The Myth of Death

By Peter Wludyka

In the year 2041 minimum brain function clones are grown to be harvested for organs or to receive surgically transplanted brains, allowing individuals to perpetuate themselves indefinitely in healthy bodies. Although legal, cloning has been driven underground by anti-cloning activists the cloners that remain use hidden maturation chambers in such places as basements or attics to grow clones. Anti-cloning groups enlist undercover operatives Martin Storm is one to ferret out the hiding places so that clones can be humanely terminated before they can be used.
The sinister and secret anti-cloning society the Brethren of Life goes one step farther: the Brethren terminate cloners as well as their clones.
Martins first mission is to determine whether Nobel laureate scientist Adrian Zeit and his wife are cloners. Though obsessively opposed to cloning, Martin cannot help sympathizing with the aged, gentle Dr. Zeit. Martin is both repulsed by and mysteriously attracted to Adrian Zeits beautiful young wife, Marla.
Unearthing the hiding place for their clones, Martin discovers he has a competitor in his search. Alice, a girl-next-door wannabee actress she has been posing as the Zeits maid and cook tracks down clones for the reward money surreptitiously paid by anti-cloning organizations.
Terminating the clones leads to a startling discovery which sends Martin and Alice on a frightening and romantic odyssey.
Who is Martin Storm and why are the Brethren out to kill him?


Wludyka again concocts a thought provoking scenariothe storys central idea is captivatingthe mystery of Martins past absorbing. Kirkus Discoveries

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 6, 2005
• ISBN: 9781453518205

Peter Wludyka

Peter Wludyka is a writer, statistician, and commentator on politics and society. His speculative fiction raises questions about today’s world by creating scenarios of the future. As a statistician he collaborates with physicians engaged in medical research — but so far hasn’t worked on any cloning projects!

Book preview

Copyright © 2005 by Peter Wludyka.

Cover art and drawings by Allan Wendt

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Epilogue

When you get to a fork in the road, take it.

—Yogi Berra

Up until now human existence has been ruled by the exclusive ‘or’. Clonal mitosis has ended that rule.

—The Epistemology of Cloning

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PROLOGUE

March 28, 2041

Joshua was their group leader. He was at least fifty-five or sixty, but his jaw would begin to quiver after he had been speaking for a minute or two. Out of nervousness. Or passion.

Virtually all of the so-called transference centers have been forced to close down. Along with the fetal warehouses and maturation centers. In spite of the lawyers and politicians.

Martin sensed a kind of shuffling agreement.

Thanks to folks like you. Thanks to your prayer vigils and civil—and sometimes not so civil… . Joshua’s smile was boyishly engaging. Disobedience.

A woman of about fifty chirped, Damn right.

Not to mention the Brethren of Life, Martin remarked to himself. That was not something that was talked about much there. Instead, the way demons hide in the closet, the Brethren, and the others who were willing to go one step farther, were something everyone was aware of, but chose to leave unmentioned.

But the butchering still continues. On a smaller scale. And you know what we say to that?

All cloners must die, the dozen or so voices responded. Most of them, except for Martin—and for Jen, who in the last week had apparently found some deeper resolve to call upon—whispered the reply.

That’s right, Joshua encouraged. But getting the rest of the job done is going to require different means. Instead of huge warehouses of mutilated children waiting to be used, we are now faced with ferreting out small hiding places that have been carved out in attics and basements. What you have volunteered to do is to find these mutilated children. And humanely destroy them.

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ONE

From the beginning Martin had been convinced they were cloners. The idea had seized him the instant he opened their dossier. And not just because Dr. Adrian Zeit—or Dr. Adrian, as he insisted he be addressed by Martin—fit the profile.

It was true that he was now wealthy. And that for thirty years he had been a prominent scientist. The first was essential if you were going to be a cloner. And the second? Well, perhaps scientists found it easy to rationalize away the moral implications, Martin decided, while locking the wheelchair’s brake.

