The Clone Republic (Clone 1)

by Steven L. Kent

  Knowing that I might later regret the decision, I pulled my media shades off my dresser and went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Sitting down and taking a sip, I booted up my shades and scanned the pangalactic headlines. Klyber’s judicial sideshow had begun. The ten thousand Mogat Separatists we captured on Hubble were now appearing in court on Ezer Kri.

  The story included a quote from Nester Smart, the provisional governor of Ezer Kri. I was not aware that there had been a change. The story did not mention anything about Governor Yamashiro. There were several lengthy video segments from the courtroom floor. Every feed showed the same thing—male prisoners sitting in groups of four to ten at a time, remaining absolutely stone-faced as judges read the accusations.

  I watched two of the feeds. I found it hard to concentrate; thoughts of the previous night kept clouding my mind. What I really wanted to do was wake Kasara and see what might happen, but I thought I should let her sleep for another few minutes.

  I viewed one last clip. Just another judge reading the exact same four charges—sedition, assault against officers of the Unified Authority military, premeditated murder, willfully obstructing the law . . . The camera panned around the court to show the jury. And then it dawned on me. Not one member of the jury had black hair. Nobody had Asian eyes. No one in the previous video feeds had Japanese features, either.

  I found a sidebar showing man-on-the-street interviews conducted in downtown Rising Sun. The streets looked empty, and the few people who gave interviews looked cosmopolitan.

  The first time I read about Ezer Kri, the article said that the planet had nearly 12.6 million people of Japanese descent. The population of Rising Sun was over 80 percent Japanese. It would have taken one hell of an airlift operation to slip that many people off the planet. Later I searched for the latest demographic statistics from Ezer Kri. I found an article that was only one month old. There was no mention of a Japanese population.

  “Damn, Wayson. You’re reading the news,” Vince Lee said in disgust.

  “They’ve started the trials on Ezer Kri,” I said.

  “You need to get your head out of those shades,” Lee said. “Kasara and Jennifer came as a package deal, and I am not going to let you speck this up.”

  Lee had a point. Bright sunlight shone through my kitchen windows. The curtains fluttered in a gentle breeze. I sipped my coffee and discovered that it had gone cold.

  “You and Jennifer had a good time last night?” I asked.

  “We did,” he said. “From the sound of things, you and Kasara did okay. I promised Jennifer that we’d all drive around the island. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I said. I went to wake Kasara up. She and I had breakfast about forty minutes later.

  We drove east, following the coast. The highway wound around bays and mountains, through small towns and wide-open countryside. Vince drove and Jennifer sat beside him. Kasara and I sat in the back. She nuzzled against me and occasionally stroked her hand over my thighs. She did not say much. She seemed wistful.

  The coastal road led along the outside of dormant volcanoes. One side of the street was barren, the other side dropped straight down to the ocean, a fathomless mosaic of blues and greens. Kasara leaned forward and spoke to Jennifer. “Let’s stop.”

  Jennifer put her hand to Lee’s ear and relayed the request. He pulled into a scenic parking area overlooking the ocean, and we went to have a look.

  I had seen enough from the car and didn’t need to look much longer. Vince and Jennifer didn’t care about much of anything. She held his arm and smiled. They talked happily. Kasara held my arm, too; but her thoughts were elsewhere. Soon she would return home. She dreaded the idea. She was a girl who lived for one week out of every year—the week she spent on vacation.

  Kasara stared down at the waves as they dashed against the black rock walls of the cliff. Wind blew her silky hair across her face. She did not smile, and her eyes seemed far away.

  “The view is beautiful,” I said, mostly because I was tired of looking at it and hoped to wake her from her trance.

  “I could watch this all day,” she muttered.

  God help us,I thought, but I did not say anything. There was no peace in her face. The girlish smile that had so lured me had vanished. Without it, she was more beautiful than ever.

  “Do you think there are fish down there? Wouldn’t the waves kill them?” she asked.

  “I don’t know anything about oceans,” I said, “but those currents look strong.”

