Death of a Clone

by Alex Thomson

  18

  MEMORY LANE

  “ORTIZ. WAKE UP, Ortiz.”

  He grunts, and then one eye flicks open. He starts, and makes to jump up, but stops when I press the spike against his throat.

  “What the fuck?”

  I’m straddling him, my weight pressing down on his chest, my knees blocking his arms. My arm is holding the spike, an occasional tremble, but I’ve got it under control. In the semi-darkness, I can hardly make out his expression, but I think he’s afraid.

  “Hello, Mr Ortiz. You’re thinking to yourself, can I throw her off? And the answer is, yes, you could, but by the time you have, this spike will have cut your throat.”

  “You?” he says. “You killed Sam? Your own sister, too?”

  “Nope,” I reply. “I’m just using the killer’s modus operandi. But we’ll get to that. First of all, I’ve got some questions for you.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck—”

  He gives a startled squeal as I press the spike into his windpipe.

  “Listen, numbnuts,” I say. “The first thing you’ve got to remember is, you’re not the boss any more. In here, at this moment, you’re the bitch and I’m the Overseer. Yes?”

  “Yes,” he wheezes, after a pause.

  “Now,” I say, “I’ve spent some time looking through your cabinet. So I’ve been putting all the pieces together. I don’t have the whole picture, I don’t know all the answers, but… I’ve got a pretty good idea. So. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to ask you some questions. You’re going to answer them truthfully, as best you can. If I think you’re lying to me, I slit your throat.”

  “I—”

  “No, no,” I shush him. “Leila’s talking at the moment. Now, just to warn you, I’m not an idiot, Ortiz. I may slip you some questions where I know the answer, to check that you’re telling me the truth. Sneaky, hmm? So those are the ground rules. Everything clear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No second chances. One lie, and I cut, and get the answers from Mr Lee instead. In fact, to avoid unpleasantness, can we pretend we’ve done the whole silly thing where you test me and tell me a little lie, and I draw blood to show you that I’m not bluffing? Can we skip that whole charade? Let’s pretend it’s already happened: you’ve called my bluff, I’ve shown you I’m serious, now we can get down to real business.”

  “Get on with it, you crazy bitch.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  “Go on. Ask me your stupid questions. But for the last bloody time, I do not know who killed your sister.”

  “We’ll come to that. But first, question number one: how old am I?”

  His eyes widen.

  “Or, to put it a way you can answer, how long have we been on this asteroid?”

  There’s a short silence. “You know how long, Leila,” he says carefully, eyeing the spike.

  “Don’t say six Earth years, Ortiz,” I say. “Don’t say two orbits. Remember what I said about lies.”

  “I… can’t. They’ll kill me. Or worse, leave me here to rot.”

  “Well, look at it this way. If you lie to me, I’ll kill you, one hundred per cent guaranteed. Tell me the truth, and who knows what will happen—maybe you’ll find a way to survive, and get back to Earth.”

  A pause.

  “How long?”

  “Thirty-seven Earth years,” he whispers.

  I was half-expecting it, but it’s still like a punch to the gut. “Thirty-seven?” I say. “Twelve orbits?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So I’m thirty-seven years old?”

  “More like forty-seven. I don’t know for sure. About the same age as me.”

  “Explain,” I say. “How can I not remember any of this?”

  His whole body seems to relax, now the truth is out; the words flow out from him in staccato bursts.

  “It’s your brain,” he says wearily. “They fucked about with your brain, when you were first made. Shoved instruments inside your head, and deliberately damaged part of your brain—your hippocampus, that’s what it was called. Stops you from forming long-term memories. Your short-term memory’s not affected, and your muscle memory is fine, you can still remember how to walk, drive a jeep, do your shifts. But your long-term memories—they fade away. It’s not an exact science, but they reckon you’ve got around six months’ memory before it starts to get hazy.”

  “The headaches,” I say, “that’s why our heads ache all the time.”

