Death of a Clone

by Alex Thomson

  “So, just so I’ve got this straight: we’re sharing an asteroid with three killers-slash-criminals, and they’re the ones in charge, holding the tasers?”

  “That’s about the sum of it.”

  “Earth! I thought it must be an Ay or a Jay who killed my sister. But it’s got to be one of the Overseers, hasn’t it? After all they’ve done, they’re not going to have scruples about killing an Ell.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Why did you never tell us, Brenda?”

  “Why do you think the Overseers keep it quiet? There would be chaos if everyone found out. Anarchy! The Overseers would lose all their authority. The Bees are, always have been, a pragmatic Family. We’ve retained the information—collectively remembered it—but the ultimate goal is to finish our term, and get to Earth. Anarchy won’t achieve that—can you imagine if the Ays found out, or worse, the Jays?”

  “So why tell me now?”

  “The photographs,” Brenda says. “He’s clearly far more of a scumbag than we thought. If he did kill Lily, you should know the truth. And don’t forget the extra year. These bastards have lied to us and lied to us, and I’m sick and tired of it.”

  WELL, WELL, WELL. Just like that, Brenda has solved half a dozen minor mysteries for me. Like, the reason why the Overseers don’t seem to have much knowledge or experience of what we’re doing here. Certainly it seemed odd that they were the best-qualified men that Earth could find to run a mining colony in the Asteroid Belt. Also, the reason why they are so grudging about their presence here. As for Mr Lee… I don’t really want to think about him right now. Maybe he was a criminal back on Earth—a murderer, even. Should that affect what I think of him now, after all the time we’ve spent together?

  I talk with Brenda for a while longer, but there’s not much left to say.

  “What now?” I ask, and she shrugs.

  “Whatever you do, you can’t tell the Ays or Jays. This whole place is on a knife-edge as it is. The situation needs to be handled with… subtlety.”

  AS I MAKE my way down the spine, the three names run through my head like a drumbeat.

  Reynolds. Ortiz. Lee. Reynolds. Ortiz. Lee.

  It has to be one of them. Jeremy was right—the Families have had their differences, but surely none of the Ays, Bees or Jays would kill a sister. The three Overseers, however, who I now know to be hardened criminals—it doesn’t stretch the imagination to think they’d kill Lily, if they felt threatened by her. Brenda didn’t seem to think any of her sisters had told Lily what she told me, but still… if she discovered the truth some other way, and was planning to tell everyone their secret, of course they’d silence her.

  And Mr Reynolds has to be the chief suspect—the one whose photos had been stolen; a weak man, most likely to panic and lash out; and let’s not forget, the man seen wandering around the tunnels, when he should have been with the Bees.

  First of all, I have to confront Mr Lee. I can’t keep quiet, like the Bees have managed. I have to know what he did, how he ended up here, or I’ll go crazy thinking about it. If I’m to ever trust him again, I need the truth. So I suit up, commandeer Cabbage (highly irregular, but it’s not needed for three hours, according to the Rota) and drive out to the depots. I drive slowly and check the brakes a dozen times. Stupid, of course—this trip wasn’t scheduled on the Rota, and the killer would hardly try the same method again—but I can’t really stop myself. Night has fallen. I hum to myself; I don’t want silence right now. I rumble along the rough track, carved out by thousands of trips back and forth from the depot. Probably 95% of Hell has never been touched by our machines. And after we’ve bled it dry, for all we can get, it never will. We’re just a blip in the eternity Mizushima-00109 has seen, circling the sun in its desultory orbit. Funny when you think of it like that.

  When I get to the ore depot, Banana is parked near the airlock doors, at a perfect right angle. I enter the airlock, then go into the depot. Two Ays should be here too, and I can see one, industriously dragging crates of ore to the far side. Mr Lee is fifty feet away, on his knees as he unpacks a crate. Our eyes meet, and I patch him in.

  “Leila? What are you doing here?”

  “I know,” I say. “I know what you really are. You’re a criminal, aren’t you? They gave you a choice of Hell or the chop, and you chose Hell.”

