The Clone Assassin (9 page)

For the last seventy years, Howard Tasman had been the galaxy’s leading authority on neural programming. When the Linear Committee, the executive branch of the U.A. government, began developing the Liberator cloning project, a very young Howard Tasman participated on the project.

He’d become a hero on his home world after the Liberators had made the galaxy safe. For a planet that had never produced an important politician, or a noted actor, or historic athlete, having a famous scientist had to do. Then things went wrong with the Liberators. They killed civilians and prisoners alike on a penal colony named Alcatraz Island. They massacred civilians on a planet named New Prague. In a chilling irony that ruined Tasman’s life forever, the Liberators murdered most of the civilian population on his home planet of Volga as well.

Tasman told Watson, “The Enlisted Man’s Empire never had a chance of survival. Clones are impotent. They can’t reproduce without labs, and the Mogats destroyed the labs back in 2512.” He smiled, a gracious, self-satisfied grin, “The clone empire didn’t need my help to go bust.”

Repulsed that Tasman’s skin was whiter than his teeth, Watson averted his gaze from the old man’s face.

“A one-generation empire isn’t an empire at all,” said Tasman. “It’s a placeholder.”

Watson looked up, and said, “Maybe, but you’ve brought down two empires. Your clones brought down the Unified Authority.”

Tasman’s smile vanished. He said, “They shouldn’t have been able to do that. They shouldn’t have been able to unite. Their programming . . .”

“The programming you created.”

“Maybe their neural programming wasn’t perfect,” said Tasman, no longer exhibiting signs of his former humor. “It was the best we could do under the circumstances. I couldn’t have anticipated the Unified Authority’s dismantling of its own military. No one could have foreseen that. The military deciding to junk its own clones wasn’t one of the contingencies the generals asked me to consider.”

Watson wondered just how much information he should give up. Living on a military base and never going out in public, Tasman didn’t pose much of a security threat. He didn’t socialize with anyone outside the Pentagon, had no living relatives, and received no visitors.

He’s a bitter old fool,
Watson reminded himself. But who wouldn’t be bitter. His attitude softening, he thought,
So late in life to be so alone
, and took pity on the old man. Tasman was unpleasant, but he was reaching the end of his existence. Even on Mars, when it looked like they would die, he’d irritated anyone who’d come near him.

Speaking softly, slowly, just loud enough to be sure that Tasman heard him clearly, Watson said, “Don Cutter is dead.”

“Dead?” asked Tasman, leaning forward in his bulky wheelchair.

“Assassinated.”

Tasman fell back on his chair, let his arms drop to his sides, sat slack and silent. It occurred to Watson that the old man might have suffered heart failure upon hearing the news. Several seconds passed, then Tasman said, “I knew about the prison in Oregon and I heard about Harris, but nobody told me about Cutter.”

He mulled the situation over, then sat up and rubbed his chin. He scratched an eyebrow, folded his hands on his lap, then raised them and rubbed his nose before announcing, “That is quite a switch-up. Now the Unified Authority regained its leadership and the clones lost theirs all in the same day.”

“All in the same minute,” said Watson.

“What’s that?” asked Tasman.

“All of the attacks took place at the exact same time.”

“But I heard that the attack on the prison was at eight in the morning.”

“Eight
A.M.
West Coast time,” said Watson. “That was eleven o’clock here.”

“Eleven? You mean, it happened at the same time that they tried to explode the bomb?” asked Tasman. As a citizen of Volga, then Olympus Kri, he wasn’t entirely familiar with global time zones.

“The bomb, the prison break, and the attack on Cutter all took place at the exact same moment. They were a few minutes late attacking Harris . . . the best plans of mice and men, right?”

“. . . a couple of minutes late with Harris,” Tasman said, confirming the information.

“This is all classified information,” Watson said, reassuring himself by reminding Tasman of the obvious.

“Then you’re in the right place, Travis. This is the most classified operation in the Pentagon.”

“There’s something I wanted to ask you,” Watson said, getting back to business. “I just got back from the Territories late last night. We don’t know exactly what happened there, but the men who attacked Harris appear to have been clones.”

“Clones?” Tasman repeated.

“Freeman thinks they were reprogrammed clones. Can you identify whether or not they were reprogrammed?”

