The Clone Sedition

by Steven L. Kent

  During the golden days, the Port of Mars employed an army of civilian technicians. Now they were gone, replaced by robots and computers. Watson wondered what would happen to the plant once the New Olympians transferred out.

  He passed the entrance of the oxygen-generation facility. There were no doors, just halls as wide as a basketball court that led down into brightly lit chambers filled with pipes and wires and cables and giant machines working in silence.

  The sewage-filtration system was loud. The smell wafting out of its cave made Watson’s eyes water. He frowned and held his breath, not yet having escaped the stench when he reached the door marked, SPACEPORT SECURITY BARRACKS.

  Forgetting the bad air, Watson looked around the hall for people. He saw no natural-borns. He saw no clones. He was alone and nervous.

  In his mind, crowds and potential witnesses offered a margin of safety. If something happened to him down here, no one would see it, no one would help him…no one would know. There would be no one to report the attack except the attackers themselves.

  The walls of the barracks had no windows or ornamentation. The sign beside the door said, BARRACKS. Watson took in the meaning more than the word. The word denoted a building meant to house soldiers; but for him, the connotation was simply, soldiers. He waited, told himself he would be safe, then took a final breath of the foul air and opened the door.

  The barracks were filled with men. Some sat around in their underwear, some wore uniforms, some wore armor; but none wore helmets. The men were awake and alive, but they did not speak, and they did not interact with each other.

  Watson approached the closest clone, and said, “I’m looking for Colonel Riley.”

  The Marine ignored him. All of the Marines ignored him. He tried to speak to several of them, but they all stared straight ahead and did not respond.

  A row of dead men lay stretched out side by side along the wall. Watson drifted toward the bodies; he could not help himself. He asked, “What happened to these men?”

  No one answered. No one looked in his direction.

  Watson knelt beside one of the bodies. The clone had been in his thirties. He still had a regulation haircut though fuzz had started to grow around his ears, an area most Marines shaved. When he spotted dried blood on the man’s ear, Watson stood and stepped away.

  Some of the bodies had bloated, stretching their pants and shirts, their skin having turned a greenish gray. It was hot and humid in the barracks, and the sickeningly sweet smell of their decay filled the air.

  Another scent hung in the air as well, something faint and sharp and acrid. It cut through the odor of the decay like a pinch of pepper in a spoon of sugar. It was a chemical scent.

  A Marine approached Watson, then walked right past him without a second glance. The clone had seen Watson and stepped around him, but he didn’t seem to care that a civilian had entered his barracks.

  Six men sat at a table no more than twenty feet from the row of fetid bodies. The men did not chat among themselves. They weren’t playing cards, though they sat erect and facing each other like men in a game.

  When Watson approached the table, the men did not gaze up at him. He tapped one of the Marines on the shoulder. No response. He wondered if Harris had been like this? Could Harris have ever been catatonic?

  Some of the men had thick stubble on their chins, as if they had not shaved for days.

  They did not soil themselves, though. As Watson hovered around the table, one of the men stood and walked away. Watson followed him to the bathroom and watched as the man entered a stall. When he unhitched his trousers, Watson decided he had seen enough and left.

  The barracks had a recreation area with card tables, computer games, and video screens. Nothing showed on the screens. The games sat unused. The men at the card tables sat staring straight ahead.

  Watson left the recreation area and entered the sleeping quarters, a room as long as a bowling alley with three-tiered rows of bunks, most filled with men. The walls and doors that separated the room from the recreation and eating areas had been designed to filter out light, but overhead lights burned brightly above the beds.

  The men who lay in the cots lay with their eyes open and their faces blank. They were clones. All five-ten. All brown-haired. All brown-eyed. Every man in every cot looked like a repeat of the men around him. Some were older or thinner. Not a one of them showed any interest in Watson.

  “Hey, you! You son of a bitch, what are you doing here?”

