METMURI, OLNIKO, AND Ugoli occupied seats before Ilanya’s desk. Teo stood discreetly behind his owner, who held court in a borrowed office.
“Good news for you, Doctor,” Eva addressed the station’s Director of Special Projects. “We’re giving you a test subject you can release into the world.”
She studied Metmuri’s round face. The doctor was still absorbing their introduction. He had not realized until this minute who he was dealing with and what authority she held. Now, while he was off-center with that realization, she dangled the enticement that should win his cooperation. His round face lit up enthusiastically. And before he leapt to too many conclusions—
“This offer comes with a few limitations I must impose, and I’ll tell you why. Your project is timely, for Political Division’s purposes. You should consider this a field test under real field conditions. To that end, I must learn from you how tractable these clones are. Can they be ordered to behave in a certain way? Will they do my bidding, like clone-bank soldiers on Corvus would?”
The bioempath looked completely confused. She had expected that, and in that moment she reached out with a gentle psychic touch. She needed to monitor his true reactions closely. Would he rebel at the interference with his plans? Could he be persuaded to do his duty? Or would she have to compel cooperation?
The expression on his face sobered. “We essentially filter personality aspects here, Arcolo.” He was shaking his head. “We don’t remove volition. They are ordinary people. They’re as biddable as ordinary people.”
Which is to say, “not very,” she thought, unless self-interest was served or devotion was involved.
“Nevertheless, Doctor, I have something I want one of these splintered clones to do. What is the best way to achieve that?”
Metmuri blinked, startled. “That’s—that’s not what this is about,” he blurted. “With all due respect, that will ruin the field test. We need to see how they behave independently, without expectations or instruction sets of any sort. That’s the whole point of this experiment: to gauge their capacity for self-directed functionality in the normal environment. If you try giving the clones orders, that’s an entirely different set of variables.”
Ilanya glanced at Olniko, who had already cautioned her that Metmuri still thought of this as a project with therapeutic uses. “Discarding dissonance,” his project brief described it, “tailoring personalities and making minds whole.” Both he and Prevak before him had been kept in the dark about the strategic uses long planned for their technology. After all, those plans were strictly on a need-to-know basis, and Metmuri had no need to know.
She turned back to him smoothly. “I understand your reservations, Doctor,” she replied. “That’s why I said there are special limitations in this case. You will still have opportunity to test general functionality with clones made from this subject. But I need your special help in creating a biddable mindset in at least one of them.”
Metmuri’s eyes narrowed and she sensed his growing anger. “Then I think you should tell me what, exactly, you want to accomplish,” he said curtly.
Ilanya’s voice hardened. “I’ve told you sufficient information for your purposes. I plan to give orders and I need to have them obeyed.”
Metmuri made a sound very near to a snort; Ugoli stiffened. The doctor pointedly ignored him and spoke only to Ilanya.
“This isn’t Political Division, Arcolo. If you want specialists in behavior modification, you already have them: destroy these pathways here, get that behavior there. That is not what we do with our clones.”
Eva regarded him calculatingly. “I know you were assistant director of the clone banks on Corvus.”
“I was.”
“You created obedient clones there. How did you do that?”
“That was different. The Primes we cloned were soldiers already trained to obedience, with those habits already mapped into their brains. Imprinting that personality into a clone was simple wholesale replication of unaltered neural pathways. If they didn’t have those behavior patterns already, their multiples would not have been inclined to follow orders.”
Eva raised an eyebrow. “Yet you’re plucking apart the very psyche of the Primes you work with here, and I read that some of the clones you produce are extremely biddable.”
Metmuri shrugged. “The Secundus series are often entirely compliant—in the sense of being passive and directable by others. Many of them lack decisiveness or a matured sense of self. Without powerful motivation from within, they respond to motivation from without. If that is what you desire, that I can provide. It is not the same as someone who hears an order and willingly, creatively, industriously obeys it.”
Eva suppressed a sigh. The contents of Metmuri’s lab reports resided in her Tolex now, but parsing science jargon in an arcane specialty was not her forte; she had not yet assimilated the information to a point where she understood the nuances of it. For this interview, she relied more on the verbal briefings she’d received from Olniko. Perhaps her ignorance of the project was hindering communication here. But she knew a way around that.
