A few other android security officers tried to stop her along the way, but she put her security clearance badge as a response to all messages, and that slowed everything down.
Then she reached the rack of environmental suits, and those did stop her. For one brief moment, she thought about returning to her office, and summoning Xyven there.
Of course, he wouldn’t come. And then she’d have to go through this all over again.
But it was hard to keep a mad on when she was having to pick through the suits, slide one over her clothes, and find a mask that wasn’t too funky.
Somehow she managed to get the stupid suit on and maintain her mood. She hurried down the hall to the Peyti unit, put her gloved hand on the divider, and tapped her personal code into the material. Then she stood still as it did a retinal scan.
The divider opened right away, which surprised her. She would have thought that this week of all weeks Xyven was going to deny her entry.
Maybe he was political enough to realize that if he had refused to see her, she would have gone above his head. Hell, she might even have tried to get him fired.
She still might do that.
She waded through the murk that mimicked the environment on Peyla, the Peyti home world. The atmosphere was thicker here, and even though she couldn’t feel it against her skin, the atmosphere still slowed her stomp into Xyven’s office.
She managed to arrive at the end of that long corridor just as Xyven’s door opened. She half expected him to be standing there, like he had the last several times she barged in, but this time, he wasn’t.
She stalked inside.
He stood in front of his human-like desk, amidst the clutter of human, alien, and Peyti furniture that he somehow felt he needed to fill the room.
His arms were at his sides, his thin fingers nearly touching his knees. His face had a mournful expression, which she wouldn’t have noticed if he were wearing the usual mask that the Peyti wore in an Earth Normal environment.
I was wrong, he sent her on her links.
Xyven always insisted on a link conversation between colleagues, so that he could save the information.
She was half tempted to yell at the top of her lungs, just so she wasn’t following all of his rules.
She took a deep breath of the manufactured air. Damn him. He took control of the conversation before she could even say a word.
Wrong about what? she snapped.
Alien involvement. You were right: it should have been a joint investigation from the start.
She sucked in even more flat air. He had never, in all the years they’d worked together, admitted fault in anything. Never.
She wondered if he did it now to derail her.
Probably.
I’m appalled at the Peyti involvement. Appalled. His skin was a faint blue. Xivim has already been here to see me. She wanted to send investigators to Peyla, but I asked her to wait until I spoke to you.
He…what? Huỳnh felt like he had physically pushed her back. She hadn’t expected any of this at all.
Why wait? Huỳnh managed.
Because I wasn’t sure about the status of your investigations, he sent.
She had over 150 investigators on the Anniversary Day cases, but all were on the Moon.
I don’t have anyone on Peyla, she sent. But I’ll send them if we’re not doing a joint investigation.
Obviously, we are now, Xyven sent. I’m so sorry, Ava. It is my mistake.
She wanted to ask him if he had decided it was his mistake after he learned what happened on the Moon or after his superior had spoken to him.
Ultimately, though, it wasn’t her business.
What was her business was that there would now be a joint investigation.
I know Joint Investigations is your jurisdiction, she sent, but I’m six months into this. I’m going to coordinate it.
She didn’t ask. She didn’t tell him she’d go over his head. She wasn’t going to give him that courtesy.
I hoped you would say that, he sent.
She had never seen him be so contrite. She wondered what was behind it, then made herself take a third deep breath. It wasn’t her business why he had a change of heart.
What was her business was making certain that the Earth Alliance investigation into Anniversary Day and the second attack were conducted properly, and with respect to the investigations her staff had already put months into.
All right, she sent, still feeling off-balance from the lack of a fight. The sooner we can augment this investigation, the better. I want a meeting within the hour, along with plans from our colleagues in the other departments.
Done, Xyven sent.
Then he folded his twig-like fingers together and held them just below his chin. She had read about this gesture, but she had never seen it. It represented very deep emotion for a Peyti.
Please, he sent, accept my deepest apologies. This second attack might be my fault. I did not listen to you. If I had…
He let the thought trail off, maybe in the hopes that she would step in and utter some platitude about it not being his fault at all.
But she didn’t.
We can’t change the past, she sent. But we can do our best to make sure it doesn’t repeat for a third time.
He bowed his head, his skin blue.
I certainly hope so, he sent. I really do.
THIRTEEN
DESHIN RETURNED FROM his house with a new resolve. Gerda had taken one problem off of his mind. Now, it was time to focus on making his home—his city—safe once more.
Technically, he shouldn’t have set up this next meeting in his office.
But Deshin’s usual safe meeting places had been compromised. Some were in the middle of the destroyed areas of domes; others had been in back rooms of buildings where weapons suppliers worked. Not too long ago, he would have asked Ernest Pietres in Crater de Gerlache to broker this meeting somewhere safe.
But Pietres had been one of the Anniversary Day casualties—before Anniversary Day—and even though Deshin now owned a piece of Pietres’s store (through more shell corporations than he wanted to think about), he no longer considered it safe.
