Instead of looking away, she sent, So what’s with the lawyers?
None of your damn business, Kaleb sent back.
It’s my business if you’re siccing a lawyer on me, she sent, kinda proud of herself for doing it. After all, she was investigating, just like her dad did, and doing it without giving herself away too badly.
You’re not important enough for lawyers, he sent, and headed to the only empty chair in the room.
“Mr. Lamber,” the teacher, Ms. Schultze, said, her hand pausing over a 3-D replica of the population of Earth in something called the Middle Ages. “So nice of you to join us.”
“Those Ages can’t be Middle if they happened a million-zillion years ago,” Kaleb said as he slipped into the chair. He was letting Ms. Schultze know that he was up to date on his homework.
“We don’t name the eras,” she said with a sigh. “We just teach them.”
So what are the lawyers for? Talia sent, deciding to go with the direct approach after all.
If you must know, he sent, the school instituted some kind of anti-bigotry policy thirty years ago, and Ms. Rutledge is thinking of expelling me, using that as her reason. I’m not a damn bigot.
Could’ve fooled me, Talia sent. She felt a little better than she had just a few minutes ago. Ms. Rutledge was protecting kids against bigotry? Against bigotry against clones? Maybe it would be safe here after all.
What do you care, anyway? Kaleb sent. You’d be happy if I get kicked out.
Would she? She wasn’t sure. He could be funny and entertaining and weirdly nice at times, although it’d been a while since she’d seen the nice.
I’d be happy if you just stopped picking on people, she sent back.
“My alarm has gone off,” Ms. Schultze said. “Your links are too active. I will shut them down if I have to.”
Kaleb bowed his head. Talia sighed, and leaned back even more. She wished she could go home.
She’d rather keep fighting with Kaleb about bigotry than think about smelly people with short lifespans on a planet she had never seen.
She wondered if it would set off the link-activation alarm if she did some research for her dad instead of listen to Ms. Schultze. It probably would.
An hour of hell, followed by another hour of hell, followed by at least six more. Then, maybe, she could do some real work at the security office, and think about things that actually were important, rather than stuff nobody cared about even back a million-zillion years ago.
What she needed to work on was an argument that would get her out of school for the rest of the year.
She needed to come up with something plausible, preferably in the next six hours. Because she didn’t want to sit through any more stupid stuff while she missed out on all the important things.
She was too smart to waste her time on a million-zillion years ago. She needed to focus on now.
And so did everybody else.
Forty-five
Jin Rastigan stood in Uzvot’s office, hands clasped behind her back. Rastigan wore her thin environmental suit which, theoretically, kept her at a comfortable temperature as well as provided her oxygen and protected her from the toxic atmosphere. But she was hot and sweaty anyway, and the suit couldn’t seem to regulate that.
Which made her think the hot sweats came from nerves.
Or fear.
Uzvot’s office looked surprisingly like a human office—desks, chairs, tables, and all kinds of technology, from screens to computers to pads. Most were Earth Alliance issue, but designed for the Peyti. Most Peyti had abandoned their traditional office customs for this setup, partly because they all went to Earth Alliance graduate schools, which taught them how to survive in an Earth Alliance environment. And the Earth Alliance started, as its name implied, with the humans, so most things that were Earth Alliance issue were human-centric.
The human-centric office didn’t make Rastigan any more comfortable. In fact, it made her more uncomfortable. She liked Peyti designs, with their heavy cushions, thick draperies, and hidden surfaces. Uzvot had kept the oranges and reds of a standard Peyti design—apparently those colors were easiest on the Peyti eye—but the colors looked out of place here, rather like Rastigan felt.
Uzvot stood in the center of the room, her long fingers manipulating the 3-D images that floated around her. She kept shaking her head.
“It makes no sense,” she said in her flawless Standard. “They’ve done this before.”
She was referring to the murder of the Peyti clones. Rastigan had enlisted Uzvot’s help using facial recognition to find out if there were other clones of the Peyti mass murderer Uzvekmt. They had found six compounds on Peyla so far, but most had been abandoned.
Before the abandonment, the majority of the clones had died—horribly—just like the clones that Gallen had seen the day before.
“Why make clones, grow them slowly, and then kill them?” Uzvot slowly moved the faces around. These Peyti faces were all the same, even though they had come from different parts of Peyla and different compounds. “If you wanted to use clones for target practice, wouldn’t fast-grow clones make more sense?”
The Peyti desire for logic. It made them good lawyers and actually kept their governments stable. But it also gave them a coldness that a lot of humans didn’t understand.
Rastigan understood it. She knew that beneath the logic, the Peyti were not cold. They used the logic to understand their world, to cope with its difficulties, and to keep their emotions in check. But the Peyti—when not surrounded by humans and when not doing their jobs—were an emotional people, who experienced great passion in their personal lives and with their families.
Rastigan loved the logic as well, although she was having a bit more trouble summoning it today. Some things defied logic, as far as she was concerned. This incident, for one.
She was monitoring her own screens, and she was seeing things she didn’t like.
