Free Apocalypse to Go by Katharine Kerr Page A

head.
    “When we leave here,” I said, “you’d better drive. I have a bad feeling about this.”
    “Do you think it’ll happen again?”
    “That’s what I’m afraid of, yeah. I don’t know anything for sure.”
    He nodded and pocketed the keys. As we walked off, he caught my hand in his. I clung to his grasp.
    In the midst of the sunny green lawn, Spare14 waited for us on a park bench. I recognized him immediately from the photos of the original Austin Osman Spare. Neither tall nor short, squarely built with a squarish face, he had gray hair swept back en brosse and blue eyes. He’d also dressed casually, in a pair of tan chinos, a blue shirt, and a gray cardigan sweater. A battered old-fashioned leather briefcase sat next to him on the bench. He was feeding stale bread to the birds and squirrels mobbing his feet, just another middle-aged man whiling away some time in the sunshine, or so he appeared.
    “He sure looks like the artist,” I said to Ari. “It’s kind of spooky, in fact.”
    As we approached, Spare14 glanced up and smiled, then scattered the last of the bread for the flock and stood. He crammed the empty paper bag into the briefcase. He stepped carefully around the feeding birds and walked over to meet us.
    “O’Grady and Nathan, I believe.” He sounded British, middle class, mostly. “I’m Austin Spare Fourteen.”
    I murmured a “How do you do?” and we all shook hands.
    “Doubtless you’re wondering about the fourteen,” Spare14 continued. “It’s a bit difficult to explain, but I’ll try as we proceed.” He glanced around, then pointed to a nearby picnic table. “This seems to be the best we can do for seating arrangements.”
    We all sat down, myself and Ari on one bench, Spare14 on the other across the table. He put the briefcase on the bench next to him, then made a tent of his fingers and considered us pleasantly.
    “I’m trying to decide how to begin,” he said. “I suppose that bluntness is best. Doubtless you realize that I come from a different though parallel world.”
    “I’d suspected that,” I said, “but I couldn’t be sure.”
    “In many ways my world is far more technologically than yours, for reasons that are quite complex. For example, I happen to be a clone. When the great artist died, a number of his cells were harvested with permission from his kin. A full line of clones was developed from them over the years. I’m the last, I’m afraid. Genetic material weakens with time. And that is why I am Austin Osman Spare Fourteen.”
    Ari’s entire body drooped into his look of extreme martyrdom.
    “He’s not having a joke on you.” I’d run an SPP and could speak confidently on the subject. “I can tell he’s sincere.”
    “I was afraid of that,” Ari said.
    Spare14 smiled, a little ruefully. “I knew this would all come as a shock to you.”
    Ari nodded. “More so to me than to O’Grady.”
    “I’ll admit to being surprised,” I said. “Before we move on, I have a question. In our world the original Spare’s work was barely known. He lived in poverty, obscurity, and surrounded by cats. But in your world—”
    “He was famous, successful, and quite rich, really. The cats, however, were present in abundance. I have more than a few myself.” Spare14 smiled as if the thought of owning lots of cats pleased him. “I’ll tell you something I’ve realized over the years. While doppelgängers, like clones, share their genetic makeup and their basic personalities and talents as small children, how they develop as they grow varies widely, depending on the world around them. To oversimplify, the original Spare fit very well in my world. He was sadly misplaced in yours.”
    “That makes a lot of sense. Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome. Now, as things worked out, I have only a modicum of my noble root stock’s artistic ability, though I did inherit a talent for police work from his father.”
    “And so you’re an Interpol officer,” I said.