Jane Sagan found Administrator Cainen Suen Su admirable in his way; he didn’t crack easily. He suffered through several hours as his lymphatic organ gradually replaced the lymph in his body with the new, altered fluid, twitching and seizing as concentrations of the electrically-conductive lymph triggered nerve misfires randomly through his body, and the overall conductivity of his entire system heightened with each passing minute. If he hadn’t cracked when he did, it was very likely that he wouldn’t have been able to tell them that he wanted to talk.
But crack he did, and begged for the antidote. In the end, he wanted to live. Sagan administered the antidote herself (not really an antidote, as those dead cell bundles were dead forever; he’d have to receive daily shots of the stuff for the rest of his life). As the antidote coursed through Cainen’s body, Sagan learned of a brewing war against humanity, and a blueprint for the subjugation and eradication of her entire species. A genocide planned in great detail, based on the heretofore unheard of cooperation of three races.
And one human.
TWO
Colonel James Robbins gazed down at the rotted, exhumed body on the morgue slab for a minute, taking in the decay of the body from more than one year under the dirt. He noted the ruined skull, fatally misshaped by the shotgun blast that carried away its top third, along with the life of its owner, the man who might have betrayed humanity to three alien races. Then he looked up at Captain Winters, Phoenix Station’s medical examiner.
“Tell me this is Dr. Boutin’s body,” Colonel Robbins said.
“Well, it is,” said Winters. “And yet it’s not.”
“You know, Ted, that’s exactly the sort of qualified statement that’s going to get my ass reamed when I report to General Mattson,” Colonel Robbins said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to be more forthcoming.”
“Sorry, Jim,” Captain Winters said, and pointed to the corpse on the table. “Genetically speaking, that’s your man,” Winters said. “Dr. Boutin was a colonist, which meant he’s never been swapped into a military body. This means that his body has all his original DNA. I did the standard genetics testing. This body has Boutin’s DNA—and just for fun I did a mitochondrial RNA test as well. That matched too.”
“So what’s the problem?” Robbins asked.
“The problem is with bone growth,” Winters said. “In the real universe, human bone growth fluctuates based on environmental factors, like nutrition or exercise. If you spend time on a high-gravity world and then move to one with lower gravity, that’s going to influence how your bones grow. If you break a bone, that’s going to show up too. Your entire life history shows up in bone development.”
Winters reached over and picked up part of the corpse’s left leg, which had been sheared from the rest of the body, and pointed to the cross-section of the femur visible there. “This body’s bone development is exceptionally regular. There’s no record of environmental or accidental events on its development, just a pattern of bone growth consistent with excellent nutrition and low stress.”
“Boutin was from Phoenix,” Robbins said. “It’s been colonized for two hundred years. It’s not like he grew up on a backwater colony where they’re struggling to feed and protect themselves.”
“Maybe not, but it still doesn’t match up,” Winters said. “You can live in the most civilized place in human space and still fall down a flight of stairs or break a bone playing sports. It’s possible that you can get through life without even a greenstick fracture, but do you know anyone who’s done it?” Robbins shook his head. “This guy did. But actually he didn’t, since his medical records show he broke his leg, this leg”—Winters shook the chunk of leg—“when he was sixteen. Skiing accident. Collided with a boulder and broke his femur and his tibia. The record of that isn’t here.”
“I hear medical technology is good these days,” Robbins said.
“It is excellent, thank you very much,” Winters said. “But it’s not magic. You don’t snap a femur and not leave a mark. And even getting through life without breaking a bone doesn’t explain the consistently regular bone development. The only way you’re going to get this sort of bone development is if it develops without environmental stress of any kind. Boutin would have had to live his life in a box.”
“Or a cloning crèche,” Robbins said.