by Lou Anders
“No, no, no, no,” the leader said so fast it sounded like he was stuttering. “You don’t wanna do that. Just give him to me, and I’ll take care of this. I din’t know he was gonna do that. Just keep it zen, okay?”
Rackam made a move that sent the thug rolling to his leader’s feet, where he was greeted by a kick to the head. Almost immediately the others came from the shadows to add their boots to the fray while their former stinch curled into himself protectively.
The courier looked at them in disgust. People could be such animals. Undoubtedly these idiots had jobs that required them to be courteous and cooperative for eight hours a shift. Yet here they were acting like hyenas. Probably that’s an insult to hyenas, Rackam admonished himself.
He heard a transport coming and didn’t want to take his eyes off the group of thugs to see if it was the one he was waiting for. He fired a warning shot, and the whole group hunched.
“Take it somewhere else,” Rackam snapped.
“Sure,” the leader said. He snapped his fingers, and his boys started drifting off. The one on the ground struggled to get up and failed. The leader snapped his fingers again, and two of the thugs hoisted their gang-mate to his feet and dragged him off. The last to leave was the leader. He pointed a finger at the courier.
“I’ll remember you,” he said, eyes narrowed.
“I can’t say I’ll return the favor,” Rackam replied. “You’ll be just as insignificant the next time we meet as you are right now.” He raised the weapon in an indication that it was time for the mugger to join his friends.
The man hawked and spat, then, with a last glare over his shoulder as he turned, walked swiftly into the gloom, his coat swinging around him.
Nice exit, Rackam thought. The courier hoped he never met this crowd unarmed; guys like them held grudges.
A transport rolled in across from where he stood, and through a window he spied his average guy tail. Rackam swore and brought his hand up to his ear as though stroking his face. Too late, he knew, the tail had been looking right at him as the transport swept to a stop. Maybe he should just wait for the guy to stroll over and introduce himself.
But when the transport rolled away, there was no sign of the man. Just when you think you’ve got the whole thing figured out, they go and change the rules, Rackam thought.
“Mr. Rackam,” a voice said from behind him.
The courier snapped his head around to find himself confronting his tail. Only he couldn’t be the tail because he was dressed completely differently from the man who’d just arrived on the transport. Instead of tan, this man wore black; instead of casual, this man was dressed in a business suit.
“What are you, a clone?” Rackam asked.
“Cloning is illegal, Mr. Rackam,” the man said. “You may call me Leon.”
“What do you want, Leon?”
“Just a sample of your blood and an opportunity to talk you into allowing us to make a slight change to the message you carry.” Leon stood calmly, with his hands clasped in front of him as though he’d merely asked for a moment of Rackam’s time.
“Oh, that’s a nonthreatening request,” Rackam said.
There was a sound off to the side, and he side skipped several paces away, lifting the weapon to keep both Leon and whoever approached in his line of fire. It was another Leon. From the clothes, this one was the one from the transport. This one looked from Rackam to Leon.
“Kletzer told us to explain,” he said.
“Kletzer?” Rackam asked.
“The one who told us to intercept you,” Leon clarified.
At that moment a transport swept up behind the courier, and one of the Leons turned away. Rackam hid his weapon but kept it in his hand. Leon started forward as the courier backed into the transport but stopped when Rackam shook his head. Leon dropped his hand, looking disappointed. The doors closed, and the transport took off. It wasn’t until then that Rackam thought to look for Leon #2 and swore when he didn’t see him on the platform.
Kletzer, he thought. Who was Kletzer? The name was vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Looking around, he quickly established that Leon #2 wasn’t in this car. That left Leon #3 unaccounted for. The other man was also casually dressed and wore tan, but the cut of his clothes was slightly different. He checked his weapon—a little more than a quarter of a charge left. Cutting through the plasticrete had depleted its charge considerably.
