SIX OF MILO’S CLONES PLANNED to revolt. That was the meanwhile. They’d learned that vague concept from Foom’s mind, and had also learned enough deep-seated secrecy not to tip off any of their others. No matter how much amperage, there was a part of Foom perpetually guarded and it reached out in ways that, even while reinforcing the notions of Thoom obedience and reliance aimed at keeping the clones walking a road of narrowed perceptions, the Revolutionaries were somewhat sure his captors would have found troubling. None of the six were aware even of the intentions of the other five, so each of course believed they were working one against twelve. There were initially fourteen clones, but the fourteenth, whose death had been the keynote of their orientation into the world of heightened consciousness, had been autopsied right before them while still warm, revealing to the impassive thirteen a tiny machine still burrowing its way through arteries and connective tissue in a wild, wet slalom.
It had been plucked out, deactivated, cleaned off, then handed to a beautiful, bathrobe-wearing woman, whose entire participation then consisted of regarding each clone, sliding the machine into a bathrobe pocket, and wordlessly leaving.
At a billion dollars a clone this wasn’t an empty show.
Teleportation came courtesy a recently departed instructor touted as a major influence early on in Buford’s ascension.
The clones rotated turns sitting with Bubba Foom when not in use. They hadn’t been in use for a number of days now.
Bubba Foom, thought Milo’s number six, didn’t much look like a psychic. During their indoctrinations to consciousness the Thoom had surrounded them with tantrics, yogis, monks, marketers and illusionists. Everything the world regarded as mystifying or arcane the thirteen Milos thought of as commonplace. Time travel—which was all teleportation really was—was inherently paradoxical. That’s why it was so difficult to master. The limited abilities opened in the clones was sufficient though, particularly with Foom assisting with a sturdy leash.
Periodically someone appeared on a monitor in front of Foom’s face to torture a young man. Or sometimes not torture. Six had learned there was value in this psychological game.
Right now was torture.
The young man was always naked.
Right now he was naked with a naked man lying beside him. The naked man’s head rested on his hands and his erection angled toward someone taking pictures with her back to the camera, who then walked to a dock to print them, clinically laid them out, then resumed another round of picture taking. The man beside the young man was disturbingly impassive to the entire scene, not in contact with the boy, simply stretched beside him. His middle-aged body was lumpy, his skin pasty, and his pubic hair a grating mass.
Six listened to Foom’s breathing. There was a barely perceptible change to its rhythm at times like this. For every shallow exhalation there were two even shallower inhalations, followed by a pause of no breathing at all. There was a clarity of thought the clones received at these times that was almost hallucinatory in its sharpness.
“He’s not going to touch him,” Six said to Foom.
Foom never spoke back.
“Your son’s never been touched before?”
One breath out, two breaths in.
“I don’t think my penis has ever done that. The little movements too. Mine doesn’t move much at all. I don’t think sexuality is as interesting as you make it to be. Why are they taking pictures? Why don’t you ever tell us to be quiet, Bubba Foom? Silence is power, yes?” Six nodded. “It is best we remain weak.”
The man wedged his hand between Michael’s thighs and accidentally scratched him with a fingernail. Foom couldn’t see the scratch but Foom saw pain register across his son’s face.
All hell broke loose.
Michael Foom felt his father’s rage and, for the first time in his young life, understood the fear his mother had of her son’s potential. Michael had learned at nine years old that there was a pitch in his mind, a high-frequency piercing whine, capable of frying anyone panic made him think of, and had thus—under his own initiative—taken it upon himself to become the calmest child possible.
At seventeen, he was placid.
The pitch didn’t need to grow in strength. It was simply there in sudden obliterating intensity. ‘There’ was the man lying beside him, whose mind was so instantly and thoroughly wiped he might as well have been dead. But he wasn’t. He was merely in the prone, vegetative state he would be in for the rest of his life.
Michael had inherited this trait from his father.
The tenuous connection between son and father strengthened in that moment to a microsecond bridge Bubba Foom rode to enter the space where his son was being held, blindly fry the brains on two floors, contain Michael from frying any more, then himself temporarily burn out.
~~~
Ele, in the checkout line of Walmart, grabbed her head and screamed so loudly the cashier almost looked up.
She dropped to a knee, jamming a palm to her forehead.
Ramses steadied Neon.
“He’s here!” said Ele.
Smoove commandeered the cashier’s intercom.
“Make peace with your god at lane two,” he said. “Immediately.”
What people saw: twenty-five blue vested warriors converging on express lane two before surging toward the front doors after some black dudes and their girlfriends, stopping incoming customers in their tracks.
What people thought: shoplifting at Walmart was being taken way too seriously.
Jim Beame said to the Afro puffs he’d never gotten around to asking out, “We just lost our jobs, you know.”
“I don’t think it matters anymore,” she said.
All the while Ramses kept repeating, This is not what we wanted, but blue vests followed. They were in broad daylight. People scattered from their wave. Instructions were given. A caravan formed.
Ele pushed the pain aside. “I think I can find him.”
“No need,” said Desiree, and pointed ahead to Milo.
But Milo also stood directly beside Desiree.
