by Mur Lafferty
“And?” Hiro asked, watching her carefully. He had been taking people-watching pointers from Minoru.
But instead of speaking, Lo produced her tablet. Hiro felt bile rise; he would never get used to seeing his own dead body on display in front of him. This Hiro had a thin face and long hair in three braids down his back. He had been choked to death.
“And his mindmap?”
“There is no known copy of him,” she said.
She looked like she was telling the truth. He closed his eyes and sat back on his bed in relief.
“This one was bad,” she said. “He’d been hatcheted. Pure psychopath. Had done a lot of damage on the streets of Luna. I’m not even sure he was doing what he was programmed to do.”
“Now what?” Hiro asked.
“From what you told us, that should be the last one. The lab is shut down. You’ve been cleared via psych test. I think we can reduce your sentence even further, but you’ll still be here for the next ten years or so.” As always, she was matter-of-fact when presenting good news or bad.
He sighed. “I’ll take it.”
Lo glanced at Minoru, then back at Hiro. “I wanted to show you something, by the way. I just heard about plans for a ship built on Luna. They are looking for a…unique crew. I know the main American working with the team. Hiro, your face has been seen several times, and few people understand your situation. You need a fresh start. May I recommend getting some distance learning on mechanical engineering with a focus on piloting spacecraft?”
“Fresh start, huh?” Minoru said, leaning forward.
“I’m not authorized to offer this to you, Takahashi,” Lo said, tucking her tablet away. “You’re very likely going to die for your crimes, not colonize a new planet.”
“That’s very true,” Minoru said, nodding. He leaned against the wall and sipped his tea.
Hiro got worried. Usually when Minoru looked like that, someone was going to get in a knife fight or lose dinner or something. He focused back on Lo when he realized that she was waiting for an answer.
“Sounds good. Better than being a pariah here on Earth.”
Wake Five: Celebrating Life
Connections
Wolfgang locked the garden doors when the team got inside. Joanna tried to feel comfort that at least they were all together now, but she knew IAN still ran the show. Ahead, something was splashing and flailing about in the lake. Wolfgang swore and took off, Joanna close behind him.
Maria and Paul struggled underwater in the lake. He was above her, holding her down with one hand and trying to stab with a thin knife with the other. She fought, and he had trouble bracing himself in the deep water.
Maria’s head surfaced, took a deep breath, and then disappeared again. Joanna thought that Paul had gotten her, but his head abruptly disappeared as well. It looked as if Maria had pulled him under.
Wolfgang dove into the lake immediately, followed, to Joanna’s dismay, by Hiro.
“No, Hiro, don’t!” she shouted, but he was gone.
“IAN, what happened?” demanded Katrina.
“Maria and I were fighting. Then Paul came and tried to stab her.”
“Not helpful,” Katrina said.
They stood, side by side, watching the other four crewmembers fight underwater. An arm lashed out and then blood bloomed in the water.
Katrina looked to where they had dropped the medical supplies. “Come on. We’re going to need those.”
One did not work for Sallie Mignon for over a century and not learn a little about self-defense. She demanded it of her employees, stating, “Life may be cheap, but don’t make it free.” Maria never really followed what she meant until she’d had a few clones with short life spans.
Maria’s fall into the water put her at an advantage of sorts. She had always been a strong swimmer; if she could just avoid the knife, she might outlast Paul.
Paul lunged at her with her boning knife. She deflected it, only getting a slight cut on her arm. He clumsily tried to hold her down with one arm, slash with the other, all while keeping his own head above water. The human-created lake’s sides were more vertical, like a swimming pool’s, and he had no shallow end to prop against.
She finally grabbed his weapon hand, pulled herself up—worryingly close to the knife—and took a deep breath. Then she dove, dragging him with her. He struggled, but this time she wouldn’t let him go.
They got close to the water recyclers, large, dormant vents. Maria dragged him farther from the shore, and his struggles got more desperate. She heard two splashes and looked up to see Hiro and Wolfgang swimming toward them.
