The Hakuryuu
Jin-Class Scout/Courier vessel, Type S
Medium-sized (100 Tons)
Crew: 1 • Staterooms: 2 (modified) • Cargo: 5 tons (modified)
Cruising Speed: 825 kph • Jump-2 Capable • Max Trip Duration: 4 Weeks
"It sounds like you've had an eventful few days, gentlemen." Kai set a tray with a pot of tea and some cups on the common room's table, and then he laid a hand on Shaw's shoulder. "I'm sorry about the loss of the Shakujou, Shaw," he said. "I know both you and Gadget put a lot into that ship over the years, and I'll definitely help you find a worthy replacement."
Gen reached for a cup of tea and took several calming sips while he surveyed in his new surroundings. The Hakuryuu was about a third the size of the Shakujou, and the ship was bright and clean with a sleek hull. This common room was built for comfort rather than utility, its walls and carpeted floor in shades of gray with white plas cabinets and counters built into the curved walls. Gen had delivered wine to ships like these, and their owners were usually very wealthy. Kai Gonocho wore expensive clothes, sounded well educated, and Gen suspected that the paintings hanging on the walls were done by well-known artists. He wondered how the three men had met.
Kai walked to the other side of the table and sat down opposite Gen. "We might as well get started now, and then you all can relax while I process Gen's information. I'll get everything entered properly, and then we'll see what we can see." He touched a tiny button on the side of the wire-rimmed circle of ocuglas he wore in front of his right eye. "Please state your full name."
"Gen Sanzen," Gen replied.
"Origin planet?"
"Kinzaan." Gen watched in fascination as his words appeared, reversed, in glowing green type on the ocuglas.
"Current planet and location?"
"Kinzaan. My location was the Three Baskets Estate and Vineyard, before those sons of bitches came and burned it, and killed my father." Gen swallowed hard, and he pushed down the rage and grief that threatened to re-surface inside him.
Kai blinked at him. "Three Baskets? Komou Sanzen was your father?"
"Yes."
"Interesting," Kai said, belatedly adding, "my condolences." His gaze drifted off center as he gave his attention to the stream of data on his ocuglas, and then he refocused on Gen. "Komou Sanzen was famed throughout the Empire as a master vintner, and as his son I'm sure you are well aware of how much demand there is for Three Baskets wine. Interestingly enough, he was a renowned geneticist before he turned to winemaking, which I'm sure contributed greatly to his success. How long had you lived there?"
"I grew up there," Gen said.
Kai raised an eyebrow. "You appear to be approximately twenty-five Standard years of age; Komou Sanzen purchased the Three Baskets Vineyards a little over ten years ago."
Gen frowned. "That's impossible. My father and I have lived there as long as I can remember. And I'm twenty-six."
The other eyebrow joined its fellow. "Give me a moment, please." Tiny, glowing rows of text raced across the surface of the glass. "This is… strange. I need more information. Please excuse me." Kai rose and left the common room.
"Huh? What's up with Kai?" Gadget asked. "He looked confused. Kai never looks confused."
"No, he doesn't," Shaw said, and he swiveled his chair to watch as Kai disappeared down the corridor at the end of the common room. He turned back to face Gen. "Kai is an information broker—"
"He likes 'information specialist' better," Gadget interrupted.
Shaw flapped a hand at him. "Specialist, broker, whatever you want to call it, Kai makes it his business to know everything about everything, and then he sells that information to whoever needs it." He drank some of his tea, and wrinkled his nose. "I fucking hate tea," he said, and set the cup down on the table.
"No one can know everything," Gen said.
"Kai knows more shit than any person I've ever met. And what he doesn't know, he can find out pretty damn fast with his network of informants and his processing system. The entire cargo hold of this ship was converted to house a computer and a bunch of fancy electronics, and he accesses the whole thing with that ocuglas of his." Shaw tapped his right temple.
"And he sells information?"
"Normally, yes." Shaw got up and retrieved a bottle of liquor from a small recess in the wall next to their table, and he poured a generous amount in his cup. "This is free… Kai and I have an arrangement." He drank the cup's content in two quick gulps.
