CHAPTER TEN

 

Lani fumed at the Flagge Security Lieutenant Garmaz. Polite on the surface, nothing but rules and regulations beneath. She’d quickly grown to dislike him.

"So I'm a prisoner? Is that it?"

"Not at all, Datameister Rouge. I've told you – this is protective custody. You've already been abducted once today. We do not want that to happen again."

She wished she could see his eyes behind the shiny crimson visor that covered the upper half of his face. She was sure he knew more than he was telling her.

"So I'm not to leave my complex?”

“Your apartment looks comfortable enough.” His visored head swiveled back and forth. “Perhaps you can spend the time...neatening it up.”

A supercilious Security officer. Bloaty! Just what she needed.

Lani refused to follow his gaze. She hoped her embarrassment didn't show. Yes, her apartment was a mess. She knew that. But it wasn't dirty. She had the best moppets on the market and they kept the place spotless. She simply had so many more things than she had places to put them. If she could just stop buying things...

But how she kept her apartment was not the business of Flagge Security.

“What does restricting my movements accomplish? Why can't I–?”

"You'll be guarded as well. Your building will be under constant surveillance. Anyone who isn't a tenant had better have a verifiable reason for being here."

"Oh, so I'm not only a prisoner, I'm bait too? I won't stand for this!"

"Stop!" Lieutenant Garmaz said, raising his hand and his voice. "I have my orders. I am carrying them out. That is all we both need to know. Good day, Datameister Rouge."

"And good riddance," she muttered as he stepped into the hallway and rejoined the pair of red-helmeted patrolmen waiting there.

As the door cut him from view, she heard a loud hum and then a beep from the far side. Curious, she touched the plate but the door didn't move. She touched it again, then began slapping it, but the door remained closed. They'd disabled her doorplate.

Unbelievable! She couldn't even leave her apartment.

Furious, she whirled and kicked at a table, missing it with her foot but catching the edge against her shin. Pain shot through it. Clutching her lower leg, she hopped around, screaming curses.

Finally, the pain eased and she dropped into her smart chair and it gently hugged her...

How stupid am I? she thought. Why didn't I just tell them about the mime? It wasn't Trev...it just wore his skin.

As hard as she tried, she couldn't find an answer to that question. She'd described the three thugs who'd kidnapped her – described them down to their nose hairs. And if – more likely when – they were caught, she'd testify against them and demand maximum sentencing. They'd her trussed up, naked as the day she'd been born, and subjected her to their leering and ogling.

But after a while, simply looking hadn't been enough. No, they decided that something a little more physical was in order. What the hell – she was dead meat anyway. That was what they'd called her: dead meat. Might as well have some fun with her.

And then she'd sat there, sick with horror, as they'd traded drug patches and started arguing over who was going to have her first...and how good it was going to be. They’d started to untie her, but then a fight broke out – she’d bet anything they were high on Hhhelll. After some shouted threats and half-hearted pushing and shoving didn't settle it, they agreed to let a game of 30-40 decide.

Leaving her half untied as they settled down to play, Lani had hung her head, as if asleep or deep in depression, all the while patiently working on the knots. As a second fight broke out, this one more vicious than the first, she wriggled an arm free and untied the rest of her bonds. Then, taking advantage of her captors’ Hhhelll-induced fog, she ducked behind some crates, found the mime’s discarded clothes, and ran for the door.

One thing about living here in Flagge, you usually didn’t have to go far before running into a Security patrol. Except today, of course. By the time she'd found one and led them back to the warehouse, her abductors were gone.

The patrol had brought her first to their unit station where she'd told them everything – except about the mime. The abduction of a datameister was no small matter, and so she'd been taken to Central Security in the Citadel, where she'd repeated her story – still leaving out the mime.

Why? Because he'd looked like Trev?

Truly, "looked like" didn't even come close. He had been Trev. When he'd walked in she'd thought the man she loved had come back from the dead. But only for an instant. Trev's death had been confirmed. So that could only mean that his genome had been copied and given to a mime. But by whom? And why?

