Duplicate Effort

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  But Flint had other things to do and he wasn’t going to tell Nyquist what they were. Flint wanted to check the name of that corporation that had Wagner so upset—the one Talia recognized.

  And he wanted to make sure his daughter was protected.

  But mostly, he wanted Van Alen to initiate a civil suit against Wagner. If the criminal case died—and it probably would—the civil suit would ensure that WSX and its shady senior partner would remain in the news, at least until Flint could decide what to do with the remaining files.

  Van Alen’s office was still in an uproar. People were examining networks, talking excitedly, and double-checking everything from their computer screens to their backups.

  No one questioned Flint’s entry, and no one asked how Talia was, even though she was leaning heavily on Flint. He knew she wasn’t injured—he’d checked himself—but she was frightened deeper than she had been since Rhonda died.

  In fact, the whole incident had probably brought Rhonda’s death back. Flint was going to have to get Talia home soon.

  But he knew this place, at least, would make her feel protected while he worked.

  “Miles, thank God.” Van Alen hurried toward him, wobbling on her heels. Her feet clearly hurt again. She only wobbled when she was tired.

  She stopped just a few meters from him, frowning.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  He looked up at her. He didn’t want to go through the whole story of the kidnapping and the arrest, but he didn’t see a choice.

  He told it as quickly as he could, as tersely as he could.

  And to her credit, Van Alen didn’t gloat that Wagner was arrested or even mention the shocking fact that Wagner probably wasn’t involved in Bowles death.

  Instead, she walked over to Talia and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Come on,” she said, glaring at Flint over Talia’s shoulder, “let’s take you to my office. It’s quiet there. You can clean up, put on some comfortable clothes, and get something to eat.”

  “I don’t have any clothes here,” Talia said, and in that tone, Flint heard I want to go home.

  But he also knew she didn’t think of his apartment as home. To her, the house she’d left on Callisto was the only home she’d ever had.

  “I have some things that’ll fit you,” Van Alen said. “I also have a full bathroom so you can shower, and a lot of hot water, so you don’t have to worry about it running out.”

  “Not to mention the fluffiest towels I’ve ever used,” Flint said.

  His daughter looked at him in shock and he realized she suddenly thought he was having an affair with Van Alen.

  “Maxine let me hide out here back when Paloma died,” Flint said. “I think I lived in her office for an entire day.”

  “More like two,” Van Alen said. “Or three. I forget.”

  “I need to use your nonnetworked machines,” Flint said.

  “Before you do, I need you to back-trace that glitch,” Van Alen said. “Particularly now that we know Wagner wasn’t involved.”

  “I’ll back-trace it,” Flint said. “After I check the files.”

  “Dad, let’s just go,” Talia said.

  He looked at her. He did need to take her home.

  But he couldn’t do that yet.

  He’d actually believed Wagner. And if Wagner hadn’t ordered Bowles’s death, then someone else had.

  And Flint was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t one of the corporations that Wagner had mentioned.

  Corporations could easily hire a killer and then deny it. Or slough it off on a lower-level employee.

  “I’d love to go,” he said to Talia. “But I can’t. Not yet. We don’t know everything that’s going on.”

  “Mr. Wagner’s been arrested,” Talia said. “The news says they found Ki Bowles’s killer. We can go.”

  “They found the killer?” Flint asked Van Alen. He hadn’t been monitoring his links. He hated listening to news while trying to concentrate on other things.

  “The shooter,” Van Alen said. “They think someone hired him.”

  She gave Talia a pointed look.

  Talia’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m really tired.”

  “I know,” Flint said. “Go with Maxine. I’ll be working in the same office, which is right near the bathroom. We’ll have food ready by the time you get out of the shower.”

  “I don’t want to sleep here,” Talia said.

  Flint nodded. “I know.”

  But he didn’t promise her that she would be able to go home. He couldn’t, not yet.

  He needed answers before he could do that.

  And he needed them now.

  Fifty-three

  Gulliver Illiyitch didn’t look all that tough. He didn’t look strong. He wasn’t all that big.

  And to top it off, he didn’t even look all that bright.

  Savita Romey found that comforting. She’d been afraid, deep down, that he would have the brains of a master criminal.

  She watched two space traffic cops bring him into the precinct. She kept an eye on him as they booked him and took him to interrogation, but she didn’t introduce herself.

  Instead, she studied him.

  He had an oily charm. He smiled a little too much. He also had the square jaw and broad forehead that some people thought composed classic handsomeness. His black hair was thick and glossy, and his clothes almost looked tailored, although they’d gotten quite messed up during the pursuit and arrest.

  She’d watched the news reports.

  Sightings had come into the police precinct and media outlets at the same time. While Gumiela had dispatched street cops to investigate sightings, the media sent junior reporters with cameras, hoping to find the man who’d killed one of their own.

  And they had.

  Romey would never know how many reporters went to dead ends, looking for the best scoop in years, but she suspected the number was probably in the hundreds.

  And for once, she was glad of it.

