MORE THAN KIN
illustrations by Judith Huey
© 1999 - All Rights Reserved
"Nice of you to show up, Jack," Ian said as I hustled up to the neatly-dug rectangle and the pile of dark earth beside it.
"I had to secure the helicopter." To place the open grave between myself and Ian, I walked over and stood beside Jean. He offered me a faint smile.
"Shall we begin?" asked Gianni. He stood at the head of the grave; traces of dirt clung to the ankles and wrists of his coveralls.
I nodded. Jean pursed his lips. Ian glared at me, then gave a sharp nod.
Gianni consulted the computer slate in his hands. "I’ve had to adapt the ceremony somewhat," he said. "Our relationship with John was unique, and I’m not sure that any single term can do it justice, but I’ve decided on ‘beloved.’" He cleared his throat, then began reading from the slate. "We are gathered today in mourning and remembrance...."
The wind gusted, ruffling my hair, tugging at the seams of my coveralls, scattering dirt from the edge of the grave. As Gianni’s calm, measured voice continued, I looked out past the grave to the cluster of domes some two hundred meters away that marked the station. Beyond it lay the forest, blue-green in the silvery sunlight, extending out toward the horizon where distant hills rose to meet the purple sky. Beside me, Jean coughed.
"...this strange and unfamiliar world, whose ways he came to learn," Gianni was saying.
Looking across the grave, I met Ian’s gaze. He glared at me, hot-eyed, his face a taut mask. I locked eyes with him, matching his anger, daring him to break contact first.
Our silent contest was ended by the sharp rap of Gianni’s knuckles against his slate. He knelt down and gathered a handful of earth, scattering it into the grave as he intoned "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. May he rest in peace—John, our father and brother."
To a chorus of "Amen" Ian, Jean, and I added our own offerings of dirt. I went last, pausing to glance at the colorless face in the grave, a face repeated identically in those of the three men around me, and in my own.
"Goodbye, John," I said.
Four shovels lay beside the pile of earth, and in unspoken accord we each took one. We worked in silence, each turning a spadeful of earth into the grave in a regular, unconscious rhythm. Like fingers on a hand, I thought. Only now one of those fingers had been deliberately chopped off. The corpse beneath us, its skull caved in from a vicious blow, bore witness to that.
Ian thrust his spade into the pile of earth and left it there, breaking the rhythm. "All right, Jack," he said. "Why did you do it?"
"Me?" I said.
"You’d been arguing with John for days," he said.
"That’s because he was being too cautious with letting me scout in the 'copter." I turned to Gianni, who stood with the point of his spade in the ground, his chin resting on the end of the handle, cushioned by the backs of his fingers. "You know how much of an old woman John could be about safety."
"He was cautious," Gianni agreed. "But with reason. Storms can blow up over the hills faster than the weather satellites can track them."
"I can dodge storms in the ‘copter," I said.
"Whether you could or couldn’t, you’d certainly feel compelled to try," Gianni said dryly. "You take too many chances, Jack."
"I can’t help it. It’s how I was made."
Ian pounced. "Exactly. You’re the thrill-seeker, Jack, the dare-devil. You told John that if he didn’t get out of your way, you’d—"
"Make him. Yes, I know." My hands tightened on the spade. "We were arguing. I said something foolish. That doesn’t mean I killed him."
"It makes you the best suspect," he retorted.
"Oh, really? What about you? I seem to recall that you were conveniently absent when Jean found the body."
"I came as soon as I could. I was—"
"Surveying a watercourse. Right. A kilometer away, and it took you fifteen minutes to get back to the station. What’d you do, crawl?" I leveled the spade at his midsection. "Or perhaps you stopped along the way to hide something heavy enough to crush a man’s skull?"
Before he could reply there came a distant, dull thump from the station.
Our four heads swung as one toward the distant domes. At first, nothing. Then a thread of black smoke rose lazily skyward.
I hurled my spade aside and took off running. Ian fell in beside me, and within seconds Gianni and Jean pulled abreast. Ahead of us, the trickle of smoke widened. "Is it one of the domes?" I called.
Jean piped up. "Either that or the comm bunker."
