F. Wilson: Dydeetown World

"Why come to me?"

"Kushegi said you were good."

Bristled at that. How could the clone of a Twenty-First Century holo sex star judge my work? By what-?

Doused it. Fruitless path. Waste of energy.

"She didn't get what she wanted," I said.

"True. Raquel was dead when you found her. But you did find her."

"And so I'm supposed to find your lover now?"

She nodded. Timidly.

Flipped the coin back onto the desk.

"No thanks."

"Please?"

If the plea in her voice was supposed to melt my heart, it failed by a lot of degrees.

"Whoever it is, let the owner go after him. Or her. Or let the owner hire me. Not you."

"This is a Realpeople I'm talking about."

"Oh."

Picked up the coin again and leaned back in my chair. Still didn't like the sound of this but I had nothing better to do.

"What's the name?"

"Kyle." Her voice quavered and her eyes glistened. "Kyle Bodine."

Thought she was going to cry, but she managed to hold it in, thank the Core.

"Look. If this guy hurt you or robbed or cheated you, get your owner on it."

"Nothing like that," she said through a sniff. "We were going to be married."

Almost went over backwards in my chair with that one.

"You were going to be what ?"

Guess I must have shouted because she jumped back like I'd pulled a blaster on her.

"M-married. We were going to be married."

Couldn't help laughing. People talk about clones being dumb, but you never really appreciate how dumb until you talk to one. They know how to look good, how to smile real nice, how to give maximum pleasure to a human body, but something must happen when they're cultured out. Something must get lost along the way. Because they are dumb.

Her face reddened. "Why are you laughing?"

"No Realpeople's going to marry a clone!"

"Kyle is! He loves me!"

"He's lying."

"He isn't !" Her voice jumped a couple of notches as she rose from the chair and leaned over the desk. "I mean something to him! I'm some body to him — not like the dirt I am to almost everybody else!"

"Hey…easy there," I said. Didn't want her burning out of here along with her gold coin. "Nobody's calling anybody names here. It's just that Realpeople don't marry clones. Not my fault it's that way — just a fact of life."

"And just the way you like it, right?"

"Don't hate clones, but I'm no oozer, either."

Gold or not, I wasn't going to lie to her. I don't like clones. Truth of the matter is I can't think of many Realpeople I like much either. But especially don't like collections of cells grown from a tissue culture parading around like real human beings.

"Bet your 'fiance-'" I said the word out of the corner of my mouth-"oozes real good, though. Probably one of those jogs clustering in the tubes shouting 'Free the clones' or 'Ban the Chlorcow' or 'Adopt an urchin!' or some other impossibility. Probably wants to marry you to use you as a bloaty trophy. Show how dregging sincere he is."

"I wasn't going to be his trophy — we were moving away."

"Where to?"

"The outworlds."

Leaned back in my chair again — slowly this time — and studied her. This was getting nasty. Like I said, I'm no clone-lover — matter of fact, I wish there were no such things as clones. But that doesn't mean I think they should be mistreated. Realpeople made them, that makes us responsible. And some dregger had been dealing this especially dumb one a dirty hand. Like them or not, I can't condone cruelty to clones.

"Look," I said slowly, hoping she'd be able to catch onto what I was going to tell her. "Don't know how to tell you this, but there are a few things you should know. Such as, there's no way you can get to the outworlds. Only Realpeople can go. You need a greencard, and clones don't get greencards. You're Unpeople. You're property. You belong to someone — either to a person or a corporation. Clones can't even have credit accounts, so it stands to reason that they can't just wander off to the stars when they please."

Watched her open her beltpurse as I tried to figure out how I was going to explain the workings of CenDat to her in terms she would understand.

"You see, when you were born…or hatched, or whatever-"

"Deincubated," she said, still working at the beltpurse.

"Whatever. They took a little piece of tissue and recorded your gene structure into the Central Data banks. Your genotype will remain on record there until you die. Just like mine. Just like everybody's."

She nodded. "I know. And they can't clone another of me until I'm dead — the One Person/One Genotype law."

"So you know about that." Puzzled me. "Then what made you think you could get off-planet?"

She looked around like I might be hiding someone behind the

desk or somewhere else in this shoebox-size cubicle.

"Is what we say here secret? Really secret?"

"The word is 'confidential.' And yes, everything's secret. What've you got in your hand there?"

She pulled something out of her beltpurse and laid it on my desk.

"This."

A greencard.

Speechless for a moment. Clones get redcards. Never get greencards. Never . It was impossible — but there it was on my desk.

"A fake. Got to be."

She shook her head. "No. It's real."

"You've tried it out?"

"I don't have to. I know it's real."

Picked it up. Sure looked real. This was getting stickier and stickier by the minute.

"You could wind up at the South Pole shoveling chlorcow manure for having this, you know."

She nodded. "I know. But it won't matter when we get Out Where All The Good Folks Go."

Always hated that expression. Everybody seemed to refer to the outworlds that way. Everybody but me. Didn't like what it implied about us who stayed behind on Earth, although I couldn't deny that it might be true.

But I stuck to the subject at hand: "You need more than a card, you know. Unless someone's changed your status in CenDat from clone to Realpeople, this is nothing but green plastic. When they stick it and a skin scraping into their little machine at the shuttleport it'll read out that there's no such Realpeople as you and you'll be arrested there and then for exporting stolen property — yourself."

She gave me a half-vacant smile. "I know. But that will never happen."

"How can you be so…?"

She shrugged and smiled. "Kyle fixed it. He took a skin sample and came back a few days later with the card. He loves me."

Looked at the greencard again. Seemed as real as my own. Couldn't figure it. A man who would go to this extreme for a clone must really…love her.

Nah.

But my face remained a picture of professional blandness.

"How long has this Kyle Bodine been missing?"

"Five days. We were supposed to meet at L–I Port by the shuttle dock Friday night. I haven't heard from him since Friday morning."

"Where do you think he is?"

"I don't know." Her eyes began to glisten again. "I don't know! And I'm worried about him!"

"Maybe he just changed his mind."

She shook her head. Violently. "No! Never!"

"Okay, okay. Don't get excited."

Got up and walked to the viddow behind my desk. Wished I could have looked out a real window instead of at this transmission from the outer wall, but I could barely keep up the rent on an inner cubicle let alone afford one on the perimeter. Kept turning the gold coin over and over in my right hand while the greencard lay cool and still in my left. Something wrong here. Something crazy.

"Can I have my card back?"

Turned and gave it to her. Real important to her, that card.

A cockroach — a big one — ran across my shoe then. Squashed it with a satisfying crunch when it got back to the floor. Ignatz was going to have to make another sweep of the place.