The room’s door opened with a bang. Two of the Captain’s men stumbled in, followed hard on their heels by a half-dozen heavily armed and armored fighters. These quickly spread into the room. One of them demanded that we surrender any weapons, and the rest prodded us with the tips of their flashguns. O’Flaherty’s group slowly dropped their weapons. The rest of us had none, at least, none that we could produce and drop on the floor.
A heavyset woman appeared at the door. It was Linda Aphrodite Jones.
She carried no weapon, but two of her black-clad fighters stood by her side.
“Hello, everyone,” she said. “Kindness, I apologize for coming into your home unbidden. I know what that means for a Trinn. But you may have forgotten, you gave me rights to your home a long time ago. What did you call it? Tandrydoon? Don’t worry; we won’t be here long.”
Kindness said nothing; he just sat there watching Linda. The old Trinn seemed bewildered by the successive invasions of his house. I guessed that he would have liked to be back in his simulation.
“And Empress. Or I guess I’d better call you Captain O’Flaherty, though I wonder if you’re really part of the Royal Court of Chance. So much lying these days.”
O’Flaherty also said nothing. I figured that she was having plant chatter with her crew; Linda did not seem to have blocked the plants. But to what effect, I could not tell.
“Dear Kli, please continue. I’m very interested in what you were about to say. Though I might have wished that you’d told me first. After all, I am paying you for this work. Come now, please go ahead.”
The fragen bared his teeth, moving his head back and forth so that his ear weights clicked as they hit each other. He looked around at all of us.
“Everywhere I turn,” he said finally, “I see new members to these families of yours. I had never thought you humans had a problem with losing your offspring, but you people certainly do. And Linda Aphrodite Jones, you certainly do have a problem. You should be glad you and your siblings don’t have more children, or pseudo-children. They certainly delight in trying to kill you.
“Elibel and Bael, meet your cousin. Or I guess maybe he’s your uncle. He’s resting right now, but when he awakes, I’m sure that he will be happy to meet you.”
“I knew it!” Linda cried. “I could see it in his face. He tried to kill me?”
“Not directly, but when your flyer went down in the waters off Government House, the thugs who got to you and sent you off in the flyer were Johnny’s people. His DNA was so close to yours, it let them figure out how to override the security ID and get him and his people inside. That’s how they got into your corner of Government House in the first place.”
“He’s a copy,” I said, “isn’t he?”
“Yea,” she said obviously excited, “though obviously he was modified. He doesn’t look like me at all.”
Everyone else was quiet. Both sets of guards, the Captain’s and Linda’s, were eyeing each other, watching for something coming from the other. Bael seemed bemused by her ever-growing family.
“How did you lose your copy?”
“She…,” Kli said.
“Go on, Kliostaff. You know more about this than I do.”
“She never knew for sure that Johnny existed. But she guessed that there might be a copy around; that was the only way anyone could figure that security had been breached at Government House. She didn’t tell me directly, but I soon figured out that she was looking for a copy.”
“How did you find out it’s it’s Johnny?”
“We could do a test now, if you like. But it’s not necessary. I traced him back to the time before he was Enrique Dermatt. Eventually I got to a research station on Olekin 4. That’s where he grew up. The station was run by a bio-for-hire outfit. That bunch still exists, by the way, and is controlled by Gregen Kappten. If you recall, Kappten is in thick with Melissa Bean.”
“So then…?”
“The records I’ve found show that Bean had a boy in that little school for girls she ran. Rosalind, do you remember him?”
“That was Johnny?” she exclaimed. “That kid was a silly little fool….”
“Sure, but he was your Johnny. Bean only had him for a little while. She tried to send him to Giorgio Sprocket—the Schoolmaster, you know him, I believe—but the Schoolmaster refused to take him. So he ended up with a group of traveling tutors in the employ of Gregen Kappten. Here is where it get’s interesting.”
“Why?”
“Johnny, Enrique—his name was Attempt 17 at that point—traveled across explored space for ten years. He was the tutors’ only pupil; Kappten put a lot of lucre into Johnny’s education. Some stays would be brief, a visit to some artifact, a historical marker, a famous building, a natural wonder. Other stays would be longer, maybe a whole cycle with a famous mathemagican. Once they spent a winter on Tyril, hunting tigers. Another time they had a long stay on Chis with the ant people. These were not the sort of tutors that you might find in the cloisters on University. They were tough, and mean, and smart. Johnny grew up tough and mean and smart. Then they went to Trinn, and all that changed.”
“Taes?”
“Not at first. Bael, you may remember Johnny as well. Your father took you to learn a bit from the well-dressed Master Smith, did he not?”
