Vigilantes

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Good question,” Muñoz said. “In the twenty-five years since his death, the answer has changed more than once.”

  She nodded toward the labs.

  “Every now and then, someone in this division suggests slow-growing a batch of baby Frémonts, raising them differently from each other, and seeing which one of them ends up like the original. I’m sure you can understand the folly in the suggestion?”

  Was this another test? If so, it caught him by surprise.

  “If they phrase the purpose of the experiment the way you just did,” he said, “then they’ll skew the experiment to get the results they want.”

  She smiled at him, as if he had just become her very best student ever.

  “And that’s why this division doesn’t ever do that kind of experimentation,” she said.

  But something in her tone caught him. If this division didn’t do that kind of experimentation, did that mean another division did?

  Stott wasn’t going to ask. Not on his first day at this new job. But he stored the question for later.

  If those teams existed, he wondered how hard it would be to join one. How many years of experience would he need in this division to get there? Or would he need to move his way through the other divisions, from Biohazard to Mixed Species and beyond?

  He felt giddy. He had made the right decision after all.

  His future was here.

  He could use his abilities, grow, and become the person he had always wanted to be.

  For the first time since he had been a child, he would be doing something useful. He might even make a discovery that would save lives.

  Which was something he needed to do.

  TWELVE DAYS AFTER THE PEYTI CRISIS

  THREE

  TORKILD ZHU STOPPED half a block away from Sevryn’s, and waited as two cops walked through the door. His stomach twisted. The day before, cops had assaulted him in that deli, deliberately pouring hot soup and some lemony drink all over him.

  No one had defended him. The owner had actually thrown Zhu out as if it had all been his fault.

  He wanted to go back in now and say something. He’d been turning it over and over in his mind ever since it happened. And what he wanted to say was this: He was as entitled to eat somewhere as those cops were. Hadn’t they ever done something difficult for their jobs?

  But he wasn’t that tough, except in a courtroom. Defending someone else. Using his brain.

  The moment he got to the point where he had to defend himself, particularly physically, he was the quiet kid in school all over again. The one who thought of the good lines after the fighting was over. The one who curled up into a fetal position whenever the bullies went after him.

  He ran a hand through his dark hair. He kept it neatly trimmed now, just like he wore actual silk suits, paid for by his employers, the exclusive law firm of Schnable, Shishani & Salehi. S3, as everyone called it, made more money than Zhu could even imagine.

  Other people dressed well on this street. The problem was that the ones who went to work early weren’t the well-dressed ones, but the ones heading to jobs that required uniforms.

  Like cops.

  Zhu sighed and adjusted the suit. It fit perfectly. Some employee of the clothing company that S3 used had arrived at the office to confirm the measurements the holo system had sent. Probably because Zhu had lost so much weight in the last year. He suspected the company was making certain that the person who ordered the clothes was entitled to the clothes.

  He was entitled to a lot through S3—or, at least, he had been.

  He’d been a junior partner with the firm for nearly a decade, and six months ago he had nearly been fired. He’d left the S3 offices to come home to the Moon, and had drunk himself silly. He’d expected to be out of a job.

  Instead, it turned out that he was the only S3 lawyer on the Moon when the Peyti Crisis occurred.

  He went from being a sloppy about-to-be-fired drunk to running a branch of S3 in the space of a few hours.

  Of course, the price had been his soul.

  The price in the law was always someone’s soul. Same old story, told since the law became a profession. Zhu had a moment of clarity right after his boss, Rafael Salehi, contacted him. Zhu could either stand by his principles and starve to death (or take some humiliating job for someone of his education and intelligence) or he could get filthy rich by representing thugs, killers, and mass murderers.

  Zhu had said no initially. But his spine was wobbly. He’d changed his mind within an hour.

  He was now representing all of the Peyti clones, the ones who had caused the Peyti Crisis. At least until Salehi got here, which would be Any Day Now.

  Then Zhu could become a glorified office manager if that was what he wanted. Or at least, he could go back to being a junior partner instead of the guy who answered all the stupid questions that the staff was asking.

  The thick yellow light of Dome Daylight covered the center of the street, missing the corner by a few meters. This part of Armstrong had a brand new dome (brand new, as of a few years ago), and its Dome Daylight program was more sophisticated than in other areas of the city. The daylight moved across the dome, mimicking the way that sunlight moved on Earth.

  Right now, they were in the early morning phase of Dome Daylight. The sun was strong, but its reach was limited.

  Zhu actually liked the design of the program. It was different than it had been when he was growing up here, when the transition between Dome Dawn, Dome Daylight, and Dome Twilight happened in a moment, destroying the illusion of an Earth day.

  He swallowed hard. No matter what he did to distract himself, he couldn’t quite make himself walk the rest of the way to the office. He could call one of the new company cars, or he could take a different route.

  But he had told himself he wouldn’t let the fear overtake him. He knew that the harassment would only get worse, as long as S3 represented those clones.

  The level of hatred in Armstrong was palpable. Which he could understand, given what had happened to the folks on the Moon.

