A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (2 page)

We would like to spread out along the rim of this small clearing
, Gomez sent through the joint alien-marshal link.
Do we have your permission to do so? If not, where should we stand?

The Eaufasse responded quickly.
Of course, permission.

And she had no idea if that meant she had permission to stand wherever she wanted or if she had to wait while it translated her request to the Eaufasse leading her.

That Eaufasse turned its pointed head toward her. Its eyes, large and liquid, fixed on hers. Then it waved one of its extra-long limbs toward her, in what seemed like a very human gesture for
Continue
.

She knew better than to assume she knew what the Eaufasse meant by the gesture.

After a moment, it tilted its head away from her, and another message came through the link.

Of course. Permission. Stand you want. Okay.

She cursed silently. She hoped that meant it was okay to stand where she wanted. At least she had it on record.

She put down her fist, gestured for the others to join her, and moved near the Eaufasse. It hunched toward the bowl like a mangled question mark.

The two deputies fanned out beside her, moving as cautiously as she was.

The clearing had an open view to the sky. Epriccom’s bright sun made the plants glow bluish green. Epriccom had the right oxygen mix for humans, which made it an enticing planet for development, but it was clearly an alien place.

So alien, in fact, that it took her a moment to recognize the bodies in the tangle of vines, leaves, and branches that passed for ground cover here.

The bodies were equidistant apart. They sprawled face down, heads turned toward her, arms outward, feet bent. They were so bloated she couldn’t tell much about them—male, female, age. Nor could she quite comprehend what they were wearing; in most areas the bloating was so severe that they had burst through their clothes.

The identical positions, and the fact that they sprawled face down, however, led her to believe they had been killed. Whether or not they had been dumped here was another matter.

She suppressed a sigh. She also didn’t know what kind of killings Eaufasse did, if any, and how they treated their dead.

May we approach the corpses?
She sent through the links.

Of course. Permission. Stand you want. Okay.

“Okay,” she muttered. Washington glanced at her, his mouth a thin line.

She started down the incline, leading the way. Washington and Rainger followed, doing their best to walk where she had. Branches clawed at her boots, and she had the impression that some of the stuff had scuttled away from her feet.

Her heart pounded. She hated this kind of thing. She always felt out of her depth in situations that involved killings in Frontier planets. She had no idea what the temperature ranges were, how the local flora and fauna interacted with rotting material, what kind of insects—if any—went after corpses, and on and on.

She could only guess at things, and she was terrified she would guess wrong. Not only did her future depend on the correct moves, but often so did the future relationship between the Earth Alliance and the Frontier planet.

When she was within a few meters of the bodies, she turned slightly toward the deputies.

Spread out
, she sent through the private links.
Tell me if you can make any sense of this. Try to limit your guesses to the ones you’re at least half certain of.

Rainger gave her a grim smile. Washington nodded once. They picked their way around the other side, with Rainger continuing until he stopped above the corpses’ heads. He crouched. So did Washington near one of the corpse’s backs.

Gomez stood near the feet, gazing upward. As she’d been traveling here, she had downloaded all the information she could find on the Eaufasse. She’d stored a backup copy on a chip in her thumb. Not that there had been a lot of information, just the preliminary report, filled with the usual happy-shiny crap about what a great planet it was, how accommodating the locals were, and how happy they would be to cooperate with any Earth Alliance culture that wanted to set up a base here.

No initial cultural difficulties, not with the advance team, and no mention of crime at all. Now whether that meant that the Eaufasse didn’t commit crimes against each other or whether it meant that the Eaufasse had a different conception of crime than the Alliance did was anyone’s guess.

And search she did, but hadn’t found anything on Eaufasse death rituals. So that meant the advance teams and the later observers weren’t allowed to see what the Eaufasse did. But she had learned not to interpret that either. It might mean that they kept the rituals private like some cultures kept bathing private or it might mean that the teams simply hadn’t been near a death so didn’t get to see what the Eaufasse did in that circumstance.

Not that it mattered now. She couldn’t find the answer she wanted. She had no idea if these corpses were arranged in an Eaufasse death position or one of the other fifteen species on this planet had been involved in any way or if she was looking at a human-on-human crime.

She sighed softly. She had hoped for a simple knife in the back of one of the deceased, with a note attached, explaining all the reasons for the crime—or at least something similar, something that was obvious and unambiguously human-on-human.

Something she could deal with.

“Rainger,” she said out loud, knowing that the Eaufasse could hear her conversation and would do its best to translate it for the other Eaufasse. “Send for the collection team. Tell them you’ll meet them here, and remind them of the delicacy of the recovery effort.”

“Yes, sir,” Rainger said. “Mind if I continue to examine the scene, sir?”

“Don’t touch anything,” she said. “In fact, make a secondary recording. Get up close. The more information we have the better.”

He nodded.

“Washington,” she said. “You’re with me.”

“Sir?” he said, looking startled.

“We came here to remove a human enclave,” she said. “I think we should see what we’re facing.”

TWO

TWO MARSHALS COULDN’T remove a human enclave from anywhere. But they could investigate the enclave, see its layout, maybe get a guess as to how big it was.

