A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (28 page)

All of that should have made him more sympathetic to Trey, but Zhu had been a defense attorney long enough to know that relationships with his clients, particularly relationships based on empathy, were a big mistake.

He sat in his room—the Chancellor Suite, which wasn’t designed for a chancellor and wasn’t a suite—and did his research. Twice he’d left to get a meal in the habitat cafeteria, grateful for the walk and the diversion. The view from his hotel room window was depressing—the edge of the habitat, and then the prison itself, round and imposing against a glow of stars.

Ships had to avoid the area, landing on the far side of the habitat, obviously not the part that Zhu’s room overlooked. The prison itself was far away from anything to prevent prison breaks—or at least attempted ones.

If there was a view that could make a man feel alone and isolated, make him believe that the universe was a cold and lonely place, this was it.

He could get out of here, he knew. He just had to give the crew an hour or two notice, and they could all head back to S
3
. He was tempted every single time he looked out that window except…

The research had him riveted.

Trey’s file was more complete than Zhu had expected, partly because the frontier marshal, a woman named Gomez, had filed an extensive report. She had to—the incident Trey referred to could have caused a major problem in the diplomatic negotiations going on in that part of the Frontier.

Her report had a lot of documentation, including video of the bodies discovered on Epriccom, the autopsy, the recreations of the faces of the dead, and much of the communications with the boy who identified himself as Third of the Second.

Her interviews in the Eaufasse compound weren’t on record and, unfortunately, there was no video of the attack on the compound by the twelve clones who had been pursuing Trey.

It didn’t matter. No matter what Zhu read, he kept finding the same details.

Trey had been chased outside of the enclave by twelve attackers, who were determined to kill him. Trey had escaped through some cunning and careful planning. He tried to get protection for himself, first from the Eaufasse, then from the FSS. The FSS screwed things up—at least from Zhu’s perspective, and also from the perspective of the Peyti translator who also contributed a report.

The translator was of the opinion that Trey had asked for asylum from the humans, not an unreasonable request, considering the way that human law in the Alliance treated clones.

From everything Zhu saw, Trey was the victim in this case.

Of course, Zhu read from a defense attorney’s perspective, but still. If Trey had been considered human under the law, he might have been charged with manslaughter, only because the weapon he chose took some forethought to use.

But Zhu could have argued that Trey had planned to defend himself from the moment he learned how the culture inside the enclave worked, and that the attack outside the Eaufasse compound had simply been self-defense.

And, had Trey been human under the law, Zhu would more often than not have won that case. If anything, he would have pled it down to manslaughter and time served.

In fact, had he been on the case, he would have argued that Gomez and the FSS were responsible for the deaths of the eight clones, not Trey, and that both Gomez and the FSS might have had some criminal liability in the commission of those deaths.

It would have been a stretch, but had he argued in front of a jury or (more likely) a sympathetic judge, he would have created enough doubt to make sure his client got off.

The only reason Trey was imprisoned, the
only
reason, was because he himself was illegal. He was a clone without clone marks approved by the Alliance.

But that could work to Trey’s advantage. Trey had been found outside of the Alliance. He had contacted the nearby culture for help, and it wasn’t his fault that the culture was trying to join the Alliance. He clearly knew nothing about the Alliance at the time of his arrest.

Human clones created inside the Alliance were illegal if they were not made according to Alliance laws.

Human clones
created by non-Alliance humans
outside of the Alliance were subject to local laws.

The community that Trey had been raised in was gone, so its laws were not knowable.

Zhu let out a breath, then realized he already had an argument to get his client out of this hellhole. He wouldn’t even need to talk with Trey about Anniversary Day.

Zhu ran a hand through his hair, then stared at that prison. It seemed so small from this vantage, yet he knew it was extremely large.

He leaned back in his chair and smiled.

Damn Salehi. He had been exactly right. Something had to rekindle Zhu’s sense of right and wrong, of justice lived and justice denied. Anniversary Day had started the feeling—and it had begun out of fear—but he wasn’t afraid any more.

In fact, Zhu had stumbled into something that challenged him, both mentally and ethically. He couldn’t just fight this one by rote, and if he won the case, he might do good for thousands of people, many of them filling the illegals half of the prison he could see from his hotel room.

He smiled.

He felt alive for the first time in weeks. But more than that, he felt buoyant. He didn’t know how else to describe it. He felt energetic and excited about the law and his place in it.

He might actually be able to bend it to his will or maybe even change how it would be interpreted.

Heady stuff for a man like him.

It no longer mattered how he felt about Trey.

It no longer mattered that Zhu wouldn’t be able to solve Anniversary Day—not that he could have done it on his own anyway.

He had a mission and, in its own way, it was as important as Berhane’s. Maybe more important. She was cleaning up after the dead.

He might make things better for the living.

All he had to do was try.

THIRTY-TWO

A WEEK’S WORTH of work, and the team had something. Several somethings, in fact. Gomez met with them in the cafeteria, not because the food was better here. It wasn’t. It was the same as the rest of the ship for as long as her personal chef had extended leave.

But the cafeteria felt homier. Besides, Simiaar actually tried her hand at cooking, something that made Apaza laugh.

“It makes sense,” he whispered to Verstraete when he thought Gomez wasn’t listening. “She’s used to cutting up dead things already.”

The very idea had upset Verstraete enough that she had moved away from Apaza, but Gomez had laughed, startling Apaza. He hadn’t realized she was nearby.

“If you tell Lashante that,” Gomez said, “she’ll want to cook every night.”

