Cloneworld - 04 (30 page)

Pippa stared at her clone, and shrugged. "I think, sometimes, in this world, in this life, some things cannot be repaired." She turned and leapt onto a parapet of rocks, then scrambled down the incline.

Her ganger turned and faced the sinking sun.

We all die,
she thought.

Some, sooner than others.

Then she followed Pippa into the shadow-lengthening camp.

Teddy Sourballs started to laugh.

"Something funny?" said Pippa. She was reclining, eating some kind of thin gruel supplied by the GASGAM's emergency life-support stores. They could keep a human alive indefinitely by reconstituting any kind of organic materials into a thin but
very
nutritious grey gruel. But, as Pippa had pointed out, it didn't do one's appetite any good to think they were eating pulped rodents and genetically reorganised horse-shit.

"You're going to the Slush Pits. Ziggurat will be waiting for you."

"Yeah, but we have
you
as a hostage, right?"

Teddy shrugged. "I can always be rebuilt."

Pippa frowned. "What does that mean?"

"She means when she dies, they just clone her. In a Vat. In a place very similar to the Slush Pits, only this one is a bit more refined and reserved for
TV Royalty
and
Important People.
Usually ganger politicians and filmy stars. It makes you sick to see such an abuse of money and power. Ordinary people have to go to the Slushers, and even that costs them an arm and a leg. Quite literally, sometimes. They're the equivalent of back-street, rusty-knife abortions carried out by sick doctors struck off the medical register for unsafe practice."

"So when a ganger dies, they can be brought back?"

"Yeah. A ganger is - how can I put this? -
allotted
a certain amount of changes in their lifetime. Some famous people, like the TV and filmy star
Rebecca Rebecca
, sell templates of their DNA so that gangers can copy them, with a few minor twists of course; somebody as famous as Rebecca Rebecca wouldn't want to be refused entry to The Ganger Awards or anything like that, would she? So sometimes they build in genetic
Clauses.
"

"So this is a society surrounding TV? That's how it looks. Especially going off the reaction when Franco - the idiot - slotted Opera."

"Yeah, media is everything to a ganger. Vanity is everything. I mean, would you want to copy somebody else's DNA, absorb it into your own system, make it the dominant life force? It takes a certain type of ego, of narcissism, to do that."

"Surely if you absorb an alien DNA, then you take on other things? Their thought patterns, for example. Characteristics. Social views and habits. That sort of thing."

"In the Slush Pits you can have Options. Whereas Clauses are enforced, Options are your chosen preferences - they buy you different grades of cloning. If it's a Straight Cheap Transfer, you're fucked. But if you have a bit of money, or want to remortgage your five bedroom ApartBubble, you can have more control. Gradients of cloning, if you will."

Pippa scratched her head. "I'm sorry. I'm a bit lost. I thought gangers had a natural, innate ability to clone others? I thought any ganger could take a sample from me, be it hair, or saliva, and copy me. That's why they were so feared. That's why they - you - were effectively imprisoned here by QGM. No off-world travel for the gangers; or next thing you know, one's impersonated General Steinhauer and is running Quad-Gal Military behind everyone's backs." She laughed, coldly.

Pippa's clone smiled. "Yes. Quite. We are massively different, organically, from the base human species. I think gangers always thought themselves superior; after all, they could mimic and imitate without problem, without remorse or empathic regret - and that could and
would
make us naturally superior. A ganger could take the strength of one creature, the agility of another, the ferocity of a third, and blend them all into one psychopathic killing-shell that would piss all over human armies. That's why we were banished here. Imprisoned. That's why everybody is so scared of us. We have the potential for massive... upset.
Domination.
Now, the elite are simply used by QGM for missions. With certain caveats, of course."

"Caveats?"

"Spinal Logic Cubes. Control implants. A little bit like what they used on you and your Combat K buddies. AI control. Behaviour devices. If I go walk-about from Cloneworld - bam! I'm a jelly donut in a skin sack."

"Is that why the orgs were put here?"

"Yeah." Pippa's clone gave a cold smile. "Yet another control mechanism, although the orgs claim they were here first - I think it helps pacify their religious warlike tendencies. Gives them credence. It was QGM playing Mother Nature again. A balance, you see? I came to understand after decades of study. The orgs were introduced as creatures of hatred - and vice versa. We are at war continually; and when a race is at war, it helps keep the numbers down, right? We're fighting ourselves into an extinction pit, and nobody seems to see the irony."

"The irony?"

"We're all pawns. All game pieces on a planetary gameboard. It makes me wonder sometimes if the whole fucking show isn't being televised for God's benefit." She gave a cold, bitter laugh, and Pippa realised with a shock that the ganger still had layers of her own personality. Which meant...

She wasn't a direct copy of Pippa.

She
did
kill Keenan's wife and children; must have! For Pippa knew, felt deep down inside, that this was something
she
could never knowingly do. But the ganger, the half-clone - it looked like Pippa, walked like Pippa, even killed like Pippa. But there were essential differences.

The clone didn't love Keenan.

Pippa did. And because of that, she knew she was the
real
Pippa, the real woman, the template; and the ganger, the clone, it was fucking with her skull, playing games with her mind and soul.

Slowly, Pippa closed her mouth. Her eyes went hard. Her heart went hard.

Soon, she would kill her.

After they reached the Slush Pits.

After they found the 3Core.

After she had served her purpose...

It was dawn. The sun crept over a blank horizon and threatened winter sunlight, slung low like a sharpshooter's sagging gun-belt. Pippa peered over the rocky ground using binos supplied by the GASGAMs.

