The Clone Sedition (26 page)

I said, “There’s no meaning in those words. What if I said, ‘Tuna fish eat isotopes’? Meaningless. I was a raving lunatic.” Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much of a lunatic I’d become. “There is no meaning to what I said, it’s the product of fatigue.”

“What does Ray Freeman have to do with it?”

That shut me up. “I haven’t seen Freeman in over a year,” I said.

“Watson says you went looking for him on the Night of the Martyrs.”

“I didn’t find him.”

“Do you know how to find him?”

I shook my head, and said, “He finds me when he wants to chat.”

Cutter said, “You were in Seattle on the Night of the Martyrs?” Watson must have told him; either that, or he looked it up in my files. “What made you think he’d be in Seattle?”

“The last time I heard from him, he was in Seattle,” I said.

“You went looking for him, but you didn’t find him?”

“I was preoccupied,” I said.

I did not know how to interpret Cutter’s expression. It wasn’t anger. His eyes hardened, and his mouth froze in an unconvincing smile. Behind the mask, I thought I saw disappointment. He said, “General, you are relieved of command.”

His words stunned me. At first I wanted to laugh. I was the one who had promoted him to admiral in the first place. Okay, yes, I gave him an extra star; but in my mind, I had as much of a right to relieve him as he did to relieve me.

I wanted to threaten him. I wanted to laugh at him. I wanted to take away his command. Instead, I said, “I am relieved.”

“What the hell do you mean you were relieved of command!” Jackson demanded. “Cutter is a damned cargo hauler. Who the speck placed him in charge?”

“I did.”

“General, we could take this ship.”

“That’s why Cutter has so many MPs guarding the decks.”

Jackson laughed. “We could take care of them rapid, quick, and pronto, couldn’t we? Swabbies with pistols…Hell, we might not lose a single Marine.”

“He wants us to hand over our guns.”

“Speck that!”

“I said we would.”

We walked around the compound as we spoke.

“You’ve been relieved of command, sir. That makes it my decision.” We walked in silence for two minutes, before he finally said, “Shit. I’ll deliver the weapons.”

Then he asked, “Who’s taking your post?”

“There’s only one general in this man’s corps,” I said.

“Ritz?” Jackson asked. “‘Run-and-Gun Ritz’? Outstanding. Once Cutter gets a whiff of Ritz, he’ll beg you to come back.”

I wasn’t so sure. Brigadier General Hunter Ritz had all the reckless bravado of a young Marine; but following orders and observing the chain of command had been hardwired into his brain. He was brash, and he and Cutter would clash, but Ritz always produced in the end. He was irreverent, but he was also inventive, hard-hitting, and ruthless. Cutter would appreciate those qualities.

“Did Cutter say why he wanted you out?”

“He thinks I was compromised. He thinks I’m working for the New Olympians.”

“Bullshit,” said Jackson.

“I’m not going to do myself any favors when we get back. I am going to push to bring the New Olympians to Earth. We need to get those bastards off Mars.”

“No, we don’t,” said Jackson.

“We owe them that much,” I said. “They’re humans living in inhuman conditions.”

“We don’t owe them anything,” said Jackson. He sounded angry. He said, “We saved their specking hides on Olympus Kri, didn’t we? We pulled them off the specking planet before it burned…and then we got ambushed for helping them!”

“That was a U.A. attack,” I said. “The New Olympians didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“We lost ships. We lost men. We lost our specking chain of command, all for helping those bastards,” said Jackson. “The way I see it, we’ve done too much for them already. And don’t get me started on that specking Night of the Martyrs shit.

“Look, General, maybe I’m bigoted against my own kind, but that’s the way it is. I’m natural-born, but I still specking hate the bastards. Give me the company of synths any day.

“The New Olympians might be loyal, but that doesn’t explain why they formed a Martian Legion.”

“We killed the Martian Legion,” I said. “We destroyed their army.”

“We took away their weapons, but they may still have an army.”

“They need to be repatriated. We can’t leave them on Mars.”

