“Isn’t it? Isn’t that what this is? They’ll never let me stay here now – just by breathing, I’m in violation of every clause in the Eden Laws. I have no rights because I’m not allowed to exist.” He plucked an artificial blade of grass, rolled it into a ball with his forefinger and thumb, and tossed it into the crazy golf hole. “Let’s face it, it’s game over for Ruben Intaglio.”
“I know a bit of something about the Eden Laws,” said Jan. “A friend of mine from the academy wrote a dissertation on the exemption trials. There are all kinds of gray areas when it comes to the GenMod subjects themselves. The geneticists, not so much. They’re the law-breakers. They’re the abominations. But the subjects never asked to be created; you never asked to be made the way you are, any more than someone can be held responsible for their skin color or their IQ. You’re exempted from punishment or reprisal. Illegal GenMod animals aren’t destroyed unless they pose a danger to human life. And GenMod humans, the way I understand it, are protected by the basic human rights in the Core Constitution, with some amendments under Eden.”
Ruben seemed to gaze right through her, in his old inimitable style, as he heaved a sigh. “You forget I’m a career criminal as well as a living, breathing crime. I’ve smuggled protected biological substances off Hesperidia, blackmailed tourists to mule for me, conspired to cover up countless other felonies for the organization, poisoned colleagues, submitted fraudulent IDs and qualifications, lied to everybody I’ve ever met. The constitution is clear on human rights, but so is colonial law when it comes to law-breakers. Any way you look at it, I’m spending the rest of my life locked up somewhere with a pane of glass between me and everyone else.”
“When you put it that way,” said Vaughn, “there’s no denying – you’re toast.”
“Jesus, Vaughn! Triple tact bypass. Sheesh.” Jan’s appalled expression mirrored Kirsten Zeller’s, but Vaughn didn’t blink.
“You’re toast all right,” he reiterated. “Unless you consider a little thing called duress.”
Kirsten Zeller pointed her bandaged hand at him. “Exactly! Everything you’ve just admitted to, every single crime, you were illegally coerced into doing.”
“So tell us what happened,” said Vaughn. “When did it start? How did you get here in the first place?”
“I’ve always been here.” Ruben roved a wistful finger across the tree-lined vista to the east. “In a way. Even in my earliest memories, I was on Hesperidia. Three-dimensional projections on the walls and ceiling of my living space. The surrounding noises to match. Somewhere on a laboratory space station in orbit around a nameless moon in an undisclosed system. I remember a kind woman named Sofia, and a man with magic eyes – the irises had purple spokes that glowed in the dark – vision enhancement implants, but to me they were just magic. He was called Fabrizio. I later found out he was Professor Fabrizio Intaglio, the geneticist who created me. I lived there till I was six-and-a-half. The wall images would move all the time, birds would fly over, animals would wander by. Some used to frighten me, but Sofia and Fabrizio would remind me that I was protected where I was in a special bubble. One day I would get to venture outside that bubble, they said, but that I mustn’t worry when my time came. It was just something everyone did when their time came.
“But I did worry. I wondered where they went whenever they left through the hissing door. What really was outside the bubble? Why did the bubble move its location every night so that I woke up each morning in a totally different place? There was no shortage of stimulation. They brought a grav track in one day, so I could run for hours, even upside down. I had games to play, puzzles to solve, languages to learn: it was mostly on my omnipod, though. Sofia and Fabrizio would give me lessons too. But why did they always wear glass over their faces? I did get to touch their faces, but it wasn’t for long, and they held their breaths whenever they let me. They explained it was because my bubble was special to me, and that I would meet other people from similar bubbles who would be able to mingle freely with me, without masks, when my time came. That made me feel lonely, because the only two people I’d ever known were saying I was different from them, that I would never be like them.”
“That’s child abuse on so many levels,” said Jan. “Was this before the Eden Laws were introduced?”