  “Yeah. The brain’s not an electric circuit. You can’t just cut a few wires. There’s going to be a bit of collateral fucking damage.” He sighs. “Big outcry about it when it all became public, if I remember right. Can’t pretend I was out waving placards myself, but… yeah. Big outcry.

  “Not that it changed anything. The programme carried on regardless. Money talks, like it always has and always will.”

  “So, what—we were up on the ships for my first ten years? Doctors meddling about with our brains?”

  “Ah…”

  “The truth, Ortiz. You might as well, now. It’s easier than making up lies.”

  “Earth, Leila. You were born on Earth. All of you were. There’s no way they could get all of the machinery and manpower needed for the programme up into space.”

  “You’re lying. You must be.”

  A little whistle escapes from his nose, and I realise I’m pressing on his throat too hard, a thin red line springing up under the spike. I relax, and he breathes hard, speaks again.

  “Leila. It wasn’t me who bought you here. None of this is my idea. I’m no angel—God knows I’ve done a few bad things in my life—but I didn’t do this. And I’m here against my will; I’m a prisoner here too. You see—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard all this off the Bees. Don’t expect my sympathy. I know what you’re here for. How many men did you kill again?”

  “And by Earth, I’ve paid for what I’ve done.”

  I take a deep breath, slow my heartbeat down. “Okay. Rewind. Tell me about the programme. What’s it about? Why did they grow us, muck about with our brains, and send us out here?”

  “Money,” he says. “Always money.”

  “Go on.”

  He lifts his eyes to the ceiling, and addresses that rather than me. “People had known about these M-Type asteroids for decades. Packed full of metals, enough to solve all our shortages a hundred times over. Only problem—it was mind-bogglingly expensive to send missions there. People came up with all sorts of ideas—robotics, technical wizardry—but they were always just pipedreams. Completely unviable, financially. Then a few bright sparks, at a company called Spiral Systems, came up with an idea. Why not mine the ore the old-fashioned way? Send out humans to do all the dirty work, extracting the ore themselves? The only stumbling block—logistically, financially, you’re talking about missions that would last over a decade—two years to get there, seven years on site, two years back. Eleven years stranded on an asteroid? Bugger that! You’re not going to be able to find regular people to do that, no matter how much you pay them.

  “So they developed the Families programme. Very hush-hush. This all came out years later, when I was a boy. First of all, it was just Ays. Grown and trained in labs on Earth, a few hundred in that first wave. A lot of failures, a lot of problems before they even got them into space. From the brain tampering, especially. God knows how many vegetables they made before they got that right. But eventually, up they went, a mission to deliver them to four asteroids—with a few Overseers to supervise: prisoners like me who were offered a second chance. Then they sat back, and waited for a few years, worked on refining the Families programme.

  “And after eleven years, the first Collection ship returned. Two of the asteroids were balls-ups. Everyone dead. Accident, equipment failure, mutiny, who knows. But two of them worked—the Overseers came back, with the swag. As for the Ays—they stayed out there. After eleven years, they’d long forgotte
n about Earth.”

  “But surely,” I say, “Spiral could have let them come back, and sent out some new ones?”

  “Couldn’t have afforded it. You have any idea how much it cost to develop the Families? To send each Ay into space? Spiral had invested billions into every single brother. Just seven years’ labour, it didn’t pay off. But put them out there, on a loop, orbit after orbit, mining swag—and suddenly it’s a different proposition. Long-term investment, but it paid off. Even those two asteroids worth of metal, from seven years’ work—suddenly Spiral had more money than God. The ships bought back more fucking metal than they ever thought possible, and all the investors came rushing in. So they started Wave 2—that’s you. Not just Ays this time, they’d learnt from the balls-ups before—you’ve got to have a mixture. So a whole range of brothers and sisters—Bees, Cees, Dees, the lot, all bred for different roles. Some families didn’t work out, production lines were discontinued pretty quickly. But the rest of you—just kids, really—off you went. Rumours were going round now about the programme, and there were protests, but I guess they got drowned out by the voices of people who were happy to have metals again. Earth’s economy had changed almost overnight.

