“If that’s a threat,” Elfrida started. She was shaking.
“Quit picking on the poor girl,” said a voice from the doorway of the cabin.
It sounded like Doug. It was Doug. He leaned against the doorframe, holding a glass of orange juice.
Elfrida looked back at the man in the rocking-chair. He was still Doug. He was in two places at once.
“Uuuhoooh,” she croaked.
Both Dougs laughed. They both had the same charming hee-haw! laugh.
The Doug in the doorway stopped laughing first. “You shouldn’t be let out without a muzzle on you, Doug,” he said.
“Well, you were out of line bringing her here, Doug,” said the other. “You should’ve given her a fresh tank and pointed her on her way.”
“That’d be murder. Then again, I guess you don’t much care about little points of morality like that.”
“You can’t do a hard job without making some hard decisions,” said the Doug on the glider. “That’s why I’m the chief of security, and you dig holes for a living’.”
The other Doug met Elfrida’s gaze. He said gloomily, “Ms. Goto, this is Grumpy Doug, and he is an assassin. His only responsibility is killing people.”
“Why you gotta put it like that, Doug? All melodramatic and shit.” The other Doug leaned back, pushing the glider to and fro with one booted toe. “Get me some orange juice, while you’re standing up. And I bet Ms. Goto would like something, too. Don’t turn down our hospitality, hon. You’re going to be our guest for a while.”
Elfrida’s head swivelled from one man to the other. They helpfully moved to stand side by side. Grumpy Doug stuck his index fingers in his cheeks to give himself dimples.
They both wore identical sweatshirts, jeans, and gecko-grip work boots. Their black hair was styled in the same fringey alpha-male cut. They even had identical scars on their chins. They looked like … no, they were the same man.
“You …” Elfrida’s mouth cottoned up. She tried again. “You’re clones.”
xix.
“I appreciate your composure in the face of the unexpected,” Grumpy Doug said. “You didn’t run screaming. Some would. There’s a lotta prejudice out there.”
The only reason Elfrida hadn’t run screaming was because she knew she wouldn’t get far.
Cloning was illegal in the UN. And now she knew why.
Confronting the same man twice over, she felt physically nauseated, like she was losing her grip on reality.
“Where did you, were you, where did, uh? On Ganymede?”
She’d heard that there was an underground cloning industry on the de-facto independent Jovian moon.
“Heh,” Grumpy Doug said. “Our technology beats Ganymede’s all to shit. We’ve been doin’ it longer.”
She looked from one to the other again. Her mind kept seeking non-existent differences to hang onto. This went way beyond telling identical twins apart. It was upsetting on an existential level.
“Which, which of you did I meet the first time I was here?”
“Neither of them,” came another voice, from the edge of the clearing. A third Doug strode towards the cabin.
Followed by a fourth, fifth, and sixth.
Elfrida uttered a moan.
“Great to see you, Ms. Goto!” said #3. “I’ve been hoping we would have the opportunity for another chat.”
Grumpy Doug, enjoying her shock, said, “Meet Sneezy, Doc, and Sleepy. You’ve already met the president.”
“Call me Happy,” said President Doug. She could tell him because he was wearing a suit and tie. He looked like a retro idol with a cadre of identical, computer-generated backup singers.
“How many of you are there?”
“Seven. Dopey stayed home to handle the media.”
“Got popcorn,” said #5. “Where’s the show?”
They all crowded onto the porch to watch the screen. President Doug was not interested in watching the surveillance-cam feeds from UNVRP HQ. He surfed the news until he found himself doing a piece to camera in the White House.
“This barbaric conflict is absolutely unacceptable,” droned the Doug on the screen. “Wrightstuff, Inc. is extremely concerned as regards the impact on industrial production and exports from Mercury. We have already contributed personnel and resources to the peacekeeping force that is bravely struggling to suppress the violence in UNVRP HQ.”
“Unconvincing,” said one of the Dougs, maybe Sneezy.
“Too many adverbs and intensifiers,” said the one she thought was Grumpy Doug.