  He stands up. “Who told you this?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just give me the truth. One: what did you do? And two: why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Leila…”

  “This is your one chance to tell me. Now, or you’ll regret it.”

  “The second answer is obvious,” he says, talking quickly and softly—no doubt listening for the tell-tale click if one of the Ays noticed us talking and patched in. “We couldn’t possibly function as a community if you knew our real background. We’d have no authority. You must realise that, Leila—you’re a clever girl.”

  “All this time, though?”

  “We never lied. We just… omitted our true history. It was the only way to make these colonies work, you must see that?”

  “Okay. Go on. What did you do?”

  The channel crackles with what could be a sigh or an exclamation. “They called me a traitor. A spy. I didn’t agree with what my government was doing. They were selling weapons to some really nasty people, responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. I stole a load of files, leaked them to the media, hoping if they got out in the public domain, they would stop it.”

  “And did they?”

  “God, no. They hushed it up. I got caught. Spent four years in prison while they interrogated me and put me on trial. I used to go weekswithout any human contact. Four years in a tiny cell, allowed out for exercise one hour a day. Anyway… in the end, they gave me the death penalty. Then gave me this choice. They like to send the political prisoners out to the colonies. Can you imagine this place run by four Mr Reynoldses? God knows what would happen. Fedorchuk was a politico too, I think…” He trails off. There’s a long, cavernous silence on the channel.

  “Did Lil know all this?” I ask him. “Tell me honestly.”

  “If she did know, she didn’t tell me,” he says. “I swear, on my sons’ lives.”

  I’m walking away now—an Ay has caught sight of me, and is watching us.

  “Leila,” Mr Lee says, and I turn my channel off. Out the depot, straight into Cabbage, and then a wild dash through the darkness to the base. I arrive back, and hit the steering wheel with the heel of my palm three, four, five times. I don’t know what I was expecting. He’s still the same man I knew. But our relationship is diminished, somehow.

  I add him to my long list of people I can’t completely trust, which now stands at an impressive 100% of the residents of the asteroid. I don’t want Mr Ortiz to find me loitering in Cabbage, so I leave the vehicle and de-suit in the airlock. Everything’s moving too fast now, and I find myself in my cabin without being able to remember how I got here. I have a splitting headache. I stew for a while, pacing from one end of the cabin to the other, turning on my heels every five paces. My mind is buzzing; I’ve got to do something. I make a trip to the Community cabin, passing Andrew in the spine.

  I’ve looked at all the evidence now, I’ve uncovered the lies. I feel like I finally know: I’ve turned the kaleidoscope, and I can see who it was, their hands round Lily’s helmet. I enter the cabin.

  Inside, two Bees are eating a meal—Becci and Bess. I sidle up to them. “Have you spoken to Brenda?” I say.

  They blink and frown. “Yes,” Becci says, “she told us about the photographs.”

  “And now you know about the Overseers,” says Bess. “A nasty shock for you, I suppose. But not that surprising when you think about it.”

  I take a deep breath. This is my Poirot-in-the-library moment. It’s only to two Bees, not the whole asteroid, the murderer’s not here to hear my accusation, and I’m not doing Poirot’s shtick of accusing and acquitting each suspect in turn�
��but it’s still my Poirot moment.

  “Mr Reynolds is the killer,” I say to them. “He had motive, he had opportunity. Lily saw the photographs, and somehow learned the truth about the Overseers’ pasts. Reynolds trashed the depot, looking for the missing photo, but couldn’t find it. He must have been terrified of the truth getting out, of how the Ays and Jays would react—and Lily threatened to expose him. So he arranged to meet her to explain, out at East 5. He goes missing for nearly an hour, with Andrew seeing him down by the tunnels, walking away from East 3. He meets Lily, kills her, returns to East 3, and—”

  “And Banana?” says Becci softly. “What happens to the jeep that Lily drove to East 5?”

  I falter. I hadn’t thought of that. If I’d been able to keep my diorama up in my cabin, if the Jays didn’t need their precious chess pieces, I would have spotted this.

