The
Colonel came with the two Masters-at-arms following in lock step behind
him. They took Sir Terrance away
without saying a word. Sir Terrance
put up no resistance and left whistling Bach’s Aria from the Goldberg
Variations. The Colonel waited
until Lutts’s whistle was gone and then sat in the same seat that Sir Terrance
had occupied.
“He
is a cool one,” Colonel Mann began, “but I think we learned a lot. Much of it I did not want to hear. How many clones do you think he
has?”
The
Princess was the first to speak, “Three, but more likely four. There are three research
facilities. One in America, one in
Norway and one in the U.K. I could
see him having a clone at each of them.
Then there would be the real Sir Terrance confirming and consulting with
all of them. Perhaps a spare that
could be used for when he needed to be in the public’s eye while the others
continued to work.”
“I
agree,” the Monsignor said, “A committee of geniuses that all could work
together is one thing, but when a committee gets bigger than five it becomes a
bureaucracy and that is not Lutts’s style.
He would not want to waste too much time trying to keep every other Lutts
fully informed. So my guess is that
we are dealing with four of them.”
“With
today’s advances on swarm networking I would not be surprised if we would find
some extra wiring inside each of the Luttses.”
“I’ll
ask the ship’s medical team to take a look at our guest. Mr. Huntington, where do you think they
are?”
“I
think they are close by the original research centers. Look at how Lutts had a secret room
where he captured us during the first raid. I think that is a good place to
start. If they are not there, then
they could be anywhere. Does he own
anymore ships?”
“I
don’t know, but we can try and look into that. Most likely if he did he would have them
masked with that flammable foam.
Now that we know something is up if we can’t scan an entire ship it will
be easy to find any suspicious vessels.”
“I
would include planes and freight drones, too.” Frank
added.
“Crap”
the Colonel said, “why not include trucks and everything else. We can’t look under every bed in the
world.” The Colonel did not look
happy.
“I’m
sorry we could not be more probing.
I’m surprised he admitted there was more than one of himself. He seemed rather cocky that we knew
that,” the Princess said with sincerity to the Colonel.
“Madame,
you did better than we did. We know
for certain his plan is still advancing.
And while he may be launching some of his nano-vectors from some
secondary locations by the original research centers he would need more. China is a long way from Norway. At the minimum he would need one on
every continent.”
“Since
there are not enough Luttses to go around, he still needs some kind of command
and control,” the Monsignor correctly surmised.
Everyone
looked towards the Colonel for some answers, but he was now looking down at the
residue at the bottom of his coffee cup.
A silence filled the room. I
could only guess the humans were feeling frustrated or unhappy. Maybe both emotions were at work. Humans can be very complex creatures
when it comes to their emotional states. Sir Terrance sure was a great chess
player. He had lost some pieces,
but he sure had a nice pile over on his side. He had even lost his Queen, if you could
call Dr. Larson a Queen, but they realized that there were at least four King
pieces on his side and that is a lot of power. His checkmate could come from any
direction: at any time. I guessed
this was one of those times I needed to keep my mouth
shut.
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