Flight by Neil Hetzner Read Free Book Online Page B

idea.
    * * *
    As they shuffled forward along the
slow-moving line, Prissi studied the famous old man while Jack told
her how close he was to one of the world’s three trillionaires.
Jack spent a lot of time at the Airie, Fflowers’ Manhattan
penthouse at the southern end of Central Park on The Plaza Plaza.
Jack had traveled to Europe and Russasia with his grandfather
during school and summer breaks while it still had been relatively
easy for the old man to travel. Jack amused the wealthy old man.
Although she had no reason to doubt Jack, from the physical changes
she was watching unfold on the old man’s face, Prissi was sure that
Jack’s relationship with Joshua Fflowers must be much more
complicated than he was letting on.
    As they had advanced in the line, Prissi had
been watching the icon of fledging, the most famous scienpreneur of
the century. He had been bored, then, after he had seen Jack coming
his way, he had become more animated. Suddenly, the trillionaire
had become extremely agitated. His head was bobbing and twitching,
and Prissi was sure she could see a tremor in his hands. The curve
of his mouth changed so that the smile became a rictus.
    Turning her mouth toward Jack’s ear, Prissi
whispered, “Is this going to be okay?”
    “Yeah. Why?”
    “Look. He seems epic upset.”
    Jack looked, then, laughed, “Probably just
frantic that it’s taking so long to see me.”
    When Prissi stepped hard on his foot, Jack
continued, “Or besotted by your beauty.”
    “Jack, be serious. Look. He looks horrible.
He could CPUke in a second.”
    * * *
    In a different, less current language,
Fflowers was thinking many of the same thoughts as Prissi. He
thought what black-humored poetic justice it would be if he were to
die, his central processor apoplectic, at the dedication of a
building he had endowed with the sole thought of nurturing students
whose brains were capable of re-discovering something miraculous he
had caused to be lost so many years before. What Greek theater it
would be, if, at the moment of his death, he should be brought back
together with the person… no, it couldn’t be the person, but
a startling mirror image of the person, one of three, who had
wrought the century’s greatest miracle, and wrestled it into the
light before slamming it back into the ignorant dark.
    Despite the press of bodies and wheedling
voices around him, Joshua Fflowers could not take his eyes off the
girl talking with Jack.
    Moving along with the shuffling sycophants,
laughing with his grandson, was a girl who looked how Elena Howe,
his wife, muse, science partner, and enemy looked when she was
fifteen. The girl’s impossible resemblance to Elena squeezed the
insides of Joshua Fflowers like a heart attack. This Doppelganger
could not be by chance. Somehow, this impossible girl had to share
most of Elena’s double helix, but how? Could she be Elena’s
daughter? Impossible. Rapacious Fate struck twice had taken away
that option. Could she be a niece? Impossible. Elena had had a
sister…Morgana. But, she must be dead thirty years by now. Could
she be a grand-niece and look that much like her? Impossible. A
daughter that couldn’t be. A niece that couldn’t be. The girl
looked too much like Elena to be anything else but a clone. But,
how? And, why? Why now? Why here with Jack?
    As the guests in the line shambled along,
like refugees from a war zone, Joshua Fflowers pondered. He and
Elena had never had children. That was a decision, strictly a
temporary decision by Fflowers, to which Elena reluctantly had
agreed. He had argued that they were too caught up in changing the
world with wings. Children could come later. Of course, they had
hedged their bets with frozen eggs and seed. That had been a
prescient move given that Elena was to fight ovarian cancer before
she was thirty-five. But, the eggs had been stored at the lab where
the research for the Centsurety Project had been entering the final
stages. The eggs, the