"No, the remains are not deteriorating exactly anymore," Fareed murmured. He couldn't take his eyes off the woman. "And I am busy, that's true, impossibly busy, and I need more help, but this can't wait." He brought up yet another photograph. Press conference to announce a new insulin pump for the treatment of diabetes, 2013. The usual dim lighting. Gregory in deep shadow, and the bank of reporters a little more fully illuminated. And there she was again, this time in softer more feminin
e attire. A silk blouse, a string of lustrous pearls, a loose cardigan jacket, and the iPhone with its visible photographic eye held close to her chest. Long tapering fingers, oval nails.
"Fareed, you aren't seriously suggesting that she herself is some sort of clone, planted in my company to clone others--."
"No, I have not used the word 'clone,' " said Fareed.
"I think you're mistaken if for no other reason than that she is singular."
"I don't follow."
"Have you ever seen another one like her?"
"No," Fareed conceded, "but that has no bearing. We might be observing the first to ever come to our attention. This does not mean she is the only one. In fact, I'd be willing to wager she's not the only one."
He brought up a third picture from another file. In this one Karen Rhinehart appeared in the laboratory with her colleagues. She wore a starched white coat like the white coat that Fareed wore now. Her hair was brushed back so severely in this photo that it might have been brutally unflattering, but it was not. She had a strong chin and a calm determined look, and for some reason, some indefinable reason, she stood out from the others glaringly to Fareed's eye as if she'd been cut from another picture entirely and pasted into place. Well, she had not. But she was not human. And that is what he saw and what he sensed.
"I do have too much to do now," Fareed said dully, eyes still studying her. "That's true. But I want to go to Geneva and have a look at her without her looking at me. I want to get into her living quarters...."
"Fareed, my employees trust me not to violate their privacy or their dignity."
"Gregory, be serious! If I wanted to bring her over, you wouldn't have the slightest objection."
"Look, Fareed, the woman must work late hours. They all do. They're all there in the evening hours. You can watch her by video feed. Every laboratory and office is video monitored."
"Ah, I didn't think of that!"
"I'll give you access."
"You don't have to," Fareed confessed. "Why didn't I think of it? Of course."
His fingers were flying over the keyboard, the keyboard specially engineered to accommodate his preternatural speed.
"I'm in," he whispered, quickly entering the data to home in on the correct laboratory, and all files on record of that laboratory and none other.
"Well, enjoy it," said Gregory with a faint mocking laugh. "Have a wonderful morning watching her every move for the last ten years. As for me, I'm going out. These long winter nights exhaust me but it's worth it. I want to walk for a while on my own."
Gregory moved to the tall fruitwood secretaire a abattant against the wall, and tucked the deck of cards in its middle drawer. He turned to the door but then doubled back, and bending over Fareed he planted a kiss on his head.
"I love you, you know. I love your brilliance and your single-mindedness. I love that you're so patient with all of us."
Fareed smiled and offered a small nod. He reached up, found the hand he hoped would be there, and clasped it. But his eyes were on the task in front of him. He barely heard Gregory's footsteps as he left the room.
The great three-storied house was silent and seemingly empty around Fareed. The mortal servants were asleep in their wing. The pavements were deserted. Mortals in their surrounding apartments slept. There were faint threads of music in the air.
Fareed heard Gregory Duff Collingsworth climbing the stairs to the roof. In a moment the faint low thrumming beat of Gregory's heart was no longer audible.
The hair stood up on Fareed's neck. A rodent worked in the walls somewhere near him, behind the lacquered paneling. A small car passed in the street.
He was suddenly aware of how very excited he was, how very excited by the mystery of this woman, and how much he enjoyed it, no matter how disturbing it was.
He went at the keyboard again, fingers moving too fast even for his eyes, trusting to the feel of the keys and his unerring knowledge of them, the codes racing down the monitor, as he scanned the video surveillance system of Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals and digested all of its systems and limits.
He identified the live feed now from Dr. Karen Rhinehart's laboratories and found them empty. No surprise. It was early morning in Geneva as well, of course, only three hours away from Paris by train. Now he brought up the archive of dated tapes and soon found strong, clear footage from two nights prior that revealed the subject, Dr. Rhinehart, seated on a stool before a laboratory counter, making notes with what seemed an old-fashioned black fountain pen on a white pad. A mug of steaming coffee or tea sat beside her. She wrote in brief bursts, paused as if to think, then continued writing. Now and then her left hand moved through her long loose hair.
A preternatural stillness gripped her. Her few gestures were startlingly deliberate, and her long periods of immobility strange. When she moved her hand to write, nothing else about her moved, not the angle of her head, or the fingers of her idle hand. He was powerfully fascinated. Clone, droid, cyborg, replicant--the common vernacular words for human duplicates ran through his mind, detached from the various fictions that had engendered them.
A half hour of this footage passed and then he recognized an exact repeat of an earlier gesture, an earlier lifting of the coffee cup, an earlier rake of the left hand through the hair. The woman had blocked the camera with a digital loop. Of course. He fast-forwarded to confirm: the loop ran for the rest of that evening and night.