She particularly liked the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Academy’s spectacular garden. On special days, students could eat outside, under the double-dome. The garden had its own dome underneath the City of Armstrong’s dome. The garden’s dome had a sunlight pattern all its own, and it was always warm inside. In truth, the garden was a gigantic greenhouse, and it felt like the safest place in all of Armstrong.
Safety was an issue for her, and she had known it before Anniversary Day. But Anniversary Day had destroyed any feeling of safety she would ever have.
The events of that horrible day were even ruining the lunch room. She cringed when she had to go inside.
Aristotle Academy was the most exclusive private school on the Moon. It was extremely expensive, extremely prestigious, and extremely snotty. Kids from all age groups filled the halls. Most were human, although some other kids got in, especially kids of diplomats and the very rich. Those alien kids had to not only understand Standard, they had to be fluent in it.
A few kids came from low income levels. For the most part, the poorest kids were the smartest ones because they all got in under scholarship. Although Talia wasn’t poor by any stretch—she had slowly learned that her father was one of the richest men in Armstrong—she was smarter than 99.9% of her schoolmates. She had snooped in the records; she had seen the studies. All the measurements of her intelligence were so far off the charts that in some of them, she blew out of normal, past genius, into something that no one had yet labeled.
Here, though, she worked hard to keep her intelligence under wraps. She kept her grades up, because that pleased her father. It took almost no effort to do so. She could spend an hour each morning on her homework and classes, and ace every single test thrown at her.
But she didn’t talk much in class, no matter how hard the teachers made her try, and she rarely helped her friends with their homework, even though she could have. She wanted people to know she was smart. She just didn’t want them to know how smart she actually was.
She had another reason not to call attention to herself. She was a clone in a place that had gone from tolerating clones to actively hating them. In the six months since Anniversary Day, it had become okay to vilify clones, both in the media and in person. For the first time in her life, she heard clone jokes, listened to her friends refer to clones as “inhuman creations,” and overheard some of the armed security guards outside the school talk about “taking out” any clone they ever saw.
No one knew she was a clone except her father and a lawyer named Celestine Gonzalez, who handled all of Talia’s documentation. Celestine had made sure that Talia was designated a human being under the law before Talia ever arrived in Armstrong, and even then—a little over three years ago—her father had encouraged her not to discuss her clone status.
He had said it was because some of the people involved in her mother’s death were looking for the clones of her parents’ only child, Emmeline, who had died in a tragic accident. But Talia had always wondered if her father worried more about the prejudice against clones.
Talia understood it very well; she had felt it too—still did, if truth be told. Her mother had raised her as a natural child. Talia hadn’t known she was a clone until that awful day her mother got kidnapped. Everything changed that day, everything Talia had ever known. From her own identity to her belief in anything her mother told her to the fact that the father she had thought abandoned her hadn’t even known she existed.
Whatever she thought about the events that had transpired in the last three years, she had learned one thing: Her dad loved her. He didn’t care that she was a clone. She was his daughter, completely and totally, and he did his best to protect her.
She hadn’t really appreciated that until Anniversary Day itself. In the weeks that followed that horrible day, she hadn’t wanted to leave his side, afraid something would happen to him too. But he made her go back to school and go out on her own. He believed she needed to learn how to survive by herself.
He never hid the fact that something could happen to him too—that it actually might happen to him, since he’d had a dangerous profession when she met him. He kept telling her everything she needed to know if he died, who she could trust to help her through the transition, how to access that fortune of his, and what she should do next.
She didn’t agree with some of it, and he knew that. But they both pretended she would do what he asked.
She just hoped it would never come to that.
She walked into the lunch room, avoiding the windows, and headed toward vegetarian wing. She wasn’t a vegetarian, although she preferred the vegetarian food here. The vegetables were fresh, the cooking innovative. She hadn’t had such fresh food in Valhalla Basin, which was a corporate-owned city. In fact, most of what she ate here wasn’t even available there. The corporation that owned everything, Aleyd, only let its own products get sold and served throughout Valhalla Basin.
No one owned the Moon. No one owned Armstrong. Heck, the school itself was some kind of communally owned thing that she didn’t entirely understand. She had gone from a place where one company ruled everything to a place where no one ruled anything.
She still had trouble wrapping her mind around that.
Employees stood behind serving tables. When Talia started going to school here, androids handled food service, but after all the bombings, an entire subset of parents got terrified of technology.
Talia wanted to remind them that the worst of the occurrences happened because of human hands, but no one would listen to her. Her dad told her that people would be afraid of whatever they chose to be afraid of, and the truth couldn’t change any of that, and that was probably right. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.
The vegetarian area smelled of garlic and freshly baked bread. But as she got closer to some of the tables, the smell of fresh apples dominated. Apples of all different kinds covered one of the serving tables. Another had different apple desserts and meals on them. Apparently apple harvest had happened this week, and she hadn’t even known it.
She took one of the apple desserts, then went to the freshness bar. There she put in an order for a fresh spinach-and-tomato omelet, and waited while it cooked.