  She wanted this guy off the street.

  For the first time, however, she wished she had a partner. A real one. She didn’t want to go into interrogation alone. This case was too important. There were too many eyes on her, and one mistake could cost her career.

  She didn’t dare lose this job, not with the boys to support.

  Not to mention the fact that she loved it.

  Except when she was exhausted and overwhelmed, like now.

  She hoped that booking would take longer than usual. Maybe by then, Nyquist would be done with Wagner.

  Nyquist wouldn’t be able to interview Wagner. That cagey lawyer would hire another cagey lawyer to protect him from everything. Wagner would never admit to hiring a man to murder Ki Bowles.

  But maybe Illiyitch would admit to taking the money.

  Or in exchange for some kind of reduced sentence, he’d talk about Wagner.

  She could only hope.

  Just like she could hope that she managed to make no mistakes in the interrogation.

  Not one.

  Especially one that would let Gulliver Illiyitch go free.

  Fifty-four

  Flint settled at the nonnetworked computer closest to the wall. He turned it on, checked to make sure that no one else had used it since the last time he had, and then got to work.

  Talia was still in the bathroom. Van Alen had ordered a feast, and then settled at her desk just behind Flint to draw up a civil complaint against Wagner.

  She would file the motions and notify the media at the same time. Over Flint’s objection, she also said she’d tell the reporters her suspicion that Wagner had murdered Ki Bowles.

  I don’t think it’s true, Flint had said.

  Based on what? Van Alen had asked. A feeling? Something the man said to you? Don’t you know his office is designed to reflect his moods? Literally reflect them. He has some pheromones in there or something that makes the people who visit him feel like he wants them to feel.
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br />   I doubt that, Flint had said, unless he wanted Talia to feel scared and me to feel pissed off.

  Van Alen had shaken her head at him. Trust me. We’re letting the press know he’s behind the killings. If we’re wrong, the fact that it was our suspicion will be forgotten in all the back-and-forthing the talking heads will do over the next twenty-four hours. If we’re right, we’ll make it even more difficult for Wagner to get away with the kidnapping.

  Flint was too tired to argue. And he rather liked her analysis. So he let her do her job. It kept her from nagging him about checking into that glitch.

  He wanted to look through Paloma’s files first.

  Over the past few months, he’d set up a sophisticated search engine that combined Paloma’s files for names, places, and crimes. Paloma had developed an unusual system for keeping track of the files, so a standard search wouldn’t work.

  Most of the time he had been grateful for that, but once he started feeding information to Ki Bowles, he found he needed something more specific.

  He didn’t want to give her something he hadn’t vetted yet.

  Although it appeared that he had without realizing it.

  Gramming Corporation was a wholly owned subsidiary of Speidel Corporation, one of the many cloning firms that had offices in Armstrong. Speidel worked mostly with the Growing Pits and other food organizations, but Speidel also did some corporate work for places like Aleyd.

  And they had a small human cloning facility. They restricted use to employees of Aleyd and the handful of other people who could pay exorbitant prices for a clone. The corporation’s bylaws also stated that clones could only be of someone who had already died.

  Some human communities didn’t allow cloning of the dead, but it was legal on the Moon. Which brought a lot of people from outside Armstrong to the cloning firms. Speidel tried to prevent being overrun by requests, so it charged the highest prices in Armstrong.

  Flint knew that Speidel had cloned Emmeline, even though when they had initially done so, she hadn’t been dead. The corporation wouldn’t release the files to him because the files didn’t belong to him.

  The files belonged either to Rhonda or to Aleyd Corporation.

  Flint wouldn’t have been surprised if Speidel’s name had been on Talia’s day of creation certificate, but it hadn’t been.

  Talia said the name on the certificate was Gramming’s.

  So he opened Gramming’s files.

  And wished he hadn’t.

  Fifty-five

  Van Alen’s shower had a chair carved in the very center. Talia found the chair by pushing buttons. The chair rose from the tile floor and became the centerpiece of the shower itself.

  The shower could either be a sonic shower like most in the Dome or a water shower, the height of luxury. A sign appeared when Talia hit the water button, letting her know that the water she was using had been recycled and would be recycled again.

  But that didn’t make her feel any less decadent. Especially when she sat in that chair, water dripping around her like those pictures of rain forests she’d seen in school. She’d set the water as hot as she could stand it. It was working some of the soreness out of her shoulders and back, but it wasn’t quite enough to make her feel better.

  She wasn’t sure anything could make her feel better.

  What was wrong with her? The people around her, the people who cared for her, got attacked. Her dad could have died. Then she went to help him like she’d promised herself she would after her mother got kidnapped, and that man had put a gun against her neck.

  The spot was still sore. So was her stomach. She had a long bruise that ran from her hip to her rib cage where his arm had clutched her so tightly she was afraid she was going to vomit.

  She hadn’t, of course. But she’d been hoping she would. She would have gotten him with it, startling him, and helping herself and her dad escape.