“Everyone’s a critic,” President Doug said, grinning at her. “Dopey’s secret superpower is the Press Statement of Excruciating Dullness. He also wields a mean Overused Cliché. Works great to keep the press off our backs.”
“I also wish to express my concern for the safety of Zazoë Heap,” Dopey Doug said, his brow wrinkling. “Everyone here is a huge fan. It is completely unacceptable that—”
“Zazoë?” yelled several Dougs. “What’s happened to her?”
“This is live. He’s reacting to something. Let’s see what.”
News items blizzarded past until the search engine found a relevant feed. Zazoë Heap’s lovely form lay crumpled inside what appeared to be a giant, translucent orange beach ball. Clues at the edges of the frame suggested a VIP suite in Hotel Mercury.
“Just stay calm, Zaz,” said Cydney’s voice. “Remain where you are, and help will come soon. Do you have any words for your fans, who are all worried about you, I’m sure?”
“It hurts,” moaned Zazoë Heap.
“I know. I know. But you have to be strong, Zaz. Think about how much it would suck to die in a dump like this. Anyway, you won’t die. You got into your Personal Survival Capsule as soon as possible. That was a survivor move.”
“The air. Was all burney. I breathed it.”
“Crap,” said President Doug. He swiped Zazoë Heap away and turned to (probably) Grumpy Doug. “The knockout gas. All burney, that doesn’t sound right. Find out how much those meatheads used.”
“On it.” Grumpy Doug went into the cabin.
Squashed between two Dougs on the glider, Elfrida gave way to tears. Hearing Cydney’s voice had undermined her façade of defiance. Now the magnitude of the catastrophe overwhelmed her. She wept, hands over her face, while the Dougs moved around her and muttered at each other in acronyms and abbreviations.
After a while, boots clattered down the steps. Peeling her fingers away from her eyes, she saw that they were all gone except for President Doug. She smelled coffee.
Seated in the wicker chair, President Doug poured an aromatic black stream into a mug that said The Joke’s Over, Now Bring Out The Real President. He pushed it along the porch rail to her. “It helps to cry,” he said. “Sometimes, you gotta.”
“Did you find out what happened with the knockout gas?”
“Unclear. They probably used too much. Our story will be that it was stored wrong. And maybe also contaminated by microbes from that crazy gengineering operation they run over there.”
Elfrida laughed. “Crazy,” she said. “Gengineering. Pot, meet kettle. Laugh.” Then she drank some coffee. It was just as good as the java at the Hobbit Hole, and in fact probably arrived on Mercury via the same route.
President Doug nodded. “You are absolutely correct, Ms. Goto. Call it cloning, gengineering, hybridization, or selective breeding, it’s all the same thing, on the same spectrum. We’ve been splicing and dicing our natural inheritance since we were proto-agriculturalists on the Anatolian plains.” He gestured at the trees around the cabin. “Here’s an example. When you manufacture soil from regolith, you introduce moisture, and that releases high levels of perchlorates. Also known as salts. So all these useless-lookin’ trees are actually gengineered creosote bushes, sucking the salts up. Creosote is all we grew here for the first twenty years. Had goats to browse it. Then you level up to cows, but you still gotta keep inputting nitrogen into the system. That’s
where the vegetation plays a double role: it produces volatile organic nitrogen compounds when it decays.”
Obviously, President Doug would rather talk about paraterraforming than the tragedy taking place a few kilometers away.
“Yeah, you’ve got a regular little paradise here,” Elfrida said. “Can I go home now?”
“Home?”
An image of her parents’ apartment in Rome popped into her mind. She pushed it away. “Back to UNVRP HQ. People are dying. I have to do something.”
He looked her up and down, without overt judgmentalism. “I think that the peacekeepers have the situation under control.”
“What can you tell me about the vault? My—Cydney said hundreds of people were down there. Are they going to be safe?”
“It’s a vault. My great-grandfather schlepped a lot of artifacts out here from Earth. Lincoln’s bed, George Washington’s writing desk, a Mac Air, a Chevy, artworks from MOMA and the Smithsonian, that kind of thing. Hardcopy books. And also a huge IP archive. That’s the only thing we make use of. The physical stuff just sits down there. But the vault is climate-controlled, with an independent air circulation system. So I guess those down there are as safe as anyone.”
