“I would have told you,” Uzvuyiten said calmly.
Salehi poured the coffee. Steam rose from it. The liquid was a rich golden brown, and it slowly became light tan as the mug mixed in the right amount of cream and sugar.
“Would you really have told me?” Salehi asked. “I thought you might have a few hours ago, but since I got a report from my detectives, I figured you are withholding information.”
“What would I be withholding?” Uzvuyiten asked, using a very old lawyer trick. Answer a question with a question, and get the desired response from the opponent.
This time, Salehi didn’t mind answering. He cupped the mug, the exterior incongruously cool, given the fact that steam still rose from the liquid inside.
He turned, waited until Uzvuyiten’s gaze met his, and then said, “An organization inside the Alliance has had the DNA for decades. There is no record of any sale, at least that we can find. We’re also unaware of any trafficking in Peyti DNA.”
“You’re saying this is an Alliance matter?” Uzvuyiten’s voice rose, like a human’s might do if the human were showing just a little surprise and distress. But Uzvuyiten was a good actor, just like Salehi was. And Salehi wasn’t going to trust any reaction that Uzvuyiten had.
“I’ve come across the Alliance twice now in relation to the attacks on the Moon. I can’t believe that the Alliance itself would willfully destroy any part of itself, particularly the entrance to Earth, so I have to think something else is going on.” He paused, sipped the coffee, and then leaned against the counter, resting the mug on the countertop.
Uzvuyiten studied him for a long time. The silence echoed. It was almost a contest of wills. Most humans would have interrupted, would have said anything, to fill the quiet, but Salehi had learned how to use silence as a weapon, apparently just like Uzvuyiten had.
It took nearly ten minutes, long enough for the coffee to cool, long enough for Salehi to get comfortable, before Uzvuyiten finally spoke.
“Why do you think we hired S-Three?”
“We thought it was our stellar reputation,” Salehi said, not even trying to disguise the sarcasm in his voice.
“That, yes,” Uzvuyiten said, as if he didn’t understand sarcasm. Salehi knew better, but he let that slide. “We also hired you because you have few Alliance-based clients. You usually represent corporations which, while they are registered in the Alliance, often sue the Alliance or challenge the Alliance’s laws.”
“That’s the only reason?” Salehi asked.
“You are not afraid of the Alliance,” Uzvuyiten said. “And you are the only human firm that we could find that had even a passing interest in clone law.”
“Are there Peyti firms that specialize in clone law?” Salehi asked.
“No,” Uzvuyiten said. “But that’s not why we brought in humans.”
“We thought you brought us in because of the tacit discrimination on the Moon,” Salehi said.
“We did,” Uzvuyiten said. “But humans populate all parts of the Earth Alliance. The Peyti do not.”
He let the words hang. Another long silence started.
This time, Salehi broke it. “What do you really think is going on?”
Uzvuyiten closed his large eyes for a long moment, a very human reaction. Then he opened them. They seemed clearer than they had a moment before.
“We think there are traitors inside the Earth Alliance,” Uzvuyiten said. “And we do not know how to stop them.”
FORTY-THREE
AVA HUỲNH STARED at the sea of faces and environments before her. She was in the Joint Unit’s Major Conference Room, sitting beside Xyven, who wore a mask. The Major Conference Room hadn’t been used since he’d become head of the Joint Unit—he’d always held meeting inside his own office—but this time, he wanted everyone to see that he had agreed to place her in charge.
And “everyone” pretty much stunned her.
When Xyven’s office meetings happened, she was in her office as well, and all she could see was Xyven’s unmasked face, and the face of whomever might have been speaking.
She’d never seen the hundreds of aliens who ran their own units within the Earth Alliance Security Department. She had known that there were hundreds of alien-only units, but she hadn’t even met her colleagues.
She was seeing many of them for the first time—and was having trouble processing it all.
First, most of the faces didn’t look like faces to her. One, in a tiny floating screen to her left, was simply a bright red eyeball like thing. Another, in the upper right hand corner of the room, appeared to be a branch covered with maggots that would stand and wiggle more little appendages that she couldn’t see.
Xyven had assured her she would be looking at faces, and she couldn’t’ believe that thing in the upper right was a face at all.
Most of the faces blurred. There were too many to process. The room set them all up as floating flat screens, and if someone spoke, its image would enlarge, and a translation would filter through her links.
She didn’t have to say much: Xyven was explaining that there would be a Joint Unit Investigation of the Moon bombings and attempted bombings. He was going to assign the aliens who used the Port or had suffered losses—his word (at least in Standard)—to the investigation, and now he was asking for volunteers.
She couldn’t count the responses. Face-like things would enlarge and make some kind of weird sound which her system would translate as We shall send a team.
Before she had even come in here, she had—at Xyven’s urging—set up a system for keeping track of the responses, and she hoped her internal network was up to the task. Because her brain certainly wasn’t.
All right, Xyven sent to her after forty-five minutes of volunteering. Your turn.
She nodded. She was supposed to brief them, and she was supposed to keep it short.
