IGMS Issue 5 Page 15

Neither could Audrey, obviously. She held him in her gaze for a moment and then started laughing again, but not unkindly. "Been practicing that line long?"

  "Every morning in front of the mirror."

  "Hmm," she yawned. "Sorry, It's been a long night. I need some more coffee."

  "We could get some. We could go to the coffee shop."

  She took a moment to evaluate him in his rhinestone jumpsuit and nodded. Only in Vegas could an Elvis in a white rhinestone jumpsuit ask an Audrey Hepburn in a black evening dress to coffee, and not have it be weird.

  "What's your name?" She asked as they walked.

  "Elvis Presley Schwartz." Pretty obvious. Like many parents of cloned children, his mother had wanted to be sure that the world would know exactly who he was. Like it was possible for them to forget his face.

  "Oh good. I hate when you meet an Elvis and his name is Stan."

  "Why?"

  "It just seems wrong. My high school had an Elvis. His parents named him Frank."

  Elvis shrugged his shoulders as if to say "so?"

  "It wasn't just that. He dyed his hair red and pierced his nose. He even got a tattoo." She shook her head. "You can't undo a tattoo. I mean you can, but it'd still leave scar. Also, he never sang, never. Sometimes, I wonder what he's doing now. I imagine he's doing the exact opposite of what Elvis would do. What would that be? Probably an accountant. Don't you think that being an accountant would be the exact opposite of a rock and roll star?"

  He nodded. "So, you're name is Audrey then?"

  She blushed. "Yes. I'm sorry, you must think I'm a complete ninny. I just keep talking and I haven't let you say anything. I'm Audrey Hepburn Collins."

  She's using her chatter like a mask. What doesn't she want me to see, he wondered. "I was just thinking how much you remind me of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's."

  "Do you really think so? Don't say it if you don't mean it, but I hope you mean it because I've tried so hard. I know that some clones try to act exactly like the original. How many hotel rooms do you think have been trashed by some Mick Jagger copy?" She grimaced. "Although I don't why anyone would want to clone him anyway. He was just some star, not timeless like Audrey, or the King of rock and roll like Elvis. There are a whole lot of copies I don't understand. Do you know what the French see in Jerry Lewis?

  Elvis hated when clones were called copies. It made him feel redundant.

  They reached the coffee shop and waited to be seated. "Anyway, I could act like Audrey and I probably will when I get older. I'll live in seclusion and volunteer for charities. But, right now I want to have fun, and I think Holly was the best character she ever played. So I'll be her for a while."

  Her attitude wasn't uncommon. It had taken him most of his life to realize he could never be the real Elvis. Two loving parents and plenty of money meant that he would never understand the desperate need Elvis had to be adored by his fans.

  Only one small room in the coffee shop was open at this early hour. A waitress in a short, roman-style toga, pointed to a table she was clearing and waved them over. The only other person in the room was an older woman who was constructing stacks of nickels all over her table. Surrounding the stacks were PEZ dispensers of varying shapes and sizes. Each time she finished a mound of nickels, she would ritualistically touch each PEZ dispenser and then close her eyes for a moment.

  The woman looked up as Audrey and Elvis took their seats and cursed under her breath. Elvis didn't need to hear her to know what she was saying. She stood up, continued her muttering and swiped her nickels off the table, clearly more willing to disrupt her good luck ritual than to sit too close to two perversions of nature. He rolled his eyes and then looked right at her, giving her his best Elvis snarl. He laughed as she gasped, swept her bowl of nickels and PEZ dispensers into her bags and left.

  The waitress brought their coffee. Elvis reached for the sugar and then thinking of the "pre-fat" comment from earlier, opened a few packets of Sweet n' Low instead. "Would you like some sugar?" He asked, offering it to Audrey.

  She didn't answer. She was staring at where the old lady had been. Her features drooped like day-old roses.

  "Don't tell me you're going to let that old bag get to you? There'll always be people like that." Elvis kept holding out the sugar as if it were the key to her consolation.