  “Huh,” I say. “I guess someone might have given Lily a lift, then returned to base?”

  The Bees adopt a politely attentive expression, but I’m aware it’s a weak suggestion. Surely anyone giving Lily a lift would have come forward and said something by now. And now I think of it—sabotaging a jeep, it’s not Reynolds’ style, is it? If he wanted to silence me, he would have come blundering into my cabin and done it face-to-face.

  At that point two Jays come through. The Rota suggests it’s Judas and Joseph. Aaron follows them in, three paces behind. They have all just finished a shift, and look tired. They get drinks, collapse on seats.

  “All right, girls?” Judas says.

  “Oh, yes,” Becci says. “Just been talking about the murder. Leila thinks Mr Reynolds is the killer.”

  Aaron glances up, as if noticing me for the first time. The Jays look at me with lop-sided grins.

  “Good for you, Lei,” Judas says, which I hate: only Lil can call me Lei. “Reckon you could be right.”

  Aaron stares at me thoughtfully, and rubs his chin with meaty hands. “How sure are you?” he asks.

  “Well—” I begin, but Bess interjects.

  “The thing is—it can’t be Reynolds.” And she explains about Banana to the others.

  And then she surprises me.

  “And there’s a second reason it can’t be him. I was there when he disappeared for an hour, around the time Lily was killed. It was Brenda and me there, up on the ridge. When he came back, he was pale. Badly rattled about something. And for a few cycles after that, you could tell something was wrong. He was too quiet.”

  Becci takes up the story. “So anyway, a few hours ago I was with him in his cabin. He was doped up on the pills—buzzing and fidgeting the whole time. And then he started getting really upset, and told me he’d seen Lily die, he saw who did it. I tried to get him to tell me more, but he wouldn’t. He was badly scared, you could tell. I’ve never seen him scared before.”

  I stare at her. “He saw it? He saw who killed Lily?”

  She nods. “That’s what he said.”

  “Reynolds doesn’t scare easily,” says Joseph. “He’s a fool, but no coward.”

  “I’ll give him bloody scared, he should’ve told me,” I say. “Where is he now?”

  “He’s sleeping in his cabin,” Becci says.

  “Well, let’s go and wake him up!”

  Bess puts a hand on my arm. “Leila, you’re not going to force it out of him. If he doesn’t want to tell you, he won’t tell you. If we’re going to find out what he saw, it will need finesse.”

  I can see her point, and don’t argue it. If there’s a guaranteed way of making Mr Reynolds clam up, it’s for me to go storming into his cabin, demanding answers. There’s a strained silence, broken only by Aaron in the rumbling voice of the Ays. “But I don’t understand… what would Mr Reynolds be scared of?”

  I hear my own voice reply. “We are one hundred per cent sure that we’re alone on this asteroid, aren’t we? Like, there’s no way something else could be here with us?”

  I must be thinking of Christie’s classic, And Then There Were None, Philip Lombard and William Blore scouring the island, convinced a killer must be hiding out there. Bess gives a little half-giggle and the two Jays give me a funny look, like they’re not sure if I’m serious or not.

  Mr Reynolds. Overseer. Serial rapist. Prime suspect. And now, if the Bees are right, my best chance of finding out who really killed my sister.

  13

  THE EYES HAVE IT

  I FOLLOW AARON up the spine, ten paces behind. In all the kerfuffle, I nearly forgot about Ashton, who should now be in his cabin, awake. Reynolds may be my chief line of enquiry, but I still want to get to the bottom of the Ays.

  Aaron turns in surprise at the door when he realises I’m following him, and I give him my sweetest smile. He’s holding the door, and I slip under his arm, to where the two other Ays are. Ashton, half-dressed, rubbing his jaw, stretching; Andy, cheeks puffed, doing push-ups. He stops and climbs slowly to his feet.

  “Can we help you?” Aaron says.

  Subtlety may be the solution to dealing with the Overseers, but it would be wasted on the Ays. “I’m conducting an experiment,” I say. “Can you help me out?”

