A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

As if anything could be more disturbing than Frémont, who loved torture in big and small ways, who liked to experiment with various forms of murder, and who often used his charisma to charm people into doing exactly what he wanted—and then killed them as a reward.

  By the second night, Zhu didn’t sleep much.

  By the time the space yacht arrived at the habitat near EAP 77743, he wasn’t sure what his mission was any longer. He had no idea what he hoped to do when he saw the prisoner who had requested a lawyer.

  Zhu promised himself that if he were too uncomfortable, he would just walk away.

  After all, he wouldn’t take on a client until all the documentation got filled out. And he would make sure the prisoner who had requested him knew that—and knew it when Zhu gave him the documentation.

  If Zhu ever did give him the documentation.

  Zhu reminded himself—repeatedly, it seemed—that he wasn’t obligated to the client until Zhu decided to take the case. He’d never really acted on that before, but he planned to act on it this time.

  He had to.

  It was the only smart thing to do.

  TWENTY-SIX

  IT COULDN’T BE that easy, could it? TwoZero couldn’t have the solutions to Anniversary Day.

  Could he?

  Gomez tried not to look pleased. She needed to remain calm.

  TwoZero hadn’t moved. He was still assessing her. His damaged hands rested on the tabletop, only a few meters from her. It looked like she could reach out and touch him—not that she wanted to do so—but she knew touching him would be impossible. The barrier between them would have captured her fingers.

  “How would you help me find out what your training was for?” she asked. “The people who conducted it are dead. Thirds told me that no one knew what you were being trained for. Was he wrong?”

  TwoZero looked down, and she felt a stab of disappointment. So he didn’t know anything. He sighed.

  “No one’s contacted me,” he said. “No one would want to contact me.”

  She thought he was going to hold up that ruined hand again, but he didn’t.

  “I can only tell you what I already know. What I remember. I think it might be enough.” He looked up at her. His eyes seemed clear. She didn’t believe he was lying, but then, she had thought Thirds was a different boy than he had been. This man had lived fifteen years in one of the worst prisons in the Alliance System. Surely, he had learned how to dissemble.

  “I’ll be the judge of whether what you remember is enough or not,” she said.

  “Of course you will.” That snide tone had returned. “What do I get if I help you?”

  She almost shrugged. Then she realized he probably wouldn’t talk to her any longer if she said she could do nothing for him.

  “I can petition for you to go to a different prison,” she said. “As your arresting officer, I will have some sway.”

  “What would that be? Medium security? Minimum security? A clone prison? Or would I get to mingle with real people?” His mouth had twisted even more, as if the words were hard for him to say.

  “You know I am not the person who determines that,” she said.

  He frowned at her. She could see him debate what he wanted to do. He was weighing his options.

  “You aren’t the only one with this information,” she said before he could speak. “The only reason I didn’t go to the other clone who was injured or go see Thirds is because you were closer. That’s all. I didn’t come see you because I thought you would be more forthcoming.”

  “And if I’m not forthcoming, then you’ll go to them,” he said. “I get it. I also get that I shouldn’t ask for much because you’ll go to them if I do, and I get that I should be grateful for anything you give me.”

  He bowed his head, and braced his hands on the edge of the table.

  “Thank you so much for conferring this great honor on me,” he said. “And for telling me how all the failures died. It’ll give me something to consider, as I mull your offer.”

  She welcomed his belligerence. It made her feel less sympathetic to him.

  “So,” she said as he stood. “This is all about what you’re familiar with. You’re comfortable. You really don’t want to leave.”

  He froze, half standing and half sitting. Apparently, she had surprised him again. “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s the net effect,” she said. “I don’t like it here, so I’m not coming back to see a recalcitrant prisoner. If I leave, the offer leaves with me.”

  “It’s not much of an offer,” he said, but he still hadn’t moved.

  “You don’t have a lot to trade in return,” she said. “Do you even know who your clone parent is?”

  “I do now.” He sat back down, although she got the sense he didn’t want to. His limbs were shaking just a little, and she wondered if they would have been able to hold him up much longer. “Apparently, I was cloned from PierLuigi Frémont. If I had network access, I would have looked him up, but the media tells me that this Frémont killed a lot of people. They call him one of the most famous mass murderers of all time and, apparently, he killed people who were his…followers? Which means he led some kind of cult. Which means he had some kind of charisma or he knew how to manipulate something. Can you tell me more than that?”

  “Only if it pertains to your past,” she said.

  He slapped his good hand on the table’s surface. Her side of the table didn’t even vibrate.

  “How would I know what pertains and what doesn’t?” he asked. “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “Tell me what you do know,” she said. “Tell me what you learned. Tell me about your training. Tell me who trained you, and what the procedures were. I’ll tell you if that has anything to do with Frémont.”

  “No, you won’t,” he said, and even though it sounded like he was striving for bitterness, he couldn’t quite manage it. He clearly did not want this opportunity to pass him by.