  “And out on the asteroids, thirty-seven years ago, you lot started your life sentences, you poor sods. Every seven years, another Collection ship would head out with a load of ex-con Overseers, to replace the old ones. Plus a load of replacements for the more expendable brothers: mainly Ays and some Jays. The ones most likely to have been damaged, doing all the heavy-duty work.”

  “Ashton,” I breathe.

  “Right. He was on the ship with us. A slightly different model from the Wave 2.1 Ays. Andy and Jupiter were replacements too, from previous ships. And when the next Collection Ship comes, you’ll get a new Ay to replace Avery.

  “So anyway, back on Earth, Spiral’s investment was long paid off. All their Families were out on the asteroids, digging away like eager fucking beavers, waiting for their trip to the Promised Land, but never quite getting there. Always in the distance, agonisingly out of reach.

  “Then I made a few stupid choices in my life, ended up on death row. Never mind how, but I did. So five years ago, I got the choice: the needle, or a trip out here. I said here, ’cause, well, you’ve got to, haven’t you? Off I went—on a ship with Reynolds, Lee, Fedorchuk. Plus Ashton and dozens of other new Ays. We all felt sorry for you poor bastards, but what could we do about it? If we’d told you the truth, it would’ve cause a riot, and for what? Spiral sure as hell aren’t going to ship you back.”

  “I bet it was just eating you up inside.”

  “Look,” Ortiz say, “it’s a shitty situation, but it is what it is. I’m not your enemy here.”

  I’m close to tears now. “But this is slavery!”

  “I know—bastards, right?”

  “Oh, no. You’re not on my team, Ortiz. Not on our side. You don’t get that luxury.”

  “Nah, I wouldn’t make that mistake, not when you’re this close to cutting my throat. Can you release the pressure a bit? It’s getting hard to talk.”

  I ease the spike back a little, and Mr Ortiz twists his shoulders. He looks uncomfortable. I feel numb, like an out-of-body experience, like it’s Leila’s body sitting on the Overseer, and I’m watching outside her, in the top corner of the cabin. Already I’m thinking ahead with a dozen questions. Like Do I tell the Jays? and How can I remember this? and What’s it all got to do with Lily?

  I tell my brain to shut up.

  “So let me get this straight,” I say. “You’ve only been here three years?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So there’ll be no Collection ship coming for another four years?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “But how does that work? How have you stalled us for more than thirty years? How did we not get suspicious?”

  “It’s not as hard as you’d think. They gave us full instructions before we left, on how to manage you. When your long-term memory only lasts a few months, it’s quite easy to keep giving you excuses why there’s been a delay. We’re behind quota, or there’s a problem with the launch of the Collection ship—always re-setting the clock, delaying Collection. You’re permanently a year away from going to Earth. Of course, sometimes there have been disputes and revolts, it hasn’t always been easy—but gradually, you forget, and we carry on until it’s time for another delay.”

  “The Rota,” I say, “you destroy it as you go along.”

  “’Course we do. There’s a permanent archive of around six years for the look of the thing.”

  That scrap of Rota, then, had been Lily’s suspicion. She tore off half a page, to see what would happen to the other half—would it move backwards, disappear? All part of the Curious Case of Time Dilation on Mizushima. But someone was wise to her, and removed the half-page of evidence.

  It wasn’t the only attempt to exploit our short memories, either. Think of Mr Reynolds, carefully taking turns with the Bees, each one every few months, to keep them from remembering what was going on; but if he thought the Bees wouldn’t discuss with each other, he was mistaken.

  “And every seven years?” I say. “How does it work when the Collection Ship arrives?”

  “The new Overseers come in and announce the existing Overseers are going home in disgrace. Quotas unfulfilled, poor management, etcetera. Spare Ays like Ashton are integrated, and eventually it’s forgotten that they’re different to the rest.”

  “And spare Ells?”

  “I… no, not as far as I know. They usually just replace any broken Ays or Jays. When we arrived, it was just the two of you here.”