She shivered and rubbed her upper arms as she felt her skin begin to crawl. Mimes were creepy in general, but this...this biological freak becoming a dead man...all but bringing him back to life....and then becoming her.

She'd thought that was impossible.

She should have turned him in, should have told about the mime copying her on the spot.

So why didn't I?

If she had they'd now be in a frenzy looking for a mime agent instead of worrying about whether or not her abductors would try again.

Was it because the mime had saved her life? The kidnapers had wanted to kill her – had been ready to pulse her to mush – but he'd stopped them.

And that was one more Why? to add to her list.

So maybe she owed the mime some sort of payback. But even if she didn't, she'd had other reasons to keep quiet. She didn't trust Security. They were almost a law unto themselves. And if they caught the mime, he'd disappear. No one would know he'd ever existed, let alone penetrated Flagge.

Seeing him like that...moving, speaking, it was almost as if Trev were still alive.

She needed to see that mime again, talk to him, find out where he got that copy of Trev's genome.

She sighed. How idiotic. As if she'd ever get the chance.

"Lani Rouge."

She bolted from her seat at the sound – her name...her voice–

–and turned.

A young woman stood in the center of the room, wearing the clothes Lani had put on this morning.

Me! No – the mime. And more life-like than any mirror.

“Seems we share more than our looks,” the mime said, hefting a hologlobe.

Lani backed away. This...creature terrified her.

“Wha...what do you mean? What do you want?”

The mime held up the hologlobe. “This. The man in here. How do you know him?”

“How do I know him?” Lani stopped and stared. “How the hell do you know him?”

“I don't.” For the first time, the mime seemed unsure. “I thought he was a composite. I never dreamed...”

“That he'd once been a real human being?” Lani felt her eyes sting as they filled with tears. Not now, she thought. She willed them back. She would not cry in front of this thing, this shape-stealer. “Well, he was a real human being – the best!”

“Was? Does that mean he’s dead?”

“Yes.” Those damn tears again. “He was killed two months ago – murdered.”

“Was he your brother?”

“No.”

“Your lover, then?”

“None of your muting business.” She looked away but knew it had to be so obvious. What was the point of denying it? “All right, yes.”

And I miss him...no one can imagine how much I miss him.

“I'm sorry.”

She glanced at the mime. Her face – her own face – looked genuinely sad as it stared at Trev’s holo. Did mimes have feelings? It occurred to her she knew so little about mimes. They didn't matter in her world.

“Sorry about what? That you killed him?”

“I didn't kill him.”

“All right then – not you, but one of your type. What does it matter?”

Finally the mime looked up at her. “Why should a mime do that? There’s nothing special about his genotype.”

That did it. A sob grew and burst from Lani before she could stop it.

“You bastard! It – he – was special to me!”

She dropped onto the edge of the chair and buried her face in her hands. She still hurt – it had been two months since his body had been consigned to the vats and it hurt as much as that first awful day.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and stiffened. She looked up and the mime was standing over her, staring at her with her own eyes, so strange.

An instant of disorientation – being comforted...by herself...dream-like...a fantasy. Confronting herself...

That was her hand resting on her shoulder, and yet it wasn't her hand...

“Tell me about him,” the mime said. "Please."

“Why?” She wiped her eyes and snatched Trev’s holo from him. Anger slowly replaced the grief and fear. “So you can mimic him better?”

“No.” Again...that hint of uncertainty. “Because something isn't right here. I should have been given a composite masque for travel into Flagge. But even if I hadn't, I never should have been given the genome of a recently murdered Flagge citizen. It doesn't make sense."

“And Trev’s, of all people.”

“Yes...” the mime said softly, eyes far away. “Of all people...” Suddenly he refocused on her. “Trev...is – was that his name?”

The mime seemed uncomfortable.

She nodded. “Something wrong with that name?”

“No, not at all. It’s just that I've never worn a masque with a name before.”