The Slush Pits, from the outside, looked like one huge warehouse. A warehouse five
kilometres
wide. It was a characterless black building, which looked like it had been constructed from corrugated black alloy. It rose perhaps five stories in height, but without windows. The only markings on the surface, mid-point down the five-klick stretch, were the giant words: Gangers Inc. Sunlight gleamed from alloy walls, highlighting morning dew and hints of frost.

Pippa sat back, and bit her lower lip.

"Heavy fortifications?"

Pippa shook her head. "On the contrary. Wire perimeter fence, one road in and out, security hut with a guard picking his nose and reading filmy slips. But then, that's what makes me suspicious, yeah?"

"There's an underground train for gangers coming here for modifications or with cloning jars," said Pippa's clone. "That's all I know. I've never been in. Never
wanted
to go in."

"There's a big surprise waiting in there for you, fuckers," snarled Teddy Sourballs, face a curious mixture of sneering superiority, and fear, and hate - all blended into a face like a punchbag. A used one.

Pippa barked a laugh. "Not much of a surprise now, is it? You've told us about it. And if we know about it, we're
prepared
for it. Understand, idiot?"

Teddy frowned. "Er..."

"You're a dumb clone, that's for sure. What does the Mistress pay you for, anyway? Stupidity?"

"It's not my fault," scowled Sourballs. "This," she waved her bound hands, "wasn't part of my original job description! I was a teacher, all right? My job was to win over the rich parents, get the little bastards into the building, and make sure we filled up their books with as much stuff as possible to justify our huge fees. Didn't matter what we put in their books, any old shite would do. We used to bribe exam markers. Got the top results! One of the top schools on Clone Terra! Bloody gangers thought we were supreme!"

She looked up. Pippa was staring at her.

"You were a fucking
teacher?"
snarled Pippa. "A teacher, piloting a gunship? Call me old fashioned, but there's a conflict of images here. What do you do during break? Torture? Rape? Sodomy? What about your spare time? Do you pilot submarines? Fix leaking Deep Space Marine Vessels? Machine gun combat fucking GKs?"

"No." Teddy had retreated into her shell like a snail under the shadow of a boot. "I never asked for this. But I got dragged along, all right? My job description specified that I was to take useless little fuckers, fill their books with irrelevant crap, then punt out top-level gangers who looked good on
paper
. We didn't care about their
education.
Oh no. We cared about their monies, because it was on the back of that cash the Mistress built the TV networks. She'd funnel the money from excessively wealthy parents into expanding her TV Empire. It was all for the greater good. You see?"

"What did you teach?" said Pippa, softly.

"English." Teddy sniffed. "Actually, I was the
Head
of English."

"How can you be the Head of something when you freely admit you weren't actually interested in teaching? Simply justifying your excessive fees? Gods, what kind of school was it?"

"We provided a service," growled Teddy, barbed-wire hair bobbing like a particularly badly fitting wig. "And we did it to the best of our ability!"

"Oh yeah? A service to your own back pockets to make a fucking big pot of cash."

"There is no crime in making money!"

"There is when it's at the expense of somebody's education! Go on, what was your prime objective? The school's mission statement?"

Teddy thought for a moment. "Okay, yes, I agree to some extent, we
were
a business. We had to make money to survive, to prosper, to expand! We were oppressed by QGM, the gangers were downtrodden and forced into a position of weakness. But one day," her eyes gleamed, "one day we will overthrow you! You've already seen, we have learned how to crack your GASGAMs. We have built a secret..." Her voice trailed off. "No. I have said too much."

Pippa stepped forward and snapped out a right straight that dropped Teddy in an instant. The frizzy ganger glared up at her through tear-filled eyes, blood dripping from her nose. "That's for all the kids you fucked over," Pippa snarled through a mouthful of saliva and hate. She kicked Teddy in the face, slamming her back and rendering her unconscious. "And that's for being a bitch. I hate bitches."

Pippa's clone stepped forward. "But
you're
a bitch!"

"Yeah, well, I hate myself," snapped Pippa.

"That's my boss you just laid out cold."

"Well, I don't want her screwing up my plan. Because it's a good plan. And it needs her unconscious so her big, flapping mouth can't flap like a bitch-landed fish on a schooner's deck."

"You've thought of a way to get in?"

"Oh yeah," said Pippa, her green eyes gleaming.

The guard's name was Squib, and he was a squib. All squibs were little fellas, about two feet in height, and bred in a FatVat with identical DNA. They were all called "Squib" which, in terms of individual identification, made life a nightmare, but because nobody working for Gangers Inc. gave a flying bollock about any forms of personal identification or the rights of the squib individual, it was a moot point.

Squib sat in his guard box, scowling, and he scowled a lot because the squibs, as genetically-engineered servile species go, were a pretty bad tempered bunch. Not to their Lords and Masters and Betters, of course, oh, no; that had been genetically dredged out of them with a fine clawed hammer. But to one another. There wasn't a single one of the six thousand squibs who worked in the Slush Pits who wasn't filled with absolute hate and loathing for his fellow squib, despite their identical nature.

And so Squib sat, his metal guard box gleaming with the crimson rays of the sinking sun, and he watched the road, and the fence, and searched earnestly for signs of intruders.
Oh
how he'd like to find an intruder. "I'd love to find an intruder," he often said to himself, "just to see what it was like to find an intruder!" This would obviously necessitate acts of hideous violence, for what Squib lacked in verticality he made up for in raw aggression and a willingness to torture even small animals to within an inch of their death.

Squib sat.

Squib fumed.

Squib contemplated.

Squib hated.

Squib had managed to build up quite a
well
of hatred, frustration, anger, apathy, disgust, loathing and downright
detestation
for everything, because he'd been sat in his hut for nearly ten years now. Ten years without an intruder! Ten years waiting to vent his glowing ball of intensity on some unlucky traveller stumbling stupidly into his nasty web.