“He’s never been in a spaceship before,” Rich says. “He’s just a little—excitable.”
“We didn’t have time to childproof this shuttle,” Alisa says. “He pried open a maintenance hatch and crossed some wires.”
“Where?” Jessica asks.
“I can show you,” Rich says.
They move back toward the hatch. Khan starts to follow them, then stops.
“No,” she says, observing the staring contest I’m having with Alisa. “I’d better stay here.” She turns back and folds her arms as Jessica and Rich exit.
“Thank you,” Alisa says.
I point at Joey. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t have time to explain right now.” Alisa walks over to the control panel of the chair. “The treatment cycle’s almost done. Depending on how long it takes to repair life support—”
“We don’t have time for that,” Khan says. “There’s room for all of us in the other ship. Start packing up whatever you need.”
Alisa’s eyes widen. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen her frightened before. “No. That’s not going to work.”
“I’m not asking, Doc,” Khan says. “We’re on the clock here.”
“Whatever your issue is,” Alisa says, “it can’t possibly be as important as saving his life.” She points at Joey.
I feel a lump in my throat. “He’s dying?”
“Not exactly,” Rich says behind me. He and Jessica rejoin the circle. “But he does need regular treatments in the MTI rig.”
“How bad is the damage to this ship?” Khan asks Jessica.
“He did more than cross some wires,” Jessica says. “It looks like someone let a five-year-old child play with a plasma cutter.”
Khan looks at Alisa. “Is that right?”
“We didn’t let him do anything,” Alisa says. “He’s been very difficult to control since we left the crater. Overstimulated.”
“And we can’t sedate him,” Rich says, “because the risk of—”
“The point is,” Alisa says, “moving him into another new environment is just going to wind him up again.”
“We’re four adults here, Doc,” Khan says. “I think we can handle one kid.”
“Five adults,” I say. “Six, if you include Lieutenant Hong. But hey, who’s counting?” I’m sure she didn’t intend to insult me.
“I’m only counting the people who are free to babysit Joey. Hong’s flying the ship. And you are going to stay as far away from the kid as possible.” Khan points at me. “This situation is already complicated enough.”
“No,” I say, starting to feel angry. “No, that’s not how this is going to work.”
“Kangaroo, we’ve got six minutes—”
“I’ll talk fast.” I point to Joey. “That appears to be a real live human being, cloned from my illegally obtained genetic material.”
“It wasn’t illegal,” Alisa says.
“We can debate that later,” Jessica says. She turns to Rich. “Is he having seizures?”
“They’re more like episodes,” Rich replies. “But MTI is the only effective treatment we’ve found so far. Medication doesn’t work, and we can’t predict when he’s going to have an episode. We also haven’t been able to identify any specific triggers or warning symptoms—”
“We need the machine,” Alisa says. “And as you can see, it’s not exactly portable.”
“That’s not true,” Jessica says. “The chair’s just a chair. All you need is the armature—”
“Oh, and did your Ph.D. in nuclear medicine teach you how to manually calibrate Tay-Mar Effect coils?” Alisa snaps. I don’t know exactly what those coils are, but I know the Tay-Mar Effect is used for magnetic containment in ionwell propulsion systems, so the components in question must need to be configured very precisely. “Or does it just come naturally because you’re a fucking robot?”
“I need a third vote!” Khan says. She points at Rich. “What do you think?”
“Me?” Rich seems surprised. “I’m just here to assist.”
“You’re a nurse practitioner, and you’ve been working on this project for as long as she has,” Khan says, jerking a thumb at Alisa Garro. “What is your medical opinion?”
Rich glances over at Alisa. She glares back at him. Rich opens his mouth slowly.
“Who are all these people?” asks a childish voice behind me.
* * *
I look over at the chair. Joey’s eyes are open. They’re dark, just like mine. He’s looking around. He can’t move because of the chair restraints.
“Can I get up now?” he asks.
I move to undo his restraints. He shrinks back from me.
“I’ll do it,” Alisa says, stepping out from behind the control panel.
“Ali?” Joey says. He pronounces it “ah-LEE,” like the Muslim name. Like the famous twentieth-century boxing champion. Greatest of All Time. But Joey’s looking up at Alisa Garro.
That’s funny. That is fucking hilarious.
“It’s okay, Joey,” she says, opening the med-sig collar and pulling away the restraining straps around his arms, legs, and torso. “These people are our friends. How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Joey climbs out of the chair and walks right up to me. “Who are you? You’re brown like me.”
Of course he doesn’t recognize me. Even if he would have recognized his own face, aged forward two decades, I no longer have the face I was born with. The agency likes to invest in cosmetic surgery for its field operatives, to minimize the chances that they’ll be recognized by people or computers. There are ways to shape facial features that will confuse a large percentage of automated scanners, and look forgettably average to most humans.
“What’s your name?” Joey asks.
“Kangaroo,” I say without thinking. I swear I can hear Jessica grinding her teeth.
“That’s a weird name. What kind of name is that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I like stories! Tell me the story!”
This cannot be happening.
“Hold that thought,” I say. Joey’s bouncing up and down now and chanting, “Story, story,” over and over again. I turn to Rich. “Medical opinion, please?”