A masque...that was all Trev was to this creature. But he was so much more than that. She had a sudden urge to tell him all about Trev. This mime had to know. But first...

“What’s your name?” she said. “I can't call you Lani and I'm not going to call you Trev. So–”

“Tristan.”

“Tristan...” She rolled the word off her tongue. A mime having a name was as strange to her as one of his “masques” having an identity must have been to him. “What a strange name.”

“I didn't choose it.”

“Who did?”

The mime shrugged. “Not from my mother, that’s for sure,” he said with a crooked smile. "Or my father."

Is that my smile? she wondered. Or his?

And then the full implication of his words struck: mimes had no parents. Who'd raised him?

She had a fleeting vision of row after row of little mimes, mime children, seated on the edges of their beds, all lined up in a cold, cavernous hall, listening to a bored voice tell them to get under the covers because the lights were going out in one minute...one minute...one minute...

She shook off the disturbing image. Where had that come from?

Oh, yes. From Trev. He'd told her. When he could get her to listen.

He'd told her other things about mime children – about how the healthiest ones who met the criteria for intelligence and compliance were fitted with interfaces at age eight. The ones with the most responsive mDNA went on to become agents, gladiators, specialized workers. The rest...the rest were sold across the globe for use as test subjects for new drugs, experimental splices. Short, often pain-filled lives, then into the vats. But they were luckier than those sent offworld, where the working conditions were even worse. She’d heard of Martian mines closing and companies abandoning the mimes like so much used machinery, left behind to die

“All right, Tristan. I'll tell you about Trev...”

She stared at Trev’s holo as she spoke, intending to give the mime a few details and no more. After all, Trev belonged to her and not to him. But once she got started, she found she couldn't stop.

She spoke of Trev’s family, his sister and brother, both working Off-World, how Trev had scored in the top ten on the Flagge science tests and had been admitted to university studies, how he'd graduated with honors and gone straight to work in Flagge’s gene prosthesis lab.

The mime had been picking his way through her living room as she spoke, not looking particularly interested. Now he stopped and turned toward her.

“He worked on designer genes? Did he have any contact with mimes?”

“Of course. How do you think they test the splices? They wouldn't use–” She stopped.

The off-handedness of her own remark unsettled her. Sure. That was one of the things mimes were really good for – testing designer genes. Splice a new gene onto a template, stick it in a mime, and see how it works. Use mimes to work out any untoward side effects before the new gene goes on the market. If one mime dies from a bad gene, there’s always plenty more to take its place.

Mimes had always been an abstraction of sorts to Lani. She'd seen them in the arena, of course, though the mayhem and violence of the fights never had appealed to her. But the mime standing before her now was no abstraction. How many mime-friends – did mimes even have friends? – had he lost to faulty designer genes?

She tensed for an angry response but the remark seemed to blow right past him. The mime only nodded.

“Trev had a lot of contact?”

“I – I don't know. He never talked much about his work.”

No, she thought. That wasn't quite true. When he'd started out he'd been so enthusiastic she couldn't stop him from talking about the work he was doing in gene prosthetics – not only making replacements for defective genes, but designing new genes to improve on the human body, to take the human genome where it had never been, where no one had dreamed it could go.

But as time went on, he became more reticent about the work. Toward the end, he might have spent his work hours in an isolation tank for he had to say about it.

“Was it a secret project? Was he gagged by Flagge?”

“I don't think so. He just changed over the past year. He seemed to be angry about something; he used to leave at night and not tell me where he was going. And then, two months ago – sixty-eight days ago, to be exact – his body was found in the freezone.”

“How did he...?

Lani swallowed. She could face it now, even talk about it. Sure she could. But it wasn't easy.

“They – it had to be ‘they’ because one person couldn't have done it, not to Trev – they cut his heart out and left it on his chest. The autopsy said he was still alive when they cut into him.”

“I'm sorry.”

She glanced up at the mime. Sorry? What would a mime know about sorry? She watched his face – her face – carefully as she told him the rest of it.

