"Replica02 - Pursuing Amy - Kaye, Marilyn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kaye Marilyn)

"Really," Tasha persisted. "I've never heard of anyone being able to see like you do. Does this run in your family? Can your mother see for miles?"

"No."

"How about your father? Did he have amazing vision?"

"How should I know?" Amy responded irritably. "He died before I was born, you know that." She hated lying to Tasha. But if she told Tasha that she had recently learned she'd never had a father, that the woman she called Mom wasn't even her mother, she might as well tell her the whole story.

Now Tasha was looking at her with a hurt expression again. Amy couldn't bear it any longer. She took a deep breath. "Tasha . . ." But something behind Amy made Tasha gasp.

"Ohmigosh, look at that. Quadruplets."

Amy turned. A woman was walking in their direction, and she was pushing a long stroller containing four identical toddlers. Everyone they passed beamed or crooned something at them.

"They're cute," Amy commented as the baby train went by.

"They're cute now," Tasha said. "But I feel sorry for them. They're going to have major problems later."

"What kind of problems?"

"Oh, identity problems, that sort of thing. Of course, it could be worse. I saw a documentary about these quintuplets, five girls, in Canada. They had a miserable life. They were treated like freaks." She shuddered. "Can you imagine what it would be like having four sisters who looked exactly like you? Pretty creepy, huh?"

"Yeah," Amy said. "Creepy."

"Say, I'm sorry. Were you about to tell me something before?"

If Tasha was grossed out by the thought of quintuplets, Amy knew there was no way she could reveal her secret. How could she possibly tell Tasha that somewhere in the world there were eleven other Amys?

"No, nothing," Amy replied. "Nothing at all."





2



After returning home from the mall, Amy ran upstairs to her room to begin the routine she'd been following religiously for a month. She started up her personal computer and logged on to the Internet. There was no e-mail waiting for her, so she went directly to her newsgroups.

She belonged to a lot of newsgroups. Among them were Advanced Teen Chess Players, Future Nuclear Physicists of America, and Going for the Gold, whose subscribers were Olympic hopefuls. She also checked the messages for newsgroups devoted to young pianists, junior violinists, wanna-be opera singers. The newsgroups had one thing in common Ч they were all sites where bright, exceptional, talented young people congregated.

Amy wasn't particularly interested in the violin, and she'd never had piano lessons. She didn't know how to play chess, she had no intention of trying out for an Olympic team, and she wasn't even sure what a nuclear physicist did. She was just trying to make contact with kids who had superior skills, extraordinary talents. But not just any smart kids Ч she was looking for girls, twelve-year-old girls with brown eyes and brown hair; girls who were five feet tall and weighed one hundred pounds. Girls who'd been born in Washington, D.C. Girls like her. Exactly like her.

It would be easier if she could just post a message in all the groups. Something like "Hi! Does the name Amy mean anything to you? Are you healthier, stronger, and smarter than your friends? Can you see better, hear better, run faster, and jump higher than anyone you know?" She could get more specific: "Do you have a birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon on your back?" She could even come right out and ask the real question: "Have you ever considered the possibility that you might be a clone?"

Clone. What an ugly word. It was like something out of a comic book or a sci-fi story. What do most people think of when they hear the word? she wondered. That sheep, probably, the one that was in the news not so long ago. It had made all the papers, and it was on TV too. Scientists had created a clone, an exact duplicate of another sheep. A genetic replica.

Just like her.