Fifty

 

Flint stood at DeRicci’s desk, operating the built-in computer. She had the most sophisticated computer network in Armstrong, and she had no idea how to use it. She also seemed to have no idea that this particular desk could be isolated from the network—and not hacked.

He couldn’t remember if he had ever explained that to her, way back when she asked him to review the safety features of the Security Office’s computer system. He suspected he had, but DeRicci probably hadn’t paid attention.

She looked at computers as tools for her, not as communications systems that worked both ways. Someone could get in as easily as someone could get out.

At least, if someone was not careful.

DeRicci was still surrounded by the Peyti faces, but she had her back to both Popova and Flint. DeRicci was talking to her contact on Peyla, trying to get more information.

Popova kept refining the search parameters, trying to figure out how many of the Peyti clones were here.

Her searches interfered with Flint’s. He had isolated the desk ten minutes before, so he wouldn’t have to deal with Popova. He also ran an internal scan to make sure the desk hadn’t been compromised. He didn’t entirely trust the Security Office’s network—not with the Earth Alliance investigators here.

He had to stay cautious, because something about this entire investigation bothered him, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Peyti clones of a mass murderer. Here.

It made no real sense, not like PierLuigi Frémont did. Humans were afraid or appalled by Frémont, even now, years after his death. Humans didn’t care about a Peyti mass murderer. Humans had no idea such a thing existed.

But the numbers Flint was getting dwarfed the ones that Popova initially found. The system tracked at least five hundred of these clones, when adjusted for different ages, like DeRicci had asked.

No children, no Peyti equivalent of teenagers, very few young adults.

So far, Flint’s system had found five hundred such Peyti scattered all over the Moon. He was having trouble setting the searches up so that he could prevent counting the same clone twice. He had to use a rather broad search, one that followed each of the five hundred clones to see if they interacted with each other.

So far they hadn’t. And, as far as he could tell, they rarely interacted with other Peyti, either.

He wished he were dealing with humans. Humans would be easy. He could tell at a glance what he was looking at. Here, he had to trust the computer system, the facial recognition system, the information that DeRicci had gotten from her Earth Alliance contact.

“Okay.” DeRicci turned around. “This was more confusing than helpful.”

“You reached her?” Popova asked.

DeRicci nodded. “She’s not familiar with the masks. She just wonders if it’s a style thing. They do get redesigned on occasion. But remember, she lives on Peyla. She’s usually the one in an environmental suit, and doesn’t deal with many masked Peyti. She’s going to check the databases.”

Flint kept working on his, listening, and not really watching DeRicci. He could tell from her tone of voice that she was both perplexed and irritated. She always got irritated when she didn’t understand something.

“She’s sending more information on those clones,” DeRicci said. “It’s weird. She’s finding those camps everywhere—”

“Camps?” Popova asked.

Flint looked up at that as well. He hadn’t heard about camps.

DeRicci waved a hand. “It’s a whole long story. Apparently, someone grew the clones in batches in camps. But I’ll tell you the details later. Rastigan was looking to see if batches left Peyla together or arrived somewhere together, and she didn’t find anything.”

Flint’s hands froze over the desktop.

“What she did find was graduation ceremonies. Dozens of them, maybe more.”

“Graduation?” Popova sounded as confused as Flint felt.

“School is extremely important to the Peyti, at least that’s what Rastigan said.” DeRicci shrugged. “Everyone who had a graduation ceremony went off Peyla to a prestigious school. But none of them went to the same school or, rather, if they did, they went years apart from the previous Peyti.”

Flint wasn’t surprised by the Peyti desire to finish education. The Peyti he’d worked with over the years loved knowledge more than anything else, and weren’t afraid to take classes here on Armstrong to get to know local laws or customs.

Of course, most of the Peyti he’d worked with had been lawyers, probably because of his involvement with law enforcement. He’d seen a lot of Peyti students in the law library and cafeteria at Dome University.

The Earth Alliance prized Peyti lawyers because of their brilliance, their ability to see through holes in cases, and their willingness to put in long hours.

“Lawyers,” Flint said. “Most adult Peyti here on the Moon are lawyers.”

“Lawyers have no power,” DeRicci said. “They can’t change the laws.”

“The Peyti who want to do that are involved in Earth Alliance governments,” Popova said. “We’re not centralized enough for them. I don’t think there are any Peyti in the United Domes of the Moon governments or in local ones. I’ll check though.”

“I’m still stuck on this school thing,” DeRicci said. “Why would it matter?”

“It would get them to the Moon,” Popova said.

Flint shook his head. That didn’t feel right. He wasn’t sure what was right. Whatever it was felt slightly out of reach.

“We don’t prevent Peyti from coming here,” DeRicci said. “They come all the time. They’re one of our closest allies in the Earth Alliance. Everyone loves working with them.”

DeRicci frowned. Then she tapped the holographic screen with several faces on it. “We should have gotten the graduation ceremony images from her by now.”

“Don’t open them,” Flint said.

“You don’t trust her?” DeRicci asked.

“I can find out how many educated Peyti are here by running the Earth Alliance bar registry,” Flint said. “Then I’ll cross check the names against the employment records, and finally against our facial recognition software. These five hundred Peyti might not be lawyers. It might be an insignificant sidetrack.”

“Five hundred?” Popova asked. “I didn’t think we had that many from our scans.”

“The Moon’s a big place,” DeRicci said. “Five hundred mixed in a population numbering in the millions is pretty insignificant.”

It depended on where those five hundred were located, Flint thought, but did not say. He started the cross-checks.

“You initially didn’t expect to find anything, did you, Noelle?” he asked DeRicci, mostly to distract her so that she wouldn’t look at the graduation images.

“No,” she said. “I was doing this so I could legitimately send information to the Earth Alliance because they weren’t talking to Rastigan. I thought Rastigan would find a clump of the clones getting ready to attack some Peyti communities. I didn’t expect to find any here.”

“We don’t know what stage this attack is at,” Flint said. “For all we know, they could be training here.”

“The Frémont clones weren’t educated,” Popova said.

“We don’t know that,” Flint said. “In fact, we don’t know anything about them. That’s part of the problem. We’re working off assumptions, not knowledge.”

DeRicci’s gaze met his. “And that’s always so dangerous. I’m sorry, Miles. That’s my fault.”

He shook his head. “It’s mine, too. We approached this investigation wrong. We got overwhelmed by the size and scope, and made mistakes. Now we have to repair those mistakes and conduct the best investigation we possibly can.”

“Whatever that means,” Popova muttered.

“I guess,” DeRicci said, “at some point, we’re going to find out.”