“You’re saying—you seriously think she’s right, it is government authorized?” Cadan asked.
Stewart made an impatient gesture. “I’m saying it could be. And if it is—God, Cadan, think about what you’d be doing if you helped her! Theft—grand theft, if the property’s so valuable they’re sending spaceships to get it back. You know how much clones cost, and they’ve only ever managed partial clones. And now we’ve got this.” He jerked a nod at Lin. “As close as you can get to a full-body clone, God knows, and it’s telepathic and electrokinetic. It could be a secret government weapon! We’ll end up on treason and terrorism charges before we know it!”
“But”—Cadan gave his head a quick shake as if to clear it—“you can’t think our government would be involved in something like that.”
At the same time Lin said furiously, “I’m not a clone. I’m me.”
Stewart flicked a glance at Lin, a glance that seemed to skate over her and move straight back to Cadan. She might as well not have spoken.
“I don’t know, Cadan! What I’m saying is, if it is the government, you can’t afford to go on the run with their property. Fine, we’ll make for the Interplanetary League HQ, but for God’s sake, going off-route without SFI’s permission? At least send them a message that that’s what you’re doing.”
“No.”
“No!”
Elissa and Lin spoke at once, their voices blending so that for a moment Elissa didn’t realize she was hearing her sister as well as herself.
“Please,” she said. “Cadan, don’t. You don’t have to believe me, but please, please, just in case I am right—”
Stewart cut across anything Cadan might have been about to say. “Yeah, if you are right, then you’re a thief, aren’t you? Stop trying to make him feel guilty—stop trying to use him. This is his career here. And mine. And I’m not risking them for you and the freak double you stole.”
Elissa stared at him, speechless for a moment. If she hadn’t known this was the same pleasant young man who’d invited her to the flight deck, who’d flirted with her over the lunch table just a few hours ago, she’d have thought he’d been replaced by his own double. He wasn’t even trying to understand what this was like for her and Lin—and the way he was talking about Lin, calling her “property,” calling her “it,” what was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he see?
She tried to speak calmly. “You’re not understanding. Lin’s not a clone. She’s my sister. My twin.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Your twin? It’s not even a real word.”
“It is a real word. It means double—”
“Double. Yeah, like a—guess what?—a clone.”
“Not like a clone!” Her voice went shrill, and she forced it back into calmness. It was no good arguing with him. He just wasn’t listening—it was too much for him to handle and he couldn’t grasp it. I couldn’t grasp it at first, and I’d shared her thoughts.
She tried another tactic. “Look,” she said. “Like Cadan said, Lin and I are linked. For three years I felt what they were doing to her. I only got it secondhand, and it was the worst pain ever. That’s what you’d be handing her over to. Please. What does it matter if it’s the government or someone else?”
“It matters because we work for them! Do you know how long we’ve trained just to get a chance at flying this ship for a pathetic four-day round-trip? Do you know what would happen to us if we helped you evade them?”
“Oh my God!” Elissa’s calmness splintered into a million shards. “This is all about your job? This is Lin’s life. Do you know what will happen to her if you make her go back? Why can’t you grasp what we’re telling you?”
A wave of color rose behind Stewart’s freckles. He opened his mouth to say something, but Elissa overrode him. “You want to see what they did, your precious government you want to report us to?” She flung her hand out toward Lin. “Come show him. Come show him what they want you for.”
Too late, as she saw the blankness hit Lin’s face and freeze it still, Elissa realized what she was asking. She stared at her twin, a mute apology. You have to show him. He has to know.
For a moment Lin just looked back at her, frozen, not moving. Then she came forward to stand next to Cadan at the rail and turned, putting her hands up to lift the dyed-blond hair from the back of her neck.
“What? What am I supposed to be looking—” Stewart stopped. And Cadan took one step back, as if the floor had lurched under him.
The hole, neat and clean-edged, stood out against the pale skin at the back of Lin’s neck. Elissa saw it more clearly this time, saw the details she hadn’t seen before. Saw that although the flesh had healed around and inside it, it was shiny with scar tissue, the sort of scar tissue that came from burns, repeated over and over again.
