Dover Beach by Richard Bowker Page B

and he's in England."
    "But England's government is as antiscience as our own. They're no more likely than we are to be running a secret cloning project."
    Winfield shook his head. "Hatton has only been in power there—what, nine, ten years? Cornwall would have gone to England over twenty years ago. The project would have been in full swing by the time the antiscience people took over. Maybe they just let it continue—maybe they had themselves cloned. It wouldn't be the first time a government's public posture didn't coincide with the way things really were."
    "Well, if Cornwall is working in England, who is trying to kill you?"
    That made him pause for a moment. "Maybe they have spies over here," he said uncertainly. "Or maybe you're right, it was just a coincidence. It doesn't really matter, does it?"
    I had no idea if it mattered. The whole thing seemed like some sort of alcoholic fantasy. All I had managed to do was find someone who was sure that Cornwall was dead, and here my client was imagining some bizarre conspiracy with the British government. It was absurd.
    Winfield sat back down on the edge of the bed. He stared in annoyance at the empty wine bottle. "The thing for me to do," he said slowly, "is to go over there and find him."
    I chuckled. It was a joke, right? Winfield did not chuckle. "Trips to England are a lot more expensive than trips to Boston," I pointed out. "I don't think even a doctor could afford one."
    Winfield gave me a what-do-you-know-about-it glance. "That's the least of my worries."
    "So what else is worrying you?" I asked.
    He clasped his hands and brought them up to his face. He appeared to be making an effort to sober up. "Going to England would be a serious step," he said. "It would involve burning a lot of bridges. That's all right. I'm willing to do it. I want to do it. But I need more information." He looked over at me. "I recognize a certain... credulity on my part, Mr. Sands. I want Cornwall to be alive. I want him to be special. All right, I'm rational, I can fight against that. So you have to bring me concrete evidence that Cornwall went to England. I don't need proof that he's still alive, just that he went there at some point. I give you three days to find me the proof. If you don't get it to me by then, I'm going home."
    Three days? The deadline seemed as absurd to me as the search itself. "I'll do what I can," I said. "But I should tell you that if the evidence exists, it might take more than three days to find it. I've already talked to my contact in the government, and he's going to search for information about who the British took; but what we're looking for might be in some file in Atlanta, or in the back of someone's desk drawer, and there's no telling how long it'll be before we get our hands on it."
    "But you see, Sands, I have to go back to Florida in three days. If I don't get back, people start asking questions, they look into things... my bridges would be burned."
    I didn't follow that, and I wasn't sure I wanted to. "If finding Cornwall is this important to you, why not go to Florida and come back when you get more vacation time, or whatever?"
    "Three days," he repeated. "Then I return to the leukemia and the melanoma and the polio and the birth defects, and I leave all this behind. Understood?"
    I shrugged. If the case was a pipe dream, it didn't really matter what kind of deadline he gave me. Private eyes don't get to choose their cases—at least, not private eyes at my level of experience. As long as I got paid, I wasn't going to argue. "You want me to report in daily?"
    "No, just when you have something."
    I stood up and put my coat on. "I figure I worked six hours at two dollars an hour. Plus expenses—parking and lunch—I figure you owe me twelve dollars and sixteen cents."
    Winfield looked at me as if I had just asked him for a new Cadillac. "You've got a nerve, Sands," he said. "I offer you something like this, and you still want your crumby two dollars an