  "I don't know. Sometimes I think people like that might be right." He voice dropped out of the lilting, musical tone it had held to this point and became huskier.

  "About what?" He put down the sugar.

  "About how we were made. Think about it. How many stillborn, and disabled children were created in order to make cloning possible?"

  Finally, an honest feeling. "That wasn't anyone's fault except the fanatics who conducted their research in silence. No one knew what they were doing until they had perfected the process."

  "And the world used their research anyway. We wouldn't even exist if they hadn't." She put her spoon into her cup of coffee and stirred, even though she hadn't put anything in it yet.

  Elvis concentrated on his own coffee for a moment. It's not true, he thought. Maybe I would still exist, but maybe I would have been an original. I could have been myself.

  It seemed that a clone could never really be his own person. The original was always in the back of everyone's mind. Clones usually responded to this pressure by becoming perfect replicas or exact opposites. This gave rise to Sean Connerys who spoke in Scottish brogues despite growing up in the Midwest or fat versions of Julia Roberts who crammed Oreos by the dozens in order to look nothing like their original. There rarely seemed to be a middle ground. It seemed like none of them just grew up to be themselves.

  "At least we weren't taken from living celebrities." He offered this as consolation.

  Audrey put her small hand to her mouth in a gesture of dismay. "Oh, that would be awful. And to think, they used to only be afraid of the paparazzi. I had nightmares for weeks after I heard about the Tom Cruise incident. At least that got congress to make some cloning protection laws." Her face grew even more serious. "Sometimes I still have terrible nightmares. Deformed children and stillborn babies are trying to choke me with their umbilical cords."

  "Can I see you again?" He said it. He looked at her with raised eyebrows.

  Her eyes widened a bit as if he had taken her off guard. "You're seeing me right now. Why do you need to see me again?"

  "You know what I mean. Can I take you out? How about Thursday?"

  "I have such a hard time remembering Thursday. It just seems to slip right by me. Wednesday is easy, I have --"

  He interrupted her. "Don't do that. Don't become a character. I want to see you again, not Holly Golightly."

  "Oh." She started to say more and then seemed to change her mind. They sat in silence for several minutes. "Don't you play a character too? You obviously aren't in Las Vegas to be an accountant. Unless of course there is some sort of dress code I was unaware of." Her long, elegant arms waved towards his jumpsuit.

  "I love music. No one would listen to me play if I were just me. So I play the part of Elvis when I'm on stage and I get to sing. But when I come off stage, I'm me."

  "Are you?"

  "As me as I can be. I have his genes. I have his mannerisms, but I'm me. I want to make a name for myself, but how can I with his shadow always looming over me? So, I take the coward's way out and I don't even try." He looked her in the eyes. "Don't you ever wish you were an original?"

  "I'm better than an original. I was made for a reason. My parents didn't have me just because it was a fad. They were a childless couple who wanted a beautiful, graceful daughter. They wanted someone who could make the world a more graceful place, just like Original Audrey did. My purpose in life is to prove that in a world of fake boobs and tummy tucks, nothing can compete with natural beauty."

  "But you're not natural." He didn't mean to say it, but he also didn't want to take it back.

  She looked stunned. For the first time s
ince he met her, he saw her built up persona slip completely way. Her face had none of the coy attitude of Holly Golightly or the regal, aloof bearing of Original Audrey.

  "But I don't know how to be me," she whispered.

  "Right now you are you. I know that we just met, but I knew from the moment I saw you that you were special."

  "Because I look like her."

  "In spite of looking like her." He picked up the aluminum napkin dispenser from the table and held it before her face. "I've seen other Audreys before. You are the only one I spent months trying to work up the courage to meet." How would she react if he took her hand? He decided to chance it. She didn't pull away. "Times like right now when you let your mask slip a bit, I see an amazing woman who I would like to get to know."

