The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016

by Paula Guran

  Technically, Gumiela should contact Cade Faulke directly. He had contacted her directly more than once to report a possible upcoming crime. She had used him as an informant, which meant she had used his clones as informants as well.

  And those clones were ending up dead.

  She choked back bile. Some people, like DeRicci, would say that Gumiela had hands as dirty as Faulke’s. But she hadn’t known he was killing the clones when they ceased being useful or when they crossed some line. She also hadn’t known that he had been poisoning them using such a painful method. And he hadn’t even thought about the possible contamination of the food supply.

  Gumiela swallowed hard again, hoping her stomach would settle.

  Technically, she should contact him and tell him to cease that behavior.

  But Gumiela had been in her job a long time. She knew that telling someone like Faulke to quit was like telling an addict to stop drinking. It wouldn’t happen, and it couldn’t be done.

  She couldn’t arrest him either. Even if she caught him in the act, all he was doing was damaging property. And that might get him a fine or two or maybe a year or so in jail, if the clone’s owners complained. But if DeRicci was right, the clone’s owners were the Earth Alliance itself. And Faulke worked for the Alliance, so technically, he was probably the owner, and property owners could do whatever they wanted with their belongings.

  Except toss them away in a manner that threatened the public health.

  Gumiela sat in one of the chairs and leaned her head back, closing her eyes, forcing herself to think. She had to do something, and despite what she had said to DeRicci, following procedure was out of the question. She needed to get Faulke out of Armstrong, only she didn’t have the authority to do so.

  But she knew who did.

  She sat up. Long ago, she’d met Faulke’s handler, Ike Jarvis. She could contact him.

  Maybe he would work with her.

  It was worth a try.

  Otto Koos led his team to the building housing Cade Faulke’s fake business. The building was made of some kind of polymer that changed appearance daily. This day’s appearance made it seem like old-fashioned red brick Koos hadn’t seen since his childhood on Earth.

  Five Ansel Management crates stood in their protected unit in the alley behind the building. They had a cursory lock with a security code that anyone in the building probably had.

  It was as much of a confession as he needed.

  But the boss would need more. Luc Deshin had given strict orders for this mission—no killing.

  Koos knew he was on probation now—maybe forever. He had missed the Mycenae clone, and, after he had done a quick scan of the employees, discovered he had missed at least five others. At least they hadn’t been anywhere near the Deshin family.

  The Mycenae clone had. Who knew what kind of material the Alliance had gathered?

  Faulke knew. Eventually, Koos would know too. It just might take some time.

  He had brought ten people with him to capture Faulke. The office had an android guard, though, the durable kind used in prisons. Koos either had to disable it or get it out of the building.

  He’d failed the one time he’d tried to disable those things in the past. He was opting for getting it out of the building.

  Ready? he sent to two of his team members.

  Yes, they sent back at the same time.

  Go! he sent.

  They were nowhere near him, but he knew what they were going to do. They were going to start a fight in front of the building that would get progressively more violent. And then they’d start shooting up the area with laser pistols.

  Other members of his team would prevent any locals from stopping the fight, and the fight would continue until the guard came down. Then Koos would sneak in the back way, along with three other members of his team.

  They were waiting now. They had already checked the back door—unlocked during daylight hours. They were talking as if they had some kind of business with each other.

  At least they weren’t shifting from foot to foot like he wanted to do.

  Instead, all he could do was stare at that stamp for Ansel Management.

  It hadn’t been much work to pick up the Mycenae clone and stuff her into one of the crates.

  If Deshin hadn’t given the no-kill order, then Koos would have stuffed Faulke into one of the crates, dying, but alive, so that he knew what he had done.

  Koos would have preferred that to Deshin’s plan.

  But Koos wasn’t in charge. And he had to work his way back into Deshin’s good graces.

  And he would do that.

  Starting now.

  Gumiela had forgotten that Ike Jarvis was an officious prick. He ran intelligence operatives who worked inside the Alliance. Generally, those operatives didn’t operate in human-run areas. In fact, they shouldn’t operate in human-run areas at all.

  Earth Alliance Intelligence was supposed to do the bulk of its work outside the Alliance.

  Gumiela had contacted him on a special link the Earth Alliance had set up for the Armstrong Police Department, to be used only in cases of Earth Alliance troubles or serious Alliance issues.

  She figured this counted.

  Jarvis appeared in the center of the room, his three-dimensional image fritzing in and out either because of a bad connection or because of the levels of encoding this conversation was going through.

  He looked better when he appeared and disappeared. She preferred it when he was slightly out of focus.

  “This had better be good, Andy,” Jarvis said, and Gumiela felt her shoulders stiffen. No one called her Andy, not even her best friends. Only Jarvis had come up with that nickname, and somehow he seemed to believe it made them closer.

  “I need you to pull Cade Faulke,” she said.

  “I don’t pull anyone on your say so.” Jarvis fritzed again. His image came back just a little smaller, just a little tighter. So the problem was on his end.