“I’m pretty sure Eden is what prompted them to announce, in the middle of breakfast, that ‘my time had come’. Maybe it was earlier than they’d planned. I don’t know. All I know is they were extra kind to me that day – I got all my favorite meals, time off from study, and at least one of them was with me at all times – and I had a strong feeling that important things were going to happen to me tomorrow. It took me forever to fall asleep. When I did, it seemed to take forever for the dreams to end.
“I woke up on a deckchair near a ramshackle cabin overgrown with wild plants. I knew I was outside my bubble. Everything was closer, more vivid, had definition – it was all waiting to be touched, and I wanted to, but I was also afraid of what would happen if I did. Then a new man brought me a bowl of cereal and a carton of fruit juice with a straw. He said his name was Jock. It was the first time I’d seen anyone with a beard – his was bushy red, with silver streaks. He had a big gut, and arms like a lumberjack—”
“Wait a minute. Old Jock?” interrupted Jan. “You’re telling me you stayed with Old Jock Galloway, at Foxtrot Outpost?”
“Aye, that I am, lassie.” Ruben’s attempt at a Scottish accent wasn’t half bad. It made her laugh.
“He was well-known for keeping himself to himself,” she said. “Hardly ever showed up at the ranger meets. Used to take off on recces for weeks at a time, studying the coastal animals. I must have only met him about a dozen times in all the years I’ve been here. He was one of the original Hesp pioneers, a bit of a purist. Never got involved with Alien Safari. Hated the idea of tourists setting foot here. But he never had a bad word to say about anyone else, as far as I know. And we had no idea he was fostering a GenMod child.”
“What would you have done if you had known?” he asked.
“I…I guess I’d have…well, I wouldn’t have interfered, let’s put it like that. He had to keep it a secret. There’ve been more than a few sanctimonious by-the-bookers ratting on colleagues out here. I get why he wouldn’t want anyone to know. But it seems a shame…all those years…just the two of you.”
“I don’t regret a minute of it. Not one second. He took me under his wing immediately, right after breakfast, and when he saw what a quick-study I was, he took me out on one of his recces, used it as a crash course in life on the Hesp. Mind-blowing for a boy of six fresh out of his artificial bubble. But once I got over the fact that Sofia and Fabrizio weren’t coming back – Jock sped that along by keeping me occupied a hundred different ways and making sure I was tuckered out at the end of every day – it was really a magical time. My GenMod IQ is well over 200. It’s always craved stimulation. So I learned firsthand from Jock all about campcraft, field survival, Hesp botany, how to pilot a rover, how to assemble a radio, and every other practical thing he knew. And while he was out on his own scientific field trips, he saw to it that I had all the prescribed education courses to work through at Foxtrot. That’s how I got all my qualifications, through distance learning, years ahead of the median age. My scholarship to the Koestler Academy, the Sagan Prize, my doctorship, all real. I had an official sponsor in COVEX called Epsom, whom I later found out was Glyn Tynedale. Exactly when he got involved with Professor Intaglio’s project I don’t know, but he was always a shadow partner in my concealment. He underwrote all my applications, faked countless references and digital documents. I never met him, but I used to include him in my prayers every night. He was a sort of guardian angel, pulling the strings required for me to stay here. Though Jock would change the subject whenever I wanted to know more about my mysterious benefactor…”
“When was the first time you met him?” asked Vaughn.
“In person? Last week.”
“Really?” Jan cut in, kneeling upright. “So between the time Old Jock passed – what was it, seven years ago? Eight?”
“Seven,” he replied, head bowed. “I sent the SOS, then hid until after the rangers had taken his body.”
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
“Like dying. The end of one world, with no idea what the next one would be like.”
“Man, that’s rough,” she said. And after a long, pensive pause, “So between then and the day you arrived for your induction as a ranger – a little over three years ago – you were all alone out there at Foxtrot?”
“Yeah.”
“How?” she asked. “You’d have needed regular supplies. How were you not seen when you went to collect them?”