Paul took advantage of her distraction and drove the knife in. Her grasp on him slipped and the knife went in above her left biceps. The water around them bloomed red, and Maria saw Wolfgang grab Paul from behind. Hiro’s hands were on hers, and then her lungs were burning and she couldn’t see because of all the red and then she was struggling to get to the surface, which was so far away.
“If you hadn’t gone in there after her, I wouldn’t have to be doing this again,” Joanna was saying.
Maria opened her eyes to see Joanna removing soaking-wet, red-tinged bandages from Hiro. “Dammit, Hiro, you are still sedated. You could have drowned.”
“I dove in after a guy with a knife,” he said, sounding very tired. “I knew there was a bigger risk than drowning.”
Maria raised her head. She lay on her back on a blanket in the gardens, and the “sun” was about to go down. Her arm was bandaged where Paul had cut her. Her sprained wrist was rebandaged. Wolfgang sat beside her, drinking whiskey from the bottle and passing it to Katrina. Behind them, Paul was gagged and trussed up like a chicken.
Hiro jerked his head toward her. “Doc, she’s awake.”
Joanna left him mid-wrap and came over to Maria. “How do you feel?”
“Stabbed,” she said.
“You’ll be all right,” Joanna said. Then she gave a furtive look to the dying light. “For a while anyway.”
“Are we stuck here?” Maria asked.
“For as long as he keeps us, yeah,” Joanna said. “He’s changed the lock combination on the door.”
Hiro got up, trailing a bandage from his shoulder. He got some candles and lit them, handing each out to the crewmembers without bound hands.
“How is he?” Maria asked.
“Well, he told us you’d been attacked,” Wolfgang said. “And he hasn’t spoken much since.”
“Hey, IAN—whatever your name is,” Maria called. “Why did you warn them?”
“I wanted to see what would happen,” he said.
“That’s…” Maria ran out of words.
“Human?” Hiro asked.
“Sure. That works.” She’d been searching for sociopathic but didn’t want to say it out loud. “Hiro, how are you doing?”
Hiro raised an eyebrow. “You mean am I scared of the homicidal AI, or the homicidal engineer, or am I feeling the bullet holes in my body? Or am I all wet, or am I disappointed that I’m not the biggest threat on the ship anymore?”
Maria waved her hand vaguely, wincing at the throb from her cuts. “All of it.”
He sighed.
“‘Get a degree in mechanical engineering, Hiro. Get a pilot’s license, Hiro. Learn meditation and hypnosis, Hiro. Slip your roommate out of prison, Hiro, drive thousands of clones and humans around in space, Hiro. Sit on your butt for four hundred years, Hiro.’ That’s what they told me. Not once did they say, Get shot and chased and stabbed by crazed crewmates, Hiro!”
“To be fair, you were one of the people doing the chasing, crazed at the time too,” Maria said.
“Semantics,” he said.
Wolfgang passed her the bottle and she took a swig. Joanna raised her eyebrows at them. “None of you should be drinking right now in your shape,” she said.
“IAN is going to kill us anyway,” Hiro said, reaching for the bottle. “At least this way we’ll go happy. And maybe singing.”
Hiro shrugged. “Same as you. Fresh start.” He told them about his very strange past full of conspiracy and yadokari.
“Lunar clone hunters went after your duplicates and your hackers?” Wolfgang asked. He handed Hiro a container of leftover pork ramen. “Interesting.”
“It’s not paranoia,” Hiro protested. “One of my extra clones got killed on Luna by a clone hunter.”
“Did he?” Katrina asked, swiveling her head to focus on Wolfgang. “That’s so interesting. Don’t you think that’s interesting, Wolfgang?”
Wolfgang didn’t have a chance to answer. IAN spoke up, startling them all.
“Hiro,” IAN said, sounding thoughtful. “That bowl.”
Hiro paused, noodles halfway to his mouth. “Poison?”
“No. Well, probably not. But come here.”
“Where? You don’t have a body!” he asked, exasperated.