“Yea. But…you’re not talking about Foosta, the boy who worked for Smith? He was so quiet.”
“Quiet, yes, but focused on learning all that he could from Smith about the arts of persuasion and deception. He was doing just that; as I understand it, Bael, you were a just casual student, but Johnny was a fanatic. And then Taes learned about the boy. He dug around as I’ve been doing; fortunately, he left traces. Eventually he figured out that Johnny was being groomed to be not just one of Melissa’s minions, but an exceptional force in her array, and ultimately the assassin of Linda Aphrodite Jones. Taes knew Smith quite well, and worked to get closer to the boy. It was about that time that Johnny’s three tutors began to die.”
“Murdered? I asked.
“Of course.”
“So Taes became Johnny’s mentor?” Bael asked.
“By that point, no one was Johnny’s mentor. The boy was on his own. He and Taes became closer, though, more as allies in the belief that they were smarter than anyone else. You know about about the clone perspective problem?”
“Human copies tend toward madness,” the Captain said, a tinge of bored frustration in her voice, as though she were quoting from a datadump. “Even when they don’t know they’re copies, most of them exhibit a total lack of perspective as to who they are. They begin to get a sense that they are uniquely superior. They may be reared with a bend toward total humility, as with the koolas monks, but still that pervasive idea grows in their heads. Sometimes that sense of superiority can be controlled and contained as straightforward arrogance—not pleasant, but not especially harmful. But most times, they go mad.”
“Yea, thanks, and so….” Kli said.
“Why it happens, nobody’s been able to tell,” she continued. “Breeders have tried to get rid of the trait, but with no luck. For a while, it was theorized that gestation outside of the womb was the cause, but research on non-copy tank babies put that one to rest. Some theologians suggest that the copy babies are born without a spirit essence, what they call a soul. In the end, nobody knows. Is that correct?”
“Yea,” Kli said. “That’s why human copies are so rare. In Johnny’s case, his breeders had hoped to channel the problem into arrogance, which they thought they could control. But meeting Taes changed all that. And the problem with Johnny was that he is very smart, and his education has been superb.”
“We suspected that Johnny was a copy,” O’Flaherty said, taking a deep and deliberate sip of her brandy. “But we had no idea who the original was, and why. Kliostaff, have your investigations shown why Johnny’s people wanted to kill Linda?”
“No. They had already neutralized her in the skuffle with the Brec faction. A lot of people don’t like Linda, No offense, facilitator….”
“None taken. It’s certainly a fact. Go on.”
“There’s not too much more to say. Maybe they did it for sport.”
“Kli,” I said, “have you found out anything more about Taes, and what Breslaft has been up to, exactly? And Linda, I really need to know: Why did you burst in here, waving weapons?”
“Why do you think?” The voice came from behind me. It was Johnny. I sprang up, but one of Linda’s guards was already next to him. Johnny was still bound, spawled across a couch. He struggled to sit up.
“She wants my help, and unless I miss my guess, she’s willing to pay for it.”
“Help?”
“Our dear Facilitator wants to take back power on Forest. But she won’t be the Facilitator, she’ll create a new role for herself. I’ve heard it will be Provisional Coordinator for Consortium Stability, or something like that. But she’ll be in control, control like the consortium or any of the other entities have never seen. She’ll be willing to offer me a lot, and maybe she’ll even appeal to family loyalty. I know she’ll figure that she knows my weak points. She is a fool. Can somebody loosen these bonds a little? They are wicked tight.”
“Nobody touch him,” Linda said. “Well, Billy, or Enrique, or Rohit, or Johnny, or Barr of Picalle—you sure do love to change identities, don’t you, my little copy—I’d lost touch with you after Melissa brought you to me all those years ago. You were such a lovely little boy in those days, and our time together was too short. Yes, you are correct, I wanted to rescue him. But not to help me regain power. I want to help him.”
“Help me? That’s….”
“Yes, Johnny. I know a way to reverse what’s happening to you. I can….”
“Nothing’s happening to me. At least not if someone doesn’t loosen these damned bonds.”
The captain stood up, looked at Linda, then walked over to Johnny and tweaked the power levels on his constraints. Then she turned and raised her hand.
“Don’t try it,” Linda said, as O’Flaherty froze in mid-motion. “I know about that plant of yours. Johnny, you and I….”
With a flash, one wall of the room dissolved, and a rush of cold, wet, night air filled the room. The break was filled with more black-clad fighters, followed by three huge gold monkeys. The fighters all had big flashguns, and as they leapt into the room, they began firing. I fell behind one of the couches, and as I did, I could see that a flash burst had seared Bael’s side.
To Be Continued
