He had the disruptor disk aimed at the second moose, and they seemed to be at an impasse: the moose was refusing to move, and Mac’s only recourse would be to kill him if he didn’t.
Mac and I were still on the same radio frequency, and so I spoke to him. Rory should be tuned in as well, but his captor, Stuart Berling, wouldn’t be able to hear. “Mac, it’s Alex. I’m in the open airlock of the Kathryn Denning behind you. A transfer named Stuart Berling came storming in, and he’s killed Van Dyke and taken Dr. Pickover captive; they’re on the ramp in front of me.”
There was silence long enough that I thought Mac’s radio must be on the fritz. But then Mac’s brogue came through, punctuated by some static; I wondered if the fact that he’d recently fired the disruptor had anything to do with that. “Aye, Alex, I saw the transfer coming toward the ship. I tried to stop him, but had my hands full with the two goons.”
“Only one goon left,” I said.
“You noticed that,” said Mac. He and the moose were now slowly circling each other; I think Mac had started the movement so that he could change his perspective and get a glimpse of me. The transfer he was holding at bay would have already seen me and Berling and Pickover. “One of the goons took the opportunity to run back toward the ship,” Mac said. “He went after the incoming transfer—Berling, did you say his name was? The goon wouldn’t halt, and I had to fry him.”
“Yeah. He must have figured that Berling was coming after Van Dyke—which he was.”
Mac and the moose had rotated 180 degrees; Mac was now looking right at me. Berling and his captive Pickover were standing motionless halfway down the ramp.
“Mac,” I said, speaking again after a pause, “are you in radio communication with the transfer thug?”
“Aye, I can be.”
“What frequency?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Switching,” I said, touching controls on my wrist. Then: “Okay, big fella. This is Alex Lomax. Which one are you? Uno or Dos?”
There was a pause while he thought—presumably not about what the answer was, but rather about whether to answer at all. But at last, he did. “Uno.”
“Okay, Uno, I want you to consider something. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the guy you call Actual—the actual Willem Van Dyke—is dead.”
“You’ll pay for that!”
“Hang tight. I didn’t do it. But he is gone; sorry about that. And you know Tres got wasted at my apartment, and Dos is lying in a heap over there.” I pointed. “No Actual. No other duplicates. Just you. That means you are Willem Van Dyke. Under Durksen v. Hawksworth, under the laws of just about every country: the biological original is gone and one transfer exists. You are Willem Van Dyke now. Sure, maybe Detective McCrae can pin a few petty things on you, and maybe he can’t—he’d have to prove that you personally, not Dos or Tres, were responsible, and that’d take some doing. But even if he can, you’re potentially immortal now; don’t squander that. We can all walk away from this.”
Uno had his back to me now, but he stopped and turned around; Mac could have zapped him with the disruptor, but I guess Uno trusted him not to by this point. He was clearly looking over at me—which meant he was looking in the general direction of Berling and Rory, too.
I thought that if Uno could be won over, he might help in saving Rory; there wasn’t much I could do, armed with a gun, against a strong transfer. And as long as Rory and Berling were locked together there was nothing Mac could do with the disruptor. But Rory was strong, too—and if Uno and Rory both went against Berling, Berling might go down.
I couldn’t see Uno’s expression from this distance—although I suspected he could see mine, and so I tried a kindly smile. It seemed to work. He nodded—I could make out that much—and slowly lifted his arms into the classic “I surrender” pose.
“Very good,” I said. Below me on the ramp, Berling was craning his neck to look back my way while still holding Rory as a shield in front of him. I doubted I could as easily talk him into letting his hostage go, but I held up fingers to indicate a new radio frequency—two and five—in hopes that Berling might want to parley for Rory’s release.