“This is what they do to me,” Lin said, her voice thin and remote. “Twice a week since I was fourteen. This is what they keep me for. This is why they want me back.”
After a long moment Cadan said, “What—what is it for?” His voice cracked as he spoke, and Stewart threw him an irritated look.
Lin made a little noise that would have sounded like a laugh if there’d been any real mirth in it. “They didn’t tell us that.”
“And it—” Cadan swallowed, then continued. “Lissa said it hurts?”
“Hurts?” Lin let her hair slide back over her neck, raised her head to look at him. “Yes, it hurts.” Once again there was a sound like laughter in her voice, but with a note to it that made Elissa go cold.
“That’s it,” said Cadan. “I don’t care if it is our own government behind it. I’m not letting them get hold of her, whoever they are.”
“Then what?” Stewart’s voice seemed to explode into the room. “You’re going to go on the run, on the spaceship they own? Cadan, for God’s sake think about this.”
“Think about it? Take a look at her, Stewart! Look what they’ve done to her!”
“I saw, thanks.” Stewart’s voice dismissed the horrific wound, put it aside as something merely distasteful that didn’t need to be mentioned. And that was when it fully hit Elissa.
Arguing with Stewart, trying to persuade him—even trying to get his pity for Lin—none of it was going to work. The moment he’d learned she was a Spare, something like a shutter had closed across his mind, cutting him off from the necessity of feeling anything toward her that he would feel for a legal human.
I didn’t really think people would be able to do that. Everyone knows about partial clones—it makes sense for someone to see Lin and me together and think she could be a full-body clone. Human-based but not human. Not a person. But I thought that once people met her, once people knew that she was born the same as me—I didn’t think anyone would be able to continue thinking of her like that.
She told me people would want her sent back, and I didn’t believe her.
“And that’s not the point,” Stewart was saying to Cadan. “Aren’t you forgetting something? You’ve got a crew of fifteen here. You’re going to force us all on the run with you?” He came around the end of the rail. “You’re the captain. You have duties to hold to. The crew didn’t sign up for this.”
“I know.” Cadan’s face was grim. “I’ve thought of that.”
“Then what? What are you going to do? Force them to turn their careers to shit with you? Make them traitors too?”
“That’s enough!” Color ran up into Cadan’s face, a flush under his eyes, on his cheekbones. “I’m going to give them the choice, of course. They can stay with me, help me get the ship to Sanctuary—”
“Or what? What if they don’t want that choice?”
Cadan’s face drew itself into grimmer lines. “Then Shuttlebug One takes twenty.”
“That’s it? You’re going to tip us out into the lifeboat and keep the Phoenix for your pet thief and her freak nonhuman clone?” The venom in his voice was clear now, and Elissa physically flinched, putting an automatically protective arm around Lin.
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“I said that’s enough,” said Cadan, his voice like steel.
“Really? Enough? That’s it, is it? Just like that? Four years, thrown away?”
Cadan opened his mouth to say something, then shut it. He looked at Stewart for a long moment. Then, “If you want to look at it that way. Four years. Thrown away.”
They stared at each other for a moment, then Stewart turned on his heel and walked off the bridge. His boots thumped briefly on the stairs, then he was gone.
Elissa didn’t dare speak. She hardly dared look at Cadan. Everything Stewart said—losing his career, committing treason . . . if it’s too much, if Cadan decides it’s not worth it . . .
Cadan’s hand was clenched, white on the rail. For a long moment he said nothing, just stared at where the barrier had slid shut behind Stewart. Then he looked away, visibly gathering himself.
“He’ll come back,” he said. “This has knocked him, and I told him the wrong way, but he’s a good man. He’ll see reason. He’ll come back.”
Elissa didn’t reply. Cadan knew Stewart better than she did. For all she knew, he was right. But that venom in Stewart’s voice, the way he’d instantly dismissed Lin as a clone, a thing, something that belonged to other people rather than herself . . . She thought Stewart was seeing reason, but it was his own reason, not Cadan’s.