“We can disassemble the MTI rig,” he says. “It’s modular. Is there enough space to set it up in the other ship?”
“Yes,” Jessica says.
“Okay, time’s up,” Khan says. “We need to go. Doc, you got a spacesuit for Joey?”
“I got it,” Rich say. He opens a locker and starts pulling out a tiny spacesuit.
“Whoa! Rick! Are we going outside?” Joey asks.
“Yes, we are.”
“Yay!” He starts making noises that could generously be interpreted as singing.
Alisa walks over to me and puts her face centimeters from mine. “I hope you’re happy.”
I gape at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
A loud screeching noise fills the room. I look over and see Rich struggling with Joey.
“We’re not finished,” Alisa says, then goes to help Joey into his spacesuit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Moon—farside—anonymous crater
10 minutes after the universe blew my mind
Once everyone’s in spacesuits, Alisa Garro walks Joey from the Mapalé over to Scorpion’s stealth ship. Jessica and Rich Johnson take apart the medical machine that Joey was sitting in and move it out, one piece at a time, while Khan and I box up other equipment and supplies from Joey’s room and stow them in the pocket. I hope there’s nothing in there that won’t survive a few hours in hard vacuum.
Joey. I still can’t believe it.
After we get everything into the stealth ship’s cargo bay, I stand on the open ramp and look at the abandoned shuttle sitting on the Lunar surface.
“I’m not sure I can put that shuttle back in the pocket,” I say. Opening tiny pinholes for radio checks doesn’t take too much out of
me. But making a five-meter hole in the universe is more of an effort.
“Forget it,” Khan says, walking down next to me. “We’ll blow it after we dust off.”
“We’re going to destroy an entire shuttlecraft?”
“This is farside. No one’s looking. And we’re low on time,” Khan says. “Our priority is keeping you and Joey safe.”
“Right.”
“And making that rendezvous with Clementine.”
I turn to look at her. “Is that still on the agenda?” I feel like our priorities might have shifted in the last few minutes. Of course, Jessica and I have already wandered pretty far from our original mission: what should have been a simple info buy has turned into the craziest road trip of all time, with a side of dysfunctional family reunion.
“Look,” Khan says, “I understand this”—she waves back up the ramp, toward the passenger compartment of the ship—“is a frankly earth-shattering revelation, especially for you. But I still have a job to do. I need to keep my people safe, and that means making sure ‘Scorpion’ and ‘Clementine’ aren’t planning any more terror attacks. I want to know they’re contained before you pull anyone else out of the pocket.”
I nod. “Right.”
The dust on the Lunar surface is so still. No atmosphere. No wind. Nothing changes here without external intervention. It’s so peaceful—
Khan nudges my shoulder. “Are you listening to me, Kangaroo?”
“I’m listening,” I say. “Take down the bad old lady. Make sure she won’t hurt anyone else. Eighty-five percent chance of punching.”
“Let’s get inside.”
I follow Khan up the ramp and through the airlock into the crew cabin. Alisa and Rich are sitting on either side of Joey, on a metal bench along one wall. Jessica is securing the disassembled pieces of the MTI rig against the opposite wall. I see Hong through the open cockpit door, sitting in the pilot’s seat.
A loud, high-pitched noise fills the compartment when I remove my spacesuit helmet. It takes me a second to recognize it as Joey screaming at the top of his lungs. Did I ever sound like that when I was a kid? I sure hope not.
“What happened?” I ask.
“He’s fine,” Alisa says.
“He didn’t want to come inside,” Rich says.
“Seriously?” This is another reason I don’t work with kids.
“Wanna Moonwalk!” Joey screeches.
Rich gives me a shrug. “He likes jumping really high.” Well, at least that implies they do let him out of the lab every once in a while.
Alisa holds up a small plastic toy. “Hey, Joey, you want your dinosaur?”
“No!” He slaps it out of her hand and continues screaming.
“A little help here?” Alisa says, glaring at me.
“Hey, Joey,” I say, “you want to blow up a spaceship?”
The screaming stops, and Joey gives me his full attention. “For reals?”
“Wait, what?” Rich says.
“Khan?” I say, turning to the tall woman scowling behind me. I seem to deal with a lot of scowling women. Weird.
“You sure about this?” she asks.
“Yeah. You’re doing a remote detonation?” She nods. “Have Hong turn the ship so Joey can see it. Then let him push the button.”
“Hell, no!” Khan says. “He’s a five-year-old kid!”
“I’m almost six and I wanna push the button!” Joey starts bouncing up and down on the bench. Alisa and Rich do their best to restrain him. “Push the button! Push the button!” he starts chanting.
I lean in close to Khan. “You remember being five years old?”
“A little,” she mutters.
“Can you think of a better way to distract him?”
She glowers at me. “You get to write up the after-action report on this.”
“Sure.”
Khan steps forward and waves toward the cockpit. “Okay, Joey. Let’s go.”
Alisa stands up. “Are you sure this is a good—”
“Talk to Kangaroo,” Khan says, ushering Joey into the cockpit.