The only place he considered safe on the Moon was his own office, and even that was an illusion.
But at least it was a place he could protect, a place where he trusted the security. He no longer trusted anywhere else.
He tapped a corner of his desk, bringing up an image of the twenty Anniversary Day clones arriving at the Port of Armstrong. It had become one of the iconic images of Anniversary Day. He had seen it everywhere, a kind of cautionary tale.
He was going to use the image here and now.
But he wasn’t going to look at it until he had to.
He ran a hand over his face and walked to his usual spot at the windows. They were made of thick reinforced nanomaterials, materials that three separate structural engineering firms had guaranteed safe—no attack could come through them.
Except, of course, the catastrophic kind. Like the bombing four and a half years ago. Or like Anniversary Day.
He had promised Gerda he would stay as safe as he could. He had also promised her he—or someone on his staff—would contact her with his health update every day.
That had been the only way to convince her and Paavo to leave the Moon.
Deshin had made her promise that she wouldn’t tell him where she was going. He didn’t want to get kidnapped and have someone pry that information out of him.
He also didn’t want it on any net or link, in case someone (or something) wanted to use his family to get to him. What he was going to do in the next few weeks was extremely dangerous—things he hadn’t done since he married Gerda—and he didn’t want to lose his family by starting out stupid.
He had set up two separate accounts for her, untraceable to Deshin Enterprises, so that she could buy a home for herself and Paavo, as well as enroll him in school, and live in whatever kind of luxury she deemed impo
rtant.
He had set it all up under her original surname, and explained to Paavo that he had to use a different last name while all of this was going on.
Paavo’s response had startled him.
I knew it, his son had said with an excitement that embarrassed Deshin. I knew you were going to make everything right.
His boy had jumped right over the fact that the family had to separate to figuring out the reason why the family needed to split up. Paavo understood that Deshin’s work might put them in danger, and he seemed to support it wholeheartedly.
Deshin doubted the boy would do that if he knew some of the risks that Deshin would have to take, and some of the horrible things Deshin might have to do, in the name of gathering information, and solving these horrific crimes.
I don’t make things right, Deshin had said to Paavo. I’m just helping in the short term, and I want to make sure you and your mother are safe while I do it. Can you keep her safe?
Paavo had nodded.
It’ll be my sacred duty, he had said with a solemnity that both made Deshin proud and scared the crap out of him. What child said he had a sacred duty? And what child believed he could take on the demons of the universe in his father’s absence?
I guess he really is your son, Gerda had said with amusement after Paavo had left the room.
Deshin had shaken his head. I didn’t mean for him to take this so seriously.
Yes, you did, she said, and she smiled. The smile had been warm, and with it, Deshin had realized he was forgiven for making them leave the Moon.
Apparently Gerda had thought about it and realized, as he had, that it was the best decision for Paavo.
The best decision for her.
And now, Deshin was taking the risks he had planned for.
Deshin sighed and turned away from the window. He faced the image of the twenty men, all of them dead now. The fact that they looked so happy always amazed him.
They were spread out through the crowd at the arrivals area of the Port of Armstrong. People surrounded them, holding hands with children, or walking, heads down, as they hurried to their destinations. Humans, dressed in suits or in casual clothes, carrying tablets or dragging suitcases, looking bored or excited at all of the movement in the Port.
Mingled among them were Peyti, with their twig-like bodies and the bulky masks that they wore. He could barely look at them either. He let his gaze skitter away from them, onto the other aliens: a clump of Disty, threading between the legs of humans, looking like children (dangerous children); some Sequev, scurrying along on their eight legs; and two Gyonnese who stood to one side, staring at the arrivals area as if they were waiting for someone else, their whiskers wrapped around their faces as if they didn’t want anyone to see their expressions.
Didn’t the men see the beings? Hadn’t they realized that through their actions, they could have killed everyone in the Port?
Deshin took a deep breath and let it out. He needed to calm. He was being sloppy and sentimental. Back when he started up these businesses, he hadn’t cared who died.
Of course, he hadn’t killed them himself, but he had easily looked the other way. Maybe those men were able to look the other way as well.
Their original certainly had.
There was a lot of argument, scientific and otherwise, argument getting louder and louder since the Anniversary Day attacks, that clones took on traits of the original, that clones were little more than copies of the original.
The laws of the Earth Alliance reflected that. Clones had no legal rights. They were considered property, and only through a complex adoption and/or legitimation program could they actually get full human status.
Deshin only knew a few clones who had ever achieved full human status, and most of them kept their origins secret.
He made himself look at the twenty faces now, forcing himself to see them. Usually he only saw that they were all six feet tall, as muscular as he was, and weirdly blond, pale-skinned, and blue-eyed. Normally the men would have gotten noticed just for their coloring. Those recessive traits were unusual in the known universe, and often a sign that parents believed in genetic purity or some other archaic notion.