Cadan took a deep breath. “Okay. Now I have to speak to the crew. I won’t ask you to leave—this is your concern now, after all. If you would sit over there?” He gestured to a couple of pull-down seats on the wall around the bridge.
As Elissa and Lin took the seats, Cadan threw open a com-channel and issued a crew-wide instruction to come to the flight deck. Then he paused for a minute, head down, hand braced on the console next to the com-channel switch.
Elissa watched him, wrung by helpless pity. His career, that he’s worked for since he was eleven. And he’s not even hesitating. He’s just doing one unpleasant task after another. The Cadan I used to know, the one so hung up on his career that he forgot how to be polite, he would never have done this.
Or would he? Was he always like this, and I just never noticed?
The door slid open. Cadan straightened, ready to face his crew.
He made it brief. Partly, Elissa guessed, because they didn’t have time to waste, if they were to repair the ship and get back into another hyperspeed hop. Partly, maybe, for the sake of the crew themselves? But also—oh, this must be awful for Cadan, right after Stewart’s reaction, Stewart’s accusations, having to explain himself all over again.
“I have to do this,” Cadan said at the end of the explanation, his voice flat. “I don’t expect anyone to agree with me. I don’t expect anyone to stay on board. Shuttlebug One is ready for evacuation, and the nearest planet with a Sekoian embassy is less than a twelve-hour flight. The shuttlebug will be leaving in the next half hour.” He paused there, and Elissa saw him swallow before he continued. “Beyond that I can only offer my apologies. It has been my honor to serve as—” He stumbled. “To work with you all. If, one day, I can make reparation—” He got stuck again, and this time didn’t recover.
They were watching him. Some of the faces did mirror Stewart’s. Shock, disgust, anger. Some of them showed only discomfort—a desire to get out as quickly as they could, before their careers got dragged down with Cadan’s. It’s not just a job—it’s a life choice was one of the SFI recruitment slogans, Elissa remembered. She hadn’t really bought it—of course it was just a job—but now, watching Cadan’s crew preparing to leave him, it looked as if it were, after all, literally true.
Cadan didn’t speak again. He gestured instead, one of the universal, easy-to-read signs Elissa knew they used for signaling across distances outside the ship. Proceed without me.
Elissa looked away as the crew left. Trepidation prickled down her spine. How will Cadan run this whole ship without his copilot and his crew? But overriding that unease was a wrenching pity she knew she shouldn’t show. What must this be like for him, seeing his crew leave him? Knowing they—like Stewart—think of him as a traitor to his own government?
She listened to the last pair of feet go down the steps, but she, Lin, and Cadan were not alone. Elissa looked up.
Three of the crew hadn’t yet gone. Ivan the chef. Markus, who’d come earlier to the flight deck. A tall fair-haired woman, one of those who’d helped defeat the pirates.
Cadan cleared his throat. “You’re free to go, all of you. I believe Mr. James will be coming with you, and he’ll take charge of the shuttlebug. It’ll be set for Charonial, of course, but if it needs piloting—”
Ivan gave the other crew members a glance. “Looks like we’re staying, sir. To offer our services on the Phoenix.”
“The Phoenix’s not going to need your services.” Cadan’s voice was flat, all expression ironed out of it. “I’m going to be right off-grid. I don’t even have full plans yet—”
“We can see that.” Ivan interrupted him. “I’m telling you, if there was anyone who looked as if he had less plans I wouldn’t want to let him have charge of a ship at all, let alone two runaways.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Way to help his confidence.” For the first time Elissa noticed her properly. She had very angular features and skin so pale it was almost translucent, both marking her out as not a native-born Sekoian.
“Wait,” said Cadan. “What are you talking about? What are you doing?”
“We’re staying.” The woman gave him a brief smile. “We’re staying to help.”