Wolfgang took the bowl from him and pointed Joanna’s tablet at it. “Is that what you want?”
“No, you fool, the air vent. I want to smell it.”
Wolfgang glanced at Maria, who shrugged. He carried the bowl back toward the door of the gardens.
“’Cause that would be something he would totally assume,” Hiro said. Maria put her hand on Hiro’s shoulder and whispered something, and he subsided, his eyes growing wide. “Well, shit.”
Wolfgang held the bowl high above his head below one of the intake vents.
IAN said, “Interesting. Go on with your story, Hiro.”
Hiro shrugged. “What else is there to say? I was a good boy in prison. I learned to control the bad guys in my head with hypnotism. I got the job with a lot of help from Detective Lo.” He looked at Joanna. “That’s another reason I know I didn’t do it. She’s below, having gotten a spot in cryo. She did so much for me I would never, ever, do anything to the ship that would harm her.”
“What about the other yadokari?” Wolfgang said. “Would they harm her?”
Hiro said nothing. He didn’t meet Wolfgang’s eyes.
“What did you say about a cellmate?” Joanna asked.
“Oh, before I got out of prison, I worked with Detective Lo to help her smuggle out my roommate. He was going to die for treason. She said he was destined for more. I would have done anything for her, so I created a distraction, started a fight, and she got Minoru out of there. I guess I’ve been thinking about that time a lot lately.”
“And who was the connection Detective Lo had to get you aboard the Dormire?” Maria asked.
“Sallie Mignon.”
They all perked up at the mention of the name.
Katrina smiled and rubbed at the edge of her bandage. “Sallie Mignon! I worked for her. I killed her once, and then she offered me a job, first as a consultant and later as captain here.” She laughed into the whiskey bottle before taking a swig.
“You knew Mignon personally? You killed her?” Maria asked.
“Yeah. I was a corporate assassin. Surprised Wolfgang didn’t tell you.” She shook the whiskey bottle at Hiro. “Different from what you did. You did real assassination. And you”—she pointed the bottle at Wolfgang—“the people you killed never came back. Did they, Hiro?”
Wolfgang glared at her.
“Wolfgang was also an assassin,” Joanna said. “He went from being that famous priest cloned against his will to rogue clone hunter. He spent a good part of his lives hunting the people who kidnapped him, and those like them.”
Katrina laughed. “I remember that. They wanted to make a TV show about him.”
“Kidnapped, and tortured, and killed, and cloned,” Wolfgang said.
Maria had gone very quiet in the candlelight. Katrina handed the bottle to her, but she passed it on to Hiro without drinking.
Laughter sounded over the speakers. “Oh, this is too rich. Okay, Paul’s turn! Go Paul! Tell them what you found in your room! And in the gardens! Wolfgang! Ungag him! You’ll want to hear this.”
Wolfgang pulled the rag from Paul’s mouth. Paul spat once and then said, “Did you know it was here? The whole time?”
“No, but I know what it says now,” IAN said. “Tell them.”
“I’m Paul Seurat. That, you know,” he said dully. “I’m not a clone. Or at least, I wasn’t until a few days ago.”
Maria and Katrina swore, Hiro laughed, and Wolfgang just glared. Joanna folded her arms and looked disappointed.
“Who falsified your files so thoroughly?” Joanna demanded.
“My employer said he could have it done. The files were going to be sealed anyway, so I didn’t need to know what it said, just that I embezzled or something.”
“So who are you?” Wolfgang asked, reaching out and grabbing Paul’s bound wrists and dragging him closer.
“I was a human,” he said, struggling weakly. “They put me here to help make decisions in case the clones got too, well, clone-agenda-focused. They wanted there to be someone on board who wouldn’t agree just because I was a clone too.”
“But you were only going to be human for the first few decades. Then you were going to die like us, and come back,” Maria said. “What’s the point?”
He refused to look her in the eye. “I didn’t like clones. I never have. I grew up hearing about the Chicago riots. But when I found out who was on the crew, I had to come aboard. I had to see the person who murdered my family.”
