Galactic Adventures Collection

Chapter 6

“You found her where?” Fred stared at his father, bewildered. Fred had come home after work to find the escoriant asleep on his bed in their tiny dormicube. He didn"t know whether to feel offended that Kate had taken his bunk or relieved she was safe.

“In the insemivats, tinkering with the mutasperm,” Greg GSH4534 said. “Listen, Son, you should have reported her missing. She could have really screwed up the mutasperm.”

More than likely, any changes would have resulted in inviability, such work the domain of gengineers, but Fred didn"t want to argue.

Like Fred, his father Greg was a mutaclone. Unlike Fred, Greg wasn"t an abortivariant, having gone full term. Greg had been tailored to operate biochemical synthesis units, and instead of arms, he sprouted nanostim tendrils in the thousands from each shoulder, a kaleidoscope of colors among them, constantly moving and probing his surroundings.

Fred had become accustomed to their constant probing wherever his father was nearby, the display of affection disconcerting to everyone else. The nanostim filaments allowed Greg to diagnose and treat any biologic or mutagenic organism, the carbon microtubules so insubstantial as to penetrate the interstices of cell membranes.

“She did say she"s a doctor in something,” Fred said.

“But couldn"t say what it was, or what her name is. I"m calling her Kate.” His filaments organized themselves into rainbows, a sign of joy.

But she"s my escoriant, Fred wanted to say. They both knew he wouldn"t disagree with his father. “I"ll take her over to the escoriant sector tomorrow before work.”

“They"ll probably do a little product-testing before they recycle her.” The filaments fluttered in agitation.

“Maybe,” Fred said doubtfully. “It would cost too much to recondition her, wouldn"t it? She can be overly assertive.” Fred realized he was stating the obvious, Greg having worked the sectors for twenty-plus years.

Grey snorted and shook his head, his filaments fanning out in dismay.

“Weird, isn"t it?”

“What"s that?” Question-mark curlicues formed at the shoulders.

“Insists she"s a doctor and has real memories, but can"t remember her name. I mean, I didn"t know my name either when I clawed my way out of that uterpod, but at least I knew I was a mutaclone. She thinks she"s real.”

“We all think we"re real.”

True, Fred thought. Simumems of life on Tantalus were nanostimmed into mutaclones during gestation, most of the mutaclones from this Genie-All factory intended for the Tantalus market. Five years ago, just out of the uterpod, Fred had had the simumems of a thirty-year-old gigolo, the wherewithal of a twenty-three year old stripling, and the testosterone-fueled giddiness of a fifteen-year old adolescent.

Learning hadn"t been an issue, however, the company providing didactistims to its employees. At first, their security systems had stymied his access, but he"d decrypted the files in moments. Operating on similar principles as nanostims, didactistims inserted their nanocarbon filaments into the brain and stimulated learning on the topic of the person"s choice.

“Kate seems to know far more than a mutaclone should,” Fred said.

Greg nodded, filaments waving. “I"ll fix us dinner while you figure out our sleeping arrangements.”

Fred nodded and looked around their dormicube. Already too small for the two of them, it would be cramped with three, and the addition of a female would challenge their privacy all around. The unitized partitions helped, but they"d still have to avert their gazes as others came out of the sanistall.

“Kate?” He woke her gently so he could move panels.

Her eyes snapped open, and she gave him a gentle smile. “Sorry I didn"t stay put. I couldn"t help exploring. And after I found the insemivats, I lost all sense of time.”

Fred waved it away. “Help me rearrange the room so we can sleep in comfort tonight. I"m glad Father found you, and not one of the other sector geeks. That would have been a disaster.”

“They"re going to recycle me, aren"t they?”

He met her gaze and was instantly floating aloft on her beauty.

He knew in that moment he couldn"t allow it, no matter what the consequences. It wasn"t just her beauty. She had an equanimity he found disconcerting, a disquieting sense of purpose so elemental as to be a fundamental force. He saw the evanescence of her soul, that spark of spirit which sang for mercy and salvation, the point of light inside her waiting like a singularity to explode into the universe, as though inside her incubated the dawning of time itself.