  “We have an ocean on Olympus Kri,” she said, prying her eyes from the view. She looked at me and smiled. It was not the same smile I had seen the day before.

  “Does it look like this?” I asked.

  “I’ve only seen pictures,” she said. “I’ve never gone out to the coast.”

  She tightened her grip around my biceps. “You’ve probably seen all kinds of oceans.”

  “I’ve only been to four planets so far,” I said. “One was a desert and one was toxic.”

  “Poor Wayson,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve seen some amazing places. So exciting to spend your life on a ship traveling around different worlds.” As she spoke, her thoughts drifted, and her smile became more pure. She reached an arm around my waist and we kissed.

  “Seen enough?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  We turned toward the car. Vince and Jennifer were already there, watching us and talking.

  “Hey,” I said. “Vince, did you see that sign?”

  The sign behind the car said “Scenic Area.” Above the words was the silhouette of a man in a cape wearing a primitive war helmet with a fin along the top. It was the insignia of our ship.

  “What’s that doing here?” Lee asked.

  Once we were alert to it, we spotted Kamehameha everywhere. He was on scenic signs and the sides of buses. There was a caricature of him on our map. Lee drove us to the spot on the way home. There, immortalized in an cast-iron statue with gold leaf, was King Kamehameha: “Conqueror of the Islands.”

  “No wonder all of those officers vacation here,” Lee said. “The ship was named after a Hawaiian king.”

  The statue stood ten feet tall and stood upon a pedestal that added another five feet. I read the plaque at the base of the statue. Kamehameha had been a warrior king who paddled from island to island by canoe and conquered villages with spears and clubs. He was also a statesman. Once he finished conquering his island kingdom, he set up treaties with France, England, and the United States of America that played great nations against each other and ensured his primitive kingdom’s survival.

  This told me something about Bryce Klyber, too. The aristocratic admiral had selected our antiquated Expansion-class fighter carrier as his flagship because he liked the name. He liked the idea of the statesman warrior. He saw himself as both a statesman and a warrior, and he believed that his statesmanship ultimately differentiated him from the likes of Admiral Huang.

  When we dropped Kasara and Jennifer off at their hotel in the midafternoon, Lee looked at me, and said, “Shit, now I’m stuck with you.” He was joking, but the feeling was mutual.

  We moped around the villa until 1700, then headed down the hill. The sun had not even begun to set. The last of the tourists still lingered on the beach, lying on the sand or wading in the shallows. In another hour the sun would go down, and even they would leave. Younger, trendier tourists would commandeer the streets once night fell.

  We could not find anyplace to park, so Lee drove around the block while I went to find Kasara and Jennifer. As I entered the lobby, I realized that I did not know their floor or room number. I did not even know Kasara’s last name.

  “You’re late,” Kasara called from the second-story balcony. She was not much of an actress. She tried to sound angry, but she did a poor job of it.

  I looked up. Kasara, wearing a sundress with an orange-and-red flower print, leaned over the rail of the balcony. Another Waikiki special, I
thought. Her dress matched my shirt. “I’m half an hour early.”

  “Come on up,” she said.

  I skipped up the steps. Kasara’s apartment bore a striking resemblance to my room earlier that morning—her clothes were everywhere. She had two pair of dress shoes, tennis shoes, and slippers scattered around the outside of her closet. Her clothes were on the bed and furniture. A bra hung from the knob on the bathroom door.

  And there was more. I saw two sinks through the open bathroom door. One was littered with cosmetics, brushes, and toothpaste. The other was neat, with a simple toiletry bag leaning against its mirror. That must have been Jennifer’s.

  “You should have come earlier. We’ve been sitting around waiting for you,” Kasara said, brushing some clothes from a chair as she retrieved her purse. She fixed those sparkling blue eyes on me, and I became oblivious to the clutter as well.

  As we started to leave, Kasara loped off to the bathroom and closed the door. Thinking that was very sudden, I turned to Jennifer. “Is she okay?”