“I have 150 human teams handling the Moon investigation,” she said. “Most are assisting on the Moon itself. A few have transitioned to Peyla to assist in their investigation of the Peyti lawyer clones. We have discovered enough to believe this is some kind of conspiracy that has been active within the Alliance for decades. But that’s all we know.”
Xyven nodded. She wasn’t certain if that was meant as supportive or if he felt uncomfortable wearing the mask, or if he was responding to some action of the other heads of investigative units.
“I think you should fan out throughout the Alliance,” she said. “I believe that we will discover some activity far from the center of the Alliance, outside of our usual sphere of influence. Even if something seems small and inconsequential, I want you to bring it to me.”
“Please,” Xyven added in Standard (probably for her benefit), “make certain you explain the implications of that small thing. We are not as versed in the details of your cultures as you are.”
His addition threw her off her stride. She smiled at him, keeping her face away from the camera—she’d been told that some cultures saw smiles as threats.
“The faster you can move on this, the better,” she said. “There is the distinct possibility that whatever is attacking the Moon will find another target within the Alliance. We need to know ahead of time if that is the case.”
She couldn’t tell if anyone in that sea of faces understood the urgency. She hoped they did.
“Thank you for your help,” she said. “Xyven will coordinate as best he can, but you’re welcome to come direct to me as well.”
And if I don’t understand what you’re telling me, she wanted to add, I’ll make sure someone helps me.
One by one the images winked out. She leaned back in the chair, nervous sweat dripping down the side of her face.
I’m the one who owes you an apology, she sent Xyven without looking at him. I had no idea how difficult your job was.
It’s not difficult, he sent. It requires extreme coordination. This is why I discourage so many joint investigations you all suggest. It is complicated, and generally, yo
u’ll do better on your own.
But not this time, she sent.
Clearly.
To her surprise, he put a bony hand on her shoulder. It took all over control not to jump. She wasn’t certain she had ever been touched by a Peyti before.
His hand had a surprising amount of strength.
I hope this works, he sent.
Me too, she responded. Me, too.
FORTY-FOUR
TRAITORS, INSIDE THE Earth Alliance. Salehi sank into a nearby chair, leaving his half-finished mug of coffee on the counter. The coffee was upsetting his stomach.
He made himself breathe, not caring that Uzvuyiten saw how upset he was.
And then Salehi thought about what Uzvuyiten had said.
There were always traitors—dissenters, people who acted against interest—inside any large organization. That shouldn’t have been a surprise, and really wasn’t a surprise. Salehi had known that people would work from within to harm the Alliance since his earliest cases.
But these people were often individuals. Or they were saboteurs, who acted alone. Sometimes they were governments who didn’t want to belong to the Alliance.
It could be argued—and it probably had been, by someone in S3—that the Disappearance companies were tiny little traitorous organizations, things that the government itself looked the other way on, because to allow the Disappearance companies was an easy way to prevent internal dissent.
Let the dissidents Disappear. Let them leave. Let them live their lives in peace, even if they are in hiding. Let them move forward, instead of attacking the Alliance itself.
Salehi ran a hand over his face.
“When you talk about treason,” he said slowly, “you’re not talking about some disgruntled employees inside the Alliance. You’re talking about an organized group.”
Uzvuyiten leaned forward, pressing his hands together. That movement was creepier than all of his other movements combined because all of his fingertips bent in the wrong direction.
Salehi’s gorge rose. He swallowed hard against it, hoping Uzvuyiten didn’t notice.
“That’s what we believe,” Uzvuyiten said. “We believe that there is an organized group. We have no proof.”
He tapped his fingers together. That movement bothered Salehi less than the others had. He asked, “Your investigators have found nothing?”
Uzvuyiten lowered his hands altogether. He leaned back in his chair. Apparently, he was back in lecture mode.
“The company that handled Uzvekmt’s remains,” he said, “got folded into the Alliance. It was a Peyti company, but it became part of a large corporation, which does a lot of work with a certain branch of the Earth Alliance Security Forces.”
“The Security Forces?” Salehi hadn’t expected that. “How can that be?”
“DNA of criminals from across the Alliance filter through the Forensic Wing of the Security Forces,” Uzvuyiten said. “You did not know that?”
“I stopped handling big criminal trials years ago,” Salehi said. “I focus on criminal cases only when there’s legal theory involved. At some point, those cases will go to the Multicultural Tribunals, and that’s when my hands get dirty.”
As in this case.
The skin around Uzvuyiten’s eyes turned slightly blue. Salehi knew that meant Uzvuyiten had an emotional reaction; Salehi just wasn’t sure what that was or what, exactly, Uzvuyiten was reacting to.
Salehi decided to move away from his admission. “So,” he said, “you believe that the Forensic Wing is filled with traitors?”
“No,” Uzvuyiten said. “We found that the only DNA that we could trace from Uzvekmt went into that branch of Alliance government. Which is odd.”
Salehi wanted to follow up on the DNA, but Uzvuyiten’s word choice stopped him. Uzvuyiten was like many long-time lawyers. He chose his words, especially his words in Standard, with great care.
“Odd how?” Salehi asked.
