The Genehunter

1. The Wrong Tom Jacks-4

He felt only a single moment of doubt: a small voice in his head reminding him what they would use the DNA for. That sort of money definitely meant private zoos: illegal cloning and a life of s*****y for an innocent individual who happened to share genetic sequences with a famous name. The voice had nothing to do with any plug-in. Simms pushed it out of his mind.

Once both parties had all the assurances and agreements they needed, Simms took his leave. He asked no questions beyond how to get in touch with them. He didn't bother with the statutory recounting of the terms of the law. They'd given him a month to find the rare and highly valued DNA of the dead rock star Tom Jacks. That was all he needed.

He spent the next twelve hours trawling all the public and private networks he could think of, seeking out scraps of information that might prove useful. Reliable cloning technology had been developed early in the twenty-first century by the notorious Dr. Grendel. Interest in collecting the DNA of the rich and famous had taken off almost immediately. As a result, a lot of people had gone to a lot of trouble to hide or destroy tissue samples over the years. The more famous the individual, the more trouble. Which was why genehunters existed. Society may be shot to hell, but there were always the mega-rich who could afford anything and everything they wanted. Historical figures became one more commodity, the rarer the better. It wasn't unknown for a collector to destroy all copies of the sequence of some star of yesteryear to make their collection all the more valuable. Which made Simms' job tricky when it came to someone like Jacks. No doubt about it, that DNA was going to be very well guarded. If it even still existed.

Simms sat unmoving as terabytes of data streamed through his brain, AI search algorithms occasionally picking out an interesting detail, tagging and cross-referencing it with other hits. Hopefully his plug-ins would give him an edge. He fell into half-sleep as his brain worked, eyes open but not really seeing, an occasional snippet of interesting information bubbling up to his conscious mind. He was only distantly aware of growing thirst and hunger. He would stop soon, eat and sleep. This was how he always was when he had a new job. Single-minded. Other plug-ins kicked in to boost his brain and body, keeping him awake and alert as he searched.

At the end of it, he reviewed what he'd found. It wasn't much. He had plenty of people offering to sell Tom Jacks hair follicles, Tom Jacks blood, Tom Jacks semen. Simms dismissed them all. None offered any provenance and none were expensive enough to be real.

One story he did keep returning to: the famous Montreux concert that degenerated into a mass brawl, the death of three fans and the hospitalisation of thirty others. This was early in Jacks' career, when he'd fronted the extreme metal band Teratoma. Their gigs were always abrasive, confrontational. When, for an encore, Jacks appeared in front of forty thousand amped-up, screaming metalheads carrying an acoustic guitar and started to croon love songs, there'd been a riot. Fans invaded the stage. That Jacks was injured in the melee was beyond doubt. Shaky video footage showed him with blood all over his face.

More interesting were unconfirmed stories of his two lost teeth, punched out by an angry fan. The records showed he had orthodontic surgery two weeks later, but there were no details of the procedure carried out. There were no surviving images of Jacks in those two weeks that might confirm the story. But there were persistent stories of the teeth being retrieved and sold by fans before, finally, being acquired by a modern-day genehunter on behalf of an unknown client.

Simms could find no hard evidence to back up any of it. Most likely it was all urban myth. The hospital records from Jacks' operation were gone. The records of those injured in the riot did still exist. Nearly a hundred people had been treated at Montreux Riviera Hospital for broken bones, facial injuries, contusions. There was a good chance diagnostic samples survived from all of them. But they were of no interest. The name Tom Jacks wasn't anywhere on the list, and the musician would surely have been recognized if he'd been taken there.

On the other hand, there were numerous rumours of Jacks clones being sighted over the years, the by-now dead rock star spotted in the unlikeliest of places. Jump nodes, shopping malls, ball-games. Again, the stories were probably junk; the standard fare of brain-addled fans. But one detail had caught the attention of Simms' AI routines. Loosely corroborated by cross-references with both medical and travel records, he had two accounts of a supposed Jacks copy being admitted to a refuge for the victims of botched clonings. Supposedly a clone from DNA from one of the lost teeth. This was only fifteen years earlier, meaning there was a good chance the man still lived.

It was a weak lead, one he wouldn't have bothered with normally. But for this case, any trail was worth following.

That was the good news. The bad news was the refuge concerned. He obviously recognized the Arizona location. It looked like he'd be talking to Kelly sooner than he'd imagined.

To his surprise, the node key she'd given him twelve months earlier still worked. Had she left it active on purpose, hoping he'd arrive? Or forgotten to cancel it?

He materialised in the public reception hall. The room was cool, air-conditioned against the fierce Arizona heat. Another disembodied voice spoke to him, this one a little more friendly.

“Please state the purpose of your visit.”

They had to be careful, of course. In the early days, refuges had been plagued with tourists and autograph hunters harassing the patients. Part of the reason they were stuck in the middle of nowhere. Simms explained who he was, who he'd come to see. A uniformed guard arrived to escort him through the clashing desert heat to another low building where he could talk to Kelly. He didn't get to see any of the patients. They were allowed to wander freely, leave if they wanted, but were kept well away from public eyes. Simms could see lines of white houses in the shimmering distance. A little oasis of trees off in the other direction. He wondered if Tom Jacks, his ticket to riches, was somewhere among them.