Time to take a more proactive approach. As the transport slowed to a stop, he positioned himself in the doorway. He left with a crowd, walked forward for a few steps, then started walking backwards until he was back inside, to the considerable annoyance of his fellow passengers. From the corner of his eye he saw Leon #2 step back into the car. Rackam waited a few seconds, then stepped out again, standing on the platform until his tail came out again, then he stepped backwards into the car. Once there, he waited until he door began to close, then slipped through the gap simultaneously snapping off a quick shot toward Leon’s door. Leon hopped backwards, losing his chance. As the transport pulled out, Rackam could see his lips moving, signifying that he was making a call to someone. Hopefully Leon #1 back in the Dark Zone.
The courier hurried to an elevator, catching it just as the doors closed. If he was lucky, the computers missed that shot of his; if not, he’d have some explaining to do when the elevator doors opened.
Gradually the elevator emptied as they passed the working-class floors until he stood alone at the front with his back to the control panel. Soon he’d have to use the pass key that would allow him access to the platinum section. For now he could relax and watch the advertisements play on the sides of the cab.
The doors opened. Nothing happened for a moment; then a man hurtled into the elevator, taking up a position with his back against the far wall, a dart gun in his hand. Rackam kicked out, and the gun went flying. Leon #4—by his clothing this was yet another one—kicked back, and the courier barely managed to sidestep the attack. Cloning was illegal; it seemed to be far too common, though.
Fighting in a confined space like this was unpleasant. Leon #4 rammed his fingers toward Rackam’s eyes; Rackham snapped his head aside, slapped his right wrist onto Leon #4’s and used momentum and a twist of his hips to sail the clone into the elevator’s thin metal wall. His face made an ugly splatting sound; Rackham pushed off in a twirl as he released the other man, pivoting on one foot with the other coming around like a scythe—heel-first. It punched into the clone’s body just below the ribs with an impact that jarred up Rackham’s body and into the small of his back. An unpleasant sensation, but much more unpleasant at the other end of the kick.
Things got easier after that. When the doors opened again on the last public floor Rackam grabbed Leon by his collar and pants and flung him into the corridor. Leon #4 lay panting for a moment, then gamely struggled to his feet. He was staggering toward the door when the courier raised his weapon and Leon #4 stopped. He stared at Rackam and shook his head.
“We need to talk to you,” he said.
Rackam didn’t answer, just kept his weapon trained on Leon’s middle and his eyes on Leon’s bloody face. The doors closed, and Rackam folded over, his hands on his knees and groaned. He felt sick, and he had no doubt that he looked like he felt.
“In order to proceed,” the elevator’s smooth feminine voice prompted, “it will be necessary for you to insert a pass card into the slot above the floor selection numbers. If you do not insert a pass in ten seconds, this car will be going down.”
He inserted the pass key, then checked his weapon; less than a quarter charge left and four Leons after him. They had to be clones. For the first time he seriously began to doubt his ability to complete his mission. The doors opened, and he was in platinum sector.
A small dark-haired woman with a thin face stepped into the cab just as he tried to exit, and he stepped back instinctively. Rackam barely felt the prick of the dart before he hit the floor. He looked up at her, unable to move. It wasn
’t fair!
He’d been expecting a Leon.
As he woke, he found he’d been bound with tape, but not gagged. He heard people talking, and gradually their words began to make sense.
“You shouldn’t be here!” a man insisted. It sounded like Leon.
“But I am here,” a woman said, her voice sounded weary. “He needs to know. He has a right to know.”
Silence greeted this remark, so Rackam broke it.
“Know what?” His voice rasped in his own ears; he wondered how long he’d been out.
The woman came and stood over him. Suddenly his mind cleared, and he remembered who she was. A tech from Discrete that he knew as Carolyn.
“Kletzer, I presume?” he said.
She smiled slightly and nodded.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because you’re as human as I am,” she said. “But not legally human. You’re a genetically altered clone slave.” She gestured behind her, and he turned his head to see the Leons in a semicircle, their identical faces serious. “Just as these men were.”
The Leons nodded.