Gadget leaned over toward Gen. "Sexual favors," he whispered.
Gen snorted, and then he held out his cup to Shaw.
The speaker above them crackled. "Excuse me, Shaw, could you please bring Gen down here right away?"
Shaw paused in the middle of pouring the amber liquid into Gen's cup. "Oooh, he sounds excited. You're in trouble now." He set the bottle down and pulled Gen's chair back. "Let's go."
Gen stayed in the chair and drank from his cup, welcoming the burn of the liquor. "I'm not going anywhere."
Shaw grabbed his shirt and yanked him up, pulling Gen close until they were almost nose to nose. "I lost my ship because of you, asshole," he said, his lip curled in a snarl. "We're going to help Kai find out why."
"I don't know why they're after me!" Gen spat back.
"Hey guys, knock it off." Gadget worked his way in between the two men, and Gen felt the press of Gadget's backside against his thighs. "We need to find out what's going on." He twisted around to face Gen. "Kai is scary-smart—if anyone can figure out what's going on, he can." He took Gen's cup and set it on the table, and then he reached out for Gen's hand. "Come on, Gen," he said.
Gen looked at Gadget's outstretched hand, bruised and scratched from their recent escape. He was not accustomed to guilt, and it felt dull and uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach. He was not the only one who had lost everything.
He took Gadget's hand.
Gen let Gadget lead him down the corridor, then down a short, narrow set of metal steps to the converted cargo hold. The hum of hundreds of cooling fans filled the chamber, and thousands of tiny lights blinked in myriad colors. One wall was dominated by screens, and Gen was surprised to see Komou on several of them. One small screen had a blurry image of a dark-haired, spectacled man, and the remainder featured an elaborately dressed woman who sat on a dais with a younger man who was similarly costumed.
The woman looked strangely familiar. Gen tried to get a closer look at the other figures.
Kai looked up from the console he was studying. "Gen, could you stand over there, please?" He pointed to a lighted circle of flooring next to his table.
Gen noticed Shaw stepping toward him, so he complied before Shaw could get a hand on him. When he stepped onto the large, raised tile, a similar circle above him lit up, and Gen gave a shout of surprise when a plasglas tube descended from a port in the ceiling, encasing him. "Hey!" He scowled when a wide, electronics-laden ring slid down and clicked into place at chest level. "What the hell are you doing?" He pounded on the clear material.
"Just a few quick tests," Kai replied. "Please stand still and keep your arms down—oh, oh dear."
"Ow! What the fuck!" Gen flapped his hand, staring at a retreating syringe. A dot of blood welled up on the back of his hand.
"I'm sorry," Kai said. "That was meant to go into your bicep; I need an actual blood sample instead of a transdermal reading. Now, please close your eyes."
"Wait, what?" Gen heard a noise above him, and seconds later another ring clicked into place at his eye level, and it began to spin. Bright, blue-white light blinded him, and Gen tried to shield his eyes, cursing when his elbow slammed against the plasglas.
"Arms down, please," Kai repeated. His fingers flew across an input pad.
"What are you doing to him, Kai?" Gadget asked.
"Just a few tests, there's something I want to confirm. Gen, we'll finish more quickly if you are still."
Gen grudgingly complied.
Gadget walked over to the bank of monitors and peered at one of the smaller screens. "Huh. This guy looks just like Gen, except his hair is way longer, and he looks a little older." He pointed at the man who was sitting to the left of the Empress.
"'That guy', Gadget, is K'zen, the Empress' nephew and heir," Kai said. "His official title is 'Douji.'"
"The Douji?" Shaw joined Gadget, and he examined the figure on the screen. He glanced back at Gen. "Wow, Gadge, you weren't kidding. Gen could be his double."
"Or his clone," Kai said.
"What?" All three men turned to stare at him.
"A clone of the Douji." Kai pushed a button, and the plasglas tube retracted back into the ceiling. "According to records at all of the locations where Komou Sanzen is known to have lived, there is no evidence that he ever married, nor are there birth records of any children. Yet after he took over Three Baskets, there were suddenly mentions of a fifteen-year-old son."
