Harvest of Stars by Poul Anderson Read Free Book Online Page B

carry their code, which the lock will open for. Charge the extra expense to your credit. I daresay that sort of thing happens every once in a while, and they’ll think little or nothing of it.”
    “Hey, Bob, you have the makings of a pretty slick desperado,” Guthrie said.
    “Bueno, then,” Kyra said gladly, “I can leave you in a safe place, sir, and convey in person whatever message you want to send Dr. Packer. Or someone else?”
    She heard grimness revive. No, she realized, it had been there all the while, under the surface.
    “Unfortunately, we can’t lay that straight a course. For openers, I wonder if I have any safe place left me, anywhere in this country. The more I think about it, the more I suspect who’s behind the whole halloo. The worst enemy I could have.”
    The breath hissed between Lee’s teeth. Had he guessed? Kyra could merely whisper, in sudden cold, “Who?”
    “Myself.”
    “What?”
    “My duplicate. My
Doppelgänger
. The copy of me that went to Alpha Centauri.”
    Memory stormed back. How old was she when the
Juliana Guthrie
came home? Seven, eight? Yes, seven. The event was not a triumphal entry. After all, the data had been beamcast ahead, received long in advance. The samples being brought were necessarily few and small, their molecular structures already analyzed, mere trophies. Nevertheless, that arrival was oddly muted, and everything about it dropped out of the news, out of public attention, with a speed that in retrospect seemed equally peculiar. She had half forgotten it.
    Guthrie went on. His matter-of-factness was more frightening than any dramatics. “We downloaded into each other, he and I. I had more experience to enter, of course. He was inoperative for a lot of years in empty space, outbound and returning. Else he’d’ve gone bananas from boredom. But the idea had been that I would be on the trip, and yet not miss out on everything that happened to me at home. While he was gone, things changed in the Solar System. I never wanted to stay in charge forever, but I decided that under present conditions Fireball had better have a backup. So I arranged to keep his return as inconspicuous as possible. By agreement, after he was brought up to date we deactivated him and I had him tucked away against a day of need.”
    And when that second Guthrie was awakened again, Kyra thought, it would be as if no time whatsoever had passed for him.
    Momentarily she wondered which of the two she confronted physically, the original or the double. Then she saw that it made no difference.
    “In North America,” she foreknew.
    “Yeah. A silly choice, with the Avantists in power? Shouldn’t we have stashed him someplace really secure? Well, a judgment call. When Fireball built new headquarters for this country, I had secret crypts and capabilities put in. I’d seen the Renewal and the Jihad and a slew of lesser disasters, and Avantism was then on the horizon. Be prepared. It seemed to me he could be as safely hidden there as anywhere on Earth, more safely than in mostlocations. Off Earth, this one of me ought to have ample protection.
    “The Synod was making the Union government heavier-handed every day, and our conflicts with it were getting worse, but I never expected it’d dare violate our contractual rights the way it’s done. I smelled too many weaknesses under the preaching and the swaggering. I knew the Kayos in embryo, as an organized resistance, already then. Nothing that happened since, till very lately, caused me to change my opinion. Someday in the not too distant future, all hell was going to let out for noon in North America. At that time, it might well be important to have another me on the spot, taking charge locally. That might save quite a lot of lives and property.”
    The part of Kyra that stood aside wondered whether this was conceit bordering on megalomania. No, she decided. Guthrie had proved himself too often, and he was too realistic to be modest. The plain truth