  Even when he tried to think about it, he couldn’t entirely comprehend what it meant to have lost millions of lives Moonwide in less than a year.

  He scanned the street, looking for more cops. They seemed to hate him more than anyone else. They had made that clear the day before. Maybe because they were constricted by the injunctions S3 filed. Or maybe because they couldn’t get to the Peyti clones any more.

  He shuddered to think what those clones would have been subjected to if S3 hadn’t stepped in.

  Then he shook his head a little. He didn’t shudder to think, because he tried not to think about the clones at all. They had attempted something awful. And they had perverted his profession to do it.

  If he were honest with himself, he hated those clones too.

  But it was pretty normal for a defense attorney to hate his clients. That was the first thing he had learned when he worked off his student loans in the most notorious part of the court system, which was nicknamed the Impossibles. Most potential defense attorneys first worked in the public defender’s office, where every case was a loser, everyone was guilty of something, and every lawyer was so overworked they couldn’t remember their clients’ names from one hour to the next.

  But he didn’t do the job for the clients. Nor, he learned in the last year, did he do it for the money. (Although he had to admit that the money was nice.)

  He did it because he actually believed his job had value to the entire society. And the value in these cases (this case, since they were tied together by the same client) wasn’t in the clients.

  It was in the cause.

  What he was doing, in defending the clones, was, as Salehi said, trying to guarantee rights for all clones.

  Because right now, the Peyti clones weren’t considered individuals under the law. They were property, and in Armstrong, at least, property could be destroyed or damaged without sanction, even if it were part of an u
pcoming criminal trial.

  Zhu heard footsteps and instinctively stepped closer to the faux brick wall, protecting his back. But the footsteps retreated, heading down a side street.

  He shook his head at himself, then took a deep breath. If he hadn’t believed in the cause, the cops might have scared him off.

  Hell, everyone might have scared him off.

  Even his ex-fiancée, Berhane Magalhães, who had come to see him at the beginning of the week. She wanted him to stop doing this work, and had even offered him one of those humiliating jobs, which her exceptionally wealthy father would probably pay him to do, if Zhu would only give up his job with S3.

  Berhane’s opinion mattered to Zhu. Perversely, it mattered now more than it ever had when they were engaged. The Anniversary Day bombings had brought out a side to Berhane that he had only caught glimpses of, and he admired her deeply now. Loved her even, where before—if he were honest with himself—the love had slowly disappeared (if it had ever existed at all).

  The argument he had with her crystalized what he believed for him. Because of her. Because he respected her. Because part of him wanted to be the guy who left S3 and helped her with her charities and her good works.

  Instead, he felt like he was doing good works of his own.

  Sure, the Peyti clones had tried to do something horrible, but that didn’t mean all clones had to pay for it. And they would, particularly after the Anniversary Day bombings, which had been caused by yet another group of human clones.

  Most of those clones had died on Anniversary Day (many by their own hands), so S3 didn’t concern itself with them. Yet.

  But Zhu had a hunch S3 would. Eventually.

  Not that it was his problem. He needed to get the law firm up and running in less than a week, plus he had to make certain that the police, courts, and prison system honored the injunctions he had slapped on them. No organization, from the Earth Alliance to the United Domes of the Moon to the domed cities themselves, could do anything to the Peyti clones until their status was litigated.

  Or so the injunctions said.

  Zhu had a hunch he’d issued them just in time.

  And, if yesterday’s incident were any indication, he had done the right thing.

  Because if cops were willing to go after a defense attorney working with one of the most high-powered firms in the Alliance, then they would have no qualms about hurting—or even killing—the clones.

  Better that the cops hated him than hated the clones.

  He was shaking just a little. He slowly looked over his shoulder, trying not to appear as paranoid as he felt.

  He didn’t see anyone behind him. But that didn’t mean he was alone. Someone could be watching him, spying on him, wanting to hurt him.

  Zhu had gone into Sevryn’s several times before anyone attacked him, but not enough to establish a pattern. And yet the cops had found him there.

  The smart thing would be to turn around and find a different route to the office. But he didn’t want to do the smart thing. He needed to become stronger. He needed to accept the hatred and live with it.

  He needed his own bodyguards. He would recommend that to Salehi as well when Salehi arrived Any Day Now.

  Zhu took a deep breath. He had to make a decision, instead of cowering on the street corner. He had a lot of meetings today. He was still hiring support staff and lawyers, most of whom were newly minted or had come from places as far away as Earth.

  The cops hadn’t come out of Sevryn’s. Zhu wasn’t sure if he was waiting for them to do so. If they walked down the street, would they come toward him? Would they try to harm him again?

  This time, no one would witness what they did—except maybe whoever was behind that feeling he had.

  That thought was enough to make him look around one more time.

  Jeez, he was being a coward. (So what else is new? that naggy little voice inside him asked.) He had as much right to be on this street as everyone else did.

  He straightened his shoulders and took a step forward. Right now, he didn’t have a personal bodyguard, so he would have to let his attitude protect him.

