The Multiple Man by Ben Bova

to his closest associates that he was going to father a President. He'd done exactly that, even though his wife had died while the son was an infant and he had raised James J. by himself.
    Not exactly single-handed, of course. But the General had never let James J. wander far from this mountain stronghold on Red Peak. Instead, he brought the world to the boy. The best scholars on the planet tutored James. Local gossip had it that there were more Nobel Prize laureates on Red Peak at any given moment during the boy's schooling years than anywhere else on earth. The General bought the Aspen Institute and gave it to his son as a sixteenth birthday present. And when James did travel, it was with a security team as large and dedicated as the Secret Service guards for the President. It was like a small army traveling. He was born to be President, and he started living like one so far back in his childhood that he had taken to living in the White House as if it were his natural habitat.
    There were always those who tried to find the strings that controlled James J. Halliday. The obvious link was from his father to the banking, mineral, and industrial interests that the General was tied to. I have to confess that my own first interest in Governor Halliday, the dark horse candidate for the Presidency, was exactly for that reason. I was going to find his feet of clay. I was going to expose his connections with the oil and banking and God-knows-what other big-money manipulators who were using him as a front man. I was going to knock him down. The son of a bitch had stolen Laura from me.
    I never found those links. They just weren't there. Halliday was his own man, as fiercely independent and tough-minded as his hero father. Despite myself, I liked the man. I wound up working for him, of course. And the relationship between James and his father reminded me of the relationship between the ancient conqueror Alexander the Great and his father, Philip of Macedon: pride, love, competition, maybe envy. Philip had been assassinated, probably on order of his son.
    Now the General stood before me, saber-straight and lean. He fixed me with his eyes as I was about to take a bite of my half-finished sandwich. I felt like a very small mouse that had just been spotted by a very hungry cat.
    "Just what in hell is going on?" he said. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. There was enough iron even in his calmest tones to swing a compass needle around.
    A slice of tomato oozed out of my sandwich as I replied, "Good afternoon, General." Dazzling comeback.
    He strode over to our table. Wyatt got up and fetched a chair for him. I got to my feet.
    As we all sat down, the General asked me, "Are you supposed to be the President's press secretary, or some amateur detective out of a lousy TV show?"
    I let the rest of my sandwich drop into the plate. "Is that a riddle or do you want a serious answer?"
    He glared at Wyatt, as if it were his fault, then returned to me. "Listen, sonny, you're supposed to be working in Washington. What in the name of hell are you doing running around the countryside to Minnesota and up here?"
    "I'm trying to find out what's going on, and who's attempting to kill your son."
    "We have the whole mother-thumping FBI and Secret Service available for that. Plus the Army, Navy, and Aerospace Force, if we need 'em. Who the hell gave you a sheriff's badge?"
    I took a deep breath. His bark's worse than his bite, I told myself, even though I didn't believe it. "General Halliday . . . sir. It may come as a shock to you, but I cannot, and will not, try to keep this story away from the news hounds unless I know exactly what the story is. I'm not going to operate in the dark."
    Wyatt smirked. "And how much have you found out by running up to Minnesota?"
    "At least I know as much about what killed those duplicates as Dr. Peña does."
    "You met Peña?" the General snapped.
    "Yes."
    "And what did he tell you?"
    "Not a helluva lot. Said he can't