A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  He’d been an idiot. A cowardly idiot. He’d assumed intelligence, which, one of his law professors had told him, would always get him in trouble.

  He had volunteered to conduct some continuing education classes for the Armstrong bar, so that they would know which criminal cases belonged in the Alliance systems and which cases remained strictly local. He loved the intricacies of Earth Alliance law, as big as it was, and if he didn’t like going to court so much, he might have become a legal scholar. Instead, he hoped he was on the track toward a judgeship—even though most of the Alliance judges were chosen from the prosecutor’s bench, not the defense bench.

  He was making enough political connections that he might become one of the token defense nominees. They always went through the Alliance system faster than the prosecutorial nominees, only because so few defense attorneys ever had success records that put them in the public eye.

  The classes had kept him busier than he expected or, if he were honest with himself, as busy as he wanted to be. He had managed to avoid Berhane most of the time.

  Berhane Magalhães, his now-former fiancée. Whom he had just left sobbing outside of Terminal 20.

  Zhu rubbed a hand over his face. He could have handled the breakup better. He could have handled it years ago, when he knew a marriage wouldn’t work. He had never expected her to wait for him. He stopped setting dates for the wedding a long time ago. She’d set the first two, and he’d missed them, mostly by failing to tell her that one date was the bar exam that would license him for Interspecies Court, and the other was the date he had to report to work at the Impossibles, which was where all defense attorneys got their start, just so they could see how hopeless the Earth Alliance court system truly was. At least he hadn’t been indentured there, like some lawyers who couldn’t afford law school. He’d paid for his own schooling, so he only had to serve six months in that hell.

  Then he went on to S3 and his real career. He kept telling Berhane she didn’t have to wait for him, that she shouldn’t wait for him, and she never seemed to get the hint. One drunken evening, he’d even confessed to sleeping with other women, and still Berhane had held on.

  He had no idea why, which he had just screamed at her an hour ago. Then she’d threatened to contact Daddy, just like she always did. Daddy—or Bernard Magalhães, one of the richest men on the Moon, who somehow managed to maintain all his wealth through investments that seemed shady to Zhu.

  Not that Zhu knew much about financial crimes. They mostly fell outside his jurisdiction. He specialized in human-on-human crimes—the violent, nasty kind—that occurred in the darker regions of the Earth Alliance, often in places that preferred humans take their interpersonal problems outside of the non-human jurisdiction.

  The moment Berhane had told him she had let Daddy listen in on her links was the moment that Zhu was done. Completely, totally, irrevocably done.

  Instead of reminding her that his shuttle was about to leave, which was what he would have done in the past, he had shaken his head and said for both of their benefits, “This is why I’m walking away. This. I’m not going to marry your father, Berhane. And it seems like you two are a package deal. I’ve been running from the package for years. Let’s just make it official, shall we?”

  And then he walked away, actually resisting the urge to run in his dress shoes and suit. He felt free. He felt guilty. He felt stupid—because he should have done this years ago.

  And he should have, for both of their sakes.

  Then he smiled to himself. For all three of their sakes.

  He was having trouble choosing what kind of entertainment he wanted for his thirty-minute confinement. Most everything had touches of romance in it, and the last thing he wanted was even a hint of romance. He had just settled on some virtual battlefield game, which seemed to be all about killing and scoring points from mayhem—something he usually avoided—when the imagery cut out.

  He cursed. The last thing he needed was something short-circuiting his imagination, especially right now. He also knew that the staff of the shuttle wouldn’t fix any problems in the entertainment system until the damn thing was outside the purview of the space traffic cops.

  Then a face appeared on all of Zhu’s screens. The face was male, older, with the pockmarked skin of someone who didn’t give a damn about enhancements. It was attached to a neck and shoulders that were encased in a uniform Zhu didn’t really recognize.

  “Forgive me for the interruption,” the man said. “I’m the senior pilot of this shuttle. We’ve been ordered to abort our scheduled flight. We’re told this might only be temporary, but at the moment I don’t know. All space traffic has been grounded until further notice.”

  Zhu groaned. He’d never heard of anything like this happening anywhere in the Alliance.

  They’d be hearing from him. After, of course, he checked Armstrong Port regulations to see if they could actually do this.

  “Everyone is to disembark. We will be going back inside, where you will have to be screened, for what, I don’t know. Why, I don’t know. I hope they’ll explain this to us when we get inside. Please accept a small link to the shuttle before disembarking so that we can let you know when the trip will be rescheduled. I hope it’ll be within the hour.”

  The pilot winked out.

  “It better be,” Zhu said to no one in particular. The last thing he wanted to do was go back inside Armstrong’s port. There was no guarantee that Berhane had left yet.

  He sighed and shoved the screens out of his way. Then he unhooked himself from the chair.

  He was already downloading Port of Armstrong Regulations, plus all of the City of Armstrong’s legal codes.

  Someone would answer for this delay.

  He would make certain of it.

  SIXTEEN

  ZHU TRUDGED UP the ramps out of Terminal 20. Along the way, dozens, if not hundreds, of other passengers from other luxury ships joined him. None of them were arrivals. All were departures, and all were talking in their various languages about their postponed trips.