“Whoever killed him used Trev’s blood to write something on the wall next to his body.” She paused.

“What?”

The word swam before her. She'd wanted to visit the spot but, being a datameister, she was not allowed to leave the Flagge Quarter. So she'd had to make do with Security Force holos...and they were vivid enough. She remembered the crude red-brown letters of the scrawl, the fierce exclamation points like claw wounds in the wall.

“‘Mime lover!!!’”

The grimace of shock and revulsion on the mime’s Lani-face had to be real.

“‘Mime lover?’ What...what does that mean? The mime brothels...?”

“That’s what I thought at first,” she said – and she was still ashamed for thinking it. “And I think Security wanted me to believe Trev was killed because of some sordid dispute over a mime whore.”

“Such a sensational crime,” the mime said softly. “Why wasn't it all over the datastream?”

“Because Flagge Security didn't want anyone to know about it. As soon as they had their crime scene holos, they whisked Trev’s body away and enzymed his blood off the wall. Anyone coming along an hour after his death might suspect something had happened there, but they'd have no idea what. I was told – ordered – to say nothing. An investigation was promised.”

“Why would they want to hide the murder?”

“Exactly what I wanted to know. So – when I heard nothing from them – I did a little investigating on my own. I am a datameister, after all and–” She took a breath. "I learned that Trev had become involved with a mime-rights group–”

“Wait,” the mime said, holding up his hand. “Stop. A mime-rights group? Humans for mime-rights? I didn't know that there was such a thing."

Lani believed him. “It's something they don't want the public to know about. They're scared, and the truth about Trev's death might only widen support for the movement. Obviously they don't want mimes to know that humans are working to free them.”

The mime looked around, found a small clear spot on the edge of the low table behind him, then sat – a bit unsteadily, she thought.

“Excuse me, but 'they’? Who is this ‘they’?”

“The gloms. Who else?”

“But they protect us. They own us.”

“Right. And they want to go on owning you. They don't want you to start thinking of yourselves as anything more than property – property that they protect from a hostile world. The last thing they want is mimes realizing that there’s a movement afoot to free them from the gloms and from anyone else who owns one. That's what Trev said.”

The mime shrugged. “A radical minority is hardly going to change things. People hate us. They always will.”

“Some do – especially those who’ve lost jobs to mimes – but most people don't care too much either way.” I know I didn't, she thought. At least until Trev was killed. “From what I've learned, the gloms play up mime hatred and anti-mime violence and squelch any hint of mime sympathy. I think they’re afraid mime-rights could catch on as a movement.”

“Not if its members keep ending up like your lover.”

He had a point. For a while she'd wondered if one of the gloms had killed Trev, but finally rejected it. If a glom had wanted him out of the way, he simply would have disappeared. No, some sick bastards, most likely some of the more deranged Sibs, had wanted to make a point by killing Trev that way and leaving a bloody message behind.

“I shouldn't have said that,” the mime said. “But tell me, are you...?”

“In mime-rights?” Lani shook her head. How was she going to say this? “No. Because of what happened to Trev, I'm more interested – more aware, at least – than before. But to devote my spare time to a cause like that? I'm afraid not. But believe me, a dedicated group of everyday human beings is out there fighting for your future.”

Looking dazed, the mime muttered something...a word. Lani stiffened. It had almost sounded like...

“What did you say just now?”

The mime shook himself and blinked. “Nothing.”

“Yes – you said, ‘Okasan.’ I heard you. What do you know about Okasan?”

“Only what I've heard. Something about her being the ‘mime savior.’ What do you know about her?”

“Not enough. I mean, nothing really. But in my investigation I came across this ...rumor…. some woman who was leading the movement to free mimes. I started to believe that maybe that's who Trev contacted, that Okasan was who he went to see all those times he'd disappear for hours.”

The mime shot to his feet. “And now he’s dead.”

He began to pace the room – and immediately tripped over a dead plant and nearly fell.