Cadan’s shoulders slumped. “You can’t, Felicia. All of you. I explained. I’m making myself a fugitive, as well as Lissa and Lin. I don’t even know how I’m going to do it—I’m going to be on the run from the bounty hunters. Possibly, if Lissa’s right, even SFI themselves. The ship’s damaged and we can’t yet use the hyperdrive—”
“We know,” Felicia said. “That’s what we’re helping with.”
Cadan’s eyes moved from her to the others, then back to her. He looked completely thrown, a million times more than he had been by Stewart’s reaction. He’d braced himself to do this, to dismiss his crew and watch them leave, and now here were these crew members, determined to stay with him. Out of nowhere a thought crossed Elissa’s mind. Sometimes finding you can trust someone is as devastating as finding you can’t.
“But why?” he said. “I—look, I know you’re supposed to treat me no different from a captain you’ve served with for years, but this is . . . You hardly know me. I haven’t done anything to deserve your loyalty.”
Ivan folded his gorilla arms across his chest, his expression deadpan. “You think you need to have gone through pilot school to have ethics of your own, Captain?”
“No. God, no. I just—”
Felicia laughed. “He’s messing with you, Captain. Ivan, be nice.”
The hint of a smile narrowed Ivan’s eyes. “Nice? Who’d recognize me if I was nice?”
Markus had been standing near the entrance of the bridge, arms folded. He’d been looking weirdly calm, and Elissa had wondered if he was as shocked as Stewart had been, if any minute he was going to explode with the same disgust the copilot had showed.
He moved now, a tiny jerk of a movement, and Elissa saw what she hadn’t grasped before, that his fingers showed white and bloodless against the dark blue of his jacket, that his face was so tense, the skin seemed stretched taut over the bones beneath. Then he spoke, and she realized he wasn’t calm. He was violently angry.
“Why, Captain?” he said, so much suppressed anger in his voice that it felt as if it would shatter something. “I would have thought the real question was why not?” He cast a glance around the bridge. “A crew of sixteen, and only four of us willing to stand against something like this? God, I knew it. I said, you start with the sliding moral scales, and you’ll find you can justify every freaking obscene thing some insane scientist comes up with.”
Felicia put a hand out. “Markus, this isn’t the time�
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“Yeah, I know.” His jaw clenched, then he looked across at Cadan. “I’ve been protesting the cloning laws since I was sixteen,” he said. “I’m in one of the groups that forced the interplanetary ban on continued research into full-body cloning. We’ve been asking for tighter laws on existing cloning for years. And some—some freaking megalomaniac sadists—they’ve chosen this way of getting around the ban?” He took a breath, looking as if he were going to continue, then shut his mouth hard, waiting for a second before speaking again. “All right. I’m done. I’m done.”
“About time,” said Ivan drily, and laughed when Markus threw him a knife-edged look. “Captain, you want more grandstanding, or you want us to get on with something?”
Cadan gave his head a shake as if to clear it. Then he straightened, his shoulders going back, snapping back into role. He sent Felicia and Ivan to oversee the evacuation, and Markus to run an extra safety check on Shuttlebug Two. Elissa knew it was against all sorts of safety protocol to deliberately leave a manned ship with only one lifeboat—the least Cadan could do was make doubly sure the one they had left was ready for emergency use.
She watched the crew as they left. Markus’s jaw was still rigid, and Felicia had her lips pressed tightly together. And on each of their faces—Ivan’s, too—was a look of set determination.
They weren’t leaving. She didn’t know if Ivan and Felicia were driven by the same feelings as Markus, or whether they had their own, different reasons for staying with a captain who was rebelling against SFI. But they’d heard the full story. They’d heard what Lin was, what Elissa had done, and they were staying. They weren’t leaving. They were going to help.
Twenty minutes later Elissa watched in the viewscreen while the shuttlebug detached itself from the dock low on the Phoenix’s flank and dropped slowly away from the main ship. Its booster rockets flared. Cadan cleared the viewscreen, and the shuttlebug became no more than a steadily blinking dot on the enviro-scan.
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