  Watson heard the loud voice and jumped involuntarily. He turned to see a natural-born rushing toward him. The man was no more than five-eight, a short man with a face so startlingly handsome that it was almost pretty. He had a thick chest and broad shoulders, and barely controlled rage seemed to exude from him. As the man rushed toward him, Watson noticed the circular scar in the center of his forehead, a jagged saw blade of circle that rose out of the space between his eyebrows as if it had been embossed.

  Not intimidated by Watson’s height, the man came in so close that their chests nearly bumped. He said, “I asked you a question,” and stared at Watson for a moment. Recognition worked into his expression. He said, “You.”

  Watson said, “I’m looking for Colonel Riley.”

  “Freeman should have known better than to let you come…unless he doesn’t care,” said the little man, and he shoved Watson hard enough to make him stumble. Then he said, “Save your bullshit for Harris.”

  His mind reeling, Watson remembered that he had nowhere to turn for help. Now, when someone was finally calling his bluff, he was alone.

  The man poked Watson’s chest, and asked, “How long have you been here?”

  “I just came down,” Watson stammered, not sure if the man meant the barracks or the planet.

  “Yeah? You find anything interesting?” the man asked. Seemingly out of nowhere, his right fist flew up and hit Watson on the mouth. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  Watson stumbled back. He felt liquid rolling down his chin. It might have been blood. It might have been drool. He tasted the faintly tinny flavor of blood in the back of his throat. His head spinning, Watson did not rub the wound. He did not want to give away his helplessness.

  “I asked you a question, asshole,” the man said. “Did you see what you came for?”

  Watson did not answer. He did not know what to say. Thinking the man meant to kill him, he asked in a soft voice, “What did you do to them?”

  “To these clones? You think I did something to them?” the man asked. His fist flew up again. This time Watson saw the blow coming. He stepped back, dodging it. The man lunged forward throwing another punch, which Watson slipped, and then the man’s knee found its mark, ramming into Watson’s crotch.

  Watson felt the world spin. All the muscles in his body seemed to tie themselves into a knot around his stomach. He felt helplessness spread through his body as his legs slowly gave way, and he sank to the ground. Bile formed a geyser in his throat. When he opened his mouth for air, vomit spewed.

  He was still conscious when the man kicked him in the face. “If you still have a brain when you wake up, tell your boss that Franklin Nailor sends his regards,” the man said.

  The toe of the shoe caught the side of Watson’s head. He heard the words and knew he’d been struck, but he blacked out before the pain or its meaning registered.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Location: Washington, D.C.

  Date: May 2, 2519

  “Are you General Harris?” the woman asked.

  Surprising question. I was in the Pentagon building, in an office with my name on the door, sitting behind a desk with my name plaque. The master sergeant at the front desk had obviously told her, “The general will see you now,” before letting her in.

  Okay, granted, I did not have any stars on my uniform; they remained in Don Cutter’s vault, but still.

  The woman walked up to my desk as if we’d been friends for years. She h
eld out her hand for me to shake.

  Okay, yes, she was pretty, maybe even beautiful. She had dark brown hair and watery blue eyes, a startling combination that went well together. Curtis Jackson was in my office as well. She certainly caught his attention. He could not take his eyes off of her.

  I pretended to be nonchalant, but I felt a connection to this woman that I could not explain. When she smiled, I saw something vulnerable in her eyes, and I felt the need to protect her.

  I wondered if this was a schoolboy infatuation or something deeper. What, suddenly you’re Pavlov’s dog? I asked myself. Ring the bell, and the dog salivates. Show the pretty girl, and the clone…Let’s just say I wasn’t coming out from behind my desk for a while.

  It wasn’t all bells and saliva, though. Along with the lust and the protective feeling, I felt a stab of revulsion. Maybe it was envy? Here was this incredibly beautiful woman, and I knew she was out of my league.

  As I mentioned before, Curtis Jackson was in my office. When the woman reached across my desk to shake hands, I noticed he was staring at her ass as if it had a thousand-dollar bill taped to it.