  He had to show those bullying cops that he wasn’t afraid of them.

  He walked down the street, and this time, his footsteps echoed. The expensive shoes that he’d bought with S3’s money had an even stronger ring to them than the footsteps he had heard earlier.

  The hair rose on the back of his neck, like it did every time he walked with his body exposed. He ignored the feeling. He had to.

  He walked past Sevryn’s and didn’t look inside—at least, not directly. He turned on one of the few enhancement chips he owned, the ones he’d bought when he first left the Impossibles. The chips expanded his peripheral vision, and let him see everything except what was directly behind him.

  He could walk with his gaze straight ahead and still see what was happening behind his ears.

  He used that additional vision to get a glimpse of the interior of Sevryn’s. The cops, sitting at one of the only tables the place had, quite close to the windows.

  Watching him go by.

  In fact, everyone in line (and there was always a line at Sevryn’s) turned to watch him pass.

  He didn’t move his head or do anything to betray that he had seen them. If they wanted to intimidate him, fine, they had. But they didn’t need to know that.

  He ducked into the deli next door. He had ordered dinner from that place yesterday for the entire office, and had it delivered. The sandwiches were better than Sevryn’s, but some of the baked goods weren’t.

  Still, the place smelled fantastic. Fresh coffee, cinnamon, and a touch of baking bread. His stomach rumbled.

  The woman behind the counter smiled at him. She was older and a little heavyset, her curly hair tired, probably because of the steam rising around her.

  He ordered coffee and a bagel.

  And then he smiled at her.

  Because he could. Because this was his life now.

  Because this was the life he wanted.

  Finally.

  FOUR

  FOR THE SECOND time in two days, Bartholomew Nyquist found himself inside the area between the Peyti and human sections of Armstrong’s Reception Center. That was the euphemistic name of the maximum security prison just outside Armstrong’s dome, where the accused were kept while awaiting trial. The Reception Center had its own dome, with varying environments so it could house various members of the Alliance.

  Once again, Nyquist had been given an environmental suit and mask. He hadn’t needed them the last time, and he hoped he wouldn’t need them this time, either. The things were ancient or filthy or both.

  Because he was in a prison, he couldn’t bring his own suit. Apparently, prison officials believed he (or other visitors) would smuggle something in with their suits. Even though he would never share the same area as the prisoner, never be able to touch him, never be able to slip him anything. Rules sometimes made no sense.

  The area between the two sections was called the Tunnels for obvious reasons. Accompanied by two mouthless android guards, Nyquist had gone through what looked like Disty warrens between the two sections. Eventually, he ended up in a clear, round room that looked like it floated.

  It was a one-person protective bubble that provided its own environment. The guards used these things to peer into the sections that lacked an environment they could function in. But Nyquist couldn’t control his own little bubble. He had no idea where the control panel was, and he didn’t have the access codes.

  He had to wait wherever the guards wanted him to. And he couldn’t talk to the android guards, because they were designed to protect and defend, not communicate.

  All of his links were down, including his emergency links, which irritated him. He could contact the prison through a link it had set up, and no one else. He truly felt trapped in a sterile environment.

  At least there was a table and a chair. He could rest his head on the table and snooze if he w
anted to. He wasn’t getting much sleep, between worrying, talking to DeRicci, and trying to figure out what was happening to his beloved city.

  But he wasn’t going to sleep. It would show weakness. Although he might rest his head if they left him in here as long as they had the day before.

  At least the wait had given Nyquist a chance to study everything around him, including the blue water-like substance outside the protective bubble. He prepared himself for the interview, reviewing the questions over and over again in his head.

  He had a long list, and he doubted he would get to all of it. He hadn’t had enough time with Uzvaan, the Peyti clone, the day before. Nyquist doubted he would have enough time today, either.

  Uzvaan had been the lawyer for Nyquist’s old partner, Ursula Palmette. Her experiences during the first explosion in Armstrong had turned her somehow, and she had been trying to bomb Armstrong herself on Anniversary Day. Nyquist still wasn’t certain of the connection, and Palmette wouldn’t talk.

  But he had used Palmette as an excuse to bring Uzvaan into the station on the day of the Peyti Crisis, to hold him in place and prevent him from bombing the city.

  It had worked.

  And now, Nyquist was using the same excuse to convince prison officials to let him see Uzvaan. The officials believed that Nyquist was here on the Palmette case. So far, no one from S3 had figured out what Nyquist was doing, but he had a hunch they’d figure it out soon enough.

  Hence all the questions he had to ask today, which he had mentally ordered from most important to least important. Even so, he doubted he would ask them in that order, because interviews were organic things. But he would do his best.

  Only a few minutes after Nyquist arrived, another bubble made its way through the blueness. Inside sat Uzvaan, limbs at his sides, legs pulled back, his maskless face still looking unbelievably alien to Nyquist.

  He was so used to seeing the Peyti with their masks that Uzvaan looked like an entirely different creature without it.