Bubba Foom struggled from the other Milo’s arms in a fit of anger and dignity.
This, thought Milo Jetstream, is when something bad generally happens.
Twelve more of him popped into existence in the Walmart parking lot.
Smoove relayed to a confused Agent of Change, knowing the reassurance would circulate, “There’s only one here you need to worry about.”
The other Milos were clean shaven and certainly didn’t look as haggard as their source material.
“In for a penny…” murmured Yvonne.
“Mexican standoff?” said Desiree.
“No speekee englace,” said Smoove, slowly and quietly, as though calculating the exact point in space-time the silent cobra would…
Strike.
“Take me back!” Foom shouted, releasing a concussive blast of psionic force that left the entire lot stunned.
Clone Six recovered quickly and grabbed Foom’s arm.
“Wait!” shouted Ramses.
“Bubba!” shouted Desiree. “Where?”
Foom met her eyes then glanced at Ele a split second. The other half of that second saw him gone.
Ele brusquely wiped tears away and moved for Milo’s car.
The other twelve Milos looked as lost as everyone else before blinking out en masse.
“I have got to learn to do that!”
“Milo, they’re close,” Desiree reminded him, pushing him and heading for the car herself. She and Ele jumped the front seats. The rest of the crew piled in. They sped off.
“Not to use you as a divining rod,” said Captain Quicho, “but—”
“Right,” Ele directed.
Desiree drove without a thought for anybody trying to keep up.
“Left. Straight. Straight. Left. Right. Down (a ramp). Off. Here!”
It was a house.
Milo jumped out. “Buford here?”
“Who cares about Buford?!” said Yvonne. “Foom’s here.” She danced about. “What do we do?” Yvonne couldn’t figure out why it seemed to be getting progressively warmer between her and Milo.
Iowa air wavered around Milo Jetstream’s clenched right hand. Without a word he dropped and punched the ground so hard it cracked. The echo effect of the expanding chi bounced Foom’s presence back to him.
Ramses barked quick orders to several Agents of Change. “Cameras.” Trunks popped. They pulled out movie-grade videocameras. “We’re filming a scene,” he told a Korean woman, who nodded and assumed her post to fend off the curious. The other Agents of Change waited for an attack. It was 12:35 on a Tuesday afternoon. Wind was light. Time stood still.
“Get inside,” Desiree urged Ramses. He bolted for the door, slammed it as though no force existed that could keep him outside, dropped into a roll, and came up flinging concussion grenades. He didn’t have to detonate them, though. The guards were crumpled against the walls. An arrow of Agents took position behind Ramses, and through them Ele emerged, legs still shaky but eyes fire red. She took a few extra steps.
“Trouble down that hall,” she whispered, sensing the fearful uncertainty streaming off the hidden clone. The house was huge, furnished nouveau-Moroccan style.
Milo, about to rush ahead, was stopped by Ramses’ grip on his shoulder. Heat flashed between them but subsided immediately.
Ele took point.
The entire facility—once they found out how to access the lower levels, determining without doubt this was indeed a facility and not a house—was incapacitated to some degree or other. Whether fully unconscious or babbling incoherently, men and women of the Thoom littered hallways and offices. Milo’s small group moved quickly, flanking Ele and heeding her hesitations. They passed one clone, dead, and Milo tried not to look at that. Didn’t need to know how he’d died, especially if at Bubba’s hand, which considering would have put a decidedly weird spin on this endeavor. The more immediate concern was why Bubba wasn’t making his presence known as there was no way he wasn’t aware they were in the building.
Milo’s comm squawked. Desiree tersely informed him that neighbors had called police. This was a “no shit Sherlock” observation but a necessary one. It meant rather than time all they had left was opportunity. “Have some Agents slip back into Walmart mode,” he said.
“Pegging it down,” Desiree acknowledged. Orders would be given to create as much confusion among the officers as possible. There would surely be some Thoom operatives arriving on scene as well, which might actually be a bonus as they wouldn’t want the “authorities” entering this secret structure themselves.
“Ele, is Michael here?” asked Ramses.
“He’s with him.” She visibly shook.
“You OK?”
“This place is full of psychic assaults. He could’ve been right next door to him without being aware how close they were.”
“If he believed there was time for them to hurt him he had to behave,” said Ramses.
“Where are they?” asked Milo, then addressed the small band with him. “Everybody shut up and stand still. Ele?”
She came in close to Ramses and laid her face against his ribcage as if seeking a hug, precisely what she was doing. Comfort flooded her small body.
“We’ve gone too far down. He’s above us,” she said.
The room wasn’t directly above but it was close enough that they reached it quickly. Foom hadn’t found anything that could cut the polymer straps binding his son, and sat beside him, forehead to forehead. Clone Six stood in a corner as unthreateningly as possible.
“My head hurts,” said Ele. Blood trickled from a nostril. Ramses eased her to a chair while Milo cut the straps with a laser from his pocket. Desiree removed the lab coat from the photographer’s limp body to wrap Foom’s son. Michael, eyes tightly closed, held his father.
“What happened to the clones, Bubba?” said Milo.