Tasman didn’t answer.

“If I brought the bodies, would you be able to perform an autopsy?”

Tasman shook his head. “What do you want me to look for?”

“I want to know if they were reprogrammed.”

“And you think that will turn up in an autopsy?” asked Tasman.

“Reprogramming doesn’t leave any physical traces. They inhale chemicals and pass out. The Unifieds run a few more chemicals past them, and their programming changes. It’s not a lobotomy, Travis. There are no incisions and no scars. Nothing happens to their frontal lobes.”

“I know that,” said Watson, though he had only suspected it. “What about traces of the chemicals in their blood or tissue?”

“It’s all olfaction, minor traces of chemicals taken in the right proportions and the right sequence, but it’s traces, just traces. Just because you walk by a barbecue and smell meat cooking doesn’t mean we’ll find a cow in your blood,” said Tasman. “The Unifieds aren’t injecting them with the chemicals. All it takes is a little whiff of the right chemicals in the right proportions in the right order.

“The trick isn’t getting the chemicals in them, it’s getting the chemicals to them. Did you ever look at the flask they used when they tried to attack Harris last year? The damned thing had a thousand chambers, aromatic release vents, and internal fans. It was a masterpieces of precision engineering.”

Watson took in this information. He’d been sent a report about the flask but hadn’t read it; now he wished that he had. He nodded and sighed.

Tasman changed the subject. He asked, “Are you still with Emily?”

Watson said, “We’re engaged to be married.” He didn’t like doling out personal information to Tasman, worried that the old man might start dropping hints about them having him over for dinner.

“Married?” asked Tasman. He snickered, and added, “I wouldn’t have thought that either of you was the marrying type.”

“You were saying something about the chemicals,” Watson prompted.

“Yes, I was. Does Emily wear perfume?”

“I’m not sure what brand,” Watson said, starting to feel annoyed.

“Performing an autopsy on a clone to find out if he’s been reprogrammed would be like performing an autopsy on you to discover Ms. Hughes’s choice of perfume.

“I’d have more luck pumping your stomach on the off chance you’d swallowed the label from one of her perfume bottles.”

 • • • 

Watson arrived at the summit.

He knew all of the officers in attendance except Major General MacAvoy. He’d first met Rear Admiral Hauser while working for Harris, then spent considerably more time with him while working for Admiral Cutter. Hauser was the captain of the
Churchill
, the flagship of the fleet.

Watson had only met Lieutenant Colonel Hunter Ritz of the EME Marines on a couple of occasions, one of those occasions being the battle on Mars. He liked Ritz.

Cardston had informed MacAvoy and Ritz about Cutter’s death. Hauser already knew; the assassination took place on his ship. None of them knew about Harris.

Watson sat in the conference room silently listening, watching the three senior-most officers in the Enlisted Man’s Empire. From the horror stories Harris had told him about officers wrangling for power, he expected the men to start attacking each other. He spotted a few cracks in the façade, but for the most part, they treated each other with respect.

Which one would I place in charge?
Watson asked himself.

That was the purpose of the summit. Cutter might or might not have left a will, but he left absolutely no instructions concerning the chain of command.

Pernell MacAvoy, a major general in the Army, was next in line. He was the oldest of the three officers, a clone whose hair had turned mostly white. “It doesn’t hardly seem like the Enlisted Man’s Empire is a military operation anymore,” he lamented. “I’m running out of privates and corporals. You have to give your boys promotions every so often so they know you aren’t angry with ’em. The problem is, if I have too many sergeants and not enough grunts, the sergeants have nobody to push around. That’s a problem. It’s a big problem.”

“Maybe you can give them bonuses instead of promotions,” Admiral Hauser suggested.

“That may be the right way to run an empire, but it’s no way to run an army. What’s the good of making sergeants if you don’t have grunts for them to bully?” asked MacAvoy. “There’s no use putting torpedo tubes on ships that don’t carry torpedoes, and there’s no point having sergeants if they don’t have privates they can push around. They can’t shout at themselves, and I pity the sergeant who raises his voice at an officer.”

Hauser smiled as he listened. Watson wondered if he had ever seen a more condescending smile.

