A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (5 page)

“Always in a group.”

“Were they in a group on this trip?”

“No and yes,” the ambassador said.

Great
, she thought. More nitpicking.

“Four emerged,” the ambassador said. “They moved quickly. A dozen more emerged. They moved even more quickly. They carried weapons.”

Gomez remained still, but a tension filled her.

“I asked him what kind of weapons,” Uzven added. “He did not know. Long ones, he said.”

“Thank you, Uzven,” Gomez said. “So, Mr. Ambassador, for my edification then. Four left the enclave, followed by twelve. The twelve had weapons and chased the four.”

“Not quite,” the ambassador said. “The four left some time before the dozen. The dozen tracked them, found them, and killed them.”

“But we only found three bodies,” Gomez said.

“Yes, that is correct,” the ambassador said. “The fourth is with us.”

She felt a surge of adrenalin. That explained a lot. The bodies were in a state of decay, so they’d been dead a while—in theory, anyway. And if the fourth human somehow found its way to the Eaufasse before dying, the human’s death could have caused problems inside the Eaufasse culture. Gomez could think of dozens of cultures in which going from living to dead in the wrong location caused all kinds of interspecies squabbles.

“Humans are particular about their death rituals,” she said. “We will have to request that the body be returned.”

The ambassador peeped, like the Eaufasse in the clearing had. It was an odd and noticeable sound. Then the ambassador spoke.

“The ambassador says he’s sorry,” Uzven said. “He was not clear.”

“Word for word, Uzven,” Gomez said tiredly. She hoped that the diplomats ended up with a better translator than Uzven, although she suspected they wouldn’t.

“The ambassador said,” Uzven said with emphasis, “‘I am sorry. I have spoken unclearly. The fourth human is with us. It lives and asks for asylum. That is why we contacted you.’”

It would have been good to know the entire translation the first time. Gomez bit back her irritation, and concentrated. So the reason the Eaufasse had contacted the Earth Alliance had been because of the fourth human, not because of the dead bodies in the clearing.

She had not expected this. “My understanding is that the Emir contacted us to remove the enclave.”

“The Emir did that, yes,” the ambassador said. “Our politicians believe that the enclave will now be a problem and want it gone. But we contacted you before the Emir. We do not know how to proceed with an asylum request while we are under consideration for membership in the Earth Alliance.”

Neither did she. She had never heard of such a thing.

“And you are…separate…from the politicians?” she asked carefully. Then she remembered to couch the terms more carefully. “Forgive me for my failure to understand your culture. I was the Earth Alliance representative closest to Epriccom when you requested Alliance presence. They chose me for my proximity, not for my understanding of your culture.”

“That’s all right,” the ambassador said. “We do not have a deep understanding of your culture either. This is why we are confused about the asylum request. We did not know that one member of a culture can become alienated from that culture. It is not our way.”

Oh, but it’s ours
, she thought, but did not say.

“My clan are the functionaries,” the ambassador was saying. “We maintain the systems of government. The Emir and his clan direct the government. In other words, we do not make policy. They do. But we enforce it.”

“Ah,” she said. “Our jobs are similar then.”

“No,” Uzven said. “They’re more like—”

“Let me, Uzven,” Gomez said. “Just translate.”

Or she’d grab Uzven’s scrawny little arm and snap it in half, just to hear if it sounded like the twig it resembled.

All right
, she acknowledged to herself, her level of frustration was higher than it needed to be. At least she was directing her aggression toward the Peyti, and not toward the Eaufasse.

“I do believe our jobs are similar,” the ambassador said and tossed its other arm outward. Then its eyes flared gold. She hoped that was a good thing.

“Well,” Gomez said, “I will work with you to make sure we make things easier for our politicians. The less they have to do, the better.”

The ambassador wheezed. She glanced at Uzven in panic. Uzven was leaning back slightly, then it tapped the bottom of its breathing mask, as if it were trying to improve the flow of whatever it was that they breathed.

“Do not worry,” Uzven said to her. “That is the sound of an Eaufasse laughing.”

“Forgive me,” the ambassador said when it quit wheezing. “If your politicians are like ours, they do less anyway.”

She smiled. “They are similar, then.”

The ambassador wheezed again. “We shall do what we can together. What do you need from my clan?”

She let out a small sigh, hoping it was inaudible. “If you have surveillance material of the dome, I would like to see it, particularly of the incident itself. You will not offend us if you do have such material. We expect it. Also, if I might meet the fourth person, the one who wants asylum. You may continue to protect him, but I would like to talk with him about the incident.”

The ambassador’s arms dropped to its side. “You do not offend with your requests, although I am surprised that you approve of the surveillance. It heartens me, like our mutual jobs do.”

She smiled. “It heartens me as well.”

“We shall send you the materials within the hour,” the ambassador said. “As for the fourth, we shall talk with it. We shall encourage it to talk with you. But that is all we can do.”

“I understand,” she said. “I do have one last request, however. Even if the fourth human won’t speak with me, I would like the name, the gender, and the place of origin, so that I might forward the information to the Earth Alliance. It will expedite the asylum proceedings.”

“Will it?” Uzven asked.

Damn translator. “Just translate,” Gomez said, just for him.

Uzven did. Or at least, she hoped it did.

“I shall have that information to you along with the surveillance materials,” the ambassador said. “And now, if you do not mind, I would like to ask you a personal question.”

“I don’t mind.” She had learned over the years such questions were often the most interesting of any conversation in a first-, second-, or third-contact.

“This is my first time working with humans,” the ambassador said. “Usually such matters are for a different clan.”