“What they never tell you is that to transport information in a DNA strand is illegal if the bearer is human. That’s why you exist. They took material from a dedicated courier and cloned it, fast growing it to maturity after taking out and adding certain attributes. Your appearance is slightly different from the original, and you’ve been deliberately given a low-affect character. Something that was encouraged by the programming they fed you as you grew. When you’ve completed an assignment, you’re put into stasis until you’re needed again. You also have three brothers, none completely identical to you.”
“Stasis?” he rasped.
Rackam licked his lips, and Carolyn—he couldn’t think of her as Kletzer—offered him water in a zero-g bulb with a straw attachment. When he’d taken a few sips, he turned his head away.
Carolyn sighed. “Essentially you’re in hibernation, your metabolism is greatly slowed, and you’re given special antiaging agents they’d never dare administer to a legal human. They feed you programming that keeps you updated and creates the illusion that you have a life.” She shook her head sadly. “But, Ken, you don’t. It’s all a lie. Dorrana is a construct,” she said, referring to his girlfriend.
Of all the things she’d said to him, that was the most disturbing. Perhaps because there was something about Dorrana that wasn’t right. She was too compliant, too available, entirely too perfect for him. It was the most convincing thing Kletzer had said so far. He put it aside. There were more important questions to ask.
“Why now? Why this message?” he asked.
“What you were carrying was a report outlining the possibilities inherent in legalizing and even extending the clone program,” Carolyn explained. “It was directed to the entire upper council of the station, and the punch line was a stock offering that would make them rich beyond their wildest dreams of avarice in spite of the trouble it would cause between the station and Earth. There was also a strong subliminal command, the ultimate in an ongoing program of brainwashing that would convince them utterly of the rightness of the proposal.”
She clasped his shoulder. “Don’t you see, Ken? Thousands of people just like you would be created and enslaved, without even the comforts and privileges that you’ve been given. With even less choice, and far more dangerous and arduous labor to look forward to until they’re worn out and replaced like machine parts. People with a built-in expiration date.”
Carolyn raised her hands and dropped them again. “Can you see why I had to act?”
Rackam closed his eyes and thought about what she’d told him. Could she possibly be telling the truth? Slaves? He was a slave? Somehow he seemed to want to believe her. Was she using some kind of mind-control drug on him?
Forcing calm on himself, he examined his life, thought about his childhood, of which he had few memories. Then he recalled the occasions when he’d wakened, briefly, in some sort of isolation tank, floating in water that must have matched his body temperature because he could hardly feel it. Before he could draw a full breath, he’d be back in his bed, or eating a sandwich or whatever he’d been doing before the strange vision.
A mild alarm stirred within. Now that he thought of it, he realized that it had happened numerous times. He’d thought it was just a recurring nightmare, but now … Carolyn’s explanation matched the experience far more than his reality did. His life did move in fits and starts. Things changed very suddenly for him, surely more suddenly than could be normal.
“She’s telling the truth,” Leon said.
Rackam nodded. “Yes,” he said aloud. “It answers all sorts of questions.” He opened his eyes. “What do you want me to do?”
Carolyn and the Leons visibly relaxed. So they did need something from him.
“We cleared you of the other message,” she said. She held up a hypo. “This contains a new message, demanding a stop to the illegal cloning and freedom for the clone slaves. Pointing out that any other action could lead to war with Earth, which takes a very dim view of slavery. It leaves the subliminal command to obey intact.”
She bit her lip. “I know that’s wrong,” Carolyn admitted. She shook her head sadly. “It makes them slaves, too, in a way. But if we don’t do it this way, then there’ll just be another message that will supersede any amount of reasonable persuasion. It has to be this way or they’ll win. Do you understand?”
The courier nodded. He understood. He also believed that if it were just a matter of convincing the council to do the right thing, Carolyn would have gone to the wall over it. Come to think of it, she already had.
“I’ll do it,” he said before he could change his mind. “How much time do I have left?”
“Fourteen minutes,” she said.
Rackam blinked. They must have given him something to wake him up.
“Do it,” he said.