Verstraete made an
urp
ing sound, as if she had already eaten something that disagreed with her.

They were only using a small part of the cafeteria. The lights were down in the other sections, and the fresh food stations were shut down. Gomez had instructed the skeleton crew to begin a deep clean of the entire ship, overseeing bot work and sometimes doing some of the work by hand. She had excluded several parts of the ship—mostly where her team was working—and that included this part of the cafeteria.

Still, the work the skeleton crew had done had taken the food smells out of the cafeteria altogether. Before, it had smelled of fresh coffee and baking bread. Now it smelled like the rest of the ship.

Usually, anyway. On this night, someone had made coffee and it smelled heavenly. Real coffee, not the stuff that came out of the ship’s cafeteria recipe. Gomez wasn’t even sure the ship’s recipe was made from coffee beans; she thought maybe it was just some chemical concoction with added caffeine. Although, if she thought about it, she knew that wasn’t entirely true because Simiaar drank that stuff like it was water, and Simiaar was notoriously careful with her body.

Simiaar had enlisted Nuuyoma’s help. They brought out plates of steaming pasta, with four different kinds of sauces—a red sauce, a white sauce, a meat sauce, and a garlic sauce. She also made or heated up trays of bread.

“Planning to feed an army?” Gomez asked.

“Figured we have a lot of planning to do,” Simiaar said, “since you declared our research done.”

Gomez noted the phrasing:
declared our research done
. Not entirely true. She had wanted a report on the research, although she had declared hers done and, unless everyone else had more pressing information, they would start with the leads she had found.

The group crowded around the food-laden table. The scents of garlic, roasted meat, tomatoes, and hot bread filled the air. Gomez’s stomach growled. She hadn’t been eating well while she researched. She had been too distracted. In fact, she had been so distracted that she just realized it now.

She grabbed a plate and piled it high with different kinds of pasta. Like the sauces, the pasta came in different colors, although she didn’t know why that mattered. And she didn’t care. She just took some whitish angel hair, green spaghetti, reddish twists, and multicolored hollow things that she couldn’t name.

Then she piled on the red sauce. She’d had Simiaar’s cooking before and knew that all of the sauces were good, although she didn’t trust the meat sauce. Simiaar had once joked that she used leftovers from her office for her meat sauces and even though Gomez had laughed at the dark humor, she hadn’t been able to eat any meat that Simiaar had cooked ever since.

Gomez grabbed a slice of bread, still warm from the oven, and sat down. The others had taken her lead and were filling their plates. Simiaar watched them, hands folded under her chin like a scaffold.

“Can you talk about what you found without ruining our appetites?” Gomez asked her.

“No fluids at dinner?” Simiaar asked, raising her eyebrows innocently.

“No
bodily
fluids at dinner,” Gomez said.

“You take all the fun out of it,” Simiaar said. “But, even with that restriction, I can talk about what I found while we’re eating.”

The others sat down, almost in unison, their plates piled as high as Gomez’s. They probably hadn’t eaten much either. The regulation stuff was barely edible; besides, they’d have to eat that most of this trip.

Simiaar’s cooking was a rare treat.

Simiaar stood and served herself. She took a little of everything, and she talked as she dished up.

“Your clone friend,” she said, nodding at Gomez, “is definitely a clone of PierLuigi Frémont. But I learned some interesting things about him as I investigated all of the biologicals you gave me.”

“About Frémont or the clone?” Nuuyoma asked, his mouth filled with food. He nearly sprayed and covered his mouth with his left hand barely in time.

“The clone,” Simiaar said. “Most of the clones, in fact. And a bit about record-keeping as well.”

“All right.” Gomez talked with her mouth full too. She had to remind herself to slow down. The meal was simply too good. The red sauce tasted like it had been made with fresh tomatoes and freshly picked oregano.

Simiaar sat down. She picked up her fork, but didn’t dig in right away. Instead, she sat over the plate of food and watched the others eat.

“First, the clone,” she said. “He’s a copy of a copy of a copy.”

“You can tell that?” Verstraete asked.

“Telomeres,” Simiaar said. “They’re really short, and somewhat damaged. His DNA is filled with breaks and errors that happen with imperfect cloning, especially imperfect cloning through generations.”

“You mentioned something like that with the dead bodies.” Gomez only remembered that because she had recently reread the file.

“I did,” Simiaar said, “and the problems those bodies had are the same problems your friend has.”

Gomez did not rise to the “friend” bait, much as she wanted to. Simiaar was trying to make a point, although what point, Gomez did not know.

“So they are, what’s it called?” Verstraete asked. “Siblings?”

“They were cloned from the same source.” Simiaar took a delicate bite of some tube pasta covered in garlic sauce. She moaned with quiet pleasure. Apparently Gomez wasn’t the only one who had missed real food.

“All of them?” Gomez asked.

“What I have access to,” Simiaar said. “That’s the three dead bodies, and your friend TwoZero.”

“Not the other injured clones?” Gomez asked. “Or Thirds?”

“Nope,” Simiaar said. “The other survivor doesn’t have DNA on record. The injured clones that died, well, their DNA and biologicals got trashed because they were, in the words of the files, ‘tainted, possibly hazardous.’”

“Because of what?” Gomez asked. “The plant weapons?”

“Presumably,” Simiaar said. “But that would mean that TwoZero’s DNA or his biologicals would have been contaminated from the start, and I have all of his records. He was nearly dead—it’s amazing he’s alive—but he wasn’t contaminated with anything. He’s just a bad copy of a bad copy, and he doesn’t have the same ability to recover that the average human has.”