She didn’t mind. As busy as she and her father had been since Anniversary Day, neither of them even bothered to cook. They ate when they could. Usually the meal she got here at lunch was the tastiest meal of the day.
Too bad she couldn’t eat it in peace.
She was trying to. She had her back to most of the room, and she was trying not to listen. But it was hard. Over the past few days, things had escalated. Her entire class was on edge, all because of some stupid prejudice against clones.
As far as she knew, she was the only clone in the school. But that didn’t stop the idiots. They were ganging up on twins, triplets, and even siblings who looked a lot alike. So far, most of the stupidity happened off campus or as sideways comments in class, but she knew escalation was only a matter of time.
And after what happened in Ms. Walters’ class this morning, that time was probably now.
“Oh, there they are!” said a male voice behind her. “The Chinar clones. How’s life in tandem, clones?”
Talia closed her eyes and made herself breathe, like her dad had taught her. She had to control her temper, he had said. She couldn’t be impulsive, he had said. Acting on impulse often led to serious mistakes.
“You’d think they’d dress alike,” said another male voice. “Everything else matches. Blow up any cities, clones?”
The Chinar twins were nice. They’d treated Talia well from the moment she arrived at Aristotle Academy, which was more than she could say for some of the other girls. Her father’s friend, Noelle DeRicci, once commented that she’d never want to be a teenage girl again because girls were so mean.
But girls hadn’t been mean to Talia (much). Not like these idiot boys.
She turned around. Kaleb Lamber stood closest to th
e twins. Of course he did. He was a big kid. Talia believe he’d had pricey muscle enhancements to give him an edge in sports, something illegal but still done around Armstrong.
Five of his beefy friends stood around the Chinar twins, who looked like children in comparison. The twins were slight, with wispy red hair and unfortunate hook noses. They weren’t pretty, but they were smart and funny, and great to be around.
They didn’t deserve this.
“Leave them alone, Kaleb,” Talia said. She tried to sound flat and disinterested, a tone she’d heard from her father when he tried to settle someone down, but she couldn’t achieve it. She didn’t feel disinterested. Beneath what she hoped was a calm surface, she felt furious.
He raised his long-lashed dark eyes to her. One of the many annoying things about Kaleb Lamber was how gorgeous he was. His features were delicate, which made her wonder whether his parents forced him to get the muscle enhancements to look more manly.
Appearances seemed to mean a lot to him, which, she figured, meant they meant a lot to his parents as well.
“Oh, you’re their defender now?” Kaleb asked.
“I’m just tired of the stupidity that you and your friends spew all over this school,” Talia said. So much for calm surface. A flush of anger warmed her cheeks.
“Stupidity? You’re pro-clone now?”
“I’m anti-bigotry,” Talia said. This part of the room had gone silent. It seemed like everyone watched, even the staff. “You’ve gone to this school your entire life. So have Maybelle and Portia. You’ve known them longer than I have, and you know they’re not clones. I don’t think you’d recognize a clone if you saw one.”
“Really?” Kaleb’s fists closed. “What makes you so sure of that?”
“Because you’re looking at the wrong thing.” Talia felt a little lightheaded, as if she was confessing to something when in reality, she was trying not to. “Contrary to what you saw on the news, clones don’t run around in groups. They live their lives just like you do. They look like someone else, but usually that someone is much older than they are or famous or something. They don’t hang out together like twins.”
She shot a glance at the Chinar twins. They were looking down, as if they didn’t want to be there. And they probably didn’t. Who liked being the center of this kind of attention?
“So you could be a clone,” Kaleb said, those gorgeous eyes of his narrowing.
“I could,” she said, her heart pounding. “But so could you. In fact, I vote for you being the clone, with those fake muscles and your obsession with it all. What better way to divert suspicion from yourself than to accuse others?”
Like she was doing right now. She was shaking.
Everyone looked at Kaleb. His friends had their heads bowed. They didn’t want to be in the middle of this either.
“I’m not a clone,” Kaleb said.
“Why should I take your word for it?” Talia asked. “You don’t take anyone else’s word for who they are.”
“Yeah,” someone said from the back. “We should look for clone marks.”
“Grab him,” someone else yelled.
Talia swore. This was not what she wanted at all. “No,” she said, but half the lunch room wasn’t listening. They were surging forward, determined to grab Kaleb by the head and search for marks.
Talia took a step backward. She hadn’t expected this. Kaleb and his friends stood near the table looking stunned as half the school descended on them.
The security buzzer went off. Someone noticed the fight already.
Talia reached for the Chinar twins, pulling them toward her.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”
She ran behind the food counters, but as she reached the kitchen, one of the security guard stepped in front of her. He was grinning.
“Good show, honey,” he said. “But you’re part of this. You can’t leave. None of you can leave.”
Talia cursed. They were going to call her dad again. Sometimes he defended her when she lost her temper. But he was going to be mad about this one.
“Sorry,” she said to the twins.