Kelly sat in a plain, square room, polished terra cotta floor tiles and whitewashed walls. She was the same willowy, black-haired beauty he'd known, but she looked taut, too, her features drawn into lines. Her eyes were red like she hadn't been sleeping well. Crying herself to sleep over him maybe. Yeah, right. He remembered the fierce, eager strength of her embrace. Now they managed merely to greet each other politely. They'd been both lovers and partners once, back in the day. There had been jobs neither was proud of. She'd quit hunting, gone to the light side and joined clONE. He'd promised to join her, but hadn't. That was all.

“What is it, Simms? I'm busy.”

“The jump key you sent me still worked.”

She shrugged, swept her hair out of her eyes. “Don't read anything into it. I forgot to cancel it. You're not welcome here. Didn't we talk about this?”

“I'd like to make that contribution we discussed.”

“You discussed it. I refused.”

“So your finances are so good you can afford the moral high ground?”

She shrugged, said nothing.

“Look,” said Simms. “I understand your reservations. But no one's untainted are they? I can provide funds and you can do good with them. How is it helping your patients to refuse?”

She scowled, looked at him. Did she see through him? But it wasn't just an act. He meant it. He'd seen too many cloning disasters over the years. He wasn't a bad person.

“How much are you hoping to contribute?” she asked.

“You could do a lot of good with forty K, I expect?” He hadn't really thought about the amount. Forty seemed to keep coming up.

“We could do some good, sure.”

“I'll transfer it to you now.”

She shrugged, sent account details across without looking at him.

“This doesn't buy you anything, you know,” she said. “It doesn't get you access to any DNA. Or to me.”

“No, no. I know.”

He'd hoped to spend time with her, imagined the two of them walking through the refuge. Maybe even bumping into the Tom Jacks clone, grabbing a DNA sample without anyone knowing. This wasn't going to happen. They weren't going to let him get close. Still, if he could somehow confirm Jacks was here, it would be something.

“I thought I could maybe sponsor an individual patient,” he said. “You know, make a real difference to one person.”

She was immediately suspicious, eyes narrowed. “What we do with the money is our business.”

While she talked he sent out probes to her plug-ins. She had the usual array of brain add-ons. He'd once known some of her private keys. He hoped she'd forgotten to change those, too.

“I'm not asking to meet any patients, or even see them. I thought I could choose a particular individual to help. If you had a list, I mean.”

It was an old technique, surprisingly effective. The suggestion of a list prompted one of her plug-ins to react automatically, pulling relevant names out of a database. Real names and their associated clone-twin names. As he'd hoped. She suppressed the data immediately, but not before he caught a glimpse.

He kept his expression blank but it didn't help.

“What did you do?” she said, standing up, sending her chair tumbling to the floor behind her.

“What do you mean?”

“You were in my head. What did you do? What did you see?”

“Nothing, Kelly. I…”

“That's why you came here, isn't it? Not to help them. Not to see me. You're working. Dear God, Simms, I don't believe you. How do you manage to f**k everything up so badly every time?”

“But…”

He didn't have time to say any more. Four guards burst into the room, weaponry aimed at him.

“Hey, OK, I just wanted to help is all,” he said.

Kelly backed away from him. “You wanted to help yourself, you mean. Like always. You disgust me, Simms. Take your money and get out of here. And don't come back. I've deleted all your access keys.”

“Kelly, please. I did want to see you, really.”

But she turned and strode away. The security guards pulled him to his feet and prodded him out the other way, back to the jump node. He thought about fighting back. He might be able to stun them if he unleashed his offensive brain hardware.

He restrained himself. He didn't need to. Because the beautiful fact was that Tom Jacks was there on her list, along with the name of the clone who carried his DNA. Luis Jesus. And that was a name he had come across before. Come across very recently.

He still had a shot. He didn't need to break into the refuge after all. Life was good. He let the four grunts escort him to the jump node, a smile on his face.

Simms stood outside the shining glass building. Another day, another hospital to break into. Except this was a real one, with real live dying people inside. Which all meant real security, too. Going to be a damn sight harder to infiltrate than Bethesda.

He'd worked on the place for over three weeks, more and more desperate. He'd tried hacking them, tried profiling key staff members to see if anyone needed urgent money. Nothing. He'd even engineered an injury – a self-administered cut to his leg – so he could get inside and take a look around. All he'd learned was the place was a damn fortress, private security keeping everything locked down. He'd discovered old tissue samples were kept on a sub-basement level, but that was it. All that efficiency meant there was a good chance the blood sample of Luis Jesus, one of those injured in the Montreux concert riot, would still be down there. The problem was getting to it.

He wondered if Kelly's clone knew his name was one of Tom Jack's pseudonyms. Jacks must have made it up that night, hoping to avoid attention. Most likely, the name was a joke on the part of whoever had created Jesus from that broken tooth years later.

It didn't matter to Simms. He had to get down into the basement, grab a sample and get out. And he had to do it now. Mann's month had all-but run out. All Simms' other schemes had come to nothing. Sometimes you had to dispense with subtlety and go in all guns blazing. Or at least, sneak in and come out all guns blazing. He didn't like the odds, but he refused to let this job slip through his fingers. Chances like it only came along once or twice in a lifetime.