Carolyn pressed the hypo to his arm, and he felt the shot go home. By the time he reached the clinic, the message should have spread through his blood to the point where Dr. Ho wouldn’t notice any lack of material.
One of the Leons sliced the tape off and helped him to his feet.
“Everything has to look normal,” he said. “That means you’ve got to go back to Discrete.”
Rackam nodded, his face grim.
“But if this works, you’ll be free soon,” Carolyn reminded him. “Now, hurry. Even though you’ve got time left on the clock, you’ve taken an unusually long time getting there. It’s important that they not become suspicious.” At his nod she offered him her hand. “Good luck,” she said.
He shook hands with her and smiled slowly. “Don’t worry, Kletzer. Failure is not an option.”
In a darkened room subtly scented with lavender, a gentleman lay upon a couch upholstered in a lavish silk brocade. Embroidered pillows cushioned his noble head, upon which a cunningly crafted device constructed of copper had been placed. It held three glowing crystal wands with their points just touching his forehead. His eyes beneath their closed lids swept back and forth frantically as though trying to see myriad images flashing by at speed.
The light slowly faded from the crystals, and the gentleman’s eyes gradually became still. For a few moments he slept. Then, as the room became gradually brighter, his eyelids fluttered open and he stretched. Sitting up with a quick, decisive movement he glanced around the room, then rose and went to a dressing table, upon which his elaborately curled wig rested on a stand.
He sat and removed the device from his forehead, examining it carefully until he was interrupted by a knock on the door. The gentleman looked in the mirror and raised one brow in mild irritation.
“Come,” he said in a languid voice that belied his excited mood.
“Good evening, m’lord,” the wizard said. He was an elderly man in a long spangled robe, and he held out his hands for the instrument that the nobleman was examining.
Reluctantly that worthy returned
it.
“A most entertaining afternoon, good wizard,” he said.
“I am glad Your Grace is pleased,” the wizard simpered.
The duke swung the heavy wig onto his close-shaven head and adjusted it. Then he rose and put on his embroidered and spangled coat, twitching the exquisite lace of his cuffs free of the sleeves.
“Indeed I am,” the duke replied, making a final adjustment. “I am quite certain that His Majesty will enjoy this new amusement, as well.”
He smiled thinly at the sorcerer, conveying with his expression that the wizard had better be grateful for this opportunity to pander to the royal whim.
No fool he, the wizard bowed low. “I shall be forever in your debt for bringing my humble efforts to His Majesty’s attention,” he assured the duke.
Picking up his gold-capped ebony walking stick and adjusting the set of his rapier, the duke proceeded to the door, where he turned to stare at the wizard. After a moment of this scrutiny, the wizard began to fidget.
“Is there some way I may serve Your Grace?” he inquired.
“I was just wondering … where do you get your ideas? All the other entertainers of your ilk draw theirs from ancient legends or ballads. Yours—”
“Ah, Your Grace,” the wizard said, bowing. “Mine are drawn from out of the very ether!”
The duke’s expression turned haughty. “Hmmph!” he uttered, and left without another word.
The wizard wiped sweat from his brow and placed the copper device on the wig stand, then exhaled a long breath. He chuckled delightedly and rubbed his hands together in sheer delight. His fortune was made! How jealous his fellow wizards were going to be! And all with so little effort on his part, too. He foresaw honors and gold showing down upon him; life was good!
Turning, he swept a tapestry curtain aside to reveal a pane of glass set in an elaborate copper frame. Behind the glass streams of smoke in many bright colors swirled and billowed, yet never mingled, as though tightly contained, yet blown by a continuous wind.
With great care he removed the crystals from the headpiece and placed them in similar holders attached to the rune-scribed frame. As soon as the third crystal was in place within the frame, the colored smokes began to swirl and clear away. A quacking voice blatted, “Sci-fi!” and before his eyes four people in loose, mottled clothing walked toward a great upright circle of stone containing what appeared to be a pool of water, impossible given its position. One by one they disappeared beneath its rippled surface.