President Doug downed the last of his coffee and stood up.
“Avail yourself of the facilities, Ms. Goto. There’s food in the fridge, a guest bedroom. Try not to watch too much screen, it’ll only make you feel worse. Get some sleep if you can.”
He jumped lightly down the porch steps.
“You can’t make me stay here!” Elfrida bellowed after him.
His response was to twirl one hand as he disappeared down the path. The undergrowth shook. Unseen security goons changing their positions.
Elfrida sank back onto the glider. She understood that she was a prisoner.
★
Trending stories that morning:
Riots on Mercury ‘Under Control,’ Says UNVRP
Zazoë Heap Critically Injured in Mercury Shootout
Ringleaders Claim They Acted in Response to Genetic Discrimination
Zazoë Heap Fighting For Life
24 Hours Before Election, Violence Overshadows Campaign
Zazoë Heap Dies of Her Wounds, Was Shot During Mercury Riots
Death Toll From Mercury Riots Reaches 117
Zazoë Fans Stage Grief-Fests on Earth, Luna, Ganymede, Titan, Ceres, Eros
Candidates for UNVRP Directorship Share Their Memories of Zazoë
Candidate Mork Rapp Calls for Election to be Postponed in Honor of Zazoë
★
“He’s just saying that because he’s polling at five percent. Stay cool, Angie. They’re not going to postpone the election. It would look like capitulating to violence.”
“You try staying cool when you’ve spent the night hiding inside the Apollo space capsule, wondering if every breath would be your last. I am not overreacting, Derek. It was a fucking nightmare. Six hundred people squeezed into an underground storage unit, with no food, no water, no toilets …”
“No kidding? They’ve got the Apollo space capsule hidden away down there? Which one?”
“All I can tell you is it had a working pressure seal, which is why I put up with it for twelve hours. If they had found a way to pipe the knockout gas into the vault, I’d still have been OK for a while.”
“That’s my girl. Always plan for the worst but hope for the—”
“Says the guy who didn’t see this coming. Doggone it! Why didn’t you warn me it was going to kick off early?”
“Whoa. This is not on me. Dr. Seth knew how important it was to wait until after the election. He flagrantly disobeyed orders. Or else his people did. He believed they were like children, looking to him for guidance. I did suspect he was a wee bit out of touch with reality.”
“He’s dead, you know.”
“Yeah. Poor old guy.”
“Heart attack. The old-fashioned way to go.”
“He was a great scientist in his day. Have you seen the obits?”
“No; it’s all Zazoë, all the time. Makes a change from Sexbotgate.”
(Pause.)
“I wasn’t going to mention this, but Angie? Leaking that vid to the internet? Was an asshole move.”
“Excuse me? All I did was fix what you broke. If you—”
“If you’d given me time, I would have fixed it myself. Now that vid is out there, which I do not appreciate.”
“Good thing you wore a mask.”
“So? It’s obviously my bedroom. You can see the Leonardo da Vinci at 3:38. People are commenting on it. I’ve had to get rid of the picture, and I’ll probably end up redoing the wall treatments.”
“Stay cool, Derek. Everyone already knows you’re a freak.”
“Exasperated snort. You drive me crazy, you know that?”
“‘In a good way.’ There, I fixed it for you.”
“We need to stay focused.”
“That’s what Cydney keeps telling me. Cydney Blaisze, my new sex toy, if you can grok it.”
“Wait a minute, Cydney Blaisze? Wasn’t she with that Goto chick?”
“Yes. It’s complicated. But speaking of Goto, can you find out what’s happened to her? Her name isn’t on the casualty lists.”
“Is she a threat?”
“She might be. Anyway, I’d feel better if I knew where she was.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Your job right now is to kiss babies and emote about Zazoë’s tragic genius.”
“Sigh. I do appreciate the need to stay positive, but have you seen the latest polls? I’m back in single digits. That bitch Patel has a solid lead, with eighteen hours to go. I dunno, Derek … I’m getting the sense that it’s all over bar the shouting.”
