A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (14 page)

He cursed. The last thing he needed was something short-circuiting his imagination, especially right now. He also knew that the staff of the shuttle wouldn’t fix any problems in the entertainment system until the damn thing was outside the purview of the space traffic cops.

Then a face appeared on all of Zhu’s screens. The face was male, older, with the pockmarked skin of someone who didn’t give a damn about enhancements. It was attached to a neck and shoulders that were encased in a uniform Zhu didn’t really recognize.

“Forgive me for the interruption,” the man said. “I’m the senior pilot of this shuttle. We’ve been ordered to abort our scheduled flight. We’re told this might only be temporary, but at the moment I don’t know. All space traffic has been grounded until further notice.”

Zhu groaned. He’d never heard of anything like this happening anywhere in the Alliance.

They’d be hearing from him. After, of course, he checked Armstrong Port regulations to see if they could actually do this.

“Everyone is to disembark. We will be going back inside, where you will have to be screened, for what, I don’t know. Why, I don’t know. I hope they’ll explain this to us when we get inside. Please accept a small link to the shuttle before disembarking so that we can let you know when the trip will be rescheduled. I hope it’ll be within the hour.”

The pilot winked out.

“It better be,” Zhu said to no one in particular. The last thing he wanted to do was go back inside Armstrong’s port. There was no guarantee that Berhane had left yet.

He sighed and shoved the screens out of his way. Then he unhooked himself from the chair.

He was already downloading Port of Armstrong Regulations, plus all of the City of Armstrong’s legal codes.

Someone would answer for this delay.

He would make certain of it.

SIXTEEN

ZHU TRUDGED UP the ramps out of Terminal 20. Along the way, dozens, if not hundreds, of other passengers from other luxury ships joined him. None of them were arrivals. All were departures, and all were talking in their various languages about their postponed trips.

Images floated on the screens in front of them, directing them back to the lounges. People separated out by class. Those who worked on the ships followed one row of lights. Those who paid less for their transport followed another. And those who either paid for a luxury berth or were frequent travelers followed the green light that lit up the floor for Zhu.

Because Terminal 20 was the luxury departure area, most everyone went that way. Even though he was taller than most of the humans, he wasn’t able to shove his way past the group of Sequev who were galumphing their way toward the main door. Sequev had eight legs and resembled spiders. Even though they were the size of small dogs, they still managed to get in his way.

He resigned himself to getting nowhere fast.

Nowhere. That’s where he was heading. As soon as he had word from the Port of Armstrong as to what was going on, he would contact S
3
and let them know what his new itinerary was.

Just his luck that he would be going back to the departure lounge so soon after leaving it. He hoped—no, he prayed—that Berhane had already run off to cry in Daddy’s arms.

Not that there was a huge chance of that. Her father was at some meeting with the governor-general, doing all those important things that a man of his station did. If Berhane had wanted to join him, she would have had to leave immediately.

Zhu wasn’t even sure Berhane knew exactly where her father was.

Zhu shrugged his night-travel kit over his shoulder. He had brought that back out because the pilot had sounded uncertain about the future of the flight. Often, it was better to book another ship than try to work around some recalcitrant pilot who seemed to believe rules were meant to be followed.

When Zhu reached a series of doors leading to various departure sites in Terminal 20, he noted with relief that the Sequev moved to the right while he was heading left. He sped up and was the first through the door back into the luxury lounge.

It looked strange. Everyone was standing and all were looking at various screens. The humans had their hands over their mouths. There weren’t a lot of non-humans in the lounge, which had become common since the bombing four years ago. Zhu had a private belief that the Port was separating its various customers by species, but he had no way to prove that.

His links filled with noise. Something about Arek Soseki, Armstrong’s Mayor. Something about assassins and murders and shutting down the Port to make sure no “bad guys” escaped. Something about horrors and how terrible all of this was to happen on Anniversary Day.

He looked up at a nearby screen. Someone stumbled into him, and he realized he was blocking traffic. Not that there were a lot of places to go. All of the aisles were filled with people and aliens standing, staring at the imagery coming on the floating screens.

He moved as far away from the path of the incoming travelers as he could and found another screen. The images took a moment to process: the mayor, sprawled; the police, talking, moving, unable to figure anything out. Reporters were trying to update everyone with very little information.

But the images of Soseki—they were clear. The man looked like a statue of himself, gray and broken, and very obviously dead.

Zhu felt nauseous. Through his links he heard more whispers, something about other targets. He scanned the lounge, looking past the people clogging the aisles.

Some passengers sat in their comfortable chairs, hands pressed against their ears the way that humans did when they were trying to focus on information inside their links. A few Peyti lingered near the doorways, heads tilted as they got information, their masks elongating their faces, their sticklike hands at their sides.

He had to actually peer at people to see if Berhane was still here. She was a small woman, with dark, curly hair and very soft, chocolate skin. Her skin attracted him most. He had always loved it, even when he was getting frustrated with her.

But she would be hard to see in this crowd.

He scanned his links for word of the governor-general—surely someone would ask her for a statement in this time of crisis—and instead got some conflicting messages that something had gone wrong at her location as well.

Then he saw Berhane. Hand on her ear as if she were concentrating on links, head tilted upward as she looked at screens, she seemed like an island in a sea of trouble. His heart lifted when he saw her, and he didn’t want that.