The Eaufasse that brought them looked at her, then at Rainger, then back at her. This one she could interpret: It wasn’t certain if it should stay with Rainger or go with her. Clearly someone had asked it to keep an eye on the team of humans that had arrived.

That was their mistake for not sending more than one Eaufasse on this little adventure.

Gomez settled it for the Eaufasse. She started out of the clearing, following the footsteps they had made on the way in. Spread across her left eye, she had a map of this area that she had downloaded from some database. The trail she needed to follow branched off the trail they had originally walked down.

The Eaufasse let out a small peep and scrambled after them, using its long limbs to pull itself through the branches. The branches would swing it forward just a bit until finally it arrived at Gomez’s side.

Wait. Please. Me lead.
The translator said for it.

It’s okay,
Gomez sent.
I have a map
.

No, no.
The Eaufasse sounded distressed. Could Eaufasse sound distressed? Or was she anthropomorphizing again?
Colleagues yours. Know not. Secret us.

Okay,
she sent.
I didn’t understand that. Try again.

Colleagues yours. Think secret.
Yes?

She sighed. She still didn’t understand it.

“I think it’s saying that the enclave has no idea that the Eaufasse know anything about them,” Washington said, sounding tired. Or maybe he was overwhelmed. This was already shaping up into something bigger than either of them wanted it to be.

Is that correct?
Gomez sent.
Do the humans know you are watching them?

Humans know not us
, the translator sent back.
We want not humans know.

That one she got. They didn’t want the humans to know that they had discovered the enclave. Which begged the question: how did the enclave get here without the Eaufasse knowing?

But Gomez wasn’t going to ask. She wouldn’t get an answer she understood anyway. She’d leave it to the diplomats, whom she was going to have to send for, given the three bodies.

I won’t reveal your location
, Gomez sent.
I don’t want the enclave to know about us either.

At least, not right now. Not when there were only two marshals standing here and an unknown number of people in the enclave.

I just want to see the property
, Gomez sent. And in case they didn’t understand that, she added
, I want to know how big it is
.

One hundred
, the translator answered.

She hoped to hell that was 100 humans and not 100 buildings. But she didn’t ask that question either. All would be answered soon enough. She simply sent a thank you and kept going.

The weird underbrush was thinning. She recognized this area. It took her back to the trail carved into the wilderness—or what she thought of as wilderness. She could cut across the trail and head directly to the enclave, or she could backtrack, and take a much larger trail that had forked from this one a click back.

She was about to take the long route when the Eaufasse peeped at her again. It made that same gesture with its arm (at least she thought of it as an arm), the gesture she had thought of as
Come on
.

Maybe that was actually what it meant.

If we stay off the trail
, she sent to the translator,
are we in danger of walking in protected areas?

That was probably too complicated for them
, Washington sent her on their private link.

There was no answer, at least not immediately.

Of course. Permission. Walk you want. Okay.

“Or maybe not,” Washington muttered, just loud enough for her to hear.

She smiled. They continued. As long as she had permission on the record—or something she understood to be permission—she was going to take the easier route.

The land was hilly here, with more thick underbrush. The Eaufasse would touch branches as it went by, probably wishing it could pull itself along with them like it had before. It would lose Gomez and Washington quickly if it did that.

As rough as the terrain was, the distance they had to cover was relatively short. They reached a hill. The hill wasn’t that high, but the hillside was steep.

Down, down
, the translator sent.

Gomez and Washington looked down, seeing nothing but ground cover. But the Eaufasse with them made that
Come on
gesture again, only its head was pointed toward the top of the hill.

Then it fell on its—stomach? front? Gomez wasn’t certain what to call that part of its anatomy—and started pulling itself through the underbrush. So that was what the translator meant by
down
.

You gotta be kidding me
, Washington sent her.

Something wrong?
Rainger sent.

Not with us
, Gomez sent.
Collection there yet?

They say they’re an hour out
, Rainger sent.
I can join you
.

We’re okay,
she sent again.

Except for this stupid obstacle course,
Washington sent, then promptly fell on his belly. It wasn’t like they hadn’t done this in training. They’d pull themselves forward by their elbows or their gun barrels or their knives, sometimes for hours.

But Washington was a lot closer to that training than Gomez was. She hadn’t done this in nearly a decade. Plus she didn’t know what this ground, and this ground cover, was composed of.

Still, she flopped down and pulled herself forward, using the branches. They actually moved with her, and she wondered if they were some kind of creature. She remembered that feeling she had earlier, that they had clawed at her boots. She wasn’t sure if they were physically pulling her forward now.

The movement through the underbrush was a lot more quiet than she expected it to be. She could barely hear the rustle of Washington and the Eaufasse ahead of her. It took almost no time to reach the crest of the hill.

The branches formed a web in front of her, but she could see through the openings. She could have sworn that the branches weren’t in that position when she had started up the hill, but she didn’t say anything. She’d seen too many strange things throughout her career to doubt her impressions now.

She moved just a little closer to the edge. Washington was at her left, the Eaufasse was at her right. It almost flattened against the ground, looking like a pile of branches all by itself. The perfect camouflage.