  “You’re right,” she said, “I probably won’t.”

  He sighed. “You can’t guarantee that I will leave this place. You might not tell me about Frémont. What can you do for me really, Marshal?”

  She smiled at him, happy that he had revealed this frustration, happy that he was similar to other criminals, despite his outward appearance.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked. “It’s pretty simple if you think about it.”

  His lopsided gaze met hers. He turned his head slightly, so that he could train his undamaged eye on her.

  “I can distract you from this hell they have you in,” she said. “For a few hours or a few days or maybe even a week. And that has to be worth something, doesn’t it?”

  He bowed his head. This time the movement didn’t come from anger or reluctance. She could actually feel his sense of defeat. Underneath that bravado, this man was truly broken.

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “Sadly enough, that’s worth a lot.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ZHU HAD BEEN to dozens of prisons in his career, but he’d never had an arrival like this one. Before he even left the habitat base, which was uncommonly small for a base that serviced friends, family, and staff of a medium-security prison, he had to submit to a variety of tests.

  First, he had to provide all of his identification, including (surprisingly) access to his birth certificate. He hadn’t needed that since he passed the Earth Alliance bar. He still had to provide all of his legal certifications, and then submit to several DNA tests.

  Those tests took several hours, not because the tests themselves were time-consuming, but because the habitat base had to send away for his personal DNA profile. The administrator yelled at him for failing to prepare for this contingency.

  Zhu apologized, knowing better than to justify his so-called failure. But he wanted to say that in all his years as a practicing defense attorney, he had never before had to prove that he was himself so that he could go into a prison.

  He found it bizarre
, and he’d mentioned that to one of the other diners at the habitat’s main cafeteria. That diner, part of the prison’s administrative staff, had laughed at Zhu.

  You didn’t know this was a clone facility? The diner asked. This is standard. You’d be surprised how many fake lawyers we get in places like this.

  Finally, his clearance had come through. He boarded the VIP shuttle—made possible thanks to S3’s connections—and headed to the prison proper.

  Like all Alliance prisons in this sector, it had the same design he’d seen dozens of times. A large starbase with layers and warrens and all sorts of security measures, from decontamination chambers to isolated areas. It also had six different recreation areas for the prisoners that were designed to look like someplace else—a planetside garden, a sports arena, whatever the guards decided to program. It also had smaller recreational areas, and an excellent library that was not networked anywhere outside of the base itself.

  What surprised him was that the prison was divided in half. One side was for offenders. The other was for lifers.

  He was heading to the “lifer” section, which he only discovered when he put in the saved links he had received when he responded to the request for an attorney.

  To get into the “lifer” section, he had to have all of his links except his emergency link shut down. Then his hands were sealed in an Alliance-approved wrap, to prevent easy transport of small chips and other materials out of the prison itself. He’d suffered through that part of the procedure before.

  What he hadn’t experienced before was a manual check of his links to make sure they were actually off. When that was over, he asked the guard who conducted the check who the lifer section housed.

  The guard, a heavy-set older man, had looked at Zhu like he was crazy. “Illegals,” he said.

  Zhu hadn’t understood. “As opposed to what?” he asked. They were all criminals. They had all done something illegal.

  “Illegals, as opposed to criminals,” the guard said. “The criminals done something bad. The illegals are bad.”

  The human side of the Alliance rejected that argument in the law. In fact, Zhu himself had prepared briefs for the Multicultural Tribunal that stated no non-human culture could consider a human bad per se, no matter what the non-human law required. The punishments would follow non-human law, but only humans got to define humans. And, by definition, humans were not born bad.

  Then Zhu’s breath caught as he realized what he’d been thinking. Clones were not human under the law.

  “Clones,” he breathed, “can be considered bad? Not defective? Bad by definition?”

  “Yep,” the guard said. “And you’re about meet one. Feel like changing your mind now?”

  “No,” Zhu said. Oddly, he felt more resolved. The deeper he got into this side of the Alliance legal code, the less he liked it. And the more intrigued he became.

  No wonder Salehi believed there was a future in clone law. Zhu was beginning to see it.

  It would be hard to fight for, though, because the clients weren’t human, but they weren’t alien either. They were property. Or they were illegal. They weren’t actual beings under the law.

  At least as far as he could tell.

  “Send me to him,” Zhu said. “I want to meet my client.”

  “Good luck,” the guard said. “He’s not just bad, that one. He’s evil.”

  Zhu frowned at the guard. “By whose definition?”

  “The entire Alliance,” the guard said.

  “The Alliance has ruled this clone is evil?”

  “Hell, no,” the guard said. “It just showed what that creature’s DNA is capable of. Evil, pure and simple. You should leave now, attorney. That clone don’t need you.”

  Zhu straightened his spine. “It seems to me that that clone needs me now more than he ever has.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  GOMEZ GATHERED THE trusted members of her team around her. Two deputies, Simiaar, and a single researcher. They all looked confused about the reason for the meeting.