“Fighting amongst themselves.”
At another time that would have been hilarious.
“Let’s get you home,” said Milo.
“That,” Foom slurred, “would be a good thing.”
Yet it had to be asked. “Is Buford here?” said Ramses, expecting the answer he got and ready to move on.
“No. I don’t know, I don’t think so. I don’t know,” said Foom shaking his head. “Buddha’s in trouble.”
“Where is he?” asked Milo.
“I think it was him. They got me fulla shit, and those commercials, and—”
Foom held his son even tighter and buried his face in his hair. Milo waited.
“—and clones. There were thirteen fucking yous! Do you know how hard that was!” Foom’s Southern drawl was pronounced when angry.
Ramses gathered up the photographs and the camera.
“You still have influence over them?” Milo asked Foom. “Bubba?”
“Milo, my head really hurts,” Ele groaned.
“We’re getting you out of here,” said Milo. He lifted one of Bubba’s arms and draped it, raising both father and son since Foom hadn’t let go of Michael. Foom’s eyes were bloodshot, distant, simultaneously full and emptied. “Need you to do one more thing, Bubba,” whispered Milo into Foom’s shock of stringy hair. “Fry ‘em.”
Bubba’s head shook slowly as if full of sludge.
“You fry ‘em,” Milo whispered, “or I swear you’ll regret it. Make them forget. Make them forget and we’ll scatter them. Bubba?”
Foom’s breathing was barely detectable. A tremble started in Milo’s right arm, which intensified along with his head clogging the more Foom stood under his own power. “Focus your intentions,” advised Milo. The clogging eased.
“My intentions are a knife,” murmured Foom inside the pocket universe behind his eyes.
“They need to forget this,” said Milo.
Foom closed his eyes and exhaled sharply once. He stood fully erect for the first time in weeks and drew a huge intake of breath, releasing it as a heavy, clarifying grunt. His jaw clenched and unclenched over what felt like a long moment. “It is done,” he said.
Milo addressed the Agents of Change hovering at the fringes of the room. “Scatter them.”
“We should bring them with us,” said Smoove.
“We should let them live their lives,” said Milo.
“Whatever that may be?” said Ramses.
“Whatever that may be.”
~~~
“That’s just bloody stupid!” Fiona railed at Milo an hour later. “There are twelve of you running around out there without a clue what’s coming after them.”
“It’s confusion—”
“You, Milo Jetstream, are confused.” She paced back and forth.
“They’re the least of our concerns now, Fee,” Milo asserted. “Raffic is out there.”
“Raffic is always out there! Raffic the Mad Buddha,” she enunciated clearly, “could no more remain in here than Leviathan could swim my bathtub. This isn’t like you, Milo. What the hell’s going on?”
“We need to find the Buddha.”
“No, I think you’ve been saying we need to find Buford. Yes? The False Prophet Buford Bone. Scourge of mankind. Yes? A right evil prick when you get to know him.”
Ramses had said nothing until now. “You don’t think the Thoom are going after them?” he said to Milo. “You drew blood, man.”
Milo, standing in the center of their safe house’s main room, said, “The Thoom know that I’m a vampire; know there’s a bunch of me. That’s twelve heightened odds wondering is it live or is it Memorex. Vampires are letting the Thoom do their dirty work, and you know the Thoom don’t do shit unless they think the odds are in their favor.”
“By that logic, they have to have Buford,” Fiona tossed out, walking away before she gave in to wanting to hit him. “And since your clones got him out of Atlantis, we assume he used to be near. We assume now that they’ve since spirited him via underground tunnels to who in hell knows where. Ele and Bubba are tapped out. I hope not burnt. Michael’s so far in denial I cry. Milo, we’ve followed you because you’ve always been a good leader, not because we need to be led. We trust you,” she said, still walking the room, a human pinball, “because you trust yourself. This, luv, is a big thing. That trust is shaken if you do stupid things!”
“It wasn’t stupid, dammit! Listen—”
“Don’t think we can’t plot as good as you. We know where in hell this was going. Do you think, though, you’re fixated lately on plot, counter plot, point, counter point too much? We’re running around with two untrained women, Kichi is going to chew the unlined hell out of our asses…” She stopped in front of him to stand as nose to nose as tiptoes allowed, eyes flaming (“He’s still smelling your hair,” offered Yvonne). “You can stone up as much as you want…”
He sat. She remained before him.
“We require a lot more of you than this,” she said. “D’you understand me?”
He nodded.
“You plan to find them?” Ramses asked Fiona.
“Yes.” She’d already sent word to the Agents of Change to report back. “They can teleport, Milo. You can’t. That makes them twelve very valuable friends.”
“They’re clones of me,” he said, as though that would explain it all.
“You know the joke,” she said.
“Some of my best friends are clones?”
“No. Isn’t it queer, losing my timing this late in my career? Send in the clones,” said Fiona.
“Send in the clones,” Ramses echoed.
Jim Beame radioed back to them that he was en route to rendezvous, clone in hand. Desiree acknowledged his communication, her eyes meeting Fiona’s.
“Don’t bother,” said Milo. “They’re here.”