“Let me phrase this a little differently for you, then.” She shifted tack. “I hear you telling me, ‘this can’t be done’—to awaken a clone who is not a soldier and have them be obedient. So I want you to figure out how it can be done. It’s that simple.”
Metmuri took that in in silence.
“You will start the cloning process today. Then you’ll have seven weeks while the subjects are fast-grown in vats and then some time beyond that while we age them to resemble their original. During that time you can find a way to create a biddable clone. If you need to call on resources from Corvus, or elsewhere outside this station, let me know and I’ll arrange for it.”
Metmuri looked pained. “That does not follow our protocol. We’ve never done … These are not soldier clones I’m working with here! What makes you think this is even possible?” he sputtered in frustrated indignation.
Ilanya barked a short laugh. “Because I already have ways to ensure obedience, and I’m fairly certain they’re far less pleasant than anything you could devise. You know what solution comes most quickly to my mind, Doctor? I would implant a detonation chip and warn the subject that disobedience will be punished with instant death. Then I would demonstrate that with one of the clones, so the others don’t think it’s a bluff.”
The bioempath recoiled as she continued. “If I want a more happily cooperative subject, I would have a pleasure center wired for externally controlled stimulation. Then obedience swiftly becomes an addictive sensation, and any deviation from my orders brings the loss of pleasure. Which becomes quite unbearable, I am told, once a body is addicted to the pleasure factor. Eventually disobedience becomes inconceivable.”
Metmuri looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, and she sensed dismay and horror in his aura.
“That approach takes time, though, and I don’t have as much of that as I would like. So I am hoping you can come up with a better solution. Otherwise I shall have to rely upon my own alternatives. They may be crude, but they are also effective.”
She gave him a humorless smile. He paled and she felt his emotions shift.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he mumbled, subdued.
“Good man.”
Commander Olniko addressed them both. “Your test subject is here, I’m told.” He tapped his ear, referring to his com implant.
Ilanya stood; the others came to their feet as well. “Then our business here is concluded for now. Start your splintegration process, Doctor. And when the cloning is well underway, let me know what you come up with to assure obedience to orders.”
“Arcolo.” Metmuri ducked his head and left the room hurriedly ahead of the rest.
IT DIDN’T LOOK like a prison cell, but it might just as well have been one. Kes paced the floor of the small windowless room she had languished in for hours. It contained a table, two chairs, a couch, and a service cubby—it was a meager conference room, perhaps, sealed behind an iris-valve door. That style door was common on board imperial vessels, she knew; the construction assured rapid closure to create air-tight compartments. She had never seen one in person before, and the way the portal’s interleaves had widened to admit her had drawn her eye in fascination.
It was the last fascinating thing she’d seen all afternoon. The valve irised shut behind her and did not budge again.
There was not so much as a vid term in this room, or not one she recognized. Kes finally abandoned the restless prowling and lay down to lounge on the couch, which was too short for her height. Maybe she could take a nap and pass the time that way. Better that than the endless, pointless speculation that had begun a tail-chasing circuit in her head.
She was succeeding in drifting off to sleep when the door irised open and someone walked unannounced into the room.
At first she thought he was just a funny-looking little man: graying lank blond hair, round face, a teal-colored tunic that did not complement his pasty complexion, white-and-teal-striped trousers of an odd cut that hugged his calves. Then she blinked and sat upright, and really registered what she was looking at.
The half-blue, half-green diamond-shaped rus in the middle of the man’s forehead said it all. This was a bioempath. A doctor, of course, but not just by virtue of medical training. Anyone who wore that laserscribed mark had years of training in psionics and energetics. This man had dedicated decades of his life to the study of disciplines that to Kes’s understanding essentially comprised one large mystery school.
There were few bioempaths in the CAS Sector—they were more common in Sa’adani space—but every citizen recognized that rus. You saw it on the evening news when some deader at the scene of an accident was revived unexpectedly by a bioempath, or an impossible cure was effected by their disciplined use of energetics.
