“I was a programmer before the Codicils forced me underground. I was really good at it. People hired me for many things, mostly removing genetic diseases. Adult diseases that led to death, by the way. I was not involved with the bathtub babies, I swear.”
She grimaced. “No. I’m lying. I promised full disclosure. One. I did one and it was so horrible I promised myself to never work on children again.” She swallowed and waited for Joanna to say something.
“People like you caused the Codicils to be written, you know,” Joanna said softly.
“Well, not just me,” Maria protested. “After the Codicils passed, the only thing people needed my skills for was the typical hacking, removing reproductive capabilities for new clones. I figured the law couldn’t dictate my ethics so I kept doing my job for interested parties.”
“You could have been the one who erased our memories.”
“Didn’t you hear my log? I erased nothing, I used the only backup I had to keep us as much ourselves as I could. All the logs were stripped some other way.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I started getting some very wealthy clients. Then Sallie Mignon took me on and I worked for her for about a century, but we parted on not-so-good terms. Soon after that, without her protection, a lot of my past caught up with me and I was implicated in a lot of crimes.”
“Things you were guilty of,” Joanna said. She didn’t ask.
“Well, yes. I didn’t consider them unethical, just programming jobs I had done. I didn’t reveal my patron, and she had covered her tracks regarding our connection. I kept my clients’ secrets, so I was the only one who went to jail. To pay me back for keeping her secrets, Mignon got me this gig.”
“Sallie Mignon,” Joanna said. “I didn’t know she had so much to do with this ship.”
“I guess she did. She has a right; she paid for a lot of it, she got the clone server aboard, even after the riots endangered our chances to be on the trip, and she’s in the server with her partner and children.”
“Sallie Mignon set me up here too. I’m getting free of some political crimes, mostly involving cloning and money. I am not entirely sure I wasn’t framed; I could never prove it. It was my punishment for being a traitor to clones and letting the Codicils go through.”
She told Maria about her political past, and Maria listened in fascination.
“You and Wolfgang have a connection,” Maria said thoughtfully. “Those odds are pretty astronomical.”
“I’ve thought the same thing,” Joanna said. “Are you connected to anyone directly?”
Maria thought hard, through all past lives. “Not that I can remember,” she said truthfully.
“Let’s look at the cloning machine problems,” Joanna suggested. “IAN, are you here?”
“You bet, Joanna,” IAN said.
“We’re going to need you to go deep, like you went for Maria’s logs, and see if you can scrounge up anything from the cloning data.”
“I’m at your service,” IAN said gallantly.
Maria and Joanna began to talk cloning technology in earnest. The feeling of finally getting to move on a project because they were locked up was an odd kind of freedom.
Maria’s Story
211 Years Ago
September 27, 2282
Come to the Java Blues Coffee House, Thursday, 4 p.m., read the postcard handed to Maria by a red-uniformed young woman.
It was almost more conspicuous at this point, using the private courier. No one seemed to use it except people who very obviously wanted to send a private letter, and using the red uniforms seemed to draw major attention to the fact.
She tipped the courier (physical money, naturally) and closed the door. Sallie hadn’t needed Maria’s services for a few months—not since she had updated her spouse’s DNA matrix to fix the MS—but the billionaire had kept her on retainer. And Sallie was the only one who used the courier service.
Later, Maria would have plenty of time to kick herself for her logical flaws. But for now, she took it in good faith that the person summoning her was the woman who was sending a great deal of money to her account every month for no reason beyond being on call.
Java Blues Coffee House closed at three p.m., Maria discovered, and frowned at the note on the door. She turned around in time to see the bag come over her head and have her arms wrenched behind her. A pinprick on her arm, and she was out.
She woke up groggy, feeling like she was floating. Then she realized she was. She was in space, presumably on a shuttle to Luna.
Escaping an Earthly kidnapper wouldn’t be that big a problem. Not as difficult as escaping the moon was going to be.
She shifted uncomfortably. Her hands had gone numb in the hours behind her back, and her shoulder ached. Her few attempts at speaking to her captors had gotten her nothing, so she didn’t plead now.
They finally landed. The diminished lunar gravity was bizarre, and she got up too fast, hitting the overhead compartment of the shuttle. She heard a snicker. She sighed.
The bag came off her head and she took a deep breath that didn’t smell of synthetic breathable plastic. Her captors looked like vacationers, two men dressed in bright colors, wearing wedding rings and matching leather bracelets.
One, the redhead, smiled widely at her. “It was so nice to meet you on the shuttle! Can you come with us for a drink to celebrate our honeymoon?”
The other one, taller, thinner, with black hair and olive skin, nodded and beamed. He took her arms, slit the plastic holding her wrists together, and then held the knife to the small of her back.
“My husband is very talented with food,” the redhead babbled as they exited the shuttle. “He can debone a chicken in ten seconds flat!”
“That’s wonderful,” Maria said, arching her back a bit to get away from the knife, but Dark Hair just moved it with her.
They entered a crowded monorail and Maria was baffled to see that no one gave them a second glance. She tried to meet someone’s eyes, beg for help, but they acted like anyone on public transport in a city and minded their own business. The redhead chattered away about their honeymoon and Dark Hair’s skill as a chef and his own career aspirations to become a shuttle pilot so he could come to Luna whenever he wanted. She wanted to enjoy the view of the Luna dome as they took the monorail along the inside of it, but she was too busy sweating and trying to inch her back away from that knife.
They stopped in what looked like a business district, and were the only ones to exit. It was late according to local Luna time, and the streets were deserted. Her captors led Maria into a white building and down a hall. She lost count of how many doors they went through and how many turns they took. From the number of stairs they walked down, she guessed they were going under the moon’s surface.
After forever, she got to one last door and entered after Redhead. He pushed her into a chair, the newlywed-in-love act dropped. She bounced a little and then settled.