Decaffeinated coffee? Adrian Zeit shuddered while seizing the collar of his silk robe. For an instant his face took on the expression of a displeased Mandarin prince, as his lips puckered up at the thought of again being subjected to decaffeinated coffee.

You ought to be used to it now, Dr. Adrian, Martin replied solicitously.

Never! Dr. Zeit sighed before adding under his breath, Even if I live a million years.

The hair on Martin’s neck stood up, the way a cat’s might when a mouse appears at a hole that the cat has patiently staked out.

But who would want to? Adrian Zeit quickly added, while pushing his fingers through several strands of errant silver hair, which, now that he had become so thin, seemed to overwhelm his bony head. Perhaps he realized that he had let something slip, Martin decided immediately. Up until now they had been so careful. Especially Dr. Adrian Zeit, who could be as opaque as a poker chip.

Well, there you are, dear, Mrs. Zeit expelled melodiously. Her lightly painted face appeared from between two large potted plants. Who would have thought you were in the aviary? she added in a way that clearly indicated she held Martin responsible for their being hard to find.

Fresh air sounded like a good idea, ma’am, Martin explained, while fiddling with the brake on Dr. Zeit’s wheelchair.

Marla, she corrected. Indulge an older woman, Martin.

Yes. He stammered out a combination of Marla and ma’am which elicited a pained expression from Mrs. Zeit that persisted while she asked her husband how he was feeling. Although she was clearly younger than Dr. Zeit—Martin immediately decided that that idea didn’t really apply at all. No. Not to cloners—she seemed genuinely concerned with his welfare. Perhaps even loving. As if cloners were capable of something like love.

Adrian and I need to discuss. She paused delicately before completing the thought. A legal problem. Her face, which was still distinctly beautiful, took on an unusual caste. Not that look he had seen before, the one that was not quite in keeping with his being Dr. Zeit’s personal aide. No, this was—.

Perhaps, Dr. Zeit began before his wife subdued the sentence with a glance.

There was an awkward moment of silence filled with battling glances before Martin, effortlessly falling back into the role of employee, replied, Yes, ma’am. I’ll be at the pool. While retreating he thought: Isn’t that just like cloners. They are always obsessed with legal niceties and hiding behind them.

Perhaps we can go for a little stroll later, Martin? Dr. Zeit half requested, his eyes lighting up at the prospect. Odd the way he always said stroll when of course Martin would be pushing him in his chair since the walls of his heart were so thin he probably couldn’t cross the room on his own. And odd too that he always acted as if Martin were doing him a favor—instead of just doing his job.

Sure, Dr. Adrian, Martin responded cheerfully. While crossing the small aviary in which the several dozen or so birds were imprisoned by the clever use of light (and nothing else), he decided that Dr. Zeit was about to tell him. Yes, that was just what he was about to do. Which was not really what Martin wanted. Not that he wouldn’t still be able to do his job. No matter what. But being the recipient of a confidence like that would be—awkward. Yes, at least that. It would feel much cleaner if he were to just discover where they kept them without being told. And then he could do what had to be done.

Discovering it had been a complete accident, he recalled with a mild sense of awe, while sliding her head from beneath his forearm. If he hadn’t been in the basement that afternoon measuring again—in the hope that some discrepancy would reveal a hidden chamber or some other hiding place—he might never have found it.

He gently pushed up from the bed. No point in waking Miss Irish, he cautioned, while peering down into the maid’s champagne contented face. Funny, in the three weeks she’d been there he’d hardly noticed Alice at all. In spite of the jet black hair and rosy Irish cheeks that made her enticing enough to want to kiss again. Even that afternoon, when she had startled him in the basement so that he had had to pretend he was down there taking a forbidden siesta, he would have just drifted back upstairs to check in on Dr. Adrian, if she hadn’t bullied him into climbing up to fetch a bottle of champagne.