“Yes,” she said, mostly so that it would continue.

“I would like to ask if you are a separate gender than those in the enclave. Or are you in a different clan? Your appearance is quite different. I am told by my assistant that your entire team all looks quite different from what we expect.”

“Humans are a diverse species,” she said. “I can better answer you after I have seen the person asking for asylum. Do you mind the wait?”

“Not at all,” the ambassador said. “And please forgive the personal nature of the question.”

“It’s quite all right,” she said. “I suspect I shall be asking difficult questions as well over the course of the next few days. Thank you for your candor and your assistance, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Thank you,” the ambassador said, and severed the link.

Uzven started to speak, but she held up a hand. Then she disassembled the screen so that it couldn’t be activated from the other side. She didn’t want the Eaufasse to listen in.

“You acquitted yourself well for someone who is unfamiliar with the culture,” Uzven said.

She hadn’t expected the compliment. “We’ll see,” she said. “This is only the first step. There’s a lot more ahead of us, and if experience is any guide, most of that will be filled with surprises.”

She hoped the surprises would be pleasant ones, but experience also told her that such hopes were idle ones. She was in for a bumpy few days. The best she could do was avoid making an already strange situation worse.

FOUR

AS GOMEZ TURNED away from the screen, Lashante Simiaar poked her head out of a sealed-up corner of the large forensic area.

“Suit up,” she said, “and come in here.”

“Both of us?” Gomez asked, using her head to indicate Uzven.

“Just you,” Simiaar said. “No offense, Uzven.”

“I do not take offense at procedure,” Uzven said. “If I am not needed, I should like to leave so that I might settle into my quarters.”

“You’re not needed at the moment,” Gomez said.

Uzven nodded, adjusted its mask, and walked out of the room.

Simiaar watched it go. “You’d think, given my job, I’d know that individuals are all different, that a species shouldn’t have an effect on me, but jeez, the Peyti.”

“Maybe we’ve just met the wrong ones,” Gomez said.

“Yeah, sure,” Simiaar said. “Get in here.”

“Okay,” Gomez said, choosing not to express her surprise. In all the years they’d worked together, Simiaar had never ordered Gomez into the autopsy area. Gomez had often gone of her own accord, but she hadn’t been required to go in.

She could do what so many others in her job did, and watch the holographic recording of the autopsy. All the mess without the smell. And sometimes she did that, particularly when Simiaar was pulling apart some alien to determine if it got killed by an Earth Alliance weapon.

But usually she watched. As Simiaar once told her, the smells told as much as the body itself. Besides, if she had it to do all over again, Gomez probably would have gone into forensic pathology inside the FSS. A lot of alien contact, a lot of travel to distant worlds, and none of the difficult conversations with a species she didn’t understand.

Simiaar handed her a pathology suit. Gomez slipped it on. It was different than the suits the marshals used to go planetside. This suit was a thin version of a biohazard suit, one that kept the icky stuff out while allowing her—or whomever—to do delicate work.

She slipped the equally thin helmet over her face. It adhered to her skin, and would keep everything out—including smells.

So the fact that she was wearing a suit meant the problem wasn’t scent-related. It was something else.

Gomez slipped inside the autopsy area. The light was bright, with even more lights on the tables. Some of the lights were on, others were off. Simiaar’s workstation was also brightly lit, and there were petri dishes alongside filled slides alongside microchip dishes, all storing samples. She also saw vials of blood and other fluids.

Simiaar was doing a full autopsy, using all the tools at her disposal, preserving tissue and fluids. Eventually, she would use nanoprobes to examine the interior of the bodies, but the probes changed the ecology of the bodies—anything inserted inside did that—so they were used last.

Simiaar was wearing her suit too, but her helmet was off.

“What’ve you got?” Gomez asked.

“I was finding some very strange stuff,” Simiaar said, “so I decided on a holographic recreate. You need to see it. And before you ask, yes, I did double- and triple-check this.”

She hit a button alongside her workstation, and the lights dimmed. Above the bodies, intact bodies appeared, reconstructed whole from DNA combined with the remains.

The bodies belonged to young human males, not quite full grown, with very rare pale skin covered with equally rare light blond hair. They had long, athletic legs, well-formed torsos, and muscular arms. They also had the exact same face.

Gomez frowned.

“Triplets?” she asked, hoping that she was right.

“Clones,” Simiaar said. “I checked the telomeres. Definitely clones.”

Gomez walked around them. Clones, like twins, ended up looking slightly different from each other. No matter what they did, they ended up living different lives, and those lives had an impact on the skin.

But these boys were too young to have lived through much, and besides, she was looking at a recreation, not at the actual faces themselves. The actual faces had decomposed into unrecognizability.

“You checked the telomeres?” Gomez said, suddenly realizing that Simiaar had checked the DNA, an unusual—if accurate—procedure for clones. “Does that mean there were no clone tags?”

The Earth Alliance heavily regulated human clones after criminal syndicates used clones to take identity theft to a whole new level. All clones needed an obvious interior tag and a clone mark on the exterior of the skin, usually in a visible place like the back of the neck.

“No tags,” Simiaar said. “Are you surprised, given how far we are from anywhere?”

Gomez wasn’t surprised. Especially since the clones looked young. “They’re not fast-grow clones, are they?”

Because that would show up in the telomeres. Telomeres were often shorter in clones, especially clones made from an adult original. However, if the clones were meant for a normal-length life, a lot of the cloning companies engineered longer telomeres. Fast-grow clones had strange, sometimes broken telomeres, usually caused by the fast-growth process.