Part 3 (2/2)
At least that was what he wanted to believe, on his best days. On his bad days, he wondered whether Aleyd hadn't been testing the nutrient-rich water as a weapon-a seemingly innocuous weapon that could be ”accidentally” deployed when the wind blew in the wrong direction.
”It was an accident?” Talia asked.
”Sometimes terrible things happen,” Flint said, ”and we can't do anything about them.” ”Like Emmeline's death,” Talia said. ”She would have had to be punished for what Mom did.”
”She would have had to live with the Gyonnese,” Flint said. ”I've never learned what that meant, how they would have raised her, how they would have treated her. The punishment, in their mind, was that your mother wouldn't ever see her children again.”
”But Mom's gone. So how can she still be punished?”
”She can't,” Flint said. ”But the Gyonnese never got their punishment. They can't revive the case-thanks to all the treaties that exist within the Earth Alliance. Once a judgment is rendered, it's either appealed or it stands. Your mother's judgment was appealed, and the appeal was denied, so it stands. The Gyonnese can't go after someone else now.”
”But if Emmeline were still alive, they could take her?” Talia asked.
”I don't know,” Flint said. ”I'd have to be an expert in Gyonnese law to give you an answer on that.” ”Someone can answer it, though,” Talia said.
”I'm sure,” Flint said.
”So you think that maybe she's still alive?”
His heart jumped. He hoped that reaction hadn't shown on his face.
But Talia didn't seem to notice. She was still talking. ”Like maybe Mom concealed her with the other clones? Or Disappeared her?”
”No,” Flint said, although he thought it was a distant possibility. ”I'm much more concerned about the fact that the Gyonnese paid to have your mother kidnapped.”
”What do you mean?” Talia asked. She clearly hadn't thought of this before.
”The judgment had been rendered. The case was settled. They had no right, under Alliance law, to interview her, let alone take her away from Callisto.”
”It was an illegal act,” Talia said.
Flint nodded. ”Which is why they hired a Recovery Man. A Tracker wouldn't bring her to them because she hadn't done anything wrong. Retrieval Artists don't work with alien governments. We work only with humans.”
And only to find true Disappeareds. No one Flint knew, not even the most unethical Retrieval Artists, would have taken the Gyonnese case.
”Recovery Men kidnap people?” Talia asked.
”Usually they don't work with sentient creatures at all, be they human or Disty or any other species we know of. They might take a plant or a creature everyone believes to be unintelligent, but even that can be stretching it. Usually Recovery Men specialize in rare artifacts.”
”Why would he take the job, then?” Talia asked. Flint shrugged. They might never know. He'd received word from Detective Zagrando on Callisto that the Earth Alliance authorities had made some kind of deal with the Recovery Man, and had let him go. Zagrando had been angry: the Earth Alliance authorities hadn't even asked a lot of questions about the case. They seemed to want the whole thing to go away.
”The Recovery Man's not the issue,” Flint said. ”The Gyonnese are.”
”What did he say? Why did they hire him?”
Flint did know the answer to that. Zagrando had given him that information shortly after Flint had returned from Callisto.
”He said they believed they could use your mother to show the illegality of human behavior with regard to Earth Alliance law. He mentioned bringing down the Disappearance Services, but the authorities believe that the Gyonnese were going to use the cloning and the tacit approval of Aleyd Corporation, not to mention the Earth Alliance itself, to show how corrupt the system was.”
”Why didn't they just indict her or whatever it is that lawyers do?” Talia's voice was getting tight. She was clearly getting upset.
”The Gyonnese believed no one would bring charges. And they might have been right. At that point, Aleyd might have used their own internal Disappearance Company to help the two of you Disappear. Or they might have tied up everything in court until you and your mother were long dead.”
Talia frowned. ”I still don't know why this is important, why it means I might have done something wrong.”
”I never said you did anything wrong,” Flint said. ”But you hadn't looked at all the possibilities. The Gyonnese are looking for a test case. They believe your mother committed a heinous crime against them-”
”You believe it, too,” Talia said.
She sounded accusing. But he wasn't going to lie about how he felt. And he wasn't going to soften Rhonda's actions any more than he already had.
”What happened in that larval colony,” Flint said, ”was one of the defining moments of Gyonnese culture. The Gyonnese don't want to let it go. With your mother gone, they might go after her heirs.”
”Heirs,” Talia repeated.
”You, for one,” Flint said.
”And the others?” Talia asked.
”Under Earth Alliance law, the other clones aren't able to inherit from your mother's estate.” Technically, Talia wasn't, either-Rhonda had never given Talia full legal status as a child, like Flint had done. But he hadn't told her that.
Nor had he told her that he had a team of lawyers working on her inheritance.
”So they're not legal heirs under Earth Alliance law,” Flint said. ”But the Gyonnese might think them useful. All six of you would be a great visual example of the way to circ.u.mvent the rule of law, with you sitting side by side in some Multicultural Tribunal Courtroom. It would be hard to argue that your existence wasn't a deliberate attempt by your mother to avoid punishment.”
”But she's not here-”
”I know,” Flint said. ”But she isn't really the case. She's an example. And the Gyonnese could go after her, after Aleyd, and after the entire system. Right now they just have you. But if they find the others, they'd have an emotional core to their case that would be almost impossible to fight.”
Talia's frown had deepened. Flint could almost see her imagining herself sitting with five older versions of her DNA, sisters, as she called them, and they would probably be as different as sisters. They would look alike, but dress differently. They would speak with different accents or even in different languages. They would have different ways of looking at the universe.
And yet it would be impossible to deny that they had come from the very same stock. And five of them would be the exact same age.
It would be a devastating visual example of a human's attempt to go around Earth Alliance law, with a wink from all the human governments and corporations.
”You think that's what the Gyonnese are going to do?” Talia asked.
Flint shrugged. ”For all I know, they put this entire case away when your mother died. But what if they didn't? What if they were waiting for something? You're not enough by yourself. You could have been an accident or a selfish moment on your mother's part. You were created after the case was settled and your mother knew the Gyonnese wouldn't take you. If there was only you, a good lawyer, like one of Aleyd's, might have a fairly easy time of keeping the Gyonnese case out of a court.”
”But the six of us are too much evidence,” Talia said.
Flint nodded. ”And there's one more thing to think about. You grew up with your mother. You were shocked when you learned about all of this. It's had an impact on you that I can't begin to understand.” Talia looked down.
”But I'm a.s.suming these other girls know only that they were adopted. If they even know that. They don't know they're cloned. They don't know where they're from or who their biological parents were. They don't know any of this history. Suddenly you appear and then there's this court case, and they're an example. If things go horribly wrong, they might even be punished for Rhonda's actions all those years ago. It would be as bad as what happened to you. Maybe even worse, because you at least knew her. You loved her. To the other five, she's just a name. A woman who had done something wrong and might have used them to get herself out of it.”
”Oh, man,” Talia said, still looking down. ”I didn't know.”
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