He knew he looked at her in the way Greg had once looked at him.

Then his escoriant simumems intruded with five thousand copulation positions. An erection quickly followed. Grimacing, he pushed aside the memories. “They might try to recycle you, but I won"t let them.”

“How can you stop them? They own this rock—and nearly all the other asteroids in the Tantalus constellation.”

How"d she know that? he wondered. He mulled it over while they rearranged the room. When they were done, he noticed she didn"t have a condicoon—a conditioning cocoon. Low-gravity environments leached minerals from bone, and condicoons stimulated their re-absorption, each night infusing their skeletal systems with nanostim tendrils.

“I"m going over to Wreck to get you a condicoon.” Requisition was where you went whenever you wrecked something.

“I"m coming with you.”

Fred heard a hint of desperation in her voice. “You"ll be safe here.”

“I"m coming with you.”

The certainty in her voice told him not to object. He stepped into the corridor and saw a trio of sector monitors coming toward them from the Wreck room, where people went to destroy things in a leisurely fashion.

“Hey, Fred, doing a little product-testing?” Troy said, his twenty-finger hands spread out over his own outsize mammaries.

“When you"re done, can I have a turn?” Mike asked, his octopus arms squishing on the piping-ribbed walls.

His boyfriend Stan jabbed him in the ribs with a hammer-sized finger. “Hey, you don"t like women, remember?”

Wreck was near the commissary, where goods imported from Tantalus tempted nobody, the prices exorbitant, the company markup at least two hundred percent. Interstellar law required the company to provide conditioning cocoons on the assumption that employees would eventually be returning to full-gravity environments.

Jane at the Wreck desk looked Kate up and down. “Where"d you come from, Sister?”

Fred could see Kate bristle like a brush. “The condicoon, please?” he said, stepping between them.

“Hey, I got to look her over, get her dims, all right, Fred? Not like I"m making comparisons. Back in a spiff.” She turned, revealing the extra pair of arms growing from her back.

“That b***h!” Kate hissed.

“Uh, don"t rattle her, all right? I broke up with her last month.” Jane had been looking to settle down, a good ten years his senior.

“Oh.” Kate almost smiled, a mischievous gleam in her eye.

Jane returned with a tightly-wrapped bundle. “This should fit you, Kate.” She pushed Fred out of the way and handed it to Kate directly. “He"s a nice man,” she added with a wink. “Good choice.”

Fred felt his face flush, and Kate giggled. “Thanks, Jane. You"re not so bad yourself.”

He couldn"t understand why the two women were laughing so hard. Shaking his head, he turned and left, somehow thinking they were ridiculing him.

She caught up to him, the bundle under an arm.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“You wouldn"t understand.”

Fred threw her a glance, understanding one thing about her. Social cues of that depth were beyond a mutaclone. Nanostim neuroprogramming wasn"t sophisticated enough to ingrain cues that nuanced, current mutaclone development protocols not that advanced. A Wreck room confab with a gene jockey had alerted Fred to ways of detecting mutaclones. Subtle expressions and social expectations were notoriously difficult to program into mutaclones, and could only be acquired by spending years among normavariants.

“Not the kind of behavior you"d expect from an abortivariant,” Kate said.

He grunted, vaguely remembering his father saying similar. About him.

Back at their dormicube, Fred dug into the mush Greg"d made, hungrier than he thought. He pushed away his empty plate and belched. “Good stuff, Dad. Thanks.”

Kate leapt to her feet to clean up.

Fred exchanged a glance with Greg. Escoriants weren"t nanostimmed to take on domestic duties, recreational procreation being the usual focus of their development.

The kitchenette sparkled when she was finished. “I"m in the sanistall. Get me a clean allsuit, would you, Fred?” And she"d stepped out of her allsuit before he could turn away.

He whirled, his face fiery. His escoriant simumems flooded his mind, gonadotropins flooded his system, and desire flooded his crotch. He wished she"d warn him when she was going to disrobe.

The sanistall was a slot in the wall, barely wide enough for a person to stand upright. When she was done, he held out the allsuit, his head turned the other direction.

“Thank you.”

Greg was already in his condicoon, the white fluffy material wrapping all but the oval where his face peeked out, the bunk under him empty.

