The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (34 page)

“Yet there were slow-grown clones of PierLuigi Frémont on the Moon not six months ago.”

Conte nodded. “I tried to find records of sales,” he said. “I haven’t been able to find any.”

“So where did they come from?” Deshin asked.

Conte shook his head.

“Then where does your single name come from?” Deshin said.

“A long shot,” Conte said. “An extreme long shot.”

“So tell me,” Deshin said.

And Conte did.

THIRTY-EIGHT

SALEHI FELT LIKE he hadn’t left his ship’s library in weeks, even though it had only been days. He had been buried deep in existing clone law, most of it cobbled together after some crisis or other. There seemed to be no real thought to the laws at all. They were drafted as reactions to whatever had sparked them, not as an existing body of work. They hadn’t been crafted, like some of the laws in the Earth Alliance, and they weren’t comprehensive. They hadn’t even existed long enough to be chiseled into order by the courts.

They were a contradictory mess.

The library’s nanoscrubbers were on full. Bots came in and out, bearing food (courtesy of the staff), coffee, and changes of clothing. Although whenever a bot brought Salehi more clothes, he figured it was time for a shower, and he would leave.

At least the room hadn’t developed that law school funk he’d noticed before finals. It didn’t matter how many scrubbers were in the law school’s systems during finals week, every study area smelled like a gym locker with a broken cleaning system.

Here, at least, the library remained somewhat pristine. A ship had to have better environmental equipment than a law school.

Not that he cared beyond that moment when he returned to the library, saw his staff working, and Uzvuyiten ensconced in his spot.

Uzvuyiten got up every four hours or so, and left the room. Salehi always felt relieved about that. He suspected the others did as well.

The other lawyers and assistants had come and gone from the room. Salehi stopped keeping track of all the players long ago. He simply didn’t have enough brain space to handle it all, particularly if he wasn’t going to use AutoLearn.

Sir?
The inquiry was soft, in his links, which was odd. It came from Lauren Jiolitti, one of the attorneys he had hand-chosen to take this trip with him. She hadn’t made partner yet, but she would. She was one of the best he’d seen.

She was sitting only a few meters from him, which was what made the contact even odder.

Yes?
he sent.

I just got word from S
3
about our investigation. I wasn’t sure if Uzvuyiten knew about it, so I thought I should contact you first…?

She sounded tentative. Salehi didn’t look at her. She had done well. Uzvuyiten didn’t know that S
3
was running its own investigation of the Peyti clone DNA, just to make certain that everything was on the up and up.

Because of his focus, Salehi had forgotten that he had designated Jiolitti as the investigation’s contact.

I’ll meet you in my quarters in a few minutes
, he sent.

He got up, muttered something about a shower break, and headed out of the room. No one paid attention. They were all as focused as he was.

He headed to his quarters which were on a different level. He hadn’t used them much. He barely thought of them as “his.”

He had the main stateroom on the ship—a large bedroom, a large sitting area, a full kitchen, and a decadent bathroom. He usually loved the main stateroom, but on this trip, it had been little more than a place to change clothes and catch a few hours of sleep.

He got himself an apple of a variety grown especially for S
3
, when he heard the chime that announced a visitor. He commanded the door to open.

Jiolitti stepped inside. She was a slight woman with shoulder-length dark hair that usually had another color running through it. Apparently, she had been too busy on this case to add that tint. The lack of it, and the fact that she hadn’t matched her eyes to her clothes like she often did, made her attractive.

Salehi hadn’t noticed that before.

Of course, it also added a few years to her face, which he appreciated.

She looked around. “No desert?” she asked.

He smiled. “No time,” he said, not wanting to explain that the desert spoke of relaxation to him. He probably wasn’t going to relax for years now—except on scheduled vacations.

She tilted her head, then ran a hand through her hair. It tumbled around her face. She stepped forward tentatively—”Living room?” she asked. “Kitchen?”—as if she wanted to know her destination before going any farther.

“Sitting room,” he said, giving the room the designation it had on the ship’s manifest. He grabbed some water for both of them and followed her into the sitting area.

It had no portals. It did have programmable walls that he had forgotten to program. The default program consisted of light paint and dark fake wood lintels, making everything a bit too heavy and a bit too Ancient Earth for his tastes.

He commanded the room to slowly give them sunlight and change the walls to show a country garden. The scenery would change as the conversation progressed.

“What did they send you?” he asked as he stopped in front of his favorite chair. It was large and comfortable, the only thing he never changed when he reprogrammed the room.

He tossed the apple in the air as he began to sit, and caught the apple as he got comfortable. Then he took a bite. He had forgotten how tart the company apples were, and thought—not for the first time—how appropriate that tartness was.

She eased into a straight-backed chair across from him. She watched his antics with the apple with barely disguised impatience.

“So far as our people can tell, the government of Peyla has nothing to do with the clones,” she said.

He wasn’t sure if that was good news or not. He decided not to react to it. He would hear her out.

“Our investigators split into two groups,” she said. “First, we have a group who are retracing the clones’ movements beginning with the moment they arrived on Armstrong, and working backwards.”

He nodded. He knew that. It had been his suggestion.

“Then we have a group of investigators tracking down the DNA.” She folded her hands in front of herself. “I thought the second investigation would be simple. Someone had to be selling the DNA after all. But no one is. As far as we can tell.”