“Someone’s developed these clones for years,” she said.
“Indeed,” Uzvot said. “Which is why I wondered at the slow-grow—”
“No,” Rastigan said. “Look. The compounds you’re watching emptied out six years to six months ago. These clones are all young, right? What we humans would call teenagers?”
“We do not have the same development cycle—”
“I know,” Rastigan said. Sometimes Uzvot forgot who she was talking to. “I’m looking at the developmental age. These clones are between childhood and adulthood, but they have reached their full growth, right?”
Uzvot turned toward her, dark eyes glittering. She was clearly intrigued. “Yes.”
“The murders occur at that age. We can probably assume that the compounds work like the one we found.”
“We cannot make that kind of assumption without evidence,” Uzvot said.
“Give me some latitude here,” Rastigan said. “If the compounds work like the one we found, then not everyone got killed.”
“We do not know what would have happened if we hadn’t interrupted them,” Uzvot said.
“We do too,” Rastigan said. “There were no adults on site, at least that we found, which means that in the end, someone would have shot his companion, and then survived.”
Uzvot shook her head. “It is only a theory.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Rastigan said. “It’s a theory. But if that theory is correct, and there are these compounds all over Peyla, then that means several of these clones—of various ages—are out in the universe, somewhere, doing something. And we don’t know how old they are or how long this has been happening.”
“You’re saying our search is too narrow,” Uzvot said.
“In both location and in time.” Rastigan wished she could get authorities to help, but she couldn’t. The Peyti were investigating the murders as an isolated crime. “How far back can we go with your programs here?”
“If we speed them up, we can go back decades,” Uzvot said.
Rastigan swallowed ha
rd. DeRicci had said that the clones that had attacked Armstrong were in their twenties.
“Can you search for the Peyti equivalent of a human in their twenties or thirties? Not a teenager. A fully formed adult, but without a lot of experiences yet.”
“Yes,” Uzvot said. “It will not be an accurate search because we cannot confirm ages, but we can get close.”
She moved her hands and the images around her changed. Images also appeared on a screen along one wall. Rastigan watched, entranced. Faces over faces over faces, all Peyti, all the same.
“There are no clumps,” Uzvot said. “But look at this.”
She froze the images around her. Orange shawls, orange caps, hands up and fingers extended, a look of Peyti joy at some kind of celebration.
It took Rastigan a moment to understand what the celebration was. Graduation.
“They have all gone off-planet for their advanced education.” Uzvot sounded relieved. “They are not here.”
“Then where the hell are they?” Rastigan asked.
“That is a good question,” Uzvot said. “I’m not sure we have the ability to find out. We will need Earth Alliance cooperation.”
“Of course we will,” Rastigan said tiredly. “Of course we will.”
Forty-six
The queasy feeling remained even after Zagrando left the yacht. If he never saw the Xandrian Sea again, it would be too soon. If he never saw the sea again—any sea—it would be too soon. He hated traveling on water, particularly inside a small box inside a boat.
He completed the return procedure for the rented yacht quickly. He had a hunch that using the automated “fast-return” system had cost him more money than he would have usually spent, but for the moment, this was all on the Earth Alliance’s tab.
He bounded through the space port, heading to the terminal where he had left his space yacht. He had all of his personal security systems on full alert. Aleyd Corporation had developed the systems for the police officers in Valhalla Basin, and Zagrando had modified them so that they would never identify him as Iniko Zagrando again.
The systems gave him the ability to see around himself at 360-degrees. It made him dizzy (which didn’t help the queasiness) but it protected him.
At least this way, he would know if he was being followed; he would actually see whomever (or whatever) was behind him.
This spaceport was small compared to the standards he was used to. He’d been told there was a larger port elsewhere on Jan, but it was very far away from here.
This port clearly catered to the high-end customers. All of the shops displayed expensive items. Some shops even (obnoxiously) told him whether or not he could afford to shop there. He had no idea how they knew; he assumed they scanned available credit.
Zag, his alias, had no available credit. He was strictly a cash guy who used other people’s accounts to pay his debts.
It took him only a few minutes to get from the water yacht rental place to the entrance to his ship’s terminal. He slammed his fist with its temporary identification against the bulkhead door. It opened, greeting him via his links, and asked him if he had a nice stay.
Yeah, if you counted getting seasick, betrayed, and nearly murdered a nice stay. Then it was just one of the best trips he’d ever had.
He made himself slow down as he followed the path to his ship.
In his haste to leave that damn island, he hadn’t recovered his weapons, so all he had were the chips in his hand. He had no real way to fight anyone who approached him here.
If he had been thinking, he would have left a few weapons on the water yacht, in case something went awry. But he hadn’t—and besides, the Emzada guards on the island probably would have taken those weapons as well.
He was really and truly on his own here.
All he could do was hope that the port security was as good as the advertising claimed it was. And he had to hope that he could talk his way out of any problems—
If he had any problems at all.
He couldn’t see anyone. This part of the damn port was curiously lacking in population, which he found suspicious.
