The Multiple Man by Ben Bova Page A

in a well-modulated voice that was somewhere between a confidential whisper and a throaty tenor. "We are honored."
    My estimation of him went up. Scratch pickpocket. He was a confidence man.
    I let him shake my hand. He had a very firm, manly grip.
    "My name is Peter Thornton. I'm Dr. Peña's assistant—"
    "Dr. Peña?"
    He almost looked hurt. "The director of this organization. Dr. Alfonso Peña. Surely Dr. Klienerman has explained—"
    I cut him off with a nod. He was pumping me, and I decided to be the pumper, not the pumpee.
    "Where is Dr. Peña? I'd like to see him. I don't have much time, you understand."
    "Of course. Of course. But the gate guard said you were asking for Dr. Klienerman and Mr. McMurtrie."
    "That's right. I'm part of the investigating team. We've got to make certain that we can handle the media from a knowledgeable basis."
    "Oh, yes, certainly. That is important, isn't it?"
    "Right." But we hadn't moved a centimeter from where I'd been standing all along. The door to the laboratory proper was still behind Thornton, and he was making no effort to take me through.
    "This is a very unfortunate business," he said, lowering his voice even more.
    "Yes. Now where're Klienerman and McMurtrie? And I also—"
    "Dr. Klienerman left last night," Thornton said, giving me a you should have known that look. "He and Mr. McMurtrie went together."
    "Last night?"
    "By chartered plane. General Halliday insisted."
    "General Halliday?" The President's father.
    "Yes. They should be in Aspen by now."
    Damn! That was one of the troubles with skulking off on your own. You got out of touch with everybody else. I decided to take the offensive.
    "I should have been notified," I said sternly.
    His eyebrows rose in alarm. "We didn't know. They didn't inform me—"
    I shook my head. "There's no excuse for this kind of screw-up. I know it isn't your fault personally, but. . ."
    He made a gesture that was almost like hand-wringing.
    "Well," I said, "as long as I'm here, I want to meet Dr. Peña. And I'll need to see the bodies, of course. The bodies are still here, aren't they?"
    "Oh, yes! They've been subjected to extensive postmortem examinations, you realize . . . but they're here."
    "Let's get with it, then."
    I had him on the run. He ushered me through the door and into the main building of the laboratory. We walked through miles of corridors, down stairs, through plastic-roofed ramps that connected different buildings. I got completely lost; I couldn't have found the lobby again without a troop of Boy Scouts to lead me.
    We passed a strange conglomeration of sights. At first we were in an office area, obviously administrative. Rugs on the floors, neat little names and titles on the doors. Secretaries' desks placed in alcoves along the corridors. Then we stepped through one of those rampways into a different building. Here I saw workshops and what looked like chemistry laboratories: lots of glassware and bubblings and people in white smocks. Then a computer complex: more white-smocked people, but younger, mostly, and surrounded by head-high consoles with winking lights and view-screens flashing green-glowing numbers and symbols.
    Then we passed more offices, but here there were no doors, no names, no titles. The men and women inside these cubbyholes looked like researchers to me. They were scribbling equations on chalkboards or punching computer keyboards or talking animatedly with each other in words that were English but not the English language.
    As we were going down a clanging flight of metal stairs, deeper into the basement levels underneath the surface building, it finally hit home in my brain that North Lake Research Laboratories was not a medical institution. It had nothing to do with medicine at all, from the looks of it.
    "What's the major area of research here?" I asked Thornton.
    "Em . . . biomedical," he said.
    "Biomedical?"
    "Well . . . mostly biochemistry. Very advanced, of course." He produced a chuckle that was