[Time: 6 weeks after Tscheya's release (& disappearance) on the bad side of town. Setting: _Diana's Bow_, sickbay.]
*Clouds...*
It was very... *white* in the room. Palest blue sky, almost smothered by whispy clouds floating around. Slanting sunbeams broke through them occasionally. She blinked, and tried to collect herself. At least she was wearing her suit. That was... important.
"Simone?" The name was familiarly unfamiliar. She turned her head towards the voice, and saw more whiteness, in the form of a human woman. White hair, modified spacer cut, white biosuit, white skin -- eyes hidden behind a silvery visor. The light and clouds were even conspiring to give her a faint halo, with ghosts of wings.
"Simone? Can you hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?" The apparition put one hand at the foot of the (white) automed she was lying in, and raised the other.
She cleared her throat. "Th-three." Her own voice was harsh, and her tongue didn't want to move. Memories were starting to trickle back -- she'd seen this white, white woman before. *H... Holmes. S. Holmes. Selene Holmes, the corporate president...* Artemis Enterprises, computers, AIs, sensors, minifacs, too much money too fast, mostly harmless, not a target. *Why is she calling me Simone? I'm...* There was something she should be thinking, be remembering, but it was like her very thoughts were floating in micrograv, unable to land.
"Good. Track my finger." Selene moved one hand through her field of view. She tracked it for a moment, then brought her own hand up to drag a lock of her hair into view. It was a golden brown; her hand was spacer-pale apricot. *...Simone, yeah.* She starting thinking seriously about sitting up.
Selene was waving a medscanner around near Simone's head. "Everything looks all right," the techie murmured. "'Tape seems to have taken."
"W-what's going on?" Simone demanded. She'd been at that NovaTech base, looking in Tscheya's office, they'd caught her, took her suit away, dosed Sandra-her with stuff, and she'd been strapped to that bed...
Someone else in the room cleared her throat, and Selene moved aside. Simone struggled to get an elbow under her -- *move or die, dance or fall* -- as that someone else walked into view. She stared for a long moment, before remembering discipline -- another woman, and this one *herself*, Quicksilver Hawke, a holo come to life.
"Ah, hi, 'Mom.'" The other-her waved, attempting a grin. They swallowed. Silver-her took a step forward and held out a hand. Simone let the other-her help her sit up. "What is going on?" she asked again, keeping her voice calm and focused, directing the question at this... clone.
"You don't remember leaving the commands..." The Silver-clone sighed. "Do you remember the base?"
Simone's brows went down, just for a moment, and she had to stop herself from glancing in Selene's direction. She was irritated; her reflexes were shot worse than after she'd gotten that bad StarFire...
"It's okay, we can trust her," the Silver-clone said, with a fractional nod towards the pale woman. "She helped me get your braintapes back."
Cautiously, Simone nodded. She vaguely remembered that pathetic little doctor, his braintape machine... *Why would _she_ need to get old braintapes, if she got away? "Mom"?*
"Right, well... You got caught, and braintaped, and then Vladimir Tscheya -- he's some kind of mega-psi, by the way -- he explained about the slave implant he was going to put in you."
Simone recoiled, barely noticing that Selene's ghost-pale complexion had gone nearly transparent, barely noticing that the corporate president was murmuring something hastily and leaving the room. Even the slightly ... *rueful* ... expression on the Silver-clone's face, looking towards the albino's retreating back, hardly registered. "He... was... going to... *what*?" she whispered, fury burning through the disgust.
"'The Procedure,' he called it. It's how he was controlling people long-distance. He took a tape, ran it through a program in his mainframe overnight, put in a neural implant, and played the altered braintape back. The alterations and implant combined to make people adore the Ungodly creep. First thing I remember, him and his doctor were walking out of the room, and he was saying 'she's not dangerous anymore.' Except you managed to leave enough information buried subconsciously, so *I* escaped, right after the brainwipe. I tried to get to Seth, but the Organization'd blown him up three days before I even got in comm-range." The chrome-suited copy was standing very straight in front of her. "You didn't leave me the passwords to the computer, so eventually I messed up on them, and Ms. Holmes 'invited' me to the _Bow_."
She flinched before she could stop it. "Idiot. How long has it been?"
"Oh, right. It's the twenty-first of April, eighteen-forty-two hours, 12 seconds."
She dropped her head into her hands, clenched her fingers in her hair. "It took you nearly eight months."
She didn't have to look. She could *feel* the clone's jaw tighten and shoulders quiver. "I did the best I could. Being brainwiped really messes up one's life, you know?"
Simone raised her head, glaring at the brainwiped clone-twin. "You let Selene Holmes find out about me."