MacAvoy stood, walked the length of the office as he thought how to respond, then said, “The Enlisted Man’s Empire was a military organization. Military organizations are made up of soldiers. Once we captured Earth, we stopped being a military operation and became a wet nurse for civilians and refugees. We’re beating our heads against walls trying to babysit the people who sent us into space. It’s ridiculous.

“I’m sorry Cutter is gone. He was a fine officer, but he was out of his depth.

“He should have stepped down the moment we went from fighting wars to balancing budgets.”

“Stepped down?” Hauser asked, looking and sounding outraged.

Starting to pace again, MacAvoy reaffirmed his position. “Stepped down. He was an admiral, not a senator. The man was out of his depth.”

“What about General Harris?” asked Colonel Hunter Ritz. “Do you want him to step down?”

Ritz, the Marine, was twenty years younger than Hauser, who was at least ten years younger than MacAvoy. The older officers were of the spit-and-polish variety, dressed in crisp blouses and well-creased pants. Ritz attended the meeting in fatigues. He leaned back in his chair so he could rest his combat boots on the seat beside him. He had the petulant smile of a perpetual truant.

“Step down?” asked MacAvoy. “I want Harris to step up. The man doesn’t want to run anything larger than a platoon. He keeps promoting everyone around him and letting them run the empire into the ground.”

“Do you think he’s out of his depth?” Ritz asked, his tone daring the old general to say something bad about Harris.

MacAvoy stopped pacing and faced Ritz. He said, “General Harris knows his limitations. That is why he put Cutter in charge. I only wish he’d been as aware of Cutter’s limitations.”

“Bullshit!” yelled Hauser.

“What’s bullshit?” asked MacAvoy.

“Everything you just said is bullshit,” said Hauser.

“So you don’t think Harris knows his limitations?” asked MacAvoy.

“Okay, yeah, well, I agree; he knows his limitations.”

“But you don’t think Harris put Cutter in charge?”

“Well, yeah, he did.”

“Then we agree,” said MacAvoy.

“You said you wished Harris was aware of Cutter’s limitations,” said Hauser. He rose to his feet as he said this.

“Do you think he knew Cutter’s limitations?”

Still on his feet, Hauser said, “Well, maybe not.”

“Are you saying Cutter didn’t have any limitations?”

Hauser sat back in his chair. “Obviously, he had limitations.”

“Do you think Cutter was up to the task of running a civilian empire?”

Hauser didn’t answer that question. Instead, he said, “The Navy runs the military. Cutter did a good job running the Navy.”

“Who would you choose to run the empire?” asked Watson.

“Bull-specking-shit,” MacAvoy grumbled. “Harris has been calling the shots from behind the shadows for years. It’s high time he took over.”

“Are you saying the Marines should run the show?” asked Ritz.

“The Marines can’t run shit. Son, you’re talking about a branch that can’t even deliver its men to the battle. If there’s a branch that should run things, it’s the Army,” said MacAvoy. “We’re the largest branch.”

“Oh, speck no!” said Hauser.

“Why the hell not?” asked MacAvoy.

“Your
boys
kill people and break stuff. That’s what armies do. That’s all armies do,” said Hauser.

MacAvoy made a show of scratching his chin, then he brightened as if an idea had just occurred to him. He pointed a finger toward the ceiling, and said, “Hang on, now! I forgot; with Cutter assassinated, you’re next in line. I bet you want the Navy to call the shots.”

“I’m next in line to run the Navy . . . the Navy . . . the Navy. I manage ships and fleets. I command sailors. I don’t give orders to civilians.”

“You know your limitations,” said MacAvoy.

“Don didn’t want it either,” said Hauser. “He agreed to run the military. He agreed to run the empire back when the military was the empire. Once we took Earth, he locked himself on his ship. Now that he’s gone, I think General Harris is the only man who can take the reins.”

Ritz straightened in his chair, and said, “He gets my vote.”

MacAvoy nodded.

Watson said, “Gentlemen, I think you should know that General Harris is missing.”

“What do you mean by ‘missing’?” Ritz growled, becoming as livid as a junkyard dog.

“Admiral Cutter sent him to the New Olympian Territories two weeks ago. He was attacked in his hotel room yesterday morning. We haven’t found a body, but there was blood in his hotel room. The New Olympian Police have identified it as his.”