  Images floated on the screens in front of them, directing them back to the lounges. People separated out by class. Those who worked on the ships followed one row of lights. Those who paid less for their transport followed another. And those who either paid for a luxury berth or were frequent travelers followed the green light that lit up the floor for Zhu.

  Because Terminal 20 was the luxury departure area, most everyone went that way. Even though he was taller than most of the humans, he wasn’t able to shove his way past the group of Sequev who were galumphing their way toward the main door. Sequev had eight legs and resembled spiders. Even though they were the size of small dogs, they still managed to get in his way.

  He resigned himself to getting nowhere fast.

  Nowhere. That’s where he was heading. As soon as he had word from the Port of Armstrong as to what was going on, he would contact S3 and let them know what his new itinerary was.

  Just his luck that he would be going back to the departure lounge so soon after leaving it. He hoped—no, he prayed—that Berhane had already run off to cry in Daddy’s arms.

  Not that there was a huge chance of that. Her father was at some meeting with the governor-general, doing all those important things that a man of his station did. If Berhane had wanted to join him, she would have had to leave immediately.

  Zhu wasn’t even sure Berhane knew exactly where her father was.

  Zhu shrugged his night-travel kit over his shoulder. He had brought that back out because the pilot had sounded uncertain about the future of the flight. Often, it was better to book another ship than try to work around some recalcitrant pilot who seemed to believe rules were meant to be followed.

  When Zhu reached a series of doors leading to various departure sites in Terminal 20, he noted with relief that the Sequev moved to the right while he was heading left. He sped up and was the first through the door back into the luxury lounge.

  It looked strange.
Everyone was standing and all were looking at various screens. The humans had their hands over their mouths. There weren’t a lot of non-humans in the lounge, which had become common since the bombing four years ago. Zhu had a private belief that the Port was separating its various customers by species, but he had no way to prove that.

  His links filled with noise. Something about Arek Soseki, Armstrong’s Mayor. Something about assassins and murders and shutting down the Port to make sure no “bad guys” escaped. Something about horrors and how terrible all of this was to happen on Anniversary Day.

  He looked up at a nearby screen. Someone stumbled into him, and he realized he was blocking traffic. Not that there were a lot of places to go. All of the aisles were filled with people and aliens standing, staring at the imagery coming on the floating screens.

  He moved as far away from the path of the incoming travelers as he could and found another screen. The images took a moment to process: the mayor, sprawled; the police, talking, moving, unable to figure anything out. Reporters were trying to update everyone with very little information.

  But the images of Soseki—they were clear. The man looked like a statue of himself, gray and broken, and very obviously dead.

  Zhu felt nauseous. Through his links he heard more whispers, something about other targets. He scanned the lounge, looking past the people clogging the aisles.

  Some passengers sat in their comfortable chairs, hands pressed against their ears the way that humans did when they were trying to focus on information inside their links. A few Peyti lingered near the doorways, heads tilted as they got information, their masks elongating their faces, their sticklike hands at their sides.

  He had to actually peer at people to see if Berhane was still here. She was a small woman, with dark, curly hair and very soft, chocolate skin. Her skin attracted him most. He had always loved it, even when he was getting frustrated with her.

  But she would be hard to see in this crowd.

  He scanned his links for word of the governor-general—surely someone would ask her for a statement in this time of crisis—and instead got some conflicting messages that something had gone wrong at her location as well.

  Then he saw Berhane. Hand on her ear as if she were concentrating on links, head tilted upward as she looked at screens, she seemed like an island in a sea of trouble. His heart lifted when he saw her, and he didn’t want that.

  He wanted to be angry at her or hate her or feel something other than relief that he found her. He had treated her so badly, and he was starting to feel guilty. That was the last thing he wanted; as one law school professor of his said, Lawyers should never feel guilty. If they do, they can’t do the job.

  Berhane twirled slowly, looking up at various screens, most of which showed the same images—the mayor, down; the chaos near O’Malley’s, of all places. What a place to die in front of.

  Her face was blotchy. She’d been crying, but she wasn’t crying now. Instead, her mouth was in a set line, as if she were trying to get information.

  He knew that look. She was scared and determined and trying to ignore how she felt.

  He threaded his way toward her, knowing he should probably stay away, knowing he was probably the last person she wanted to see, but going toward her anyway.

  He reached her side, and lightly touched her back. “Berhane?”

  She started. She hadn’t seen him, or if she had, she wasn’t processing it.

  He said quickly, so she wouldn’t move away, “If you don’t want to talk to me, I understand, but I’m hearing something about the governor-general…?”

  He half expected her to burst into tears. Instead she glanced at the screens and then back at him, that little frown line appearing between her eyes.

  “I can’t reach Daddy.” She sounded a lot calmer than Zhu expected her to.

  “So he is with the governor-general,” Zhu said. “I thought you’d mentioned that. Tell me what’s happening.”

  “No one knows.” Another glance at the screens. She needed information, he needed information, and there was no way to get it here. No one knew anything in this lounge.