The color around Uzvuyiten’s eyes faded. Had he deliberately distracted Salehi? Salehi didn’t know and didn’t care. He wasn’t really distracted; he just wanted to hear what Uzvuyiten had to say about the Forensic Wing.
“Odd, in that this particular Forensic Wing is human run,” Uzvuyiten said. “We had believed the actor behind these clones, the mastermind as you call him, was Peyti.”
Just like Salehi had always assumed the masterminds were human.
“Could the masterminds,”—he was careful to use the plural (he had always been careful to use the plural)—”be human and Peyti both?”
“Perhaps,” Uzvuyiten said. “The fact that the clones went undetected through law schools all over Peyla suggests Peyti involvement.”
Salehi hadn’t thought of that. Clones in the same profession, clones of the same age in the same profession, clones who looked like each other as well as a famous mass murderer, would have gotten noticed if they were bunched into the same school.
At least, they would have been noticed in human schools.
Salehi silently cursed himself that he had believed the Peyti would be any different.
Every now and then, his own blindness irritated him greatly.
“But the department is run by humans,” Salehi said. “Not humans and Peyti.”
Uzvuyiten nodded—or tried to. The movement still seemed awkward.
“The Security Department is quite a bureaucracy,” Uzvuyiten said. “Each Alliance species has a department and then there are departments that specialize in interactions between the older members of the Alliance, such as a Human-Peyti Relations Department.”
Salehi knew that. He also knew what a labyrinth Alliance bureaucracy was. “That Department isn’t part of the Security Department. It stands alone.”
“It has a branch inside the Security Department. Every aspect of interspecies relations has a branch within the security department.”
“But you told me that the Forensic unit was human run,” Salehi said.
“The Forensic Unit is human-run,” Uzvuyiten said, “only because humans are more concerned with what you call Designer Criminal Clones. They are generally made by humans for the purposes of disrupting human lives and human systems. Even designer criminal clones made from other species generally have a human overseer.”
For once, Salehi was having trouble following Uzvuyiten’s concerns. Uzvuyiten usually laid out his arguments clearly. This time, he was following a meandering trail.
Because he was trying to throw Salehi off? Off what?
“Yet you thought Uzvekmt’s clones came from a Peyti source,” Salehi said.
“I still believe that,” Uzvuyiten said. “I believe the company brought its resources into the Forensic Wing, which then sold or gave or exchanged or accessed Uzvekmt’s DNA to someone—Peyti, most likely—and then that Peyti raised the clones. I cannot believe that the clones of Uzvekmt were raised by humans.”
After Uzvuyiten had pointed out what happened, Salehi couldn’t believe that humans raised the clones either. It would have taken much too much effort.
“Do you have evidence that the Forensic Wing is selling DNA?” Salehi asked.
“I’m am not sure the DNA was sold,” Uzvuyiten said. “Remember, there is a Human-Peyti relations department within the Security Division. Therefore, there would be Peyti working in the unit.”
“I assume other species would work in the Forensic Wing,” Salehi said. “Not every death investigated by the Security Division is human.”
“But it is against religions or cultural customs, sometimes against agreements made with the Alliance, for all species to be evaluated forensically. The human habit of autopsy, of examining the dead, is offensive to many many cultures, and impossible with some species.”
Uzvuyiten pressed his hands together again, probably so that he could proceed into a new lecture, one Salehi didn’t want to hear. He’d read cases about some species whose bodies simply disintegrated upon death, causing all kinds of legal problems in human-based murder cases.
>
“I know,” Salehi said. “But the Peyti—”
“Are employees in the wing. I doubt they are the source,” Uzvuyiten said.
“Because you’ve investigated them?” Salehi asked.
“Yes,” Uzvuyiten said. “That much we could do.”
“Meaning there was something you couldn’t do,” Salehi said.
“We have been unable to compare the DNA from the arrested clones—our so-called clients—to the DNA available through the forensic wing.”
“You believe there would be a difference?” Salehi asked.
“The Wing adds a tiny tag to the DNA that does not change how the DNA works. It’s an internal marker, known to very few people.”
“Yet you know it,” Salehi said.
Uzvuyiten inclined his head. “It factored into a case I worked on as a young attorney, decades ago. I checked: practices have not changed since then.”
“I take it, then, that you have the DNA from the lab?” Salehi asked.
Uzvuyiten closed his eyes slowly, a sign of impatience from a Peyti. Salehi wished he had phrased the question differently, because he knew how Uzvuyiten was going to answer.
“I do not,” Uzvuyiten said in his precise way, which was exactly what Salehi expected. “However, I have confirmed that the Forensic Unit has Uzvekmt’s DNA, and I have confirmed that it has been tagged. Now we just need DNA from the Peyti clones imprisoned on the Moon to test against it.”
“No one has sent that to Alliance Security Department?” Salehi asked.
“So far, the case is not theirs. The Moon’s security office is handling everything or the local police are, as you well know.” Uzvuyiten stared at him, as if Salehi had been stupid.
But he hadn’t been. He would have assumed that any law enforcement organization would have sent the clone DNA to the Alliance lab for testing, just to find the source of the DNA. They’d had nearly a week to do anything before S3 enjoined them from acting.
The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) Page 28