Starbase Human (19 page)

A lot of these facilities had existed then to supply bodies—almost literally—to military front lines, places where androids, bots, and military machines did not function well. One of the many reasons that Alliance law still refused to recognize human clones as actual human beings was to preserve the use of those clones in military situations, situations that would have required a lot more safeguards and legal protections if actual human beings (as defined by the law) had gone into battle.

“Judita?” Simiaar said in a tone that implied she had tried to speak to Gomez before. “You know something we don’t?”

She knew a lot that they didn’t, but she didn’t say that.

“The history of the facility,” Gomez said, as if she were answering Simiaar’s question. “This place has been around a lot longer than two hundred years. It’s just been at this location for two hundred years.”

Apaza turned in that miraculous chair of his. “How long?”

“I don’t know,” Gomez said, and by that, she really meant,
I’m not looking that up
. “It’s been a government facility from the beginning, and it has made millions of clones for the Alliance.”

“I don’t get it,” Simiaar said. “If that’s the case, then how come this place is churning out clones of PierLuigi Frémont?”

“I don’t know,” Gomez said, “and the information I have here doesn’t make it seem that obvious.”

The military used cloning facilities closer to the Alliance’s borders. There were also some near what the Alliance termed trouble spots, places where humans and some of the other Alliance species did not get along.

But here, near the center of the Alliance, none of that applied.

This facility was being used for something else entirely, and no matter how she approached her background research, she couldn’t tell what that was.

Gomez leaned back for a moment and frowned at the screen. As she did so, it went dark, just like it was supposed to.

Something here was even more protected that the usual information she would seek when she was on the Frontier.

“You want me to look at that?” Apaza asked her.

He knew what kind of database she was digging in.

It probably wouldn’t hurt to have him do it, and yet she worried about it. Nothing was as secure on this ship as she wanted it to be.

Besides, she’d been inside databases like this one before. Much of the information was unavailable through the standard methods. Either she had to have access to a shadow database or she had to be invited to get the information, often from the place she was trying to find out about.

This cloning facility was being used, and it was being used by the Alliance government, but for what reason, she didn’t exactly know.

“Judita,” Simiaar said, “what’s going on?”

Gomez logged out of the database and shut the entire computer down. Then she stood.

“I need to think,” she said, and walked out of the room.

TWENTY-EIGHT

“SEND HER AWAY,”
the man said to Nuuyoma.

I don’t think that’s a good idea
, Verstraete sent.

The man ate another bite of his pakora. He watched Nuuyoma as he did so. He knew they were communicating on their links.

The restaurant seemed unusually loud, or maybe Nuuyoma had started noticing the noise again. People laughing, dishes clanging. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a starbase restaurant without non-humans also eating something.

“It’s all right, Chepi,” Nuuyoma said without looking at her.

No
, she sent.

He wasn’t going to respond on the links. He had an odd feeling that they’d been compromised. He wasn’t sure why.

“There’s an open table not far from here,” he said, nodding toward it. “Wait there.”

“Elián,” she said.

He looked at her, his expression serious. He wished he could talk to her on the links, but he wasn’t going to. He hoped she understood that he wasn’t kidding around.

He didn’t want to give her any orders, not aloud and not on the links.

Finally, she slapped her hands against the table, making the man’s water skitter across the white cloth. Nuuyoma’s unfinished dinner bounced.

She didn’t say anything, though. She just stood up and crossed to the other table. As she sat down, a waiter looked agitated and then hurried toward her.

Nuuyoma almost smiled. She was breaking the restaurant’s rules, and the system wasn’t set up for it.

“All right,” he said to the man. “Tell me what’s really going on.”

The man leaned forward so that his misshapen face wasn’t far from Nuuyoma’s. “I want to know where Takara Hamasaki is.”

“I’ve never heard of Takara Hamasaki,” Nuuyoma said.

“Fair enough,” the man said. “She disappeared into the Alliance. I want you to find her.”

Nuuyoma did smile this time. “I don’t track Disappeareds. My work is on the Frontier.”

“There has to be records of her. The Alliance is good at keeping records.” The man sounded intent.

“What’s your interest in her?” Nuuyoma said.

The man folded his hands together. “She’s the survivor.”

“Of what?” Nuuyoma asked.

“Of the starbase explosion, what we’ve just been discussing,” the man said.

“I thought you didn’t know if anyone survived.”

“My cohorts told me she had escaped. Then their ship blew up away from the base.”

“So you say,” Nuuyoma said.

“I know. I was speaking to them when it blew.”

“But they could have been on the docking ring,” Nuuyoma said.

“Then why would they tell me they were going after her?” the man asked.

“Why were they going after her?” Nuuyoma asked.

The man leaned back. He let out a long sigh, as if he were contemplating the question.

“Because,” he said quietly. “Back then, we didn’t want anyone to know we existed.”

“We?” Nuuyoma asked. “By ‘we’ do you mean the theft ring you had put together or the clones of PierLuigi Frémont?”

The man’s smile was small. “Both.”

“You’re clearly not fast-grow,” Nuuyoma said. “Why were you created?”

The man’s cheeks became even ruddier. “One thing at a time.”

“You want to trade information,” Nuuyoma said. “You can’t be coy with me and expect my cooperation.”

The man set his plate on top of Verstraete’s. One of the waiters came by and whisked them both away.