He wanted to be angry at her or hate her or feel something other than relief that he found her. He had treated her so badly, and he was starting to feel guilty. That was the last thing he wanted; as one law school professor of his said,
Lawyers should never feel guilty. If they do, they can’t do the job
.

Berhane twirled slowly, looking up at various screens, most of which showed the same images—the mayor, down; the chaos near O’Malley’s, of all places. What a place to die in front of.

Her face was blotchy. She’d been crying, but she wasn’t crying now. Instead, her mouth was in a set line, as if she were trying to get information.

He knew that look. She was scared and determined and trying to ignore how she felt.

He threaded his way toward her, knowing he should probably stay away, knowing he was probably the last person she wanted to see, but going toward her anyway.

He reached her side, and lightly touched her back. “Berhane?”

She started. She hadn’t seen him, or if she had, she wasn’t processing it.

He said quickly, so she wouldn’t move away, “If you don’t want to talk to me, I understand, but I’m hearing something about the governor-general…?”

He half expected her to burst into tears. Instead she glanced at the screens and then back at him, that little frown line appearing between her eyes.

“I can’t reach Daddy.” She sounded a lot calmer than Zhu expected her to.

“So he is with the governor-general,” Zhu said. “I thought you’d mentioned that. Tell me what’s happening.”

“No one knows.” Another glance at the screens. She needed information,
he
needed information, and there was no way to get it here. No one knew anything in this lounge.

He made a decision. They had to get out of here. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“We can’t,” she said. “The Port’s in lockdown.”

“I mean, inside the Port. Somewhere better than this.”

“What could be better than this?” she asked.

Somewhere that the people in power went. Somewhere with better access. Somewhere he might be able to find answers.

He took her elbow, like he would have two days ago. Her lips thinned, but she didn’t pull away.

So he smiled, just a little.

“Come on,” he said in his most comforting voice. “Let’s find out what’s really going on.”

SEVENTEEN

THE EARTH ALLIANCE lounge at Terminal 20 was filled with diplomats, lawyers, and specialists of all ages and races, watching the images on the various screens while simultaneously leaning into their links. Some were subvocalizing. Others had that glazed look that humans got when they were concentrating on their links and not paying attention to anything around them.

An inordinate number of Peyti sat around tables, tapping on small screens, while pairs of Nyyzen hovered near the private chambers, obviously waiting to get in.

The Nyyzen unnerved Zhu. They worked in pairs, and when they did, they created a third, somewhat ghostly creature that was visible in outline.

That wasn’t the hardest part of dealing with them, though. The hardest part was the fact that their heads were isosceles triangles. Their mouths were on the equal sides of the triangle, and their eyes on the short part. If looked at from one direction, it seemed like they had eyes on one side of their face and a mouth on the other. Zhu had no idea where their nose was—if they had a nose.

He had to pull his gaze away from the Nyyzen. A few Disty sat on top of tiny tables, their small bodies hunched, their arms busy while their feet pressed together. They could be mean when interrupted. He didn’t want to stand by them either.

The chairs were full, but one table remained open with a few seats. The problem was that it was near a group of Rev. They were huge, and always took up twice the space of humans. Plus, the Rev were pear-shaped and hard to get around. They had extra arms, which retracted or something (Zhu never really understood how their anatomy worked), and the younger Rev sometimes pulled out their arms at odd moments to trick or harass humans.

Zhu had handled more than one case involving Rev, and he never really wanted to again.

“What is this place?” Berhane asked.

He had almost forgotten she was with him. He put a hand on the small of her back, partly to keep her steady and partly to make sure she didn’t go to the wrong part of the gigantic room.

“I told you. It’s the Earth Alliance lounge.”

“It smells weird,” she said.

It did. Any grouping of different species had weird, unduplicatable smells. Some species smelled horrible to humans, and others had no real scent at all. Combine all those smells, plus the smells of frightened and worried human, and you got—well, this miasma of low-level stink.

“You get used to it,” he lied.

She nodded and seemed even more subdued than she had in the luxury lounge.

He had told her that they would be able to find out what was going on once they got here, but he wasn’t sure that was true now. Everyone seemed preoccupied, nervous, and terrified.

He led her deep inside before he saw someone he recognized, a lawyer formerly at the Impossibles, now some sort of researcher in the Human Justice Division of the Earth Alliance.

“Hey, Barry!” Zhu’s voice carried. Half the humans in the room turned toward him.

Barry Pliska wasn’t one of them. He leaned against the wall, one foot braced against it, face gray. He looked almost ill. He had one hand against his ear and his head bowed.

Berhane grabbed Zhu’s arm. “Look,” she said, pointing at one of the images.

Zhu squinted. It appeared to be the exterior of a hospital.

“I think the governor-general is there,” she said.

“Check your links,” he said.

“I have been,” she said. “They’re working all right, except I still can’t reach my dad.”

“Keep trying,” Zhu said, primarily because he wanted to keep her busy. He threaded his way through the crowd to get to Pliska.

Zhu didn’t really care if Berhane followed. She wasn’t going to leave the lounge without him, and he didn’t want to be near her if she found out that her father was collateral damage in whatever had happened to the governor-general.

Zhu had made the mistake of talking to her shortly after her mother died in the actual bombing four years ago. He’d been calling to set up a time when he could do the right thing and break up with her then, but the moment he spoke to her, he had known that it would be wrong.