  “So what really happened to my four sisters?”

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”

  I think back to the cabinet. I hadn’t seen any mention of other Ells. Old, forgotten Ays, yes, and notes from old Overseers—but Earth knows what they had destroyed, along with the Rota archive.

  “Listen,” Ortiz says, a note of desperation creeping into his voice, “we weren’t bad Overseers, really. The ones we took over from, they seemed like right bastards. I read the notes they left behind. We’ve just tried to do the best we could.”

  I think of Reynolds and the Bees and say nothing.

  “Don’t kill me, Leila. I know you’re angry, but I’m not the one to blame.”

  “What about Lily? Did you kill her?”

  “I swear I didn’t. I just want to get home, there’s no need for any killing.”

  “But Lily was on the verge of figuring out what was going on here,” I say. “How close she was, we’ll never know. But she knew Ashton was different, she had realised something funny was going on with the Rota archive, she knew someone was playing about with our history. She was sticking her nose in, and if she worked it out, this whole fairy tale would have crashed around us, wouldn’t it? We’d have become one of the balls-ups. No trip home for Mr Ortiz, no pardon back on Earth.”

  “Not me. I swear it. I never even spoke to Lily about this. I’ve said all along, it’s the Jays. Leila!”

  I’m pressing too hard again, and he coughs, gasps as I ease the pressure.

  “So,” I say. “What now? You’ve left me in a difficult situation.”

  “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Well, I can’t straddle you with a spike to your throat forever, can I?”

  “You’re not going back to Earth,” he says softly. “They’ll never let you. Would it be so bad to live out the rest of your days here and forget? You know what they say—ignorance is bliss?”

  “Easy for you to say. You’ve got your ticket back to Earth.”

  “Earth’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he says. “You can make things work, here.”

  “This time next year, I’ll have forgotten this conversation, won’t I? And what tune will you be singing then, I wonder? How many of us will still be alive?”

  I need to talk this over with the Bees and Jays. I
can’t work out the answer by myself. Together, we could work out a strategy.

  But Mr Ortiz decides to take matters into his own hands. I glance to the side, figuring out how to extricate myself from his cabin with minimum awkwardness, and he takes his chance. Quick as a viper, his right hand’s free, and he snatches out and grips my wrist. His fingers are cold and rough. He twists my wrist violently, and with a yell I fumble the spike.

  He draws himself up to a sitting position, and with his left fist he punches me full in the face. I fall off the cot, nose and eyes smarting, waves of nausea pounding at me. I’m too shocked to cry out.

  I scrabble on the floor, but I can barely stand; the bastard hit me as hard as he could. Tears and snot are streaming down my face. In the corner of my eye, I can make out Ortiz, lazily stepping down from the cot, spike in his hand.

  “Nothing personal, Leila,” he says, pushing me back to the floor with his foot. “Like I said, I think you’re in a shitty situation. But there we are. Nothing you or I can do about it. I’ve still got a chance, though, and I don’t plan to die on some shitty fucking asteroid, millions of miles from home.”

  “Bastard,” I manage to hiss.

  He frowns, and points the spike at my chest. “I told you the truth, by the way. Whoever killed your sister, it wasn’t me. But I’m sorry, girlie—you, I’ve got to kill.”

  I close my eyes and wince.

  At that moment, there’s a bang as the door crashes open. I open my eyes and see a Jay running in. Mr Ortiz swivels, swears, raises the spike—

  And the Jay points a taser at him (of course the Jays stole the taser—how could I have doubted it?) and twin wires shoot out, landing right in Ortiz’s chest. There’s a buzz, and Ortiz convulses as he falls to the floor. His arms and legs continue to twitch, and I have to look away. It’s creepy.

  The Jay ambles towards me, steps over the stricken body, and offers me a hand.

  “Jeremy,” he says. I take his hand, still dizzy, and he pulls me up. “I’m sure you had everything under control. But I just wanted to lend a hand.”

  “Were you listening?” I say.