Floxham Island ~ Sinclair V-Log AZ267/M (10 page)

My next task
was to see to Nembier, so I grabbed the overalls and unlocked the
bathroom. His eyes widened as he saw me enter and he drew his knees
up and tried to scuffle out the way; afraid I was going to kick him
again I guess. After locking us both in I fished for my keys and
let him out of the restraints. He looked a little surprised to be
let free but stayed sitting on the ground, obviously mistrustful of
me and I have to admit that I felt bad at having lost my rag with
him earlier. I’ve always prided myself on doing my job properly and
to know that I lost it and behaved like a low life Merc, made me
feel ashamed.

“Take off those
clothes and have a wash,” I said; trying to make it sound like a
friendly offer rather than an order. “Here’s a pair of clean
overalls to put on so you can be clean and comfortable.” He
hesitated for a moment so I stepped back and leant against the door
and lit myself another of the blue eyed plank’s cigarettes. “It’s
okay, go on,” I coaxed. “Look buddy, I’m sorry I lost it earlier
okay? I shouldn’t have done that and I apologise and I will add a
note to my report about it, so you’ve no need to feel you’re being
bullied. I may be a law enforcement guy but I do have a code
y’know, even if I can’t always stick to it.” He seemed pacified by
my admittance so he stood and began to remove his clothes. Shock
and shame enveloped me as my eyes registered his badly bruised gut
that obviously gave him some pain. “I’ll see if there’s any
painkillers around here for you.”

He turned the
tap and waited for the basin to fill. “I didn’t do it Sam,” he said
quietly. “I haven’t killed anyone. I can’t prove it though.”

“It’s not my
job to judge you,” I replied before realising that by attacking him
earlier, I’d done just that, “and I’m sorry I hurt you earlier. For
what it’s worth though, between you and me, I don’t think you
killed the girl yesterday. Don’t ask me how I know, but I don’t
think you did it.”

“Thank you for
your honesty,” he said as he began to wash, “and in return, I’ll
offer you something.” This caught me by surprise and he smiled for
the first time. “Want to know how I got out of those restraints
yesterday?” I nodded. “I didn’t escape them by myself you know Sam.
I’m not an expert lock picker. I’m a scientist who gets his rocks
off by studying ancient languages scrawled onto stones. Killing
doesn’t excite me Sam and I get no thrill from the chase. Ancient
ruins are what give me a hard on my friend. I’m the ultimate boring
old fart; happiest when I’m crawling around in some dusty ruin,
gazing at scratches on stones. I’ve never been in the military,
never learned to fly, never been married nor had any children and
I’ve made love seven times in all of my sixty two years of life.
One talent I do have though is an excellent memory and I never
forget a face.”

“So why are you
telling me all this, and what’s it got to do with how you got out
of the restraints?” I asked, bemused but very interested.

“Because the
person who let me out of them is someone I’ve seen before.” This
was the last thing I’d expected to hear and my shock must’ve been
obvious because he smiled again.

“And who is
that?”

“Well Sam,
that’s the first question that needs an answer.”

“And what would
that answer be?”

“You’ll find
that by asking the second question.” Now he was being cryptic and I
was getting annoyed. He was getting one over on me but I couldn’t
blame the guy for playing this little game. How the fuck was I to
know who let him out of the restraints and more importantly, why?
Ahh, now the penny was beginning to drop so I smiled
triumphantly.

“And why would
this unknown person want to let you out of the restraints?”

“Well done
Sam,” he sniggered. “You’re good. You’re very good.”

I thought about
what little I knew of Nembier. He’s an Agrillian scientist who, by
his own admission, gets his rocks off by studying ancient languages
and hasn’t been laid in years. He may not be the life and soul of
the party but he’s bound to be pretty well connected, amongst the
scientific community anyway. He could be well travelled and for all
I knew, he could have friends and contacts from many worlds. How
was I to know who he was talking about? I hadn’t the faintest idea
but I knew I had to find out. Even though it’s not strictly my job
to find out information about the crimes my cargo may be accused
of, this had got to me and for my own peace of mind, I had to know.
I didn’t know where to begin to answer these cryptic questions
though and it showed.