We had made our way to the firing range. Ahead of us, a company of men fired at targets, some moving and some stationary. Most of the men used special M27s designed for use aboard ships, guns that fired holographic bullets. A few of the men used real M27s that fired live ammo. Cutter would confiscate the real ones in another hour. The holographic guns posed no danger.

We had seen so much war over the last fifteen years that Darwin’s survival of the fittest had occurred in a nation of clones. Our weak men had died over the last decade. The clones who remained did not miss many shots, nor did they waste bullets. Training hardens men, combat forges them, attrition turns the weak ones into statistics.

Jackson was right. If we wanted to take the ship, Cutter and his MPs would not pose a problem.

Location: Washington, D.C.
Date: April 28, 2519

The message from the office of Gordon Hughes, Governor of Mars Spaceport, came with the governor’s virtual security seal. It said, “I have Howard Tasman. Do not send clones.”

Cutter read the message and verified the seal. The name, Howard Tasman, meant nothing to him.

He tried calling Hughes. No one answered. He sent a short message of his own—“Who is Howard Tasman?” An hour passed, then a day, then a week. He received no reply.

In the meantime, Cutter tried to solve the mystery on his own. Having started his career as an enlisted man, Cutter did not mind doing a little legwork. He started with a quick search of the mediaLink, a mostly entertainment-based network that included magazines, encyclopedias, and reference books.

There were no references to Howard Tasman, not even a record of his birth. Apparently, he had not been an actor, writer, politician, or professional athlete.

Cutter accessed military records, using his office computer. Tasman did not appear to have had a military career.

He called Watson. Instead of saying “hello,” he asked, “Have you found Freeman yet?”

“Not yet,” said Watson.

Cutter thought,
Not yet, sir.
He said, “For God’s sake, Watson, the man is seven feet tall. He eats bullets and shits out dead people. What’s taking so long?”

Cutter wasn’t really bothered by Watson’s not having found Freeman. It was the boy’s inability to say “sir” that bothered him.

“I’ve got every satellite and traffic camera on the planet
looking for him. It’s like he never steps into the sunlight,” said Watson.

Or he’s off planet,
thought Cutter. When the Enlisted Man’s Empire attacked Earth, its Navy had a self-broadcasting spy ship. That ship disappeared after the war. In the admiral’s view, that ship’s disappearance was a security nightmare. She was a modified cruiser, with three decks and three landing bays, that was capable of carrying nine transports. She had a stealth generator that rendered her invisible until she broadcasted. Like any other self-broadcasting ship, the spy ship created an anomaly that could be detected from millions of miles away whenever she broadcasted; but that was the only time she could be detected.

“I have another job for you,” he told Watson. “Maybe you’ll be able to get this one done.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Watson.

What do you want me to do, sir?
Cutter thought. He asked, “Ever heard the name Howard Tasman?”

“Can’t say I’ve heard the name; is he important?”

“Apparently Gordon Hughes thinks he’s important.”

“Hughes?”

“Hughes sent me a message saying he has Howard Tasman.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Yeah, he said not to send clones.”

“Are you sending me to Mars?” asked Watson.

“Not yet, not until we know something about Tasman first. I want you to go to the U.A. Archives to see what you can dig up.”

“Not a problem,” said Watson. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. When you leave Bolling Air Force Base, make sure to take your guard. I know about you sneaking out at night.”

So Cutter knew he went out at night. Watson could not escape the feeling that the admiral was using the bodyguards to look over his shoulder. He felt both angry and embarrassed.

He did not like living on a military base. The irony was that now that he lived among clones, he identified more with them than before. They grew up in the orphanages believing they were natural-born children living in facilities for synthetics. He now believed the same thing about himself. He was a natural-born citizen living on a base for military clones.

He knew he was natural-born, of course; but weren’t they as certain of their origins as he was of his?

Watson was a man who could not sleep unless he’d had an orgasm. He had slept well every night since returning from Mars. Since leaving the
Churchill
, he had slept in nearly every part of town except Bolling Air Force Base.

His bodyguards, on the other hand, always looked tired. When he spent the night in a woman’s apartment, they spent the night in the car.