He could hear her announce, after ordering him up the ladder, Must be something they’re celebratin’ tonight because it’s the really good stuff the doctor wants. And that’s up at the top. While he wondered if they might be celebrating the fact that they had made a decision to go ahead with it, she had persisted mischievously, If it was me I’d put the good stuff at the bottom, where it’d be easier to get. But then that’s the difference between the rich and the working class.

It had been right then that he had seen the switch, hiding as if it were a spider, behind a two-by-four stud.

This place is right out of the twentieth century, she had remarked with a kind of distrustful amazement that suggested that forty-one years was an eternity. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that someone would want to live like this. Strange, if you ask me. Even if Dr. Zeit is a great man.

When Martin hadn’t replied, she had persisted, He is, you know. I even saw a piece about him on one of the magazines. Doesn’t it feel kind of funny to see someone every day like that. Someone who’s on the magazines.

Dr. Mengele would have been too, Martin repeated in a whisper, this time a foot above her sleeping face, while gently extracting the key chain from her blouse as if it were a fishing line. When the three keys appeared, resting on her damp pink chest as if they really were little fish, he unclipped the one to the wine cellar. He had made a note of it on their second trip down, while laughing, and before kissing her, which he had done after descending the small aluminum ladder with a bottle of wine in each hand. That kiss had elicited a huge sigh from Alice. And a widening of the eyes that persisted throughout the little celebration that Dr. and Mrs. Zeit insisted they join. Perhaps so that there would be four people celebrating rather than two, Martin surmised. Or at least so that someone would actually drink the champagne, which Dr. Zeit was clearly too ill to enjoy, and his wife too—he wasn’t sure what. Except that she must have had several glasses now that he thought about it. Or she wouldn’t have begun running her fingers through his hair like that. Funny, he had been sitting on the sofa, after the kiss, basking in the afterglow of the kiss—or was it the knowledge that he was certain where they’re hiding place was—when Mrs. Zeit, or Marla, as she insisted on being called, began absently arranging his hair. She was standing behind him, with the doctor right across from them pretending to sip from his champagne glass, and Alice, wide eyed, now definitely drinking champagne, lounging in a chair, when she began absently arranging his hair. She was doing it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Even though it was making Martin very uncomfortable.

Just the thought of her fingers in his hair sent a strange shudder through him as he slipped out into the hall and pulled the door to. Well, what would you expect from cloners? he almost exclaimed out loud, weaving his way down the narrow stairway to his room. Anyone who would do that, would do anything, he persisted, while trying to guess exactly how the switch operated.

Once in his room he extracted the syringes from the back of the bottom dresser drawer. They were in a small blue box that had been covered with loose socks. He carefully loaded and capped them, surprising himself at how calm and efficient he felt. He then crept down to the kitchen to retrieve the flashlight before heading for the basement.

He didn’t turn on a light until he had pulled the basement door to, so that he had to wait at the top of the stairs for a moment for his eyes to get used to the light. The metal stairway descended into a large room. Empty except for a several bags of fertilizer and some gardening tools, its only distinguishing feature was the small wine cellar that had been constructed by closing off the far corner of the basement with two rows of tall, wooden shelves that met at a small door.

Instantly he experienced that feeling—the one that had struck before, but only after he had actually entered the wine cellar. It was a feeling of familiarity. Not from having been there in the basement half a dozen times in the last four months. No. It was an ancient familiarity he said to himself almost out loud. Like those places you hide when you’re a child, he elaborated—although no such places actually came to mind.

That feeling was even more intense as he stepped through the tiny door into the wine cellar, but he pushed it aside as he bounded up the ladder to the switch. Panting, he flipped it down, expecting to hear the grinding sound of the walls sliding outward. Or the sound of a trapdoor opening.

Instead, there was nothing. He stood there for a moment. Pondering, his hand reaching over to flip the switch again, he—.

Now haven’t you had enough, Martin? The words rang out like the word of God as he strained to hear some response to the switch.

It’s one thing to be drinkin’ our employers’ wine at their behest… and another to be—. Alice,