“So where do
you go from here now you have this news huh?” he asked with a grin.
I shrugged and ran a hand through my hair. “Well answer me this
Sam. How much do you know about Agrillian law and social
history?”

“Practically
nothing,” I admitted as he dressed, “but I’m going to find out. Now
come on, I’m taking you to the canteen so you can be more
comfortable. We found some inmates alive by the way, so I’m gonna
be putting a team on watching you twenty four seven. That way you
don’t have to sit in here on your own and you can have something to
eat and drink but I meant what I said earlier though, if I have to
chase you all over this place once more, I’ll put you outside and
leave you to the creatures okay?”

“I’ll not try
to escape Sam,” he said and extended his wrists towards me. “It
wasn’t my idea last time remember.” He locked eyes with me as I
cuffed him and unlocked the door.

Back in the
canteen I led him over to the nutri vend and helped him get some
food and a drink and sat him down at a corner table. Everyone was
eating and talking after the terrifying afternoon we’d had and I
felt bad interrupting but it was necessary.

“Hey guys,” I
called and waited for the chatter to die down. “Sorry to interrupt
again. Now, for the benefit of our new friends here, this guy here
is Professor Kluvak Nembier. He’s under restraint because he’s
wanted in connection with a crime. It’s not my job, nor anyone
else’s here to decide on his guilt or innocence so I don’t want to
find anyone bullying him okay? Yes I know I lost my rag with him
earlier and I’ve apologised to him for that and I intend to add
that fact to my official report so everything is above board. I do
have a code and when I’m wrong I’m big enough to admit it. Now I’ve
told him that he can stay with us in here so he has access to food
and drink; he’s a person not an animal and I like to do things
right. I’m asking for volunteers to sit with him on his table. Say,
teams of four in two hour rotations? It’s gonna have to be twenty
four seven I’m afraid but all you have to do is make sure he
doesn’t run off, get him food and drinks and escort him to the
bathroom and back. Okay so who wants to be on the first watch?”

Once Nembier
had his first team with him, I got myself something to eat and sat
down. By the time we all decided it was time to get some sleep, I’d
got to know several of the inmates and found them to be nice guys.
One of them, a middle aged man with a quiet way about him named
Baz, turned out to be from Agrillia 3, so I took the opportunity to
try to learn about the place. Nembier hadn’t given me much of a
clue except to ask me what I knew about the social history and
laws, so I took a stab in the dark.

“What’s life
like on Agrillia Baz? Y’know, day to day.”

“What’s it
like?” he asked. “Well umm, in what context? What’s life like
anywhere?”

“Well umm,” I
faltered as I tried desperately to think of what to say. “Is life
easy for instance, or are there so many laws that you have to look
over your shoulder all the time?”

“Well it’s okay
I guess,” he said as he scratched his chin. “The authorities are
pretty easy going most of the time. They let us get on with our
lives without too much interference. It’s more relaxed now than it
was during the outbreak.”

“The outbreak?”
I asked. “What’s that all about?”

“Well Sam, a
couple of hundred years ago there was tragedy. A fusion reactor
blew up and caused the atmosphere to become contaminated with a gas
that made people sterile, so over time the population began to
decrease rapidly as the elderly died off without there being a
similar number of babies being born to keep the numbers steady. The
scientists began to panic that we’d die out, so they sanctioned
cloning as a way to get the numbers back up. Everything was fine
until the clones reached puberty and then many of them went
crazy.”

“Crazy? In what
way crazy?”

“I don’t know
the finer details. I’m no scientist but it seems that once they hit
puberty, the hormones somehow fucked with the wiring in their
brains or something, because a large number of them turned into
crazed killers.”

“No shit?”

“No shit Sam,”
he nodded. “I remember hearing how thirty five percent of the first
clone generation were guilty of murder. There was a whole wave of
executions as the killings began. You see, once they sanctioned the
cloning process, lots of couples went for it which resulted in many
births happening around the same time and those babies all reached
puberty around the same time. The killings all started around the
same time too and in some cases, whole families were wiped out. I
remember my grandfather telling me about a neighbour of his who
came home and sliced up his wife and all four of his kids, then
calmly made himself dinner and sat down and ate it without batting
an eyelid. It was only when he hadn’t reported for work for three
days that someone went around to check, and they found him sitting
in his garden as bold as brass while the bodies of his family stunk
up the entire house.”