  “You don’t expect her to leave without touching up her hair?” Jennifer asked.

  “But it was perfect,” I said.

  Jennifer shook her head. “Wayson, that girl spends two hours every morning doing exercises, touching up her hair, and putting on her makeup. Then she spends another thirty minutes making sure it’s perfect before she leaves the hotel. But try to get her to clean up the room . . .”

  It was Kasara and Jennifer’s last night in Hawaii. Lee and I wanted to make a big deal of it. In many ways, it would turn out to be the last night of my vacation, too.

  Kasara wanted to go shopping for trinkets. Jennifer and Lee wanted to get out of Waikiki. Both ideas sounded good. We drove to the Honolulu Harbor. There we found a mall that would be far less crowded.

  Kasara went on a spending spree. In one store, she found hats with “I LOVE HAWAII” stitched across their bills in rainbow colors. She bought five of them “for the other gals at work.” She also bought a case of locally made chocolates in the next store and canned oysters with cultured pearls in another. As we left, she saw a photo booth. Without even saying a word, she turned to me and rested her head on my shoulder, batting her eyelashes and pretending as if she was pleading for permission.

  “What?” I asked.

  She nodded toward the booth and grinned.

  “Isn’t that a bit dangerous? What will your boyfriend say?”

  “I didn’t tell you?” Kasara said. “We broke up.”

  “When did that happen?” I asked.

  Kasara shrugged and smiled. She grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the booth.

  “They broke up?” Vince asked Jennifer while we were still in earshot.

  “They will when she gets home.”

  The thought of Kasara breaking up with her boyfriend left me both excited and scared. I ran my hands over my hair, trying to push it in place for the picture. Kasara slid onto the bench inside the booth and pulled me next to her. The people who designed the booth had kids or singles in mind. Even when I pushed in and squeezed against Kasara as best I could, my right shoulder still hung out of the door. We looked into a small mirror as lights around the booth flashed on and off.

  Kasara let her hand slide up my thigh. I tried to ignore the jolt running through my body and look relaxed. “I didn’t think nice girls did things like that,” I teased as I stepped out of the booth.

  “Nice girls don’t,” Kasara agreed. “Working girls on their last night of vacation do all kinds of things.”

  “What kinds of things?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.” She stepped closer to me and stared deep into my eyes.

  “I have to ask . . .” I said. “Your boyfriend . . . That wasn’t because of me, was it?”

  “You’re so self-centered,” she said, laughing. “You had nothing to do with it.” I felt relieved. I also felt disappointed.

  Something happened between Vince and Jennifer during the short time that Kasara and I spent in the photo booth. Perhaps Jennifer told Vince that she wanted to stay in touch with him, and he said he had other plans. Perhaps it was the other way around. They held hands for the rest of the evening, but I heard lags in their conversation and moments passed when they seemed reluctant to look at each other.

  When we passed a stand selling the Crash and fruit drink, Kasara pointed. Jennifer, Lee, and I groaned. Pretending to ignore us, Kasara looked at the people waiting, and chirped, “Oh well, the line is too long, anyway.”

  “We haven’t had dinner yet,” said Jennifer.

  Jennifer was the more sensible of the two. She did not flirt the way Kasara did, and she spoke less frivolously. Fun and flirtatious as Kasara was, I wondered what would have happened had Lee first met Kasara on the beach and I dated Jennifer.

  We strayed into a courtyard in which people sold various kinds of foods from large, wooden carts. One cart had skewers of fruits, fish, chicken, and beef cooked over a charcoal grill. Kasara and I bought meat sticks and munched them while sitting on a bench overlooking the docks as Vince and Jennifer walked off to look for more options. We looked at ships and watched the sunlight vanish in the horizon.

  “What’s it like on Olympus Kri?” I asked.

  “It’s not like this,” Kasara said. “The night sky is kind of like the day sky, only darker. We’re pretty far from our sun, so it’s cold and gray. I mean, it’s not like we never see the sun. It’s like a shiny patch in the clouds.” She sighed. “We don’t have a moon.”