Gen stepped well away from the lighted floor tile and rubbed his elbow. "But I was there as a young child," he insisted. "I grew up there."
"As I mentioned earlier, Komou was a geneticist before he became a winemaker, and he was widely regarded as being one of the top scientists in the field. He was highly skilled at cloning, and one of his his specialties was the transfer and assignment of memory in clones."
"No," Gen said, even as his heart started thumping painfully in his chest.
Kai glanced down at his console. "Twelve years ago, two years before he took ownership of Three Baskets Vineyard, Komou was in the employ of Empress K'non as a consultant. He was hired to work with her science advisor, a former student of his named Uko."
"That's Uko." Gen pointed at the spectacled man. "He used to visit us every now and then, years ago. My dad said he was another winemaker." A memory rose to the surface of the turmoil in Gen's mind; Uko's first visit, when he was seventeen. Gen could clearly remember Komou introducing them, and he also remembered the quickly masked surprise on the man's face. "You've got to be wrong," he said. "We've had that vineyard all my life."
Kai tapped a few keys, and the screens lit up with images of a scrubby, mountainous vineyard, and a sprawling stone greathouse. "Is this what you remember from your childhood?"
"Yes," Gen replied. He walked over to the screens and pointed at the greathouse. "I used to run through the breezeways of the house in the summertime, and here"—Gen indicated an image of large, shallow wooden vats—"I used to stomp grapes here with my father and the other workers, right after harvest." He jabbed at a picture of a tall, gnarled tree. "I climbed this tree! I used to climb up here and read, when I was done my chores."
The glow of the screens reflected on Kai's ocuglas, and made his expression inscrutable. He pressed a few more keys, and a second set of images appeared on the panels. "And what about this? Do you remember any of these places?"
Gen studied the montage. There was another hallway, this time high-ceilinged and made of marble, with rows of wide marble columns on each side. Another screen showed a large outdoor pond, its calm waters covered with flat, bright green leaves and plump, deep pink flowers. The last image was a garden, its trees blowing in the breeze, with thousands of tiny pink petals fluttering down to cover the immaculately kept lawns.
"I…" He wanted to say No, I've never seen these places before, but the pictures were familiar, in a dream-like way. "I think I used to hide behind those columns…" He reached over and touched the screen. "There was a man, he was a pain in the ass and always telling me what to do, and I liked to hide from him, just to get him riled up."
"And the pond?"
Gen frowned as he concentrated on the picture. "There were large gold and black fish that lived in the pond, and I used to be allowed to feed them sometimes when I was a child." He shook his head. "Wait. How could I be feeding fish in a pond and stomping grapes in a vat? Or running down a stone breezeway and hiding behind a marble column?"
"Memory overlap," Kai said. "These pictures are from the Empress' palace on Tenkigh. Look at one more image, please."
The screens went black for a second, and then they all lit up with one large image; rolling hills of red earth, and rows of grapevines that stretched out for miles. At the center was a large, wood and stone lodge that nestled amidst a stand of tall trees.
Gen traced the clay-tile roof of the lodge with shaking fingers. "This is my home… was.. my home." He turned to look at Kai. "I don't understand. How can I remember being in all three places?"
"This is the Three Baskets Estate and Vineyard, on Kinzaan," Kai said, "or, it was before your would-be assassins set fire to a good portion of it. For the last twenty Standard years, Three Baskets has extracted the juice from its grapes by using wine presses." A flurry of key taps, and the initial set of photos re-appeared across the screens. "This vineyard is not Three Baskets. It was called Tasogee, and it employed the older, more traditional method of stomping grapes by foot in a wooden vat." Kai paused, and then added, "It was the childhood home of Komou Sanzen."
Gen's hand clenched into a fist, and he slammed it against the screen closest to him, breaking it. "This is insane!"
"Hey!" Shaw shouted.
Gen pointed at Kai. "You're out of your fucking mind. I am not a clone!" He pushed past Shaw and Gadget, and stomped up the metal mesh stairs.