  If she were in a better mood, she would smile. Jarvis was short enough without doctoring the image. He had once tried to compensate for his height by buying enhancements that deepened his voice. All they had done was ruin it, leaving him sounding like he had poured salt down his throat.

  “You pull him or I arrest him for attempted mass murder,” she said, a little surprised at herself.

  Jarvis moved and fritzed again. Apparently he had taken a step backwards or something, startled by her vehemence.

  “What the hell did he do?” Jarvis asked, not playing games any longer.

  “You have Faulke running slow-grow clones in criminal organizations, right?” she asked.

  “Andy,” he said, returning to that condescending tone he had used earlier, “I can’t tell you what I’m doing.”

  “Fine,” she snapped. “I thought we had a courteous relationship, based on mutual interest. I was wrong. Sorry to bother you, Ike—”

  “Wait,” he said. “What did he do?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You get to send Earth Alliance lawyers here to talk about the top-secret crap to judges who might’ve died because of your guy’s carelessness.”

  And then she signed off.

  She couldn’t do anything she had just threatened Jarvis with. The food thing hadn’t risen to the level where she could charge Faulke, and that was if she could prove that he had put the bodies into the crates himself. He had an android guard, which the Chief of Police had had to approve—those things weren’t supposed to operate inside the city—and that guard had probably done all the dirty work. They would just claim malfunction, and Faulke would be off the hook.

  Jarvis fritzed back in, fainter now. The image had one meter sideways, which meant he was superimposed over one of her office chairs. The chair cut through him at his knees and waist. Obviously, he had no idea where his image had appeared, and she wasn’t about to tell him or move the image.

  “Okay, okay,” Jarvis said. “I’ve managed to make this link as s
ecure as I possibly can, given my location. Guarantee that your side is secure.”

  Gumiela shrugged. “I’m alone in my office, in the Armstrong Police Department. Good enough for you?”

  She didn’t tell him that she was recording this whole thing. She was tired of being used by this asshole.

  “I guess it’ll have to be. Yes, Faulke is running the clones that we have embedded with major criminal organizations on the Moon.”

  “If the clones malfunction—” She chose that word carefully “—what’s he supposed to do?”

  “Depends on how specific the clone is to the job, and how important it is to the operation,” he said. “Generally, Faulke’s supposed to ship the clone back. That’s why Armstrong PD approved android guards for his office.”

  “There aren’t guards,” she said. “There’s only one.”

  Jarvis’s image came in a bit stronger. “What?”

  “Just one,” she said, “and that’s not all. I don’t think your friend Faulke has sent any clones back.”

  “I can check,” Jarvis said.

  “I don’t care what you do for your records. According to ours—” and there she was lying again “—he’s been killing the clones that don’t work out and putting them in composting crates. Those crates go to the Growing Pits, which grow fresh food for the city.”

  “He what?” Jarvis asked.

  “And to make matters worse, he’s using a hardening poison to kill them, a poison our coroner fears might leach into our food supply. We’re checking on that now. Although it doesn’t matter. The intent is what matters, and clearly your man Faulke has lost his mind.”

  Jarvis cursed. “You’re not making this up.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I’m not making this up,” she said. “I want him and his little android friend out of here within the hour, or I’m arresting him, and I’m putting him on trial. Public trial.”

  “Do you realize how many operations you’ll ruin?”

  “No,” she said, “and I don’t care. Get him out of my city. It’s only a matter of time before your crazy little operative starts killing legal humans, not just cloned ones. And I don’t want him doing it here.”

  Jarvis cursed again. “Can I get your help—”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want anyone at the police department involved with your little operation. And if you go to the chief, I’ll tell her that you have thwarted my attempts to arrest a man who threatens the entire dome. Because, honestly, Ike baby, this is a courtesy contact. I don’t have to do you any favors at all, especially considering what kind of person, if I can use that word, you installed in my city. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, Andrea, I do,” he said, looking serious.

  Andrea. So he had heard her all those times. And he had ignored her, the bastard. She made note of that too.

  “One hour,” she said, and signed off.

  Then she wiped her hands on her skirt. They were shaking just a little. Screw him, the weaselly little bastard. She’d send someone to that office now, to escort Jarvis’s horrid operative out of Armstrong.

  She wanted to make sure that asshole left quickly, and didn’t double back.

  She wanted this problem out of her city, off her Moon, and as far from her notice as possible. And that, she knew, was the best she could do without upsetting the department’s special relationship with the Alliance.

  She hoped her best would be good enough.

  Up the back stairs, into the narrow hallway that smelled faintly of dry plastic, Koos led the raid, his best team members behind him. They fanned out in the narrow hallway, the two women first, signaling that the hallway was clear. Koos and Hala, the only other man on this part of the team skirted past them, and through the open door of Faulke’s office.

  It was much smaller than Koos expected. Faulke was only three meters from him. Faulke was scrawny, narrow-shouldered, the kind of man easily ignored on the street.

  He reached behind his back—probably for a weapon—as Koos and Hala held their laser rifles on him.

