The Pride of Parahumans (12 page)

"What?" The camera view shifted to the left,
just barely showing Aniya expressing disbelief at this statement.
"Argen's not paying?"

"We have a bit of an agreement with zir
employers." The camera shifted back to Derrick.

"That does not mean that we have to pay for
zir." It shifted to the right this time, showing Cole gripping the
table tightly in all four sets of talons.

"I say it does." Derrick stood up and popped
the strap holding his sidearm in place.

"He's going to shoot! Get him!" It was hard
to tell, but it looked like Denal was scrambling across the table,
sword drawn, and pouncing on Derrick. It was moving fast, but I
could just barely make out several sounds of darts flying before
the jaguar was thrown down to the ground with the sword embedded in
his bodysuit.

"Argh, you idiot." Derrick shoved Denal
loudly off himself; there was a snap of metal breaking as he did
so. When Denal landed, he saw Aniya and Cole lying prone on the
floor, their bodies twitching and their mouths filling with foam.
There was a sharp intake of breath as Denal noted the darts in
their necks, the glazed lifeless look on their faces. Then he ran,
deeper into the bowels of the ship, no doubt hoping that he could
lose the presumably relentless pursuer just standing up behind
him.

I stopped the video at that point. First
Denal was not only a lecher but a murderer; then he was an innocent
framed for the deaths of our closest friends by a corrupt
Guildmaster's progeny? What was truth and what were lies? How could
I decide?

Chapter
11

I tried to return to life as usual in the lab
the next day, but my mind kept wandering back to Aniya and Cole. I
mixed a couple of reactions improperly, and the resulting readings
were impossible to decipher, wasting hours of effort. After the
third ruined experiment, Maximus spoke to me.

"Are you all right?" he asked, knowing full
well that I was not all right but still asking to be polite
regardless.

"No," I told him, not wanting to elaborate
further.

"I heard about your friends."

At that comment, I ripped off my headgear and
snarled at him. "What did you hear?!"

"Well," Maximus started, "I heard two
different accounts: one stating that one of the parahumans you came
to Vesta with shot your other two companions and stabbed a
Marquez." I think I felt my claws start to penetrate my glove as I
clenched my fist in fury "and the other stating that Marquez shot
two of your friends and the third one stabbed him in retaliation."
I relaxed slightly at this statement; he'd apparently seen more
than one version of the night's events. "Do you know what really
happened?" he asked.

I shook my head. "The second version sounds
more like what I know of Denal, but who knows what happened?" I
wasn't too sure I wanted to tell him about the plan to violently
persuade Derrick Marquez to lower our coverage rates.

Maximus glanced at the piece of my
environment suit that was in my hands instead of covering my head,
then back at my face. "Maybe we shouldn't talk in here, if you
insist on not wearing that while we're doing so." He gestured to a
door leading to a maintenance corridor meant for the custodians. I
found myself following him out.

Once we were outside the lab, Maximus started
to get out of his hazard suit as well. I could see that he, too,
had a preference for "going commando." The corridor was dark, with
only a string of small lights along the ceiling to light up the
bare stone walls. He shoved his suit in a pocket in the wall
opposite the door and indicated that I should do the same.

"Uh, why?"

"It gets hot in here. Even less ventilation
than in the lab." That made sense. Only with the fans were the
suits bearable at all. I threw off my suit, figuring that I had
even less to hide than he did, and if he was flaunting it like
that, I could too. Max picked up my discarded containment suit,
folded it up, and put it in the same cavity as his own suit. Then
he shoved a rock over the hole and covered our suits completely. He
turned to me abruptly. "Okay, that should cover up the audio
sensors in our suits. So what didn't you want to tell me
before?"

I was more than a bit surprised there; I
hadn't known that there were audio sensors in the clothes. I had
expected that Maximus would simply tell his progenitor anything I
told him. "Why would you do that?" I asked. "I assume it would be
more convenient for your father to simply listen in on our
conversation rather than wait for you to repeat it to him."