Watson opened the door of his office. His guards waited on the other side. Two were sitting, the third was asleep on the floor. Their clothes were wrinkled, and their faces were puffy and blotchy from the lack of sleep.

“We gotta go,” said Watson.

The bodyguards did not argue. One asked where. Watson told him. The driver went ahead to check the car. One bodyguard walked ten feet ahead of Watson; the other remained a few paces behind him.

They rode into Washington, D.C., and drove down a ramp into the underground parking lot of the archive building. No one spoke until after they parked, then one of the bodyguards
told Watson to stay in the car while he searched the building. The driver and the remaining bodyguard sat in tired silence.

Once the bodyguard returned, the driver stayed with the car while Watson entered the archive, his bodyguards in tow. The Enlisted Man’s Army guarded the archive. Six clone officers sat behind a bulletproof barricade, all holding M27s.

Watson went to the security station and showed his identification.

The officer in charge typed some information into a computer. Watson’s security clearance wasn’t enough, he needed authorization from Admiral Cutter’s office before he could enter.

Apparently, the authorization came through quickly. The officer glared at Watson, scrutinized him, then told him to pass through the posts.

“The posts,” a security device that identified people right down to their DNA, looked like a postmodern attempt at re-creating an ancient Grecian archway—two ten-foot pillars, spaced six feet apart, topped by a ten-foot rectangle, all made of polymerized metal.

The pillar on the left side of the posts was known as the “sprayer” because it shot a fine mist made of oil and water vapor. The sprayer dislodged flecks of skin, dandruff, and hair, which the column on the right, the “receiver,” vacuumed and analyzed.

Watson stepped between the pillars, felt the gust, and was admitted through. The process took under a second. The bodyguards passed through the posts also, the security team checking their identities as well.

After his last visit, Watson knew his way around the archive. He found a computer station and made himself at home. His bodyguards remained on their feet, standing a few feet behind him, their arms by their sides, their hands near their guns.

The inside of the archive was a three-story vault with a domed ceiling and a circular balcony. The walls were square, but the computer stations were arranged in concentric rings.

Watson sat down. He typed a security access code, the last gate between the archives and a break-in. The leaders of the Enlisted Man’s Empire considered the archive to be a temple
of forbidden knowledge and admitted only its highest of high priests to enter. In this library could be found information for assembling a broadcast network, creating clone farms, and undermining nations.

The clones needed to retain this information if they hoped to extend their empire beyond the current generation.

Tactile sensors in the keyboard of the computer verified Watson’s DNA and fingerprints every time he tapped a key. A discreet retinal scanner in the screen confirmed his identity 120 times per minute. Watson did not notice the additional security precautions as he trolled for information about Howard Tasman.

A menu appeared.

Tasman, H—Biographical Information

Tasman, H—Liberator Project, Linear Committee Briefing—June 24, 2453

Tasman, H—Neural Programming Code—March 8, 2454

Tasman, H—Need for a Death Reflex—August 17, 2461

Tasman, H—SECURITY PROFILE, Updated 2506

Watson started with the security profile and discovered that if Howard Tasman was still alive, he was an exceptionally old man. He’d been born on a planet called Volga in December, 2428. That made him eighty-nine years old.

Watson read the name of his home planet and stopped. He’d heard of Volga, but he was not sure where or how, maybe in school. It was not one of the big planets, not one of the capitals of the six galactic arms.

The file included a birth picture, fingerprints, a footprint, photographs of Tasman’s parents, and a DNA sample. Watson skipped all of that. He scrolled through the file, stopping at a picture of Tasman as a young adult, just finishing college. He’d studied gene replication and neural enhancement before being hired by the Unified Authority to work in the military cloning program in 2448.

Pictures of Tasman showed a man who could blend into any crowd. He was average height—five feet nine inches. He was slightly on the thin side and weighed 162 pounds. He had short brown hair, brown eyes, no tattoos, no scars, no identifiable
markings. Watson examined a photograph of Tasman at the age of twenty-one. He had a soft, doughy face. He had narrow shoulders and long, skinny arms.