  "You think I'm amazing?" Living in the shadow of a legend, she obviously never realized that a normal girl could be loved for being herself.

  "Yes, I do."

  He could see that the honesty of the moment had become too intense for Audrey. She couldn't be used to speaking so frankly.

  She replaced her mask, a coy expression this time. "I must say that I am amazing, or at least my many boyfriends think I am. There is this Duke from England who comes to visit me every month, just for a weekend. Just to get his Audrey fix as he says. Of course, he pays for my apartment so he knows where to find me. That is a fair exchange don't you think?"

  This wasn't working. She's lost, and I need to help her find her way out.

  He knew the movie she was playing at but couldn't remember the name. She's protecting herself against me, he realized. If she doesn't let me see behind the facade I can never reject her, only her persona. Elvis let her continue speaking. He knew that he wasn't ready to give up on her yet; there was something about her worth saving.

  She kept talking, her words saying more and less than she intended, her eyes scanning the room as if looking for an audience. But, not the whole room. There was one table that she studiously avoided. It wasn't obvious at first, but the more he focused on her, he could tell that there was something she was purposefully ignoring.

  He snuck a look out of the corner of his eye. At first he didn't know what it could be, and then saw it. He smiled and laughed out loud.

  "What?" She looked self conscious. "Did I spill on my dress?" She searched for the imaginary spot.

  "No." he said. "But wait here. I'll be right back."

  "Where are you going?"

  "It's a surprise. Promise you won't go anywhere?" He tried to suppress the grin that was bubbling to the surface of his face."

  "Sure." She didn't sound sure.

  "I promise it will be worth it."

  A few minutes later he had returned, his hands behind his back, the grin still on his face.

  Her eyebrows scrunched together in expectation. "Am I getting that tiara after all?"

  Elvis didn't say anything. He just smiled again, and from behind his back, produced the largest chocolate fudge ice cream sundae that he had been able to persuade the kitchen staff to make. Two scoops of chocolate fudge ripple, two scoops of tin roof sundae, and two scoops of double chocolate were smothered in hot fudge sauce, nuts and whipped cream.

  Her mouth formed a little "o". The sundae she had been avoiding looking at on the other table looked like a mole hill to this mountain of ice cream. She didn't say a word, and she didn't take her eyes off prize as he brandished a long handled spoon and placed it in her hand.

  "It's for you. Dig in."

  "I don't like chocolate or ice cream."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes?"

  "I don't think you're sure."

  "No?"

  "No." He couldn't believe that a woman could look so terrified of dairy. "I think that Original Audrey hated chocolate and ice cream."

  "She did."

  "But you don't hate it." He took her hand in his and guided the spoon to the sundae, filling it with a large mound of ice cream.

  She stared at the spoon for a few more seconds and then put it in her mouth. She took another bite, and another and then another. Tears melted down her face, dropping onto the table, mixing with bits of melted chocolate.

  A crowd of people began filtering in the coffee shop. The sounds of the slot machines seemed to grow louder, yet for the first time that night, Audrey wasn't performing for an audience. She was sobbing now, alternating gulps of air with bites of ice cream. Finally, she finished the dish and set down the spoon. She looked up at Elvis through tears and chocolate and said, "I think I like chocolate ice cream."

  That did it. He began to laugh. Trying to control it only made it worse, and great guffaws began to shake his body. At first Audrey seemed to become frozen in time, but then she began to laugh as well. People at nearby tables turned to stare and that only made them laugh louder.

  Finally, they gained some control, and quietly looked at each other.

  "So, now what?" Audrey asked a little timidly.

  "Now we find out what else you like." Holding her in his gaze, he moved to sit beside her on the booth bench. Then, gently, he took her hair out of her Holly Golightly updo and let her hair fall softly around her face. He began to lean in.

  She pulled away from him. "I'm sorry I'm such a mess," she said.

  He grabbed the aluminum napkin holder and held it up to her face. "Do you know what I see?" he asked her. Chocolate sauce dotted her cheek, her eyes were red and puffy, black mascara rings circled her eyes and ran down her face.