  She hadn’t told them, any more than she told them why she had opaqued the windows in the conference room of the EAFS Stanley and shut off the recording equipment. She also asked them to shut off all links except those they needed to monitor the ship. She monitored them silently, just to make sure that everyone had followed her request.

  She didn’t want any record of this meeting.

  She’d been feeling paranoid ever since she left Clone Hell. The research she had done on the trip back to the Stanley had exacerbated that feeling.

  It had taken her half a day to make the journey because of the regulations around Clone Hell and the fact that the shuttle simply wasn’t built for speed.

  She hadn’t cared. She spent the time reviewing the file she had written about the incident on Epriccom fifteen years ago. In that report, she had focused on the diplomatic side of the incident, on the Frontier issues, and on the Eaufasse. She had given everything else, including Thirds and the clones, relative short shrift.

  She didn’t blame herself for that; she had been working on the Frontier after all, and her job was to stop problems, not analyze situations. But in several places in the report, she had highlighted that these clones needed to be investigated in some way. She had even flagged the report for extensive review. She had felt, even then, that something was off about the entire setup.

  But the review hadn’t happened, and the report itself got buried in the mass of information filed about the Eaufasse as they continued to apply for acceptance in the Alliance. The report was excerpted, but not attached, to the files that accompanied the injured clones to the hospital. A full copy of the report went with Thirds on his journey into the system, but only because the damn Peyti translator had insisted that something had gone wrong with Thirds’ treatment on Epriccom.

  Uzven’s complaint got attached to her report and sent with Thirds. As far as she could tell, that’s as far as the information ever got.

  She was researching what she had done fifteen years before because her sessions with TwoZero had completely unnerved her. The information he had given her—if true—should have been a warning to the Alliance.

  She had known that he was the second clone of something known as twenty, which she assumed was the twentieth clone of PierLuigi Frémont, but she didn’t know that for certain. He also told her that he knew a clone in that enclave named Sixteen of Two Hundred, a name that just scared her.

  Two hundred was the highest second number that he could remember. He believed, but he wasn’t certain, that he was “of Twenty,” a fact that also unnerved her.

  He had been in the enclave as long as he could remember. He also had been with a large group when he was very little, but that large group kept getting smaller and smaller over the years.

  And he swore he had never seen anyone who looked different from him until he left Epriccom for good. The people who ran the enclave were much older, but their faces were familiar.

  She had asked about his daily routine then, but he said it varied. He got vague on specifics on the way the enclave ran, and he claimed he couldn’t remember what had happened on his outing to kill Thirds. She wanted to pin TwoZero down on that, but she wasn’t certain how relevant it was.

  Besides, she had learned enough to terrify her.

  She had also learned enough to realize that he lacked a lot of crucial information.

  He did not know where the clones had come from. He did not know who had created them. He hadn’t realized he was created until he was in the hospital, trying to survive his hideous wounds. He had not realized that there was life outside of the enclave.

  He had learned Standard and a few other languages. He had had a solid education in the classics, mathematics, and some science. He had also been tutored on the finer points of etiquette. But he had not been taught where those habits would be used.

  And of course, he had learned to use every weapon known to the Alliance, plus how to make weapons out of pret
ty much anything. He had also learned how to turn weapons on the person who was trying to use that weapon against him, which made her think of Thirds and the way he had attacked the twelve chasing him.

  He had been trained to do that.

  Every description was difficult and chilling, and she had tried very hard not to show the disgust on her face.

  She wasn’t certain she had succeeded.

  She had probably left before some trained Alliance interviewer would have, but she knew she could return to interview TwoZero any time. No one had spoken to him in more than a decade; she doubted anyone would talk to him until she returned.

  Still, she asked the prison to notify her if anyone wanted to see him.

  It greatly disturbed her that the Alliance hadn’t treated him according to standard procedure. Standard procedure in cases like his involved interviews and re-interviews. Plus, the Alliance should have searched for his originator. Someone had created these clones. They had clearly been illegal, even to the hospital staff.

  Standard procedure was simple: Illegal clones got investigated, their originators found and punished. None of that had happened.

  All of TwoZero’s information should have been investigated more than a decade before, and if it had been, she was beginning to believe that Anniversary Day might never have happened.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had deliberately buried the files. Someone or something. She wasn’t entirely convinced it could all be blamed on carelessness, not with Uzven making such a fuss. She also couldn’t blame the purity of hindsight. She had seen warning signs in her meeting with Thirds, in that damn enclave, in the death of the three boys, and with the attack of the twelve.

  She had simply trusted her colleagues to do their jobs as well as she tried to do hers.

  By the time she had returned to the Stanley, she had a plan in place. The plan made her stomach twist. She had never done anything like it before, and she couldn’t do it alone.

  Now, she faced the four people she had chosen to help her, and hoped she had chosen wisely.