  All those fantasies, and they never came true. Not even the attack fantasy. Attacking the attacker didn’t make things better, like she had always thought.

  It had made things worse.

  She wiped her wet hair off her face. Steam rose around her, coating the etched glass that protected the shower area from the rest of the bathroom.

  This was nice. It was the kind of thing her dad could afford but wouldn’t. He was weirdly stingy, wanting a kind of life that didn’t rely on money.

  Maybe that was why he worked so hard, even when he said he wouldn’t.

  Because he didn’t want to think about the money he had.

  She wasn’t sure how she could deal with him working anymore, now that she knew the danger he was always talking about was real. And how focused he got. Just like Mom. Mom wasn’t ever thinking about Talia.

  Mom was thinking about the next experiment, the problems on the job, the way that the company wanted her to be.

  And all she’d done was get mad at Talia.

  At least, her dad had let Talia help.

  Although that hadn’t made her feel better, either. All that stuff she’d learned about Ki Bowles had been disturbing. Ki Bowles had a lot of people after her, so she needed orders of protection. And a lot of people hated her because she was so good at her job.

  Talia didn’t understand any of it.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  Maybe that was why she’d been trying to leave. To visit those other girls, who were just exactly like her—exactly like her, down to the DNA structure—to see if they’d found a life that was better, one that didn’t involve parents who worked too hard or people who hated them because of their jobs or, God forbid, kidnapping.

  Talia ran a hand over her face, smoothing the water off it. Then she closed her eyes and tilted her head back.

  At least here she felt better than she had all day.

  Here she could pretend everything was all right, even when it wasn’t.

  She could pretend that she was cherished and loved and safe.

  Just like the girls she called sisters.

  Fifty-six

  Flint hunched over the nonnetworked computer in Van Alen’s office, blocking her view of his work with his body. Not that she was trying to look at it. She was doing her own work, setting up his case, handling parts of the crisis that had descended on the office during the power glitch.

  Talia was still in the bathroom. He was going to send Van Alen for her if she hadn’t come out when the food arrived.

  But he wanted to be calmer by then. Because he’d been reading Gramming’s legal files, and they turned his stomach.

  Gramming had originally been set up as a humanitarian corporation attached to Speidel Corporation. Cloning sometimes went wrong. Not like it had in the spectacular early years, where a cloned child might have a finger growing out of its belly, but something a bit more subtle.

  If an elderly couple wanted to clone their dead adult child, they’d often instruct the company to make several attempts. Gene manipulation, particularly certain kinds of enhancements, made the adult different than the baby had been.

  Some parents wanted a child just like the one they’d raised. Others wanted a child just like the adult the dead person had made himself into.

  Often cloning companies like Speidel showed the parents the cloned child, only to have them reject that child as “not right.” That child—a living breathing human being—then became property of Speidel.

  And Speidel wasn’t set up to raise dozens (and in the early days hundreds) of children.

  So it set up Gramming, where, for a small fee, families who wanted to could adopt the clones and raise them as their own.

  Adoption had fallen out of favor in many parts of the sector. It was easier to have a child carried through a surrogate or grown in a vat from the parents’ mixed sperm and egg than it used to be. But creating an original child from sperm and egg, however it was done, remained expensive.

  And the people who couldn’t afford to create their own children and who couldn’t have them the na
tural way often adopted because adoption was so much cheaper.

  The one thing Gramming did from the beginning was insist that Speidel hide the clone mark. Most clone marks were visible behind the neck. But Talia’s, like every other clone made at Speidel, was behind the ear and under the skin.

  Most adoptive parents would never know that the baby they’d raised from a few weeks of age was a clone. Gramming had done studies. People didn’t want to raise clones. They wanted to raise “real children.”

  As Speidel cut the amount of human cloning work it did in favor of agricultural products, the money that went to Gramming faded as well.

  That loss of revenue threatened Gramming since, despite the intent of the corporation’s founders, it had become a tidy for-profit business.

  So the new CEO—Ohari Kinoy—had spoken to his lawyers about that. His lawyer.

  Justinian Wagner.

  Who suggested that certain clones might have more value than others. Say, clones of a highly regarded scientist who married one of the most gifted computer programmers in the city. Clones whose original had a tested intelligence that was higher than her parents’ combined.

  Flint went cold as he stared at that. Because Justinian Wagner—years younger, but just as cold—had been talking about five clones of Emmeline, clones that Rhonda had made to protect herself, not their living, breathing daughter.

  He made himself continue. Wagner had made the same argument about babies whose parents had award-winning beauty or some highly desirable talent, things that got passed through the genes.

  As close to designer babies as a company could get.

  The clones were created for other reasons that, like Rhonda’s, often weren’t specified in the files.

  And the clones that weren’t wanted—the “defective” ones, the ones that didn’t quite look like Uncle John or Aunt Susan—were property of Speidel or Aleyd or whatever corporation had paid for the cloning.

  So, Wagner had suggested, on special children, bump the fee. Deal with the parents yourself so that no one else would know.