The Multiple Man by Ben Bova Page B

supposed to put me off my guard. "I'll tell you something. I've got a doctorate in molecular biochemistry, and I don't understand half of what these bright young people are doing nowadays."
    "That far out, eh?"
    I was about to ask him who paid for all these bright young people and their far-out research. But we had come to the bottom of the stairwell. There was nothing there except a blank cul-de-sac, about four paces long, with cement walls and an unmarked steel door at its end.
    Thornton, looking suddenly grim, fingered the buttons of the combination lock set into the wall next to the door. It swung open and we stepped through.
    This area looked medical. A large room, with pastel green walls. No windows, of course, this far underground. Glareless, pitiless overhead lights. Cold. Like a morgue, only colder. Two reliable tables in the center of the room, each bearing a body totally covered with a green sheet. Nineteen dozen different kinds of gadgets arrayed around the bodies: oscilloscopes, trays of surgical instruments, heart-lung pumps, lots of other things I didn't recognize right off.
    I found myself swallowing hard. Despite the cold of the room, the stench of death was here. I went to the tables. Thornton didn't try to stop me, but I could hear his footsteps on the cold cement floor, right behind me. I stopped at the first table. So did he. I lifted a corner of the sheet.
    James J. Halliday stared blankly at me. Christ, it looked exactly like him!
    I let the sheet drop from my fingers and went to the other table. This time Thornton stayed where he was. I lifted the second sheet. The same face stared at me. The same sandy hair, the same blue eyes, the same jaw, the lips that could grin so boyishly, the broad forehead, the thin slightly beaked nose.
    "I wouldn't pull the sheet any further back," Thornton's voice came from behind me, "unless you've had some surgical experience. It . . . isn't pretty."
    I placed the sheet gently back on the cold face. Dammit, there were tears in my eyes. It took me a minute before I could turn back and face Thornton again.
    "What were the results of the autopsies?" I asked. "What killed them?"
    Thornton looked uncomfortable. "I believe Dr. Peña should discuss that with you."
    "All right," I said. "Where is he?"
    "He's coming down to meet you. He should have been here by now." Thornton glanced at his wrist watch.
    The cold was seeping into me. "Look, couldn't we—"
    "Dr. Peña is a very frail man," Thornton told me, and for the first time since I'd met him in the lobby, I got the feeling he was saying something that he really meant. "He's nearing ninety years of age. He drives himself much too hard. I hope you won't . . . say anything that will upset him."
    I stared at Thornton. The life of the President of the United States was being threatened. Hell—one of those bodies could just as easily be James J. Halliday. And he was worried about his boss's frailties.
    There wasn't time for me to answer him, though. Through a second door, one set farther back in the room than the one we had used, Dr. Peña came riding in on an electrically powered wheelchair.
    He looked older than any human being I had ever seen; even Robert Wyatt would have looked coltish beside him. His face was nothing more than a death mask with incredibly lined skin stretched over the fragile bones. His head was hairless, eyes half-closed. He reminded me of the mummified remains of pharaohs; not a drop of juices left in him. He was wrapped in a heavy robe that bulged and bulked oddly. And then I saw all the cardiac and renal equipment loaded on the back rack of the wheelchair, and realized that below the neck he was probably more machine than flesh. His hands were covered with barely discernible thin plastic surgeon's gloves. It gave his long, bony fingers and the liver-spotted, tendon-ridged backs of his hands a queer filmy sheen.
    His voice surprised me. It was strong, confident, alert; not at all the thin, quavering piping