“This, I am not hearing.”
“And when you think about the fact that all this is just damage control, picking up the pieces from Charlie’s death …”
“Let’s not go there. What happened, happened. What will happen, will happen.”
“Easy to say when you’re a hundred million miles away.”
“All I’m saying is that we don’t have time for counterfactuals. I know, I know it sucks that Charlie’s dead. But right now, you have to get out there and connect with the voters.”
“It’s the NEO colonists that are going to swing this thing. And I can’t connect with them, Derek. Tried, failed. I think they’re a bunch of space pests, and as much as I smile and upvote their baby pictures, they can tell I despise them.”
“Angie, Angie. You of all people should know it doesn’t have to be real. It just has to look good.”
“What would really help is if someone whacked the Patel bitch.”
“I didn’t hear that. A hundred and seventeen dead is enough. Anyway, I don’t have any assets on 13882 Calcott.”
“Great.”
“Sigh. The truth is, things have been kind of crazy here. So I may not have been paying attention to the extent that would be ideal. But I’ve got this end under control now. And I promise you, when the day after election day dawns, you will be the new director of UNVRP.”
“Strange; when you say those words I feel a sense of dread.”
“You’re still torn up about Charlie, aren’t you?”
“I loved him, Derek. Believe me or not, I don’t care. I’ve loved him ever since I was nineteen.”
“I believe you. He was a great guy.”
(Sound of sobbing.)
“Angie? Angie! C’mon. Big girls don’t cry. You’ve got a new sex toy, so play with her. Take your mind off it. And then go do a couple of birthday parties and a ship christening or two.”
“While you, what? Disport yourself with the maidbot?”
“Actually, I’m into gardening bots these days. But no, I have stuff to do. It’s kind of urgent, so … Ping me later, OK? And don’t forget to use quantum encryption protocols and DNR protection.”
xx.
Elfrida slept through the morning.
When
she woke up, afternoon light poured through the windows of the cabin. She couldn’t believe she’d slept that long. She stumbled to the bathroom. She was still constipated. After straining for a while, she gave up. She splashed her face with water from the faucet.
A faucet! Such an ordinary thing. Such a luxury, in a hollowed-out mountain at Mercury’s north pole. People went to such lengths to pretend they were still at home.
The mirror showed her a comically hideous vision. In addition to her swollen nose, she now had a purple lump on her forehead from her collision with the roof of the water mine. Her eyes were massively bloodshot.
She followed the chatter of talking heads into the kitchen. Grumpy Doug was watching a tablet propped on its self-stand, eating Krispy Komets cereal from the box.
Elfrida didn’t want to take the Dougs’ food, but she was ravenous. She found waffles, cream, and fresh blueberries in the fridge. As she microwaved, poured, and sprinkled, she watched the news over Grumpy Doug’s shoulder.
It was all over. The ‘rioters’ (after a brief flirtation with ‘rebels,’ the media had settled on ‘rioters’) were in custody. The solar system resounded with calls for them to pay for the murder of Zazoë Heap.
Cydney appeared on a competitor’s feed, interviewed as a stand-in for Angelica Lin, who was busy kissing babies (via telepresence) on Near Earth Objects.
“We strongly believe that this tragedy in no way reflects the values of Inferior Space,” Cydney said. “And I know my dear friend Zazoë Heap would agree. Vote for Angelica Lin, and get justice.”
“Good to see you’re not too traumatized, Cyds,” Elfrida mumbled.
She finished her waffles and wandered into the cabin’s living-room. Wooden furniture. Throw cushions with vid stars’ faces printed on them. It reminded her of a cheap vacation chalet in the Sudtirol.
“Can I go outside?” she yelled. “Or will you shoot me?”
“No. Yes,” Grumpy Doug yelled back. “And for your information, there are cameras everywhere.”
“Like I didn’t guess that.”
She leaned her forehead against the window. Her unicorn cavorted across the clearing. Blinking back tears, she’d inadvertently blinked up the knowledge guide.
The Mercury Rebellion: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Solarian War Saga Book 3) Page 16