  "A completely insane woman?"

  "No."

  "A federally recognized natural disaster area?"

  "No."

  "A --" He put his finger to her lips so she couldn't speak anymore.

  He looked at her a moment more, her mouth pursed in a small pout under his finger. She really was a mess, and she still had a long way to go towards finding who she really was. But then again, so did he. Maybe we can figure it out together, he thought.

  She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to speak.

  "I see an original Audrey." Then, he kissed her.

  The Gold Bug

  by Orson Scott Card

  Artwork by Jin Han

  * * *

  It was all based on trust, wasn't it? You join the Fleet, you train until it's as natural to pilot your ship as to dance, as reflexive to fight with the ship's weapons as to use your fists. Then you go where they send you, leaving behind your family and friends, knowing that relativistic travel ensures you'll never see them again. To all intents and purposes, you've already given your life for your country -- no, your species.

  You can only trust that when you commit to battle near some far-off world, the commander they've assigned to you will actually win, will make it worth the sacrifice.

  As to you, personally, does it matter whether you live or die? Sel Menach asked himself this question more than once during the two-year voyage to war. Sometimes he thought it really didn't matter at all. All he cared about was victory.

  But when they got to the Formic world, forty lightyears from Earth, and he and his warship hurtled from the transport and faced the enemy formation, he discovered that no matter what his mind decided, his body was determined to live.

  It was a child's voice he heard over his headset, giving commands to his squad. And another child giving commands to his commander. They had been warned; it had been explained to them. Mazer Rackham's voice came over the ansible, acquainting them with how these children had been screened, trained, tested, and now the finest military minds among the human race, the most relentlessly competitive, with the fastest reflexes, would give them their orders.

  "They don't know the test they're taking is real," said Rackham. "To them, it's all about winning. I can assure you that the supreme commander, Ender Wiggin, does not waste his resources. He will be as careful of your lives as if he knew you were there."

  We're trusting our lives to children?

  But what choice did they have?

  In some ways
, the actual battle was not too different from what the children must be experiencing on their simulators. Inside Sel's fighter, there was no sound except the voices of commanders and fellow pilots, and the Dvoak and Smetana he always played to help keep him calm and focused. When a fellow pilot was killed, all Sel heard was the soft voice of the computer saying "Connection broken with" and the fighter's i.d. If the killed ship had been maneuvering fairly nearby, there would be a blink of light on the simulator.

  An hour after they poured out of the transport it was over. Total victory. Not a Formic ship in the sky. And their losses had been, all else being equal, light.

  Mazer's promise about the child commanders turned out to be true. When the surviving fighters returned to the transport and sat together to watch the replay of the battle on the large simulator, no one could find a single decision to criticize.

  Each of the individual children had done well; but on the third viewing Sel began to grasp thegenius of Ender Wiggin's overall strategy. He had maneuvered the enemy into an untenable position, forcing the enemy to expose himself, the enemy to be aggressive, the enemy to sustain the losses. Wiggin had been careful of lives that he didn't even know were involved.

  But victory in this place was not complete victory. Who knew how many ships were under construction on the planet's surface? How long would it be before a new enemy arose?

  They watched the succeeding battles, fought near different worlds, on their simulator, and Sel's awe at these children only grew. There were mistakes, but the overall design of the battles was always so deft that they were all in awe of Ender Wiggin.

  As the Admiral of their expedition said, "No military force has ever been so well commanded or so wisely used."

  Then came the final battle, when they were lost in despair. Vast swarms of enemy ships hopelessly outnumbered the human fleet.

  "If he thinks it's a game," said Sel to his friend Ramon, "or even a test, what's to stop him from refusing to go on?"

  "Refuse or not, we've lost the war right here."

  And this time it seemed that Wiggin had met his match, as he broke with all his previous practice and simply sent his paltry fleet straight into the swarming enemy.