Maybe no one noticed that day in Armstrong’s port, because the men had already been dismissed as clones. Or maybe it was their mood, which seemed so jovial.
The two men closest to the exit doors were looking at each other and grinning. Two others had their arms draped around each other’s shoulders, heads touching. Five of the men were clustered in a group, clearly in the middle of a conversation. One stood in the middle, looking up as if he were trying to see where to go next. The remaining ten were laughing, all of them caught in various poses related to that laugher, mouths and eyes open or closed, hands on stomachs as if holding in the guffaws or hands clasping (or about to clasp) as if they were about to applaud.
The joy offended him the most, since they were all about to leave the Port and murder at least one person, and, in some cases, thousands.
Thousands.
Including people he loved.
Somehow, for the next hour or more, he had to control the disgust and anger that he felt. He had to act as if these twenty men were nothing more than tools, tools he wanted. And he had to do so with great calm.
He took another deep breath, then sent a message to his security staff.
Search them. Then send them up.
He was taking a hell of a risk.
He hoped that it would pay off.
FOURTEEN
RAFAEL SALEHI DIDN’T like to get summoned, particularly by his two name partners. Yet that was what had just happened, via the one link that tied all three name partners together and kept their communications completely confidential.
Salehi was a senior partner at a law firm that bore his name. His great-great-great-grandfather had been one of the founding partners, along with at least one great-great-great grandparent of the other name two partners. If nothing else, the universe could claim that it knew that Schnable, Shishani & Salehi was, and always had been, a family business.
Lately, Salehi had felt trapped by it. He hid in his suite of offices on the fifteenth floor. He’d set the environmental and holographic controls in his private office to mimic one of Earth’s deserts—today it was the Mojave, with its orangish mountains and brown landscape. Cacti extended into the distance.
When—if—his mood ever improved, he might have his office mimic the Mojave after a rain. He’d only seen that desert one time in his life and he had been lucky enough to arrive during the week when the desert bloomed. It remained one of the most beautiful, and dramatic, moments of his life.
He kept the office this way to remind himself of other places, places far away from Athena Base where S3, the nickname everyone used for the firm, made its home. He’d been thinking about leaving the firm—becoming a non-active partner—a year before, but had changed his mind as he started developing a legal theory about the future of clone law.
But, after the debacle six months ago that led to the loss of Rafik Fujita, one of his best transport captains and a good friend, the fight had left Salehi. He was biding his time until he found a way out of this place, a way out of the law.
If only his traitorous mind would allow him to stop thinking about what-ifs.
He kept the temperature in the office at 37 degrees Celsius, the humidity almost non-existent. It kept others out, and helped him stay warm, even though he’d had a lot of trouble lately. He knew that was psychological; he felt guilty for the death of Fujita. Salehi had been the one to notify Fujita’s family, and it was a moment he would never forget.
Salehi tugged on his expensive linen shirt, imported from Earth at great expense. He’d bought his khaki shorts in one of the shops nearby that catered to mid-level professionals who planned to go on vacation at a real resort. His sandals were handmade there as well, molded to his feet by a local craftsman rather than artificial nano-technology.
Most people said
they couldn’t feel the difference but he could.
He looked at himself, lean and dressed for anywhere but the office, and wondered if he should change before he went to the conference room in Schnabel’s office suite.
Finally, Salehi decided against changing. He would freeze, but that would give him an excuse to leave.
He really hated being summoned.
He grabbed a floppy brown hat, and wished he had a sweet, senseless brightly colored alcoholic drink complete with chopped fruit along the side, so that he could look even more out of place. He wanted to give the impression that he really didn’t care, when deep down, some part of him still gave a damn.
He felt like he owed that much to his family. He had grown up here, playing under his mother’s desk, sitting on a miniature replica of his father’s favorite work chair while his father finished up depositions, listening to his grandfather badger staff who mistreated clients. Once upon a time, Salehi had loved this place, and part of him still did.
That was the part that he couldn’t quite let go.
He opened the door only to find Debra Shishani on the other side of it, hand curled as if she were about to knock. Unlike him, the second named partner in this law firm was dressed like a real lawyer. She wore a black tunic that covered matching black pants, and heels that made her even taller than she usually was. Her brown hair flowed around her shoulders, which accented her angular features.
She narrowed her almond-shaped eyes—the most distinguishing thing about her face—and said, “I came to fetch you.”
“I’m coming,” he said, sounding petulant even to his own ears. “Although I don’t know why you want me. I really don’t give a damn about this stuff any more.”
It almost sounded like a lie. Maybe it did sound like a lie. Maybe his ambivalence was evident in his every word.
“You’ll care about this,” she said. “It’s clone law.”
He bowed his head, shaking it, surprised at the tears pricking his eyes. Clone law had been what had gotten Fujita killed. Salehi’s enthusiasm for clone law had led to the entire case, to the fact that a clone of PierLuigi Frémont had been on board that ship when the Earth Alliance had blown it to smithereens.
The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) Page 7