“I"m sleeping across the room?” Kate asked, the new condicoon bundle at the foot.

Fred nodded, setting a clean allsuit outside the sanistall. “My turn.” He twirled his finger at her.

She dutifully turned away.

He disrobed and hurled the dirty one at the chute. All hydrocarbons were recycled. He didn"t care to think what they were recycled into. When he finished in the sanistall, he poked his head out.

She was already in her condicoon. “I"ll close my eyes, I promise,” she said, her face scrunched in exaggeration.

“Roll away toward the wall,” he told her.

She did so, and he stepped from the sanistall to don his allsuit.

Crawling into the condicoon on the bunk below Greg, he sealed himself inside. As it sent its tentacles deep into his tissues, Fred wondered what he was going to do with Kate. What do I tell them when they demand I turn her over? he wondered, staring at the darkened underside of the bunk above him.

His father"s soft snore drifted down to him, and he could tell by the soft breathing from across the room that Kate was deep asleep too.

His worries swirling through his head didn"t stop him from drifting off, and visions of a verdant world filled his dreams, a world where lush vegetation cascaded down terraced hillsides, boab trees sprawled everywhere, their branches draped with vines, and the gentle rains of warm tropical days washed away his troubles.

A dream he"d had many times, a dream that had been planted in his mind during his uterpod gestation, a simumem of the planet Tantalus.

Her pump heels tap, tap, tapped the plascrete as she walked up the broad avenue between apartment buildings, the chill night wind slicing through the thin, jacquard jacket, funneled up the avenue by the multistory buildings on either side.

Dr. Sarina Karinova felt none of it.

She hadn"t been able to relax or sleep, and finally she"d given up and had decided to walk back to her office, hoping to distract herself. She"d left a note for Anya in the faint hope her wife had departed in mid-task in a fit of pique, in spite of its being so out of character it wasn"t worth considering. But it was a straw she could grasp at.

Odd, she thought as the plascrete slipped past her, how faint hopes loom large, far out of proportion to their statistical probability, particularly when the alternatives are so gallingly unthinkable.

She"d considered comming her family on Tbilisi or her in-laws on Petrograd, but both sides were so distant that at most they"d only provide emotional support.

This was one of the few circumstances she wished they"d purchased a mutaclone. Anya hadn"t balked for a moment at taking on household management, even though a saniclone would have been an inexpensive convenience. Sarina had eschewed their use since her stint on the Genie-All asteroid, the conditions behind their manufacturing objectionable. Anya, out of respect for her preference, had taken on the laundry, meals, shopping, and housecleaning.

But if we"d had one, Sarina thought, the saniclone could tell me what happened.

Striding along the darkened street toward her office, chin tucked to her chest against the chill, Sarina noticed how few hovers zipped past above her, the hour late. Far down the boulevard was a cluster of emergency vehicles, their bright, flashy lights difficult to ignore. Not too far from my office, she thought, gauging the distance.

Her practice fronted one of the major boulevards in the Capital, but it had been her membership in the Society for the Humane Treatment of Mutaclones that had brought her to the attention of the Premier"s Chief of Staff, Feodor Luzhkov. At one of their forums, Sarina had piped up and had asked what was being done to insure mutaclones received adequate medical care, and the speaker had asked her to introduce herself. After the forum, Luzhkov had approached and asked if she might examine a family friend for him. His comcard, she"d seen immediately, had the Tantalus government emblem.

The next day, he"d come to her office alone after business hours. “May we use the back entrance for this appointment?” he"d asked.

“Sounds as if some discretion might be required,” she"d replied.

Luzhkov had smiled. “Indeed. A doctor understands discretion.”

She"d made a guess. “Why me, and not the palace physician?”

“Discretion, as you noted.” Again that smile. “And what might be a good day and time?”

She"d set an appointment, making it the last one of the day and giving herself a clear half hour before then.

As she"d begun to enter it in the appointment book, he"d stopped her. “No records, please.”

She"d blinked at him. “Very well. But I"ll need to send out labs and genalysis samples.”

