Звезда Пандоры

The clone had been initiated two years ago, after Cotal’s insurance company array had conducted a legally required attempt to contact him through the unisphere. Subsequently, a more detailed search involving human researchers had also failed to locate any trace of him since he left Oaktier forty years earlier. At that time sixty-five years had elapsed since his birth, and he should have booked in to the clinic for his first rejuvenation in accordance with the policy that his reasonably wealthy parents had taken out at conception. As he didn’t appear, the courts granted the insurance company a body-death certificate on the grounds that he had either been illegally killed or had been involved in some freak accident that had gone unreported. The re-life procedure was activated a week later.

Although not too common, the operation was relatively straightforward for a facility as well equipped as the Clayden Clinic. Cotal’s DNA was subtly modified to produce accelerated growth, and the fetus kept in the womb-tank for just over twenty-three months. During the last five months, the clinic had inserted a neural link, and started to download Cotal’s stored memories into his new brain. There weren’t many; although he had regularly updated his secure store every couple of months, he’d stopped when he allegedly left Oaktier, aged twenty-five.

Lying on his bed bathed in mock-twilight, he looked like a fourteen-year-old famine victim. His body was dreadfully thin, with skin stretched tight over ribs and limbs. Some kind of gel had been applied to prevent excessive flaking, though several large areas were raw and crusting beneath the glistening substance. There was almost no muscle on his arms and legs, leaving his knees and elbows as knobbly protrusions. It meant he had to wear an electromuscle mobility suit to move, which looked as if he was imprisoned in a wire exoskeleton cage. But it was his head that was the most ungainly aspect. It was almost adult size, leaving it far too big for his spindly neck to support without the mobility suit.

Wyobie Cotal’s large sunken eyes followed them as they came into the room. He made no attempt to move his head. Every now and then he would open his lips a fraction, and a nipple would deploy from the side of the suit, pushing into his mouth so he could suck on it. Paula refused to look at the tubes around his waist, and the arrangement for connecting them to his penis and anus.

And I used to think recovering from an ordinary rejuvenation was humiliating enough.

“Hello, Wyobie,” Hoshe Finn said. “You’re looking better this time. Remember me?”

“Policeman,” Wyobie Cotal whispered. His voice was amplified by the suit, producing a weird echo effect.

“That’s right: Detective Finn. And this is Chief Investigator Paula Myo from the Serious Crimes Directorate. She’s come all the way from Earth to look into your death.”

Wyobie Cotal’s weary eyes focused on Paula. “Do I know you?”

“No.” She wasn’t about to start explaining her notoriety to someone who was struggling to make sense of his small stock of memories. “But I would like to help you.”

He smiled, which allowed drool to leak from his mouth. “You’re going to break me out of here?”

“It won’t be much longer.”

“Liar!” He said it loud enough that the amplification circuit wasn’t triggered. “They said I’ll be here for months while my muscles grow. Then I’ll just have a kid’s body. The speed-up growing part has stopped now.”

“But you’re alive again.”

He closed his eyes. “Find them. Find who did this to me.”

“If you were killed, I will find them. I always do.”

“Good.”

“I understand you and Tara Jennifer Shaheef were sex partners.” Paula ignored the way Hoshe Finn winced behind his filter mask. The amount of time they could spend with Cotal was limited by his condition; she didn’t intend on wasting any of it.

“Yes.” The expression on the strange child-face softened. “We’d just started seeing each other.”

“You know she left Oaktier as well.”

“I know. But I can’t believe I ran off with her, there was too much for me here. I told the police before. I was seeing another girl, too.”

“Philipa Yoi, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Was she the jealous type?”

“No no, I’ve been through all this before. It was all just fun, nothing too serious. We all knew that. Philipa and I were first-lifers, we wanted to… live.”

“It was just fun at the time of your last memory backup into the clinic’s secure store. But you didn’t leave Oaktier for another nine weeks after that. A lot could have happened in that time.”

“I wouldn’t have left,” he repeated stubbornly.

“Had anybody mentioned taking any trips? Were any friends planning a holiday on another planet?”

“No. I’m sure. My head’s all weird, you know. This was just five weeks ago for me. But my whole life is jumbled up. Some of the childhood stuff is clearer than Philipa and Tara. Oh, fuck. I can’t believe anybody would want to kill me.”

“Do you know anything about Tampico?”

“No. Nothing. Why?”

“It was the planet you bought a ticket for.”