That truly surprised him. He allowed himself a frown. “Then where did the DNA come from?”

She sighed and glanced at the wall. It now showed a sunrise over some mountains that Salehi should be able to name. Of course, he couldn’t. He wished he hadn’t reprogrammed the wall, since it was distracting her.

“Where it came from is an actual problem,” she said.

He braced himself for something horrid.

Her gaze met his.

“Here’s how it goes,” she said. “Peyla doesn’t have as many identity theft problems as the rest of the Earth Alliance—something to do with the law-abiding nature of the Peyti or something. I think it has more to do with the fact that they’re anal about identity in the first place, so they have a lot of double- and triple-checks that make identity theft hard.”

He had remembered now why he had assigned this to her. She had an affinity for the Peyti. She always had. She had volunteered to coordinate work with the Peyti lawyers on various cases, and more than once, she had pushed for an S
3
branch on Peyla.

The partners had always decided against it. S
3
had been a human firm for generations, and no one in the firm wanted to admit that many clients appreciated that.

But many clients—particularly some old, staid ones—did.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “The Peyti didn’t follow Alliance protocols in handling a dangerous criminal when they arrested Uzvekmt after the genocide in Qavle.”

“All right,” she said with a smile. “I won’t tell you. I also won’t tell you that they didn’t follow protocol when they tried him or when they imprisoned him.”

Salehi sighed. “What a mess.”

“Well,” she said, “to be fair, there was no protocol to follow. Those laws didn’t go into effect for another ten years after the capture of Uzvekmt. And the Peyti simply didn’t see the need before that.”

“So you’re tell me the DNA is untraceable.”

“That’s the odd thing,” she said. “It’s not untraceable. Uzvekmt was handled by just a few Peyti. From the moment he was in custody until his death, his contacts were limited. So there are very few candidates for the DNA theft.”

Yet she had said it would be hard to track the DNA. He took another bite of his apple, still braced for the worst case.

“But?” he asked.

“The company that handled his remains got swallowed up into the Alliance itself. Technically, we should be able to trace that DNA, at least.”

“We can’t?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You’re telling me the
Alliance
lost his DNA?” Salehi asked.

“Or the record of it, yes, I am,” she said.

He set the apple down, happy that his hand wasn’t shaking. Then he stood up.

There had been an Alliance connection to Rafik Fujita’s death. Salehi had tried to investigate what had gone wrong, only to be told the information was classified.

Classified.

He glanced at the stupid wall. The sun was up over the horizon, turning the sky a delicate pink. Earth somewhere. Made sense. He usually programmed Earth images into his systems.

But it couldn’t distract him; it couldn’t slow his increased heartbeat.

How could the Alliance lose the records of Uzvekmt’s DNA?

He ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t like the connections. Usually when he found connections like this in the law, he believed they had meaning, particularly when those connections showed up in a criminal case.

And that’s what this was, wasn’t it? All of it? The bombings, Anniversary Day, the Peyti Crisis? They were all crimes. He was handling criminal cases.

Only the clones were pawns. They couldn’t be full blown actors in these dramas because they didn’t have access. Just by their non-citizen status, he knew they couldn’t be at the center of all of this. They couldn’t work in the Alliance government, not for any group.

Although, technically, clones shouldn’t have been able to become lawyers either.

He pounded a fist at his forehead. Behind him, he could hear rustling as Jiolitti shifted in her chair. His movements were bothering her. Too bad. He didn’t have time to take care of her.

If the government—the entire government—was involved in a crime against the Moon, how could he bring anything to court? Was he thinking too small?

And why the hell would the Alliance attack the Moon? It made no sense.

He shook his head.

“Sir?” Jiolitti asked.

He turned around. She was frowning at him.

“It was probably just a clerical error,” she said. “Should I have someone in the Alliance track down the DNA?”

That was the logical thing to do.

“No,” he said. “Let me handle this part of the investigation.”

He wasn’t going to lose someone else because he passed off a job. He wasn’t going to make Jiolitti or the detectives she assigned into the targets of whoever—whatever—was doing all of this.

For an inexplicable reason that he didn’t entirely understand.

“Did the detectives find anything else?” he asked.

“Not anything conclusive,” she said.

“Pull them back for now,” he said, then stopped himself. He almost asked for a report, but he didn’t want them to document anything. “Tell them to be ready in case we need them again.”

“All right, sir, but shouldn’t they continue? They’ve found out a lot already.”

He shook his head.

“I need to do something else first,” he said.

“Would you like my help?” she asked.

He made himself smile before he turned around. He actually struggled to make certain the expression in his eyes matched the one on his lips.

“I have this for the moment, Lauren. You did a great job here.”

“I didn’t do much.” She stood, clearly knowing she was being dismissed. “I’m ready any time you need me.”

He nodded, not quite able to answer her.

After she left, he sent a message to Uzvuyiten on a private link.
I need to talk to you in my quarters. It’s important.

I’ll be right there,
Uzvuyiten sent back.

Salehi wandered back to his chair, then picked up the half-eaten apple. It was turning brown. He cupped it in his hand.

The Alliance wouldn’t want to destroy the Moon. Destroying the Moon—or all the cities on it—would cripple the Alliance. So the Alliance itself wasn’t behind this.