“Mute!” he said. “What is all this junk?”

“Some of it’s Trev’s, things I kept when I cleaned out his compartment.” She'd meant to go through them but somehow never had got around to it. She didn't have the will, didn't have the heart. “But most of it’s just things I…buy.”

“Do you ever use any of it? Most of it looks like it’s never been unpacked.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “Sometimes I just buy things. For the last year or so I've simply been buying things...for no reason. Not to have them...just to...buy them. Trev says – said – it’s fall-out from my datameistering.”

The mime stared at her. “Really? It affects you?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

Lani didn’t know personally any retired datameisters. They tended to move away, supposedly to luxury communities where they spent their time and accumulated wealth far from the jumble. But stories filtered back, stories of villages peopled by dull-witted ex-datameisters living out the rest of their years in mentally-enfeebled comfort.

Lies, she suspected, told by disgruntled shufflers jealous of people who could retire in their thirties.

At least she hoped they were lies. Sometimes she wondered…

She didn't feel like talking about this, but she hadn't talked to anybody in so long, and really, this almost seemed like talking to herself.

“I used to always have a reason when I bought things, now I just buy. And I don't think I'm as...smart as I was before. Or at least not as quick. I mean, the memory’s still there, it’s just that my access and retrieval times seem longer. There's a hesitation, as though there's a bump in my neural pathways.”

“Why don't you quit?”

“Can't. I'm only half way through my ten-year contract. And it’s iron clad. No way out. Even if I broke every bone in my body, they'd still wheel me in for my access sessions.”

She stretched to relieve the growing tightness in her limbs. Or did she want to shrug off the fear that she was slowly losing her mind...and that at the end of her contract she’d have nothing left?

“Could be just my imagination, though. The power of suggestion, you know. Anyway – only five years to go. I'm saving my money, investing it conservatively. When I retire I'll be set for life.”

And she’d be all right. She was sure of it.

When her contract was up, she’d leave the gloms and see the world – go to the winter sports resorts in Antarctica. That looked like fun. Or maybe climb mountains, visit the deep-ocean habitats. Live under the sea for a few weeks. And maybe retire to one of those luxury polar communities she’d heard about, where she could walk a hundred meters from her front door and look out on a vast white wilderness, with no building, no other person for as far as the eye could see.

She smiled, but the mime's look told her that he saw through her show of confidence. He kept staring at her, and it made her uncomfortable.

Finally he shook himself. “It’s your life,” he muttered, then louder: “I've got to get out of here.”

“That’s easy enough. I'll call Security. They'll come and personally escort you to the Citadel.”

“Is that...a joke?”

Something in his eyes...a warning.

“Just my way of telling you that’s the only way you'll get out of here. You can't even get to the hallway – we're locked in this apartment. 'For my protection,' they said. Even if you could, they won't let you leave the building if they think you're me. So it looks like we're stuck together.”

“Don't look so comfortable, datameister,” he snapped, a definite edge to his voice now. “If Security finds us together, we'll both be dragged off to the Citadel. And that won't be pleasant for either of us. They'll find out why I'm in Flagge–”

“Why are you here?”

“I can't tell you, so don't ask. Besides, you're better off not knowing.”

“You came to steal data, didn't you. That much is obvious – why else impersonate a datameister? But what data? What does Kaze want to know so bad that it sends a mime agent into hostile territory?”

“Who said it was Kaze?”

“Who else would it be?”

“Think of an answer, because if I get taken in, Security will want to know where you fit into the scheme.”

“But I had nothing to do with it! I was kidnapped!”

He smiled. “You'll have to be very convincing. What if Security doesn’t believe you?”

Lani hid a shudder. He was right. She'd be implicated in whatever he'd done or planned to do. Mute! Why hadn't she told Security about him?

“Wh-what can we do?”

“You can help me.”

“Help you how? My doorplate’s been disabled.”

A grim smile flickered across his Lani-lips. “That’s the least of our problems.”