“May I make a suggestion?” he"d asked. “Let"s use a mutaclone designation, a part of your philanthropy.”

And she"d agreed it was apropos cover. So nowhere did the name of the Premier"s daughter appear, only the contrived designation, OLGS562.

How ironic, she thought, striding purposively toward her office, that we"d chance upon such a contrivance and that her genalysis somehow got mixed up with a mutaclone"s at the lab.

The emergency vehicles appeared to be very near her office, she saw. Her ground-floor suite had been less expensive due to its being on the ground floor, the most desirable and most visible premises being higher up. Some of her patients noted the inconvenience of having to walk into her building. You could take a hover directly to most places and avoid the effort of actually walking.

Firehouses snaked across a sidewalk soaked in water. She passed the first fire truck and saw, to her horror, that it wasn"t beside her office.

It was her office. Demolished.

wasTattered frames stared eyelessly at her, fragments of glasteel giving the windows a toothy edge. Burn licks scored the upper sills, a thin reed of the smoke still seeping from the doorway. The door sat agape at a forlorn, awkward angle, its glasma busted out.

Sarina stared, her mouth agape.

“Move along, miss,” said one firefighter, glasma crunching under his feet.

“That"s my office.” Her voice came from someone else. It couldn"t have been her who was speaking. She didn"t have the faculties to believe what she was seeing.

“Please, step back over here.”

Her body obeyed a command that her mind wouldn"t process.

All of it, gone.

She"d barely paid off the examination equipment, and now she"d have to relocate while…

“Captain Gennady Ovinko, ma"am.”

“Doctor Karinova,” she said woodenly, “Sarina Karinova.” The emptied window frames stared at her from over the Captain"s shoulders.

“Looks like some sort of explosion, Doctor. Any explosives inside?”

“No, Captain. Just the usual items in an outpatient medical practice. No oxygen tanks, no anesthetic. You can check the inventory, inspected two months ago by the Department of Health. Oh, and my insurance carrier has as full inventory. Here"s their contact info.” She traked her insurance information to Captain Ovinko.

“Sorry, Doctor. Checked it already. Record"s unavailable for some reason. Do you have an inventory in your office records?”

“Of course, Captain. Here, let me send that to you.” She brought up her office files on her corn—or tried to. A blinking red warning flashed in her cornea: “Records unavailable.” She told him what she found.

“That"s odd,” he said. “What a coincidence.”

It was odd. Her office records—including patient files—were stored remotely on a secure skyserver with multiple redundancies, guaranteed immediate restoration if the archive should fail. It wasn"t only good practice, it was required for patient health records. Further, the encryption was unbreakable, impossible to penetrate without passwords.

wasShe tried to access her patient records on her corn.

“Records unavailable” flashed in red.

“But you"re sure nothing was explosive?” the Captain asked her.

“I"m sure.” She couldn"t understand why her office records couldn"t be accessed. She put in a trake to the records management firm.

“Well, looks like you"ll have to practice medicine somewhere else for a time,” Captain Ovinko said. “Here"s the Fire Marshall"s contact info. They"ll be investigating. Sorry about your loss, Doctor. You might as well go home, nothing you can do here now.”

She nodded numbly, barely seeing him, the eyeless windows holding her gaze, like the sockets of some corpse.

Sarina left only because they told her to. She didn"t know where to go. Home was empty of the person who mattered to her most, and now, she had no other place to escape to, her office a wreck. So she walked, not seeing, adrift, unmoored.

An autocom appeared on her corn from the records management company. “Account deleted at account holder"s request, yesterday at 8:30 pm.”

She halted, uncomprehending. But—but—

There must be some mistake, she thought, eight-thirty having been about the time she"d logged off to go home. She pulled up her trake-mail message to the lab. Eight twenty-seven, she saw. She remembered her regret arriving at home at eight forty-five.

I couldn"t have deleted my files, not even accidentally, Sarina thought, since I wasn"t logged on.

Anya, my office, my patient files.

All of it far too coincidental to be a coincidence. Sarina whirled, scanning the street and sky on all sides, as though someone pursued her right now.