Of course, he had no idea what normal was here. He had noted a lack of customers when he and Elise had arrived, and then he had attributed it to the fact that this port truly was at the ass-end of nowhere.
He rounded a corner.
There, looking like a significantly larger, classier, and more expensive version of the water yacht he had just left behind, was his new ship. Damn, he loved that thing. He was happy to see it, as if it were a person in its own right.
No one stood around it. His heightened personal security didn’t show anything, either. He seemed to be alone, and able to get off this horrible planet unimpeded.
He couldn’t quite believe it.
But it made sense. The men on that island wanted a buyer for their wares. They had one, who, it seemed, might have betrayed them. They were more concerned with Elise at the moment than Zagrando.
Or they had been more concerned with Elise over an hour ago than they were with Zagrando.
Still, he had to get out of here. He also had to make certain they didn’t find him, just in case.
He walked slowly toward the ship, his entire body tense. He kept expecting something to jump out at him, someone to tackle him, something try to take a shot at him.
But nothing happened.
He touched the side of the ship. It recognized his DNA, plus the temperature of his palm, along with the fact that blood still moved through his veins. No one had cut off his hand to gain access to the ship.
A stairway emerged from the side. He climbed it and entered the airlock, telling the ship to make certain to activate the major safety protocols.
Then he stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
He scanned the ship, using its own programs and his.
He was alone.
He shut his eyes, letting himself feel relief for just one moment. He wasn’t done yet. He still had to leave here. He had to make sure that no one followed him, from those guards to Elise herself. He had to contact Jarvis.
But Zagrando had made it this far.
And, he was beginning to think, that had been a miracle in and of itself.
Forty-seven
Flint got off the elevator in the security office and immediately noticed that the place had changed. Activity everywhere, people scurrying down the halls, and Popova not at her desk like she had been for most of the past week.
DeRicci was back. That was the only explanation.
He paused at Popova’s desk, wondering if he should talk to DeRicci first. But it probably wasn’t wise. She would shut him down if she knew what he was doing.
Instead, he went into the conference room. The Earth Alliance investigators had made it their own little fiefdom. They had equipment, designated secure, on the large table.
Goudkins paced in the back corner of the room, where no windows revealed her to the rest of the office. She had changed clothes. She wore a blue shirt over blue pants, which were not Earth Alliance Official Regulation.
Ostaka still wore his suit, but the buttons were open around his neck and he had rolled up his sleeves.
Both investigators looked tired, but oddly, they seemed more relaxed at the same time.
Flint was a bit more relaxed as well. Goudkins’ story about her sister checked out. Her sister had died, rather horribly, on Anniversary Day, and Goudkins had taken a longer than normal leave to mourn. From what Flint could find—and he didn’t dig as deep as he would have liked because he was at home—she had come to the Moon, taken care of her sister’s affairs, and participated in the seemingly endless round of funerals that happened after the bombings.
He didn’t know if that made her more trustworthy, but he found the information helpful. She hadn’t lied. In fact, she had probably underplayed her reaction to Anniversary Day.
Weirdly enough, that made her part of the Moon, at least in Flint’s mind.
He still wasn’t sure what to make of Ostaka. Everything Flint found on him seemed to suggest he was a by-the-book investigator, which had never sat well with Flint.
Ostaka nodded at Flint as if they were colleagues. Flint wasn’t willing to go that far.
“We’re compiling a list of the companies that supply clones to the Earth Alliance,” Ostaka said, without saying hello.
Goudkins turned. Apparently, she’d been so deeply engaged in the conversation she’d been having on her links she hadn’t realized he had come into the room.
“I’m interested in the ones that supply the defense industry,” Flint said.
“It’s not easy to figure out which company is supplying for the defense industry and which just provides fodder for colonization,” Ostaka said.
Fodder. The word made Flint bristle. His daughter wasn’t fodder. No one was.
But he didn’t want to say anything, or reveal himself as too involved with this. He had to remain quiet, for Talia’s sake.
“What about companies that supply slow-grow clones to various industries?” Flint asked.
Goudkins shook her head, then turned her back on them. She was still having her conversation.
“The companies that provide slow-grow also provide the fast-grow clones that most organizations use,” Ostaka said.
Flint tried not to think about the fast-grow clones. He’d seen a few. They were childlike because they were so young. Often they didn’t understand what was happening to them.
He barely understood it, either. He never understood why anyone would use something that had human feelings and human reactions in a situation where ‘bots or androids or other machines might do.
“I’m also trying to be careful as I make this search,” Ostaka said. “I don’t want to set off red flags too early.”
“Makes sense,” Flint said. “Are you finding anything of value?”
Goudkins turned around. Her eyes seemed clear now. They had lost that far-away look most people got when communicating through links.
“We’ve found some companies that the Alliance has stopped doing business with. The companies were flagged as dodgy, meaning they have ties to criminal organizations or have done business with other shady companies. Not,” she said, holding up a finger, “that that’s any guarantee they’re actually the companies we’re looking for. I’m actually pretty certain they aren’t.”
Blowback Page 27