“They were delivered once a month to another abandoned outpost. Tynedale arranged it through his contact at Miramar Central. It was never just him and Jock; there were others involved, at HQ, at Saint Jacques, and inside COVEX. It’s a well-oiled machine. Little did I know I’d been groomed to be Hesperidia’s primary smuggler. Not by Jock, who never knew what they had planned for me, or at least never let on to me that he knew. But Tynedale played the long game. He probably has GenMod orphans like me operating on a dozen worlds. There’s always been a long waiting list for scientists wanting to become Hesp rangers, though. So he had to wait, even after Jock died, to secure me a position as an official ranger. I had all that time to practice, to learn, to get into shape, to be the best that I could be. I used to listen to the comm chatter, and of course I had remote access to the intranet, so I learned all about you, Jane, and Governor Nabakov, and all the other rangers. I compiled personnel files so detailed you wouldn’t believe, all in preparation for my…graduation.
“A few months before I was due to arrive for my induction, Tynedale hailed me for the first time via vid-link. I’d never spoken live to anyone else since I’d met Jock. I was nervous and tongue-tied. This was my guardian angel, hailing me from the heavens – the mystery benefactor I’d looked up to for most of my life. Except he was a bit of a disappointment. Jock had been full of life. This guy was dull, serious, and rather than setting me at ease, seemed bent on making me feel beholden to him. After all, he’d invested a lot of time and effort into getting me to that point. He said there were certain extra duties I was to perform, duties I had to keep secret from the other rangers at all costs. And if I didn’t do them, or if anyone found out what I was up to, my time on Hesperidia might come to a sudden and abrupt end. As long as I did his bidding, I had the run of the planet. He even sent me a GenMod companion, to bolster my image as someone who belonged here, someone who could compete with Jane and Stopper for the top job – a rival brand, if you like.”
“Well, his motives were for shit, but he gave you the best present imaginable there,” said Jan. “Flavia’s perfect for you.” Stopper lifted his head at the sound of her name, and locked his gaze on the hospital; he seemed to know the young wolf was in there. “She’s already proved herself.”
“She’s all I’ve got left. We’d be lost without each other.”
With his ego out of the equation, Ruben wasn’t the same man Vaughn had disliked so intensely during the expedition. He’d known the boastful bravado had been an act, but he hadn’t known why Ruben had taken that act so far over the top and down the other side into caricature. The answer was that he didn’t know any better. He hadn’t had the social calibration to hone his sense of what was appropriate, so he’d exaggerated any trait that had received validation from his peers: the waxy charm, the alpha hunk appearance, the confidence, the intellectual showboating. It was plain to see, now that he’d sloughed those affectations, that he was still that lonely GenMod boy banished from his bubble and left to figure out the complexities of human interaction he’d been deprived of, apart from one meaningful relationship. He was a sad husk of everything he’d projected himself as.
But he was also, in the profoundest sense, from his birth to this very moment, a victim.
“Did you know what Tynedale was up to that night of the meteor shower?” asked Vaughn. “Did you know he’d corrupted the sat net?”
“No. That could have been catastrophic. I’d never let anything like that happen to Hesperidia. This world is the only mother I’ll ever have.”
“And these tourists you used as mules, how did you select them?”
“I didn’t. I was given a list of names of compromised tourists with every new rotation. My job was to make sure I had at least one of them in my tour group, so I could hand them the contraband and personally see them through the security checks.”
“How did you do that? Ensure you had at least one mule, I mean.”
“Any one of fifty ways, Detective. The administration here is a joke. Everything from changing the itineraries on the mainframe to simply getting the mules to ask for a transfer to my group: trust me, that’s the easy part. The hard part is retrieving the live samples from their natural habitats. As Jane will tell you, some of them are protected by more than just a bad smell.”
Jan glared at him. “Don’t use my name to justify anything you did. I wouldn’t care if you had a gun to your head. You violated the only inviolate rules we have here – for three fucking years—”
“Okay, okay,” Vaughn calmed her down, or tried to – she looked ready to march across and stomp on Ruben’s broken ankle, like Vaughn had done earlier. “There’s no justifying what he did, Jane. Maybe you or I would have done differently in his position.”