“Feodor Luzhkov,” she traked, tagging her com as urgent. She looked toward the palace. She didn"t know whether he"d answer at this time of night, nearly one am. And if he doesn"t answer? she wondered. What then?

“Luzhkov here.”

Relief flooded through her. “Is this com secure?” She"d marked her message private but was sure he had access to far greater encryption than she did.

“It is now. Yes, Doctor, how may I assist you?” Luzhkov"s image on her corn looked prim and neat, as though he hadn"t been asleep.

“Apologies if I woke you, Mr. Luzhkov, but I need your help.” She almost burst into tears. “My office has been bombed, my patient files destroyed, and my wife is missing. I think she"s been kidnapped.” There, she"d said it, her worst fear, and a sob escaped her.

“I"ll have a hover there in one minute, Doctor. A black crown vick. I"ll stay on com with you until you"re safely inside. You think it"s related to the examination?”

The genalysis. Chromosomal smoothing. She knew it, and didn"t know how she knew it. “I think so.”

A black hover descended to street level and pulled alongside her. It looked so nondescript that it stuck out like a nebula on a night sky.

“That"s your hover, Doctor. Climb aboard.”

She collapsed onto the seat as the door slid shut behind her, and his neuralink disconnected.

Dr. Sarina Karinova stared out the window as the hover banked toward the palace, her life chewed to pieces, disbelief threatening to swallow her whole.

Looking across the room at Fadeyka, Admiral Zenaida Andropovich wondered what she could do anymore. What the hell is a mother supposed to do? she wondered.

First the beach on Marseilles and then the Post Graduate Program. And now this!

this!Fadeyka"s treatment at the glitterati recovery program had been intermittently interrupted by court appearances, and he"d seemed appropriately remorseful at having destroyed his own career and at having very nearly destroyed his mother"s.

Destined for command, they no longer said.

The treatment program included multiple components, including psychodynamic therapy, reparative family interventions, nanoneural reprogramming, and in-vitro condicoon immersions. Rumors rife on the neuranet hinted that the program"s methods had been adapted from the unconscionable practices invented at that infamous Rusky gulag, Magadan, rumors that Zenaida dismissed as outlandish.

The court sentenced the Dean"s wife, Galina, to twenty-five years at Brygidki, and Fadeyka to court-ordered treatment, finding him culpable only of youthful dalliances. Further penalties for d**g possession were suspended pending his completion of the program he was already in.

Zenaida kept close tabs on Fadeyka whilst he participated in the six-month program, visiting occasionally and comming frequently. She became acquainted with the program director, a neuropsychoanalyst with a stellar interstellar reputation. Dr. Innokenti Pablov was as gentle with her as he was stern with his patients. Any deviation from his exacting schedule of treatment was received with scathing rebukes and threats of expulsion.

She and Dr. Pablov of an age, Zenaida thought the galaxy of him, and they began to spend hours in neuranet conversation, connected on coke, corn, and trake, becoming completely immersed through their neuraplants in a way that reminded Zenaida of her dear lost husband, the Rear Admiral of the Fifth Fleet.

Then, at the five-and-a-half month mark of Fadeyka"s recovery, Dr. Pablov invited Zenaida to a weekend family retreat at the glitterati recovery center for a reparative family intervention with Fadeyka that Dr. Pablov volunteered to facilitate.

Zenaida arrived the night before and was met at the spaceport by Dr. Pablov, looking even more handsome than his neuranet avatar portrayed him. How she ended up in his embrace, and then in his bed, she couldn"t have said, and all she remembered of the night was how fulfilled she"d felt.

The next afternoon as Dr. Pablov escorted her through the facility toward Fadeyka"s room, Zenaida soared with his every gesture and word, her long-dormant libido now in full flagrant bloom, her face flush and her loins awash.

And then they arrived at Fadeyka"s door.

Two young men lay on the floor of his room, locked in a grotesque, monkey-puzzle tangle of limbs, stark n***d, their members in each other"s mouth, the other residents crouched in a circle around them and taking bets as to which could resist having an o****m the longest.

Belatedly, Zenaida recognized one of the young men on the floor as her son.