  After our meal, we continued along the waterfront. I noticed that the sidewalks became more crowded. Men and boys were bustling up the street in droves. Then I saw the distant lights. “Sad Sam’s Palace,” I said.

  “Sad Sam’s,” Kasara said. “I’ve heard about that place.”

  “We were here two nights ago,” Lee said. “Didn’t you say the fights were all fake?”

  “You were there, too, weren’t you?” Jennifer asked.

  “He went,” I said. “He just doesn’t remember anything.”

  “I was drunk,” Lee said. “That was the night I had the fruit drink.”

  Faked wrestling matches did not seem like something Kasara or Jennifer would enjoy, but they surprised me. “Can we go?” Kasara asked.

  “You want to see the fights?” I asked.

  I meant to ask Jennifer, but Kasara intercepted the question. “I’ve always wondered about this place.”

  “Are you up for this, too?” Lee asked Jennifer.

  “Sure.”

  Lee and I shot each other amused smiles.

  As we started toward the door, an old, white-haired man in a tank top called to us. He might have been a long-retired soldier. He had tattoos on his back and shoulders that looked ridiculous against his wrinkled skin. “Hey, you, you don’t want to go in there.” He had the gravelly voice of an old drill sergeant.

  “We’ve been here before,” said Lee, though he certainly had no memory of that last visit. I went to pay for the tickets, or I would have heard what the man said next. Unfortunately, I did not hear it until several days later. The man said, “You want to stay clear of the Palace on Friday.”

  Had I heard that, I might have thought twice about going inside. I might have noticed that as far as I could see, Lee and I were the only clones in the crowd. By the time I returned with our tickets, Lee had already told the man to mind his own business.

  An usher led us to our seats. Coming late as we had, I expected to sit on the first or second balcony. Instead, the usher led us to the first floor. Threading his way around tables filled with screaming fight fans, he found an empty table just one row from the ring.

  The venue had changed. Instead of ropes, ten-foot walls made of chain-link fencing now surrounded the ring. The fighters had changed, too. Instead of flabby men in colorful tights, the ring now held two large and muscular men.

  “Are you sure they’re faking this?” Lee asked. “It looks real.”

  One man grabbed the othe
r by the hair and rammed his fist into the man’s face several times. Blood sprayed. The fight ended a moment later when two medics carried the loser out on a stretcher.

  “It wasn’t like this last time,” I said. “It was all headlocks and bouncing off the ropes.”

  A waitress came by our table between bouts and we asked her about it. “You came on Wednesday,” she guessed. “That was Big-Time Wrestling night. Tonight is an Iron Man competition.”

  “What’s that?” Jennifer asked.

  The waitress smiled. “Open challenge, honey. Anything goes.”

  “Ladies and gentleman, we have your winner by knockout, Kimo Turner.” The announcer raised Turner’s arm and polite applause rose from the crowd. Considering Turner’s impressive size and the vicious way he fought, I found the lack of enthusiasm surprising.

  “Which branch are you boys in?” the waitress asked when she returned with our drinks. All of us ordered beer except Kasara, who ordered something fruity with layers of blue liquor and white smoothie.

  “Marines,” Lee answered.

  “Where you in from?” the waitress asked.

  “Scrotum . . .” Lee corrected himself. “The Scutum-Crux Fleet.”

  “You’re a long way from home,” she commented as she took the money for the drinks.

  “Keep the change,” Lee said. He was feeling generous. I was, too. It was a magical evening. We could feel the electricity in the air. In another twenty-four hours we would send the girls home, but not until we had made a complete night of it.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the next preliminary match, please welcome once again, Kimo Turner.” The audience applauded more readily that time. People shouted encouragement to the big man as he returned to the ring. Turner had a strong, rounded physique with bulging chest muscles, mountainous shoulders, and thick arms. I looked from him to Lee, a dedicated bodybuilder. Lee’s arms and shoulders were more defined, but Turner looked far more powerful.