She'd hoped that not all was lost, but the copy winced. "I didn't know the computer would cry thief if I flubbed the passwords. She hasn't used the data against me. She *helped* me get your 'tapes back! Tscheya... went after her, couple months ago. Her employees got her out of his psi-range and then she called me up, 'cause she knew I could tell her the base's layout."
Simone's head ached, and she felt simultaneously faint with hunger, and nauseous over the *power* this fool clone-copy had given that Holmes woman. She closed her eyes and waved a hand in front of her face, trying to clear away the clouds in her mind. "I want to go home. We'll talk about it there."
"I'll get us a ride down in a shuttle." The copy helped her up, supporting her when her knees tried to buckle. Simone tightened her jaw, hating this weakness, and leaned on the clone's arm for balance as they went through the ship -- _Diana's Bow_, surely, with all this glaring white -- and to the shuttle. Probably the _Arrow_. She collapsed into a seat and wondered what she should be upset about this time.
"Ah, they've got a stealth system," the other-her explained, across the aisle. "Nobody should see us landing at the ancestral mansion."
Simone nodded, letting herself be relieved despite the implication that her own defenses wouldn't spot the shuttle. It wasn't commando raids by Artemis personnel that worried her, not with that corp-pres knowing her secret... A queasy thought dripped through her mind, of an expressionless, visor-shielded Selene Holmes, holding a house of cards in one white hand. She took a breath and banished the image before the cards could be crumpled and tossed to the ground.
The clone was right -- there were no challenges, and the shuttle's landing was adequate. Better than she could have done, in her current condition. No wonder rehab took so long after a braintape playback. She'd yell at Seth next time for not mentioning... No, Seth got blown up, wouldn't be much left to yell at.
The shuttle's door opened, and Simone tried to lever herself out of the seat. She felt her balance going and dropped back, rather than sprawl on the floor. The Silver-clone helped her stand, get out of the shuttle -- quite invisible, that shuttle, she saw when she glanced backwards -- and get into the house. *Safe Harbor, at last.*
"Welcome back, Simone," her house-comp said as they came in the front door. "There have been some security anomalies."
The Silver-clone nodded. "That'll be the shuttle."
"Ah." Simone nodded once, as well. "Thank you, Kato," she told the personality program. "I'm tired right now. I'll deal with things tomorrow. Hold all calls."
"Yes, ma'am," the house-computer acknowledged.
She moved towards the office with more of a lurch than she'd expected. Her copy caught her, again.
She sighed, and put her arm over the clone's shoulders, leaning on her heavily as they took the shortcut through her office to the elevator. On the second floor, she looked across the balconies at the door to her rooms -- on the exact opposite side of the building. With a shake of her head, she pointed to the left, where the most opulent guest-room was. The copy nodded and turned in that direction. Simone was more dependant on the arm around her waist than she felt like admitting, even to herself.
Six careful steps, and they were at the bed. She lowered herself onto it -- carefully at first, but finally with a flat collapse that left her head on a pillow and vacuum take where the rest of her ended up. She closed her eyes and tried to feel more secure. Houses built of ID cards kept drifting through her mind.
"Um. You should probably drink something..."
Simone could just hear the "Ms. Holmes said" at the end of that sentence. She had no doubt that this copy had been briefed on how to take care of brand-new clones with freshly-loaded 'tapes. Still, it would taste good... "Orange juice, in the 'fridge," she mumbled through the pillow.
"Right." The copy left the room, breaking into a trot in the hall, from what Simone could hear, and taking the stairs down, two at a time. After a moment, she decided that she should be annoyed, since taking the elevator would have been faster. *'S what I'd have done, though...* Stars. A brainwiped... not-a-clone, technically, since that was obviously the original body, which at least meant Simone didn't have to worry about the effects that bad StarFire'd had on her. She wondered if the other woman were still addicted.
She supposed it ought to bother her, that the copy-self was what had become of the original Simone after the braintape was taken, that she herself was somehow an older version. She'd never really thought about what it would be like to know things had gone terminally bad. She'd always thought of it from the perspective of the ... original: "I'll be dead, so it won't matter."
However, exhaustion and thirst (and that cursed feeling of powerlessness) were quite good at convincing her that she was alive, and real. So was the copy's attitude; very attentive, obedient. It was nearly as stomach-upsetting as the blackmail parts, to see *herself* -- herself as *Quicksilver*, even -- so... apologetic. Subservient. She vaguely wondered if brainwipe just *did* that, or if something else had broken the other's spirit. She wouldn't have thought it could be done to *her*, but obviously this other-her was weaker somehow, where it mattered.
The Silver-clone got back -- this time via the elevator. *Of course. Mustn't spill the juice.* Simone opened her eyes a little, and watched the copy as she entered and put the glass down on the table beside the bed. Then she had to sit up again -- and accept help to do it. "Just sit on the edge of the bed and I'll lean on you," Simone said tiredly, batting near the pillow, to indicate where she wanted the support.