  Instead of shaking her hand I pretended not to notice it. I looked at my calendar. The woman’s name was Sunny Ferris. She was Arthur Hooper’s lawyer.

  I said, “You’re Miss Hooper.”

  I caught the mistake as soon as I said it, but by then it was too late.

  She said, “Ferris. I’m Arthur Hooper’s lawyer.”

  “My mistake,” I said.

  She smiled. She had a wide, toothy smile that invited all kinds of mischievous thoughts.

  I said, “Please, sit down.”

  She brushed her hands along her skirt to smooth it, then sat, her blue wool suit doing little to hide her curves.

  She might have been thirty, making her just about my age. She had a professional look about her. At least the suit was very professional. An image flashed in my brain. I imagined her dead. What the speck is wrong with you? I asked myself.

  I asked, “Are all of your clients former U.A. interrogators?”

  Her smile wavered almost imperceptibly. She said, “You’ll need to forgive me, General, I’m just getting started on this case. I don’t know anything about my client’s employment history.”

  “In that case, allow me to educate you, ma’am,” Jackson said, looking like he couldn’t wait to join the conversation. “He was a Unified Authority Intelligence officer. He interrogated prisoners. That’s a polite way of saying he tortured clones.”

  She had to turn around to see Jackson, so I could only imagine her expression. I imagined it as a pasted-on smile under a thinly disguised glare. She said, “I would prefer to avoid conversations about Mr. Hooper’s employment history before discussing it with Mr. Hooper himself,” which I interpreted as a polite way of telling Jackson to speck off.

  “I’m sorry, I should have introduced you,” I said. “This is Colonel Jackson.”

  She did not offer to shake his hand. She nodded, said, “Hello, Colonel,” and focused her attention on me.

  I said, “The colonel brings up a fair point. What do you know about your client?”

  “Technically speaking, he’s not my client,” she said, making herself comfortable, leaning on one side of the chair, her legs crossed. “I don’t work for Mr. Hooper, General. My firm, Alexander Cross Associates, represents the entire Olympus Kri encampment.”

  “So you got seventeen million clients?” Jackson asked.

  “Mr. Hooper was never a resident of Mars,” I said. “I can show you his records; he’s not from Olympus Kri.”

  “No?” she asked.

  “Born on Earth, raised on Earth, served in the Unified Authority Navy,” I said. “Maybe the New Olympians hired him to follow me.”

  I did not believe that story on several levels. I still believed that the majority of New Olympians were loyal to the Enlisted Man’s Empire…desperate to relocate to Earth, but loyal. I had not believed they were loyal before going to Mars, but I came back convinced of it. Was that part of my reprogramming?

  Trusting New Olympians, fearing the ocean, and now weird fantasies about a woman I had never seen before…Was this the by-product of reprogramming? I tried to sort out my feelings and realized that I did not trust this woman…Sunny Ferris. She might have come to my office representing Arthur Hooper, or she might have been working for the New Olympians; but I found it hard to believe that the New Olympians had hired her to defend Hooper.

  Hooper was a mercenary. If there was one hard-and-fast rule about mercenaries, it was that the people who hired them abandoned them when things went wrong. That was one of the benefits of hiring mercenaries—they were disposable. You owed them nothing but the price of their hire.

  I wondered if Sunny’s visit was less about helping Hooper and more about implicating the New Olympians. The question was, who was setting them up? Was Sunny a pawn or a player?

  I asked, “Have you met Arthur Hooper?”

  “No. I was told I needed authorization from your office.”

  Damn straight you do, I thought as I smiled, and said, “He’s currently in intensive care. Perhaps his doctors will say that he is strong enough to receive visitors.”

  Jackson, who clearly wanted a role in this conversation, asked, “Really, I thought they had him in solitary confinement?”

  “Solitary confinement?” Sunny asked. “How can he be in solitary confinement? Are you saying he’s under arrest?”