He looked at me aghast. "Not everything I do
is for my progenitor. I have a life apart from him, you know."
Maximus sat down on the stony floor and gestured for me to join
him, which I did. "I've actually been finding reasons to disagree
with him. I don't think that Jakob Griggs really has the best
interest of parahumanity in mind."

This intrigued me. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that his efforts to 'preserve' us
will make us stagnant and vulnerable."

Stagnant and vulnerable? "I still don't know
what you mean."

"Have you heard that humans weren't created
by anyone?"

"I heard that many humans think their
ancestors were created by someone, but they can't agree who did it,
and many scientists think none of the hypothesized creators of
humanity ever existed and humanity arose through a natural process.
What would that have to do with Jakob making us stagnant and
vulnerable?"

He took a very deep breath before explaining.
"While I was training for this job, I decided to look up several
human books on biology. Many of them referred to a process called
evolution, whereby species adapt to their environments, generation
by generation. When they reproduce, mutations are common. Some
mutations grant advantages over others of the same species and
enable the carrier to reproduce more and spread the gene throughout
the population. For this reason, I started the policy of leaving
harmless mutations in our cloning process alone; previously, any
mutation was corrected. However many species, such as humans, do
not generally reproduce by cloning. They reproduce sexually,
blending half their genes at random with those of another
individual. This introduces an additional form of variation into
the population and adds another form of competition as individuals
compete to mate with individuals of the opposite gender." He drew
in another deep breath before continuing. "Humans still prefer to
reproduce sexually. Therefore, they have the potential to evolve
much more quickly than we do and gain an advantage over us."

I thought that I could almost understand now.
"You think that Jakob was wrong to hide the results of my
findings."

He nodded.

"But what about the reasons he gave for doing
that? Keeping the Protectors' Clans in line and preventing
overpopulation?"

Maximus uttered a sound half like a snort and
half like a laugh. "After he told me about that, I looked up the
actual human population growth rates. It appears that just a few
generations after the mortality rate of a human population drops,
enabling rapid growth, the birth rate tapers off. It's like they
make lots of babies when they think many of them won't survive to
adulthood, but after things change so that all their young can
expect to grow up, they voluntarily sterilize themselves,
temporarily or permanently, to limit the number of children they
have to raise." He let that sink in before addressing my former
point. "As for 'keeping the Clans in line,' can you honestly say
they are under control after what just happened to your
friends?"

I thought about it. "No, they're not." At
that point, I decided that I could trust Maximus Griggs with the
secret I so badly needed to keep from Jakob Griggs and the entire
Marquez Clan. "Almost a week before I started working for the
Society for the Preservation of Parahuman Species, I was attacked
by a bounty hunter. Marquez drones stopped him, but afterwards, a
commander, Derrick Marquez, spoke to me. He told me that my group
would now be paying three times the rate we were already paying and
that if I refused or attempted to get insurance with another Clan,
he would release videos portraying us performing certain acts that
might impair our ability to earn a living." I was not yet inclined
to elaborate on me and Aniya's activities to this person. "I
agreed, and shortly after, I took a job with the SPPS because I'd
heard they could convince the Clans to lower my rates and I could
even make some extra to help out my friends. However, the night
before the incident, they told me that ever since I joined the
SPPS, their already exorbitant rates had been increasing by leaps
and bounds. Even with me contributing my income, it was reaching
levels that they couldn't afford. So they decided to have a chat
with Derrick Marquez about their rates and, if necessary, persuade
him violently." I ducked my head between my legs and covered my
face so that Maximus wouldn't see my expression of grief. "Then the
negotiations apparently went wrong, and either Denal snapped and
killed Aniya and Cole, or Marquez didn't like their terms and
killed Aniya and Cole for it. I want to believe that my only
surviving friend isn't an insane murderer, but I'm so inclined to
doubt everything that I wouldn't be too surprised if he was."

I looked up long enough to see Max's jaw
hanging wide open in shock. "By the makers," he said, "I didn't
realize it ran that deep." He straightened up and asked me another
question that would shake me like nothing in my short life had
before: "Was the rate hike after you started working here, or after
you found a mutation that would enable us to breed?"