"Damn." Gianni’s lips tightened into a slash as we charged ahead.
The comm bunker stood twenty meters outside of the station’s perimeter, and as we passed it Gianni smiled with relief. The low, half-buried building was intact. Once in the station proper I could see the main dome rising undamaged, so the living quarters were safe. The dark smoke lay to our right. Suddenly Ian shouted "The cloning tanks!" and put on a burst of speed. Jean grabbed my arm and told me he would fetch an extinguisher; I nodded at him, and Gianni and I continued on to the smoking remains of Dome Three.
The heat from the burning building was terrific. The dome’s smooth surface had collapsed, and oily smoke rose from the shattered wreckage as the plastic bubbled and burned. Ian stood at the edge of the ruin, his chest heaving.
When he heard our footsteps, he turned to face us. "It’s a total loss," he said, in a raw voice. "The cloning tanks are gone."
Within a minute Jean appeared, lugging two portable fire extinguishers. Though fierce, the fire was small, and he and Gianni quickly eradicated it. We stood staring at the wreckage, the tang of scorched plastic bitter in our throats.
"So much for bringing John back," I said.
"Somebody certainly made sure that we couldn’t bring him back," Ian said darkly. "First the murder, now this."
"Will it jeopardize the mission?" asked Jean.
An uneasy silence descended. Gianni broke it by saying "I’m not sure. It’s up to Ship now. After all, we’ve only lost one scout out of five. Yes, it was John, but we’re John too, aren’t we? All of us were grown from his DNA."
"Yeah, but what about his neural engram?" Ian said. "None of the four of us has John’s whole mind."
That was the crux of the matter. Two billion kilometers out in space hung Ship, its precious cargo of DNA samples and neural engrams protected by that distance from the radiation of Penny, the F3 star at the heart of this system.
Ship had arrived in-system nearly a year ago, and after determining that the second planet had potential for a colony Ship dispatched its nanos and Von Neumann machines to construct the on-planet station. When the cloning tanks were finished, Ship sent the DNA sample for John, the mission’s scout. The tanks grew five clones from the sample, and one of the clones was imprinted with John’s full neural engram: his personality, memories, and sense of self.
The other four clones (Jean, Ian, Gianni, and myself) received a "tweaked" version of that engram. We shared most of John’s memories, but the elements of his original personality received different emphases in the four of us. The result was a team of five scouts with enough similarities to work well together but enough differences that our strengths would overlap and cancel out our weaknesses. Or so the theory went.
But John was the key. As the original, he possessed the ability to integrate our data. The decision on whether to colonize this world or not ultimately rested with Ship, but John’s recommendations would figure heavily into that choice. Now he was gone, and though the four of us who remained shared John’s full engram between us, none of us held the whole of it.
One of Ian’s comments tickled the back of my mind. Turning to him, I said "What do you mean when you said somebody didn’t want John brought back?"
Ian stepped up to the ruined dome, carefully plucked a piece of the wreckage free, and brought it back to us. "Smell that?"
Gianni wrinkled his nose. "Smells like burnt plastic."
"Try again. There’s a sharp undertone."
We bent our heads over the charred lump. The stench from the blackened plastic was sharp enough to make my eyes water, but beneath it was a heavy, acrid odor. "That’s cordite," Ian said. "It’s the base for the explosive charges used in the seismic surveys. So this wasn’t an accident."
"You run those surveys, don’t you?" I said.
Ian’s face darkened. "Jack, if you’re suggesting—"
"Suggesting? Me?" I put on a fake smile. "Would I go around accusing people like that?"
Gianni’s voice cut through the tension. "Ian? Jack? Arguing like this won’t solve anything."
Maybe not, but it would be fun, I thought, and I could see a similar idea work its way across Ian’s face.
"Think of the mission," Jean said softly.
Ian nodded and broke away from me. "You’re right, Jean," he said. "The mission comes first. John’s gone, so it’s up to us to make sure this world is safe for colonization. Agreed?"
"Agreed," I said. The success of the mission was a bone-deep compulsion in all of us; it was the single strongest part of John that we shared.