She’d never thought to meet one in person. What was a doctor of this rare breed doing in a place like this? Surely he was not her client? Or was he?
She collected herself rapidly, coming to her feet to take advantage of her presence and stature to make herself imposing in that space.
“Sarit Hinano.” He greeted her and gestured to the nearby table. “Please. Have a seat.”
There were guards behind him in the hall: the two who had brought her here, and two naval security in black fatigues. They stayed outside but had a clear line of sight to her; she saw sidearms at the hips of the uniformed men. Her lips thinned. She remained standing while the doctor took a chair. Only then did she sit opposite him. She still had not said a word.
That silence seemed to disconcert the good doctor. He clasped his hands on the table, then unclasped them, then finally set them one atop the other as if to hold them still.
“I’m Dr. Metmuri Esimir,” he introduced himself. “You will be my, um, guest for a time. Has anyone told you why you’re here?”
“No.”
He blinked nervously several times then, and his brows crept up. “Um. Oh.”
He drummed his fingers on the table, then stilled them with an apparent effort.
“Why am I here, Doctor? This was your idea, I take it?”
He blinked again, surprised. “Oh, no. Well, yes. But not exactly. I mean…” He blew out a breath in exasperation. “Let me start again, Sarit. I need to ask you some questions. Quite a number of them, actually. Will you kindly humor me and answer them? This will take a while.”
She had a feeling Metmuri would reveal more if he was uncomfortable in her presence than if he was collected. Kes had many ways to unsettle men, and she used one of them now, inclining her head slightly back so that she looked imperiously down at him, even though they were seated on a level. One eyebrow lifted as if to invite him to proceed.
He cleared his throat nervously and began.
Her answers were terse; she waited to see what information he would volunteer to fill the gaps her silence created, but his questions were pointed and persistent. Metmuri did not ask her anything a client ever had; he spoke to her as a doctor would. Name, age, place of birth; major illnesses, medical history, family history, cyberimplants and enhancements. At one point the shorter man who had escorted her here came in with a datapad and took her thumbprint and retina scan. “To retrieve your medrecords,” Metmuri explained, as if that explained anything.
“I’m not ill,” she felt prompted to say.
“I should hope not, Sarit Hinano. We need to be certain of the particulars of your health, though.”
“And why is that important?” She took that opportunity to sharpen her tone. All these questions and still Metmuri had not revealed why she was here, unless it was for a medical exam. She was getting tired of this game. If her client wanted a medical scene, she could accommodate, but she would be the one asking the questions and running that show.
“Your health? Oh.” Metmuri actually blushed and avoided her gaze. He fidgeted with a stylus he’d taken out of a pocket, turning it over and over in his fingers before he answered her.
“There will be some tests. Quite routine, I assure you. Then we’ll know where to go from there.” He finally looked her in the eye. “We need to verify your physical condition, you see? And if you pass, then I can tell you more.”
She threw herself back in her chair. “No, I don’t see. I suggest you explain yourself if you want me to cooperate with you. I didn’t come all this way for a medical exam.”
Metmuri made a strange noise, half giggle, half snort. “Oh no, Sarit, that’s where you’re mistaken. That’s exactly what you came here for. For starters, anyway.”
“‘For starters’? For what reason, exactly? Who wanted me here?”
Dr. Metmuri studied her, then, with a distant expression on his face, his eyes roving the plane of her face, the bodice that showed through her shirt, the length of her white silk sleeve to her long fingers tapping the table.
“You’re a guest of the Navy right now,” he said, bringing his eyes back up to hers. “As to who wanted you here: you might say that was me. I didn’t know it would be you, precisely. But it was certainly my idea to get someone.”
“Any domina would have served?”
He shook his head. “Any reasonably well-adjusted person would serve. You’ll do as well as any. Though given your work, this should prove especially interesting.”
Any reasonably well-adjusted person would serve? Had Helda known that when she’d ordered her out the door?
You’ll do as well as any.
She felt profoundly disturbed by his remarks. That feeling only grew as the afternoon wore on.