That worked. It helped that her copy had found the straws she kept for iced tea. Decadence simply mandated those straws. She'd have to remember to have Kato keep a good stock of them.
The glass went back on the bedside table when she finished the juice. It had helped; she certainly wouldn't have wanted anything particularly solid. Simone foresaw a lot of soup in her near future.
She realized she was studying her clone -- she'd seen her image often enough in mirrors and holos, but apparently something was lost in the transition. The reality of her own lines, fine-boned jaw, curve of breast... She smiled a little, remembering one of the times she'd thought about cloning herself, the things she could pull off with an alter-self. At the time, she'd dismissed the idea, since she certainly wouldn't get any work done with another her around. Narcissism was obviously a danger, she decided vaguely, looking at the blue-on-blue patterns within her other-self's eyes.
Simone felt her clone about to shift, and she stretched a little, covering a yawn with one hand. "I need to rest," she said, with a little regret. "There's other bedrooms all over the place," she added, waving in the general direction of the closest.
The Silver-clone swallowed and nodded, sliding out from behind Simone and helping her lie back down. She considered whether she wanted to be under the blanket or not, and decided not -- the sheets across her shoulders might have the comforting feel of a spacer's sleep-web, but they'd probably get tangled around her in the night and feel more like those cursed restraints. She had her suit on, and a pillow. She'd be fine.
After the Silver-clone had left, Simone traced along her jawline, down her neck, collarbone, belly, hip, and back up to cup one breast. Idly, she wondered what it would feel like, to touch the body she knew as her own, but without the exact answering sensation from where she touched.
Between the eight-months-old "recent" memories of capture, and the narsey problems her clone presented, her dreams were very unsettling.
There was a soft melody playing, but it was getting louder. Simone dragged herself out of a nightmare where that Ungodly Tscheya was presenting her with their white-blond, blue-eyed infant, and she was tied down and couldn't kill him... The covers had gotten a little tangled around her feet anyway, during the night. She'd slept, fitfully, for seventeen minutes and fifty-ish seconds over twelve hours (she wasn't quite sure when she'd become aware her nightmare was a dream), and the gaslight was faded with the addition of sunlight. That confused her a little, until she remembered this room -- unlike her own bedroom -- faced the gas-giant New Garavar orbited. The melody was getting annoyingly repetitive, and louder. "Enough, Kato. I'm awake."
"Would you like breakfast in bed, ma'am?" came the voice from the ceiling speaker.
"Yes. Protein drink, medium glass with tea-straw. One half-slice 'glish muffin, grilled, cut into squares." If her stomach rebelled at even that mild solid food, at least she could play with it.
"Very good, ma'am. Would you like the daily news?"
Her *brain* rebelled at that idea. "Not yet. And no security anomalies, either." She'd have to figure out how to explain the clone to the personality program at some point, but if it hadn't crashed from confusion yet, it could wait. "Where's... the visitor?"
"There are no visitors today, ma'am."
It *was* having some problems with the paradox, obviously. She sighed. "Where am I, Kato?"
"You are in the guest master bedroom. You are in the breakfast nook."
She nodded, and decided to go for the quick and dirty fix. "Designate the me currently in the breakfast nook as 'clone' or 'copy.' Designate the me currently in the guest master bedroom as Simone."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Use security cameras to maintain identity recognition, since the clone has my voiceprint." And retina-print, fingerprints, and gene-scan, but that was superfluous data, as far as educating Kato was concerned. She'd deal with the security holes presented by her incompetent copy later.
"Yes, ma'am."
She set herself to dragging the pillows into position so she could sit up, and actually managed it only a few minutes after the 'bot showed up with her food. Then she decided she was ravenous.
Only after she'd drunk half her protein drink did Simone realize that her clone had *not* followed Kato's 'bot up -- just as Simone'd decided she'd call the other-her when she wanted to talk to her, obviously the copy had understood that her presence was not requested. This understanding was yet another long-term security hole, probably, but useful enough at the moment.
She finished her food -- including all of the English muffin, to her surprise -- and sent the 'bot away with the dishes. She eyed the distance between the bed and the bathroom and decided that she was glad she was wearing her biosuit. Maybe she'd be steady enough for a nice, decadent bubble-bath soak tomorrow.
Steady or not, it was time to get some walking practice in, and see how bad the Situation was. "Kato, ask the copy to come up here. Address her as 'Ms. Hawke,'" she added quickly, lest Kato actually call the other-her "clone." There was always a chance that this alter-self wasn't a *complete* screw-up.
The copy appeared in the doorway very quickly. She'd probably been lurking in the art gallery down the hall. She'd put her suit into the green-with-silver-trim mode, rather than full mirror-reflectiveness. Her expression was alert, curious, faintly worried, and reminded Simone of a lapdog.