I tensed up. "Cole actually said that the big
increase was a few days before, and it was less than a week after I
discovered the MOR10X-6 promoter inhibition."

It was then that he dropped the bombshell
that would shape the remainder of my years to come. "I think my
father ordered your friends killed."

I collapsed, falling backwards and hitting my
head on the rocky ground I had been sitting on. This was too much.
I was shocked back to reality by Maximus pinching my toes between
his claws. "What makes you say that?!" I demanded.

"Well," he began, stroking his chin in
thought, "a few hours after your meeting with him my progenitor
invited Jerome Marquez and all eight of his clones to dinner with
him." Good to know he didn't put all that food to waste, then. "And
I suspect that when you asked the Marquez officers about what had
happened, the only reason you weren't taken in for questioning was
that you worked for the SPPS."

I thought of how that tiger had grabbed me
and demanded I tell him where Denal had scurried off to, and how he
let me go after Derrick had told him that I was "with Griggs." I
sat up and said, "Yes, that's accurate."

The savannah cat grabbed my hand and pulled
me the rest of the way forward. "I think he was trying to
demonstrate how powerful he was. Even if you didn't catch on that
he was responsible for the extreme actions of the Marquez, you
would realize that he had some measure of control over the
Protectors' Guilds when you were exempt from questioning during a
murder investigation involving your closest companions."

I considered his words carefully. Yes, it did
seem odd that a few words were able to dissuade such an aggressive
enforcer from strangling me. But I hadn't even considered the
possibility that Jakob Griggs had orchestrated the murders and
framing for murders of my friends. I could believe that he had
convinced the Marqueze's to raise my friends' premiums in order to
give himself more leverage over me and convince me to keep the
mutation a secret, but killing them seemed a bit much. And I told
Maximus such.

"Maybe he didn't mean to kill them," the
clone told me, "but that would still make him responsible in part
for your friends' deaths. There has to be justice for what he
did."

Justice? "How would you bring about this
justice?"

At this, he grinned. The same toothy grin
that had so intimidated me when sported by his father. "We strip
him of his power and help parahumanity evolve; that's how." I
looked at him incredulously, still unable to figure out what he was
talking about. Then he added, "I kept a backup of the genetic data
you showed me. We can make it open-source."

I finally got it. "And then every biochemist
in the solar system will be able to grant parahumans the ability to
make babies, and he'll have no influence over the cloneclans." And
then I recalled what else he had said about his influence. "But
then the Clans will be unrestrained. What will keep them from
abusing the people like Marquez did to us before I even joined this
whole mess with the SPPS?"

Maximus looked like he hadn't a clue;
apparently he hadn't thought that far ahead. "Well, I'm sure there
are better systems of governance than the feudalism we've
apparently developed into. Maybe I could read some human works on
government, and if the Guilds are cruel to enough people we can
convince them to start a revolution to put in place something
better."

"I don't recommend corporatocracy," I added
with a bit of snark. I'd left Ceres for a reason, damn it.

"Look, I'll leave it up to you whether to
release it." He pushed the rock covering our containment suits
aside and retrieved them. As he handed me my suit, he said, "I'd
suggest you take the rest of the work week off. You're no good to
us if you're still grieving over your friends. You'll be paid as if
you were still here at work."

I started to throw on the suit (no point to
walking all the way to the lockers naked) when a data card fell
out. I picked it up. There was no label, but I could guess what was
stored on it.

***

The chip was indeed what I had suspected: all
the information on MOR10X-6 I had found, the sequence, the
phenotype, the mutation that disabled it, everything. I spent the
next day researching what it would cost to produce a mutagen that
would induce the mutation. It was only a few qcoins, and a CRISPr
enzyme to remove the gene entirely didn't cost much more. I found
several different biotechnology blogs and open-source libraries
where I could upload the data and distribute it to anyone who cared
enough to read it.