“Damn, that’s
some weird shit,” I replied, still trying to connect all the dots
and understand how this affected Nembier and his case. “So what
happened?”

“The
authorities quickly passed laws outlawing any more cloning and they
also passed a law preventing any clones from breeding, even the
ones who hadn’t gone crazy. All the ones who had killed were
rounded up and executed and any children of clones were also
rounded up and euthanased. The clones that remained and seemed
healthy were sterilised and branded with a mark on the back of the
neck but otherwise they were allowed to live reasonably normal
lives, although they quickly found their neighbours weren’t quite
as friendly as they had been before.”

“What an awful
situation,” I replied and he nodded.

“Yeah it was.
It’s referred to these days as the Agrillian outbreak. I’m
surprised you didn’t know about it.”

“Well I’ve been
around some, but I’ve never heard about it. Thanks for telling me
though Baz, I’m extremely grateful to you. This information is very
important.”

“It is? How?”
he asked.

“My prisoner is
from Agrillia 3 and he is accused of nine murders. Murders he
swears he didn’t do. We had a teenage girl with us when we arrived
here and she ended up with her throat cut not long after we
arrived, at the same time as Nembier escaped from the restraints. I
know she wasn’t killed by the creatures and I feel sure that we’re
all meant to believe Nembier killed her, but something about it
doesn’t add up and I feel pretty sure he didn’t do it.”

“So what does
that have to do with the outbreak?” he asked.

“Nembier hinted
to me that someone let him out of his restraints. Someone he said
he’s seen before.” I looked at Baz as he digested this
information.

“But he didn’t
say who?” he asked.

“No,” I
admitted. “He’s being cryptic and I can’t blame him really. When
you’re handcuffed and powerless to control your own destiny, I
guess it’s natural to want to play a power game with your
captors.”

This job had
quickly become far more complicated than I was comfortable with. My
job may be complicated at times but it is also quite simple, at
least in theory. All I have to do is find my target, catch him and
deliver him to the relevant authorities; quick, clean and simple
and that’s the way I like it. Bang, bang, bang and on to the next.
This Nembier business had got right under my skin and try as I
might, I just couldn’t shake this feeling that I had to find out
what was going on, even though it’s not strictly my job. Maybe it
was Jena Marks’ death that caused it; maybe I felt she needed
justice. Whatever, I was hooked and I couldn’t let it go. As we
drank I thought about what Nembier told me and turned it over in my
mind, trying to make some sense of it but the more I focussed on
it, the fuzzier everything became. Someone had picked the locking
mechanism of his restraints and let him out; someone he’d seen
before. Those were the alleged facts but where the fuck was I to
find the answers? What I needed to know was who had freed him and
why? Nembier wasn’t telling so I was on my own and as I ran a hand
through my hair, I sighed with frustration.

“What’s up
Sam?” Baz’s question brought me out of my musings.

“How the fuck
am I going to find out who freed him and why?” I replied but he
shrugged.

“Well what do
we know?” he asked. “He said he’s seen the person before.” I
nodded. “So we can assume that this encounter happened on Agrillia
can’t we?”

“Can we?” I
replied with a shrug. “The guy is a scientist. He may have
travelled all over the galaxy doing his thing.”

“Exactly what
is his thing?”

“Umm ancient
Agrillian languages I think.”

“But that’s not
something that’s going to be of interest to many folks outside of
Agrillia,” he said. “Is it?” A light went on inside my mind at this
comment and I had one of those moments of sudden illumination when
things fall into place and form the beginnings of a pattern that I
can recognise.

“You’re right
Baz. Ancient Agrillian languages might be very interesting to
modern day Agrillians, but who else would be that interested huh?
There may be other scientists from other worlds who would be
interested in that sort of thing, but they’d travel to Agrillia to
study it.”