“I’m not,” Maybelle said. “Look.”
She pointed to the table they had just vacated. A group had caught Kaleb and were twisting his head at an odd angle, looking for the clone mark.
Talia almost reached for hers, but she didn’t. Hers was not in the normal place nor was it regulation size. Hidden, because her mother didn’t want anyone to find her.
She swallowed back bile. The kids were in a frenzy and the guards were having trouble wading into the mess.
She wanted to believe the frenzy was anti-Kaleb, anti-bullying, but she knew better.
The frenzy was anti-clone. And she had started it all.
Six
Sunbeam Gallen put the soil sample in her test-tube rack. Old-fashioned science in an old-fashioned place. She put her hands on her back and stretched, then peered out the windows of her little habitat.
It had taken her five years to get approval to work in this part of Peyla. Peyla was the home planet of the Peyti. The Peyti had a niche in the Earth Alliance: They fit perfectly into the overall legal system. Their organized minds helped them find the most minute ruling within seconds, often faster than any link could provide the information. Their dispassionate approach to life—by human standards—made the Peyti a lot more ruthless.
Combined, those things made them the best lawyers in the Alliance, and since the Alliance was all about laws and rules and regulations, lawyers were in high demand.
It also meant that anyone trying to do anything on Peyla faced not just a variety of regulations, but an even greater variety of lawyers willing to parse those regulations for exorbitant fees.
Fortunately, Gallen’s research had two corporate sponsors. She liked to think of herself as an independent scientist, but in truth she wasn’t. One corporation had built her habitat—not out of the goodness of its heart, but because she gave it a chance to test the habitat in the harshest of Peyla conditions (which, by human standards, was incredibly harsh).
The other sponsor got the fruits of her research. Early studies of Peyla—before the Peyti and the others on the planet joined the Earth Alliance—showed some trace minerals and organic compounds not found anywhere else. Some of those compounds, in particular, might have properties useful in the medical field—and not just in human medicine, but in Disty medicine as well.
Since the humans and the Disty didn’t share a lot of diseases in common, the fact that such material could be used for both made the corporations sit up and notice. Their scientists figured that those compounds might have uses beyond humans and Disty, with other alien groups that shared some of those common traits.
Privately, Gallen called that magic science. Or simple wish-fulfillment. The corporations saw tons of money.
Gallen used that monetary fantasy to fund research into the Peyla landscape. She wanted to know how this particular world bred its varied and unusual species. She believed that the organic compounds making up the soil, water, and air were the proper place to start.
Outside, the landscape of Peyla was a goldish green. She had grown used to the landscape, both harsh and beautiful at the same time. The habitat sat on a cleared patch of land, and had its own landing strip for the hovercraft that she used to get here (courtesy of the first corporation). Beyond that, tree-like plants rose above a tangle of other plants. In the distance, mountains covered in red snow glowed in the half light.
She loved it here, even though the atmosphere was toxic to her. Toxic to all humans. When she went out into it, she had to wear an environmental suit. The air burned human skin, even though the atmosphere was not hot.
That was different from the Peyti reaction to an oxygen-rich environment that humans needed to survive. The Peyti only needed a mask to function in a human environment. The mask covered their faces so profoundly that Gallen spent her first few months on Peyla staring at Peyti mouth
s when the Peyti spoke. The mouths were square and moved inward when the Peyti said something.
Without the mask, the Peyti also looked less delicate. They had twig-like arms and legs, a slender body, and elongated faces. But without the mask, the mouth dominated those faces, and whenever a Peyti spoke, double rows of very powerful teeth glimmered gold.
The color gold—not the element gold—threaded through everything here. The dark soil had a goldish tinge. The plants, all of which were specific to Peyti, had some of that gold threading through them. It wasn’t chlorophyll and it wasn’t anything else that human-based scientists recognized.
The Peyti had a word for it, and they claimed that the gold substance was the fountain of life. It might have been for them. For humans, who hadn’t been allowed to test it early in their relations with the Peyti, the gold substance was a mystery, something they hadn’t encountered before.
And because it was gold-colored, Gallen suspected, humans believed it had special properties. From time immemorial, humans believed anything that looked like gold brought value to them.
Gallen cared less about that than other components of the soil, which had not been studied from a human perspective. Before joining the Earth Alliance, the Peyti confined most outsiders to the cities. Only a select few ever made it to the countryside.
After Peyla joined the Earth Alliance, the Peyti insisted on having Peyti involved in any organization that tried to do business on Peyla. Often the Peyti would stop research or investigation into something new and interesting to humans by handing the organization Peyti information on that very thing.
Usually that Peyti information was enough, but it had become clearer and clearer—at least to Gallen—that the Peyti information obfuscated as much as it clarified.
She had managed to get this far into the Peyla countryside because she was operating as an individual. In fact, in her proposals for funding to the two corporations backing her, she sold her individual status as a plus. She would be able to find out things that no other human had discovered because she was working alone, without true affiliation. The Peyti requirement of having a Peyti representative on the team was void here.
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