“Thanks, Kangaroo!” Joey calls back before the door closes on him, Khan, and Hong. Now it’s just Alisa, Rich, Jessica, and me in the cabin.
“We need to talk,” I say to no one and everyone.
“Agreed,” Jessica says.
“Yeah, you first.” I point an accusatory finger at her. “SISTERS?”
“Half sisters,” she says.
I turn my finger toward Alisa. “A FUCKING CLONE?”
“It wasn’t my idea,” she says, as if that makes a difference.
“And YOU!” I point at Rich.
He holds up both hands. “What did I do?”
That’s fair. I don’t have a specific complaint about him. But I’m still mad as hell.
I unleash a torrent of obscenities at the world in general. It takes at least a solid minute before I’m out of interesting swear words.
“Finished?” Alisa asks, her arms folded.
“You’re finished,” I say. I’ve decided I’m angriest at her. “You are so fucking finished!”
“I have to agree.” Jessica sounds remarkably calm. “You’re all going to prison.”
“Whoa!” Rich says. “Who said anything about prison?”
“That,” Jessica says, pointing at the closed cockpit door, “appears to be a whole clone of a living human being.”
“Well, yeah,” Rich says. “It’s a medical breakthrough—”
“It’s a felony is what it is,” Jessica snaps, looking at Alisa now. “This is a violation of at least seven different interplanetary statutes, not to mention basic medical ethics. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking my career was over and I didn’t have a whole lot of options,” Alisa says.
“What could possibly have possessed you to come up with such a ridiculous idea?”
“My idea?” Alisa’s hands ball into fists. “You think I could have talked State into supporting something like this? Especially after how thoroughly Lasher burned me?”
Jessica frowns. “You mean—”
“Genesis has been running since the day after State found out about him.” Alisa points at me. “The name’s a joke. A double entendre. It’s about creating life, but the project itself was only brought to life because of Kangaroo.”
“More like a meta entendre, actually,” Rich says.
“Should have called it Project Frankenstein,” I mutter.
“Joey doesn’t have the ability yet,” Alisa says. “We don’t know if he ever will. Hell, we don’t know if he’ll live to be ten years old. It’s a miracle that we brought him to term at all.”
“Wait.” I can’t believe it took me this long to do the math. “He’s almost six years old?”
“That’s right.”
I point at Alisa. “He’s the reason you stayed on the Moon. Why you didn’t leave. You’ve been here ever since he was born.”
She glares at me. “I wasn’t going to abandon an infant.”
“Or you didn’t trust anyone else to look after him.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Alisa snaps. “I told you. I chose to stay.”
I’m not sure how to read the expression on her face. Is it possible that dealing with a baby awakened some maternal instinct inside the evil witch? Could her heart actually have grown three sizes over the course of those first few months? Or did she just want to maintain control over her experiment, to micromanage what Joey ate, what he read, what vids he watched—
“No.” I suddenly realize something. “Oh, no, you didn’t. You did not!”
“I’m guessing she did,” Jessica says.
I can’t come up with a gesture intense enough to convey what I’m feeling. “You also stole my parents’ vid library?”
I didn’t think it was possible to feel more violated than being cloned, but here it is. As an orphan, that archive of ancient movies and television series was the only connection
I had to my dead parents. I watched those shows over and over again while I was growing up. I can quote entire episodes from memory in some cases.
“I didn’t steal anything,” Alisa says. “You consented to medical procedures which gave us blood and tissue samples. And you asked Equipment to load your vid library into your eye.”
She’s right. Years ago, I asked Oliver to copy all those vids into my implanted computer memory so I could rewatch my favorites during long space voyages. I didn’t think about who else might have access to them.
“That put the vids in the agency warehouse,” Alisa continues. “Just like your blood and tissue samples. They’re property of the agency now. And come on, that data’s not private anyway.”
“So you just wanted to rub it in?” I say. “It wasn’t enough to steal my DNA for your crazy illegal experiment, you had to steal my entertainment, too?”
“Kangaroo,” Jessica says, “that’s not why she did it.”
I frown at Jessica. “Are you actually defending her?”
“No,” Jessica says. “They were trying to condition Joey’s brain.”
I gape for a moment. “You think watching television is why I can use the pocket?”
“We don’t know why you can use the pocket!” Alisa says. “We needed to reproduce the stimuli you had as a child as closely as we could.”
“So you’re also going to bring in some bigger kids to knock out his front teeth in a couple years?” I can’t believe any of this. “Jesus Christ, don’t you think raising him on the Moon has already skewed the results?”
“Low gravity doesn’t significantly affect brain development,” she says. “Science Division has been doing animal studies here for decades. We’ve established that. But we know exposing infants to vid screens can influence mood, behavior, learning—”
“And you did it anyway?”
“We had to take a calculated risk.”
“And now Joey’s sick.”
Alisa scowls at me. “That’s not because of the vids.”
“I want to see your records,” Jessica says. “I want to see all the research—”
“Wow, real classy, sis,” Alisa says. “You’re just going to assume we did something wrong? The only possible answer is that we missed something because nobody could possibly be as perfect as the golden girl, Jessica fucking Chu?”
Kangaroo Too Page 24