“Maybe? Maybe I’d have done differently?” She huffed and hissed to one side.
“Again, it’s called duress. I’m not excusing anything he did, but extraordinary pressure brings extraordinary compromise. We’ve no reference for the dilemma he was given – as existential as they come. So all I’m saying is we should hear him out before we pass sentence.”
“Uh, there’ll be no one passing sentence here,” Kirsten Zeller piped up. “That’s not your job, Detective Vaughn, nor yours, Jane, and certainly not mine.”
“Whose, then?” asked Jan. “Who gets to decide his fate? COVEX? The OC Judiciary? The Supreme Court? Who gets to decide the value of the life-forms he plundered? Who speaks for them, if not someone who knows what the hell she’s talking about?”
“I think we’ve rather strayed off the point here,” said Vaughn.
“No. You’ve unwittingly strayed onto the point, numbnuts.”
“Oh, here we go.” Vaughn flung his arms up in exasperation, which prompted Stopper to spring into playful action, expecting either a wrestle or a chase or even a ball toss from his favorite lawman. “I think…that’s my cue for a timeout.” He got up, and to encourage the dog’s exuberance, performed a wacky Red Indian war dance around him. This got Stopper barking like crazy, and there was thus no turning back. “We’ll pick this up later,” he said to any or all of them, secretly vowing to give the whole affair a wide berth until at least the next morning. He’d put out enough fires for one day, and Jan in this kind of form was liable to explode an already incendiary situation. What he needed right now was a swim to cool him down. The big Boxer knew just the place. His favorite spot in the river. The poor boy had been deprived of it for two whole days, and for a loyal dog who’d come to rely on that loyalty being reciprocated, two days was practically a lifetime.
Chapter Eighteen
No jumping eels chopped up the surface of the Pit Stop, thank God, so Vaughn stripped to his undershorts and went for a dip in the cool, refreshing river. He floated on his back in the still water pockets away from the current, and let the chaos of the last few days dissolve into memory, until only the salient events remained, like the peaks of icebergs jutting above the surface. Those he could navigate in his own good time. Tenax was gone, Tynedale was in custody, and the rock-hoppers were on their way to clean up the mess. He’d actually come here to keep his niece safe, and though she was, Vaughn had neglected his primary mission in favor of distractions, too many distractions
. There was never a shortage of those on Hesperidia, but he’d let Melekhin do his job for him, hadn’t set the rookie a good example in terms of quid pro quo these past few days. And poor Joy had been completely out of the rotation ever since he’d arrived. She would know nothing about today’s attack – potentially a game-changing disaster for the Alien Safari enterprise.
Poor Joy? Ha! She was in the best possible place. She’d been spared a horrible experience. And she was sunning it up with her strapping new lawman boyfriend. No, it was poor everyone here at Miramar, but not poor Joy.
Jan arrived not long after, threw off her sticky attire and jumped in wearing that same two-piece swimsuit he’d spied from a distance after his return from the Star Binder: waterproof sports bra and yoga pants. She wore those for every swim, but he never got tired of seeing her in them. Nor did the flirty frolicking in the river get old. On the surface, underwater, briefly in the rapids, she made him feel like he was the only man anywhere in existence. In turn, he playfully overpowered her, which she loved, and goofed off in ever more imaginative ways. They’d invariably wind up in each other’s arms, dancing on the shoulder of the current, until Stopper got jealous and pawed his way between them, so that Jan could serenade him.
A few minutes later, while mermaid and mer-dog were busy cutting an aqua rug, the eels returned with a vengeance in the Pit Stop. Vaughn made a sharp exit, citing cramp as his latest lame excuse. Jan knew full well he was a wuss when it came to things that slithered, but an Omicron legend could never admit that.
“Fancy a trip back to the Keys?” he asked her. “I need to let them know what’s happened here, and we can plan our next move.”
Apex Page 24