She was transported back to the first time she"d discovered Fadeyka in some scion"s bed on the planet Marseilles, and as she had then, she hauled him sans clothing from the treatment program to the spaceport and threw him into her yacht, berating him ruthlessly the whole way.

She ignored Dr. Pavlov"s trakes throughout the trip home, learning from his trake-mails that the other young man locked with her son in the two-backed, monkey-puzzle embrace had been the top counselor at the recovery program, whom Dr. Pablov had instantly fired.

Despite his pleas, she never returned his trakes.

Once back on Tantalus, while Zenaida tried to figure out what to do next, Fadeyka continued his dissipation, knowing somehow never to bring it into her house and consequently disappearing for days at a time. She"d thought she"d have to give up on him then.

Not long afterward, an officer appeared at her door, warrant in hand, glasma cuffs out and ready. A condition of Fadeyka"s sentence was his completing the treatment program, which he"d made a complete wreck of.

At his sentencing, Fadeyka was given a two-year term at the Zamkova Correctional Colony on Ternivka, a day"s journey from Tantalus. Relieved, Zenaida hoped the former monastery might osmalize into him some of its asceticism simply through his being there. Unlike the full-fledged prison at Brygidki, infamous for its barbaric conditions and routine executions—some of them extrajudicial—the Zamkova Colony was a country club in comparison, the facilities decentralized, park-like plazas in the center of each unit, a low guard-to-inmate ratio, a serene setting on the mostly Mediterranean-climate planet.

Zenaida visited him once per month, no more than the rules allowed, not asking for any special privileges, staying aloof from the colony administration (her last two episodes having soured her on such relationships), and offering Fadeyka very little support during his incarceration. After she rebuffed his first two requests for money, he stopped asking, but when he asked for a modicum of supplies, such as an extra allsuit or another pair of shoes, she was happy to oblige.

What Zenaida did notice, three or four months in, was how the guards began to treat him during their visits. They became increasingly deferential, calling him “Captain Andropovich,” and snapping to attention whenever he approached, holding doors, pulling back chairs, and even bowing.

“It"s just respect, Mother,” Fadeyka told her when she pointed it out. “Nothing more than the son of an Admiral deserves.”

Skeptical, she kept a sharp eye out for anything untoward, and in these observations, did notice among the guards a curious ennui, their passive demeanors incongruous to the kind of attentive discipline she"d expect in such an environment.

“It"s just a low-key place, is all,” Fadeyka said nonchalantly. “Used to be a monastery, long ago.”

Then Zenaida began to notice a similar lassitude in some of the prisoners visiting with their families in the booths beside hers.

At the same time, she became aware of increasing requests for the interdiction of clone-smuggling ships at the Ukraine borders, the military sometimes assisting the domestic authorities when problems became so severe they threatened to overwhelm civilian law enforcement. Mutaclone smuggling had become big business, the government having stringent regulations on the proportion of mutaclones to citizens within its borders. Further, each mutaclone was registered and required to have a Galactic Positioning System locator in their neuraplants to monitor their locations at all times. In spite of these stringent regulations, several thousand mutaclones with deactivated GPS locators had been apprehended inside the border, smuggled in with forged registrations. Given that much of the Ukraine"s interstellar borders consisted of open space, the Navy was frequently called upon to assist in patrolling that border, especially during peacetime.

One such batch of mutaclones was intercepted by a cruiser on random patrol, unaccompanied by a civilian interdiction ship, and a vid of their capture and apprehension was circulated through the naval command structure and finally made its way to her desk. When Zenaida viewed the vid, it struck her as oddly familiar, groups of mutaclones shuffling morosely from point to point, their gazes vacant, their faces blank.

It wasn"t until she went to visit Fadeyka again that she put the pieces together. The prisoners and guards moped about morosely, their gazes vacant, their faces blank—just like the mutaclones.

Shaken, she"d said nothing to Fadeyka, but as she"d left the visiting center on her way to her yacht, she"d conferred with another family who"d been visiting.

“You know, I"d noticed that, too. They all seem so depressed!”