She damped down the urge to snap "Don't *look* at me like that!" and just waved towards one of the chairs. "Drag it over here so I don't have to shout."
Obediently, the clone did so, sitting down and clasping her hands in her lap. *Didn't get much sleep, did we?* Simone thought to herself, noting all the minute signs that she'd seen in mirrors when she was frazzled around the edges. The notion of mirrors made her frown slightly, noticing her distorted reflection in one of her copy's biosuit's decorations.
She sighed. "Is there anything that I absolutely have to know about right now, or do we have time for you to get me a hairbrush?"
"I don't think there's anything that won't wait a little longer," the copy said, standing up.
"There's one in the bathroom," Simone said, flipping a hand towards that door. "It'll do."
With a nod, her alter-self went and got the guest-brush. Simone tried to sit up, away from the pillows so she could comb her fingers through the back of her hair. It was longer than she usually kept it, and there were certainly tangles enough -- she'd obviously been sleeping restlessly. The thought of getting the snarls out was suddenly more than she wanted to deal with.
The copy slid onto the bed, behind her, and started gently brushing her hair. Simone stiffened a little at the presumption, then realized that the other-her had read her mood -- probably subconsciously, even -- and just reacted. Still vaguely miffed, she relaxed a little, letting her alter-self's brushing sooth her nerves. She'd always wondered if part of the reason Salome was so calm was all that hair to brush...
After a while, the tangles were obviously all gone, but her clone kept stroking the brush through her hair. It was definitely nice, but sitting up was getting tiring. She stretched her shoulders and slumped over to one side, then tugged her legs around so she could lie on her stomach. *Wonder if she's narsey enough to think of backrubs...*
The answer, apparently, was yes. She shuddered a little that someone else could open her suit, but it was good to have the night's tensions rubbed away from her shoulders.
"Where were we?" she mumbled after nearly eight minutes of that. "The latest situations?"
The copy stiffened a little, though she didn't break the rhythm of massage. "Current financial status is that we've got a bit under half a million credits. Tscheya's accounts are in the negative numbers. I used some of the cash to dry out that StarFire problem, then sold the surplus pills to Flare."
"Mm! You've met up with the red menace, then."
"Yeah -- the last heist's funds have been starting to come in, by the way."
Ah, yes, the ShadowHawk's appearance on the _Pathfinder_. She'd nearly forgotten Serena's indignation about valuable stage-trick secrets being compromised. Between that and the funds from Tscheya's accounts, she'd have plenty to pay off Byte's privacy fees. Finding a way to drain Tscheya of funds -- perhaps her copy *wasn't* totally hopeless. "Good. Anything else I should know?" she asked.
The clone thought for a while, kneading Simone's lower back. "Nothing immediate, as far as I know."
"Good." Eventually, Simone would have to hear the whole sordid tale from the time her brainwiped self escaped to yesterday, at 18:38:03, when she woke up again. She suspected that it would be painful to listen to, and if nothing required her instant attention, she was going to put off everything distressing for the next week, minimum.
"Much as I'd like to lounge around all day," she sighed, noting that the backrub had gone to a delicate stroking, "I need to practice walking around."
"Okay." Her alter-self started fastening her suit back up, obediently.
Walking was a decided annoyance. She made a circuit and a half around the upper story of Safe Harbor, with her copy on one arm and gripping the balcony railing with her other hand, but it was obviously not optimal. At least she got to *her* quarters, when her strength finally gave out.
"Kato, catalog for walking sticks!" she ordered from her sprawl on the bed. The holoprojector at the base of the bed lit up, displaying several names. She selected one at random and voice-flipped through the images of various walking sticks, canes, and hiking staves until she found a suitably elegant one. "Mmmm... Knife or stunner..." she mused.
"Stunner," her copy suggested. "It relies less on balance, even if it's less traditional."
Simone gave the other-her a look out of the corner of her eye. "I was just about to decide that," she muttered. "Kato, order one cane number five-seven-A. Have it shipped to Kevoni's for either an aftermarket stunner in the handle, or a reproduction of the cane, with stunner -- whichever is less noticeable."
"Very good, ma'am."
"And have the guest master bedroom cleaned up."
"Yes, ma'am."
Reluctantly, she considered her progress and sighed. "And give me catalogs for powered wheelchairs, Kato." She had quite enough credit for a standard-issue model, with no frills, and it would be a good backup for the cane. If she made a habit of resurrection, a wheelchair would be a vital addition to Safe Harbor. She wished she'd considered all of that before now. She really was going to have to track down Seth's clone and yell at him. Maybe the little rat had intended to take advantage of her while she was still recovering, in the hopes that her aim would be off...
She remembered that Seth'd taken tapes for Quicksilver, not Simone, and looked at her copy again. "Why that outfit?" she asked