  “What kind of experiment?”

  “I want the three of you to line up in a row, and I want to see if you really are identical.”

  Andy glances at Aaron. “What do you mean? You know we’re identical.”

  “Ah, but are you sure? You were identical when you first came to Hell, certainly—but after two and a half orbits of backbreaking work? How identical are you now?”

  “Sounds weird to me.”

  “I used to notice differences between Lily and me. At first glance you’re the same, but how many little changes do you think have happened to your bodies all this time?”

  Ashton shrugs. “Seems like we’ll get no peace unless we go along with it. You know how stubborn Ells are once they get something in their heads.”

  “That’s the spirit, Ashton. Vests off, please, gents, I need to see those torsos of yours. And Aaron, can you take off your cap, so there’s nothing distracting?”

  The three Ays shuffle and line up by one of the cots. Aaron is closest to the door, then Ashton in the middle, then Andy. Though they won’t admit it, they’re clearly enjoying showing off, comparing bodies. I stand five feet away, hands clasped behind my back, studying the trio. There’s a lot of sniggering and muttering, but I ignore it. I quite like this feeling of power, directing the three of them around.

  There are cuts and bruises on their arms and chests, but I ignore them and try and focus on the bodies themselves. Up to the faces, the cut of the jaw, the position of the eyes, the ears, the nose. What did you see, Lily?

  “Turn around,” I say. “Three-sixty degrees.”

  They rotate slowly, jostling one another, Andy trying to push Ashton off balance. Ashton and Aaron look naked without their props—their glasses and cap—like I’ve never really seen them before. Their backs are the same, just like their fronts. I stop focussing and zoom out, taking in all three faces at the same time.

  Aaron is starting to get restless. “Come on, Lily,” he says.

  “One minute,” I say, and Ashton rolls his eyes, and in that one instant I see it.

  It’s the eyes.

  Ashton’s eyes are different, undeniably different to his brothers’. Shod of his glasses, standing side by side with his two brothers, you can see it. Aaron and Andy’s eyes are smooth ovals, but Ashton’s taper away like a teardrop. The eye sockets are shaped slightly differently too—I can’t put my finger on how, but I’m right, this is a different pair of eyes. And it doesn’t matter how long you live, or what kind of physical labour you do—your eyes don’t change, they don’t get warped by your environment.

  Which means… which means Ashton is not a brother to the other Ays. Lily must have spotted this, when he took his glasses off for a shift.

  I realise Aaron has wandered off to his cot, and Andy and Ashton are putting their vests back on.

  “The
eyes,” I say to them. “Ashton’s eyes are different.”

  “What?” Ashton says.

  “You’re different to the other two,” I tell him. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

  “You really are pushing your luck,” he says.

  “Stand next to Andy—then Aaron can see. Aaron?”

  “I’m finished playing games,” Ashton says.

  But Aaron has turned back, and is giving him a funny look. “No, let’s see what she’s talking about.”

  Ashton protests, but Andy sidles up to him, and he stands, sullen, while Aaron stares at them.

  After a while, he grunts, and swaps places with Andy.

  “Have you quite finished?” Ashton asks.

  “Well?” I ask Aaron and Andy. “Do you see?”

  Andy glances at Aaron. “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not immediately obvious.”

  “Come on,” I say. “It is.”

  He wrinkles his nose, and his moustache moves up with it. “Do you know how the whole process works? To make us, I mean? Do you know for sure if there are or aren’t small differences when batches of brothers are pulled out? ’Cause I certainly don’t.”

  There’s an ugly silence, as if someone just farted. Talking about the vats and the creation process is considered bad taste.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I say. “You know it doesn’t. How can your eyes be different? I bet you Andrew and Alistair have eyes the same as you two. It’s just him!”

  Ashton stares daggers at me, and is about to speak, but Andy cuts in. “Leila, suppose you’re right, and he is… different, I’m not sure what your point is. We’re still all Ays, pulling together on the asteroid. If you were right, it would make no difference to me. Aaron, would it make any difference to you?”