Back in her office, she asked for an analysis of the fleet"s participation in the mutaclone smuggling interdiction. The smugglers" vessels were frequently too small and too fast for the ponderous naval ships to intercept, and often all they could do was track these vessels. What alarmed Zenaida was the concentration of sightings near the border adjacent to Ternivka, site of the Zamkova Correctional Colony. Further, her analysis indicated an increase on sightings about three months into Fadeyka"s incarceration there.

Zenaida needed no more evidence than that. Fadeyka is at it again! she thought. She tipped off the border patrol through its director, the head of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and sent a trake-mail to the Penitentiary Service Director, and then offered to send in the Fourth Fleet to blockade the planet.

Instead, the Penitentiary Service investigated, infiltrating the Correctional Colony by sending in investigators disguised as convicts.

They were courteous enough to arrest her son during her next visit. Zenaida made sure that her wooden stare told him exactly who had alerted the authorities to his operation.

The headlines were lurid, the depth of his corrosive influence extending all the way to the warden, whom Fadeyka had co-opted. Nearly all the prison guards had been kidnapped and mutaclones put in their places. Further, mutaclones had been substituted for about half the prisoners, who"d been freed and were now working for Fadeyka in his far-flung mutaclone smuggling enterprise.

This time, the evidence of his masterminding such an extensive criminal operation was overwhelming. Zenaida expected nothing less than a life sentence at the harshest, most dreaded gulag in the Ukraine: Brygidki.

Zenaida was right about the location, but wrong about the length. He got only two years. Further, he was placed in high security, where the most incorrigible prisoners were kept in twenty-four hour isolation.

She visited only once.

She stared at him through six inches of reinforced glascrete, Fadeyka held in chains twenty feet back on his side of the impermeable barrier. His eyes were dull and defeated, his shoulders slumped, his complexion wan and pale. He was a ghost of the boy she"d loved.

Finally, Zenaida thought, he"ll come around.

This period was the worst of her. Listless and sedentary at home, Zenaida was perfunctory at work, but her heart was no longer in it. The Admiralty was a ship without a captain, cruising along on its momentum, but now absent any guidance, its rudder fixed and its course straight, but traveling blindly for all that.

Now, after this latest fiasco, she didn"t know any longer. Maybe he was completely incorrigible. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?!” Zenaida screamed at him.

Ivan the shovelclone gestured with one pan hand at the pulp on the sidewalk. “This one?”

“See any other dead mutaclones around here, i***t?” The sanicrew lead glanced up the side of the building and looked over at the pulp"s erstwhile owner. “What floor do you live on?”

The older man standing a few feet away in a bathrobe also glanced up. “Fifteenth.”

“Name?”

“Why do you need to know my name?”

“Look, Popushka, every mutaclone is registered to somebody, and each has to be tracked. Bureaucracy, all right?”

The man shrugged. “Yiktor Balanchuk.”

“Mutaclone?”

“Mira.”

“Mira what, Sir?”

“Oh, uh, you mean her designation?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Let me check.” He stared at the mutaclone pulp on the sidewalk for a moment, his iris twinkling as he consulted his corn. “Mira M775RKK.”

The sanicrew lead noticed that the mutaclone was n***d from the waist down. He looked at Balanchuk in his bathrobe and then at the half-clothed mutaclone. “Helluva way to keep your wife from finding out you were f*****g the maid.”

“That doesn"t have to go into the report, does it?”

“What report? There"s no report, just a record that this saniclone has termed. Thanks for your help, Mr. Balanchuk. All right, Ivan, scoop her up.”

Ivan the shovelclone took one two-foot wide panhand and placed it at one end of the corpse. He then placed his other panhand like a stop at the other, then scooped up the b****y pulp in one swift motion.

The sanicrew lead opened the back of his County hover, a utility model with a bin in back for just such detritus. In went the pulverized meat. He and Ivan then sprayed off the sidewalk, but only because this was an upper-class neighborhood, the apartments here easily thrice what he could afford. If it had been a poorer neighborhood, he wouldn"t have bothered.

The sanicrew lead turned to seal the back panel and found Balanchuk staring at what was left of his saniclone. “Get a male mutaclone next time,” he said. “Less tempting.”

He closed the back and looked up at the high-rise apartments around him.

Expecting another mutaclone to splatter the sidewalk from above.