"Ship has to be told about this," Gianni said.
"That’s true," Ian said. "It’s also true that one of us is a murderer." The last word hung in the air as we avoided each other’s eyes. "So I think we should buddy up. That way, if somebody else turns up with his skull caved in we’ll have a better idea of who the prime suspect is."
"Fine," Jean said. "I’ll go with you."
"All right." Ian pivoted, turning his back on the wreckage. "Let’s go to Dome Five and count the seismic charges. Then we’ll have absolute proof of whether or not this explosion was deliberate."
"Jack and I will go to the comm bunker and report to Ship," Gianni said.
"Jack can make up his own mind, thank you very much," I retorted.
"Fine." Ian stared at me. "If you have to bury more evidence, go right ahead."
Before I could reply, Gianni cut in. "Accusations aren’t going to help, Ian. And Jack, I really do need some assistance at the comm bunker."
"Okay," I said. "I’ll help. But Ian, later you and I will have to talk."
"I’m looking forward to it," Ian said. "Come on, Jean."
Jean was staring at the burned dome, his shoulders shaking. Gianni touched a hand to his arm, and he turned to face us. His eyes were brimming with tears.
"John’s really gone, isn’t he? Forever and ever."
"We certainly won’t see him again," Gianni said.
"I suppose Ship could bring him back," Ian said. "More of his DNA samples are up there, and his engram. But without the experiences we’ve had here, he wouldn’t be our John."
"You’re right," Jean said, as he scrubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
"I just didn’t realize until right now that he wouldn’t be back."
I looked away. John had been irritating at times, and he certainly thought that he knew best, but he did care for us. He made us get along, kept us focused on the mission. He held us together. Now he was gone, and already Ian and I were bickering. How much longer until we all split apart?
Ian slipped an arm around Jean’s shoulders and led him away from the wreckage, toward the supply dome, while Gianni and I walked silently to the comm bunker.
I waited by the small uplink dish while Gianni punched in the bunker’s access code. Inside was cool, dim, and cramped. Hunched over, we shuffled forward and folded ourselves into the twin plastic chairs that were the only furniture. The ceiling hung an oppressive half-meter above our heads. Gianni slid out a keyboard and began typing. "Time for another creative report," he said.
"Why ‘creative’?" I asked.
The glow from the monitors gave his face a bluish cast. "I informed Ship of John’s death, of course, but I altered the circumstances somewhat. I said we found him in the field, that he had fallen and struck his head against a rock."
"You lied to Ship?"
"I offered a scenario that was consistent with the data," he said. The click of his fingers on the keyboard made a precise counterpoint to his clipped voice. "Now I need a similar scenario for the destruction of Dome Three. An accident, perhaps. After all, the tanks required pure oxygen, volatile chemicals—"
I leaned over and clamped a hand on his right arm. "Gianni, lying to Ship directly violates mission guidelines."
Colors from the screen flashed across his face as he gazed at me. The eyes, the slant of the nose, the set of the jaw—I saw those identical features in the mirror every day. But the energy behind his face was different. My face in the mirror was vibrant, shifting; Gianni’s was placid, absorbed. "What is the
goal of the mission, Jack?"
"To establish a colony," I replied promptly.
"And who is best able to determine if this planet is suitable for a colony?"
"We are, of course."
"But who has the final say as to whether the planet will be colonized?"
"Ship does."
He nodded. "Precisely. But Ship is cautious, conservative. It has to be, with ten million DNA samples tucked into its vaults. It only gets one chance to colonize a planet, so it has to have accurate, reliable data."
"Haven’t we been providing that?"
"Put yourself in Ship’s place," he said. "If one of your scouts had been murdered, if the cloning tanks had been sabotaged, would you trust the other scouts?"
I frowned. "I see the problem."
"It gets worse," he said. "If this planet was barely habitable, I imagine Ship would simply abandon us and move on to the next star on its list. However the planet is, in fact, quite suitable for a colony. Atmospheric oxygen is a bit above Earth-normal, and Penny runs hot in the ultraviolet, but both are within
acceptable parameters. Only one element has been unreliable, and that’s us. If...
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