“Your family?” Joanna asked, frowning.
“They were emergency personnel in the clone riots. You remember, lots of people fought and died and the clones just came back the next day—but my family didn’t.”
“And you think that is me,” Maria said softly. She racked her brain back to that time, remembering entering a burning building to rescue Sallie, being followed by firefighters who had begged her not to enter, and police officers who demanded she stop and surrender. The entire building had come down on them just as she reached Sallie.
“And your employer was, who can guess?” IAN asked gleefully.
“Okpere Martins,” Paul said. “Why?”
Maria went very still. She was shaking her head.
“Okpere Martins was one of Sallie’s high-level operatives after I quit. Sallie Mignon put you on this ship.”
“No, Sallie turned me down for a job, which forced me to apply for this one…” Paul trailed off. “Oh.”
“Did you know I was your target when you took the job?” Maria asked.
He shook his head. “I knew it was one of you. Then a few hours ago I found my paper journal. I’d hidden it somewhere. I guess I was worried the rooms would be tossed. There’s like twenty-five years of pointless shit, until the captain went paranoid. That helped me remember everything. I asked IAN to dig up some old news stories from Earth and found out the clone in the riots was Maria.” He stared at her with tired hatred.
Maria stood up, holding her head as if it were too full. She paced around, keeping clear of Paul, even though he was still restrained.
“Let me see if I have this right. Sallie Mignon hired a corporate assassin to captain the ship. She got a hacked Pan Pacific United man with psychotic yadokari inside to pilot us. A clone-hating human with a grudge hides in plain sight with false records. Joanna, you also knew Sallie, right?” she asked.
Joanna nodded. “She was a friend of a friend. I had some political crimes I was about to go to jail for. She said she could help.”
Maria turned her brown eyes to focus on Wolfgang. “And you, Wolfgang. What did Sallie do to get you on board?”
He shook his head, looking as if he wanted to deny it. “I was being hunted by Luna authorities for my actions after killing a high-profile target. I was in holding when I got a message—”
“Hand-delivered?” Maria asked.
Wolfgang frowned. “Actually, yes. It said I had an option besides prison. I took it.”
“And you don’t know who sent it?” Joanna asked.
He shook his head.
“I can guess,” Maria said bitterly.
Joanna spoke quietly. “And Maria? What’s your connection?”
Maria must have been too shaken by the near-drowning. She couldn’t focus on any one fact. “I was in the employ of Sallie Mignon for a very long time. I thought it was a good relationship but one time, shortly after the sabotage attempt on the Dormire, she used my skills to threaten someone. I didn’t want to be her tool for revenge, so I quit. I am fairly sure now that she was behind some missing parts of my life. I was a hacker, but I have holes where I know I did some terrible things, then was killed, then cloned again. I think she was behind at least one of the mysterious disappearances.”
“And?” IAN prompted.
“I just discovered I programmed IAN from a human’s mindmap. And”—she swallowed—“I have no proof, but the holes in my memories, and my subsequent murders, coincide with the disappearance and cloning of Father Gunter Orman”—she nodded at Wolfgang—“and the assassination of high-profile Pan Pacific United politicians.” She nodded at Hiro. “It’s very likely I did the hacking behind those crimes.”
They stared at her.
Joanna broke the silence. “Wait a second. If you don’t remember, how can you be sure?”
“The time line fits. Both the abduction of Wolfgang and the murder of the Pan Pacific United ambassador by a hatchet clone happened during my missing weeks. I was cloned and the information about my dead body was conveniently lost. I was the best hacker of my day. It’s not hard to figure out. And of course—” She stopped before she mentioned Mrs. Perkins. The whiskey boiled merrily in her stomach, considering a return to the outside world. She didn’t want to meet anyone’s eyes.
“This is all circumstantial,” Joanna said, putting a placating hand on Wolfgang’s shoulder.
“I didn’t put it together until just now,” Maria said, focusing on Joanna, one of only two people in the room she hadn’t wronged. “You all telling your stories, they fit with some of my memories. Everything adds up.”