  “Don’t even try,” Koos said. “I have no compunction shooting you.”

  Faulke’s eyes glazed for a half second—probably letting his android guard know he was in trouble—then an expression of panic flitted across his face before he managed to control it.

  The other members of Koos’s team had already disabled the guard.

  “Who are you?” Faulke asked.

  Koos ignored him, and spoke to his team. “I want him bound. And make sure you disable his links.”

  One of the women slipped in around Koos, and put light cuffs around Faulke’s wrists and pasted a small rectangle of Silent-Seal over his mouth.

  You can’t get away with this, Faulke sent on public links. You have no idea who I am—

  And then his links shut off.

  Koos grinned. “You’re Cade Faulke. You work for Earth Alliance Intelligence. You’ve been running clones that you embed into businesses. Am I missing anything?”

  Faulke’s eyes didn’t change, but he swallowed hard.

  “Let’s get him out of here,” Koos said.

  They encircled him, in case the other tenants on the floor decided to see what all the fuss was about. But no one opened any doors. The neighborhood was too dicey for that. If anyone had an ounce of civic feeling, they would have gone out front to stop the fight that Koos had staged below.

  And no one had.

  He took Faulke’s arm, surprised at how flabby it was. Hardly any muscles at all.

  No wonder the asshole had used poison. He wasn’t strong enough to subdue any living creature on his own.

  “You’re going to love what we have planned for you,” Koos said as he dragged Faulke down the stairs. “By the end of it all, you and I will be old friends.”

  This time Faulke gave him a startled look.

  Koos grinned at him, and led him to the waiting car that would take them to the Port. It would be a long time before anyone heard from Cade Faulke again.

  If they ever did.

  DeRicci hated days like today. She had lost a case because of stupid laws that had no bearing on what really happened. A woman had been murdered, and DeRicci couldn’t solve the case. It would go to Property, where it would get stuck in a pile of cases that no one cared about, because no one would be able to put a value on this particular clone. No owner would come forward. No one would care.

  And if DeRicci hadn’t seen this sort of thing a dozen times, she would have tried to solve it herself in her off time. She might still hound Property, just to make sure the case didn’t get buried. Maybe she’d even use Broduer’s lies. She might tell Property that whoever planted the clone had tried to poison the city. That might get some dumb Property detective off his butt.

  She, on the other hand, was already working on the one good thing to come out of this long day. She was compiling all the documents on every single thing that Rayvon Lake had screwed up in their short tenure as partners.

  Even she hadn’t realized how much it was.

  She would have a long list for Gumiela by the end of the day, and this time, Gumiela would pay attention.

  Or DeRicci would threaten to take the clone case to the media. DeRicci had been appalled that human waste could get into the recycling system; she would wager that the population of Armstrong would too.

  One threat like that, and Gumiela would have to fire Lake.

  It wasn’t justice. It wasn’t anything resembling justice.

  But after a few years in this job, DeRicci had learned only one thing:

  Justice didn’t exist in the Earth Alliance.

  Not for humans, not for clones, not for anyone.

  And somehow, she had to live with it.

  She just hadn’t quite figured out how.

  Deshin arrived home, exhausted and more than a little unsettled. The house smelled of baby powder and coffee. He hadn’t really checked to see how the rest of Gerda’s day alone with Paavo had
gone. He felt guilty about that.

  He went through the modest living room to the baby’s room. He and Gerda didn’t flash their wealth around Armstrong, preferring to live quietly. But he had so much security in the home that he was still startled the clone had broken through it.

  Gerda was sitting in a rocking chair near the window, Paavo in her arms. She put a finger to her lips, but it did no good.

  His five-month-old son twisted, and looked at Deshin with such aware eyes that it humbled him. Deshin knew that this baby was twenty times smarter than he would ever be. It worried him, and it pleased him as well.

  Paavo smiled and extended his pudgy arms. Deshin picked him up. The boy was heavier than he had been just a week before. He also needed a diaper change.

  Deshin took him to the changing table, and started, knowing just from the look on her face that Gerda was exhausted too.

  “Long day?” he asked.

  “Good day,” she said. “We made the right decision.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We did.”

  He had decided on the way home not to tell her everything. He would wait until the interrogation of Cade Faulke and the five clones was over. Koos had taken all six of them out of Armstrong in the same ship.

  And the interrogations would even start until Koos got them out of Earth Alliance territory, days from now.

  Deshin had no idea what would happen to Faulke or the clones after that. Deshin was leaving that up to Koos. Koos no longer headed security for Deshin Enterprises in Armstrong, but he had served Deshin well today. He would handle some of the company’s work outside the Alliance.

  Not a perfect day’s work, not even the day’s work Deshin had expected, but a good one nonetheless. He probably had other leaks to plug in his organization, but at least he knew what they were now.

  His baby raised a chubby fist at Deshin as if agreeing that action needed to be taken. Deshin bent over and blew bubbles on Paavo’s tummy, something that always made Paavo giggle.

  He giggled now, a sound so infectious that Deshin wondered how he had lived without it all his life.