“If you want to trade, you need to tell me a few things,” Nuuyoma said. He felt like he was talking to a wall.

The man watched him.

“You need to tell me why you want to find this woman,” Nuuyoma said.

“She killed my cohorts,” the man said.

“Whom you disagreed with and might not have liked,” Nuuyoma said.

“That’s beside the point,” the man said. “You will want to speak to her as well.”

That was true. If she was the sole survivor of the explosions, Nuuyoma would want to talk with her.

“If she’s in the Alliance, she’s out of your reach,” Nuuyoma said.

The man shrugged. “It would be nice to know that.”

“This happened thirty-five years ago,” Nuuyoma said.

“Indeed,” the man said.

Nuuyoma sighed. He looked over at Verstraete. She would tell him to ignore this, that it was blackmail and that it wouldn’t help anything. But if he could get the information
and
protect the woman (if she was still alive), then he would help solve the Anniversary Day bombings.

“What do I get if I find this information for you?” Nuuyoma asked.

“You will know several things,” the man said. “You will know who created us. You will know who manages the DNA now. And you will be able to find the criminals who tried to destroy your Moon.”

The echo of Nuuyoma’s thoughts almost unnerved him. “Why would you tell me that?”

“It costs me nothing,” the man said.

“And why won’t you tell me now?” Nuuyoma said.

“Because it’s time I handle the final details of my life.” The man swept a hand over his body. “I am decaying. My cells are breaking down. The technique used to make me wasn’t that sophisticated, and enhancements don’t work as you can tell from my face. I would like to settle my accounts.”

“By getting revenge on a woman who may or may not have killed two people you didn’t like?”

“They weren’t just people,” the man said. “They were, as some clones call it, my siblings.”

Nuuyoma nodded. That detail didn’t surprise him. “But you didn’t care about them.”

“I didn’t say that,” the man said. “I didn’t agree with them.”

“And all those fast-grows? Were they your siblings as well?”

The man’s smile was even smaller than before. “They were made from the same DNA,” he said. “But they were not from my unit. They were failures.”

The word
failure
made Nuuyoma start. That was the word Gomez had repeated, the word the clones from Epriccom had used to justify the murder of their other “siblings.”

Did that usage go all the way back to PierLuigi Frémont, the original? Nuuyoma didn’t know.

“I won’t be able to get you real-time information,” Nuuyoma said. “I can only search through our databases as they existed about a year ago.”

“I know that,” the man said. “Death records will exist. Tax records. Addresses, all of that stuff your Alliance does for its members. You will get me close.”

“You’ll be going into the Alliance to get your revenge?” Nuuyoma asked.

“I didn’t say that,” the man said. “But what I do want are the actual documents. I do not want you to lie to me about her existence.”

“I would like the same from you,” Nuuyoma said.

The man nodded, once. Nuuyoma had the odd sense that he had just finalized the deal.

“You never told me your name,” Nuuyoma said.

“It’s not relevant,” the man said.

“Ah, but it is,” Nuuyoma said.

The man folded his hands together again. “Here, they call me Luis. I do not use a surname.”

“What do you call yourself?” Nuuyoma asked.

“I,” the man said.

Nuuyoma shook his head. “If you want to work with me, then you will tell me your name. Your real name. Your given name.”

“I have no given name,” the man said. “But my peers knew me as One Of One Direct.”

“One Of One Direct?” Nuuyoma asked. “What does that mean?”

“The first from the direct line created from the DNA of the original. I am the first made from that line.” The man spoke quietly.

“How do I confirm that?” Nuuyoma asked.

“You cannot,” the man said. “On some things, you’ll have to take my word.”

“And on some things, you’ll have to take mine,” Nuuyoma said.

“Find Takara Hamasaki for me,” the man said. “And I will make sure you have everything you need for your investigation.”

He stood up. He was taller than Nuuyoma had expected.

“I will meet you here, at this table, tomorrow night. I will only talk with you. You may bring as many friends as you like, but only you will sit at this table. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” Nuuyoma said.

The man nodded once. Then he left. Verstraete stood. As she walked over, Nuuyoma leaned back in his chair. He watched the man thread his way through the throng of people.

If what that man said was true—if he was the first clone from the original—then he might not be as old as Nuuyoma thought. PierLuigi Frémont died fifty-five years ago. If he was cloned after death, then that man was only a decade older than Nuuyoma.

The man looked ancient in comparison.

Either that, or clones of Frémont had been made long before the man died.

“Well?” Verstraete asked as she sat down.

“Well,” Nuuyoma said. “We have some digging to do.”

TWENTY-NINE

GOMEZ CLOSED THE
door to the little information room and stood in the corridor for a moment.

Superficially, her choices seemed easy. She could let Apaza search the database. She could let him search all the available databases, which would call attention to the
Green Dragon
and to them.

She could do some more research herself in that database.

Or she could go to the surface as herself, get a tour of the facility, and tell them she was thinking of permanent retirement, and wanted to have a good, secured position inside the Alliance. In other words, she would be asking them for a job.

If she did that, if she went below and identified herself while telling a lie, she put everything at risk. But she had no idea if anyone would investigate her or her story. After all, she had a marshal’s badge and she had taken a leave of absence, something high-ranking officials in any secret service did when they were investigating a new position.