  Thanks, Jackson…asshole, I thought. “He was taken into custody while following one of our Marines.”

  Sunny said, “As I understand it, he was on a beach.”

  She really was pretty. Her irises had this watery blue tint. She might also be dangerous, I reminded myself. She came representing a former U.A. interrogator.

  Jackson answered. He said, “Ma’am, the area was under surveillance. We have a video feed tracking Mr. Hooper from the time he left his house to the moment of the confrontation.”

  Sunny allowed Jackson to speak, but she kept her eyes on me. She leaned over my desk, and said, “Innocent until proven guilty, General, or have the rules changed now that the Enlisted Man’s Empire has seized control?”

  “We believe in due process,” I said.

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “I would like to know why Hooper and his friends were following me.” She locked her eyes on mine, and, I swear, it was as if Jackson had left the room.

  “Have you read the police report? The witnesses say you attacked Hooper and his friends.”

  Feeling attacked myself, I said, “I apprehended them.” Feeble.

  “You shot Arthur Hooper four times!” Those watery eyes were so expressive. What they said at the moment was bordering on hate and loathing.

  We sat in silence for several seconds, a silence that Curtis Jackson broke. He brought up an excellent point. “You said your law firm works for the New Olympians. If Hooper was vacationing in Hawaii, and he is not from Olympus Kri, why are you representing him?”

  “My boss gave me the case. I guess I just assumed it had something to do with Olympus Kri,” Sunny admitted.

  “Maybe it does,” said Jackson. “Is there anyone on Mars looking to hire retired Unified Authority thugs?”

  The look on Sunny’s face went from hateful to disgusted. You would have thought Jackson was talking to her with a finger up his nose. She glared at me, then at him, and she said, “Please explain what you mean by ‘thug.’”

  “He worked in U.A. counterintelligence,” I said. “Mostly he captured and tortured suspected enemies, but his records show that he may have been involved in assassinations as well.”

  Her expression shifted from anger to something resembling shock. She said, “I had no idea. I…I did not know anything about that.”

  I said, “Mostly he captured and executed clones.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “He is a low-priority war criminal,” I said. “If I’d known who h
e was, I might not have shot him. Now we need to wait until he heals before we can hang him.”

  What was it about this woman that hit me so hard? In another minute, she would leave my office, and I would feel a void. I did not think the emptiness would last long, maybe a week or two; but why had I fallen so hard for her in the first place? She was beautiful, but I had seen many beautiful women. I had lived with an actress that people described as “one of the most beautiful woman of all time.” Surely this girl, this lawyer, was not nearly as beautiful as Ava had been; and yet Ava never stunned me like this.

  You will never see her again, I reminded myself. Washington, D.C. was a big city made even bigger because lawyers and generals did not travel in the same circles. As her parting gift, I said, “I’ll clear you to see your client, Miss Farris.”

  She thanked me and left.

  I watched her walk away, knowing that I would think about her.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Location: Mars Spaceport

  Date: May 2, 2519

  Watson, who had always hidden behind his size, no longer saw Freeman and Harris as heroic figures. Having now experienced violence, Watson saw them as demigods. They operated comfortably in a world that now terrified him.

  Until entering the barracks, the worst pain Watson had endured in his adult life was a headache brought on by an overchilled vodka tonic. He’d begun to think he had a high pain threshold.

  His jaw throbbed. When he moved it, he heard a clicking noise. It was a soft noise, almost drowned out by the silvery flash of pain that filled his brain.

  Sharp pain stabbed at him under his ribs when he took a deep breath or moved. He thought the ribs were probably broken. He touched a finger to an area that had turned a florid purple just below his chest—pain. He gasped, and his jaw clicked. The sharp pain from his jaw smothered the ache from his chest. For the first time in his life, Travis Watson understood the difference between an ache and a pain. Aches hung around; pains shot through him and disappeared.