  He made a decision. They had to get out of here. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “We can’t,” she said. “The Port’s in lockdown.”

  “I mean, inside the Port. Somewhere better than this.”

  “What could be better than this?” she asked.

  Somewhere that the people in power went. Somewhere with better access. Somewhere he might be able to find answers.

  He took her elbow, like he would have two days ago. Her lips thinned, but she didn’t pull away.

  So he smiled, just a little.

  “Come on,” he said in his most comforting voice. “Let’s find out what’s really going on.”

  SEVENTEEN

  THE EARTH ALLIANCE lounge at Terminal 20 was filled with diplomats, lawyers, and specialists of all ages and races, watching the images on the various screens while simultaneously leaning into their links. Some were subvocalizing. Others had that glazed look that humans got when they were concentrating on their links and not paying attention to anything around them.

  An inordinate number of Peyti sat around tables, tapping on small screens, while pairs of Nyyzen hovered near the private chambers, obviously waiting to get in.

  The Nyyzen unnerved Zhu. They worked in pairs, and when they did, they created a third, somewhat ghostly creature that was visible in outline.

  That wasn’t the hardest part of dealing with them, though. The hardest part was the fact that their heads were isosceles triangles. Their mouths were on the equal sides of the triangle, and their eyes on the short part. If looked at from one direction, it seemed like they had eyes on one side of their face and a mouth on the other. Zhu had no idea where their nose was—if they had a nose.

  He had to pull his gaze away from the Nyyzen. A few Disty sat on top of tiny tables, their small bodies hunched, their arms busy while their feet pressed together. They could be mean when interrupted. He didn’t want to stand by them either.

  The chairs were full, but one table remained open with a few seats. The problem was that it was near a group of Rev. They were huge, and always took up twice the space of humans. Plus, the Rev were pear-shaped and hard to get around. They had extra arms, which retracted or something (Zhu never really understood how their anatomy worked), and the younger Rev sometimes pulled out their arms at odd moments to trick or harass humans.

  Zhu had handled more than one case involving Rev, and he never really wanted to again.

  “What is this place?” Berhane asked.

  He had almost forgotten she was with him. He put a hand on the small of her back, partly to keep her steady and partly to make sure she didn’t go to the wrong part of the gigantic room.

  “I told you. It’s the Earth Alliance lounge.”

  “It smells weird,” she said.

  It did. Any grouping of different species had weird, unduplicatable smells. Some species smelled horrible to humans, and others had no real scent at all. Combine all those smells, plus the smells of frightened and worried human, and you got—well, this miasma of low-level stink.

  “You get used to it,” he lied.

  She nodded and seemed even more subdued than she had in the luxury lounge.

  He had told her that they would be able to find out what was going on once they got here, but he wasn’t sure that was true now. Everyone seemed preoccupied, nervous, and terrified.

  He led her deep inside before he saw someone he recognized, a lawyer formerly at the Impossibles, now some sort of researcher in the Human Justice Division of the Earth Alliance.

  “Hey, Barry!” Zhu’s voice carried. Half the humans in the room turned toward him.

  Barry Pliska wasn’t one of them. He leaned against the wall, one foot braced against it, face gray. He looked almost ill. He had one hand against his ear and his head bowed.

  Berhane grabbed Zhu’s arm. “Look,” she said, poi
nting at one of the images.

  Zhu squinted. It appeared to be the exterior of a hospital.

  “I think the governor-general is there,” she said.

  “Check your links,” he said.

  “I have been,” she said. “They’re working all right, except I still can’t reach my dad.”

  “Keep trying,” Zhu said, primarily because he wanted to keep her busy. He threaded his way through the crowd to get to Pliska.

  Zhu didn’t really care if Berhane followed. She wasn’t going to leave the lounge without him, and he didn’t want to be near her if she found out that her father was collateral damage in whatever had happened to the governor-general.

  Zhu had made the mistake of talking to her shortly after her mother died in the actual bombing four years ago. He’d been calling to set up a time when he could do the right thing and break up with her then, but the moment he spoke to her, he had known that it would be wrong.

  He felt relieved he had broken off the engagement before all of this started, and then he felt guilty for the relief. He had a hunch his timing was going to be awful, as usual. He had a hunch her father wouldn’t be answering his links again.

  “Barry,” Zhu said as he got closer.

  Pliska looked up, his expression as close to terrified as a man’s expression could be. He held up one finger, then subvocalized something while maintaining eye contact with Zhu.

  Then Pliska let his hand drop away from his ear. He wasn’t on links anymore. He said, “Brace yourself—”

  And then the entire Port shook. Disty fell off the tables. The Revs’ extra arms came out, bracing the creatures against the wall. Humans staggered on their feet.

  Zhu grabbed a nearby chair, which skittered under the force of whatever was happening. He heard the same words repeated in Standard and the other languages he half understood.

  “Sectioning…”

  “Dome…”

  “Protection…?”

  And then cursing, lots of cursing. The shaking lasted only a few minutes, maybe not even that, but half of the officials in the room had either fallen or lost their balance. Dust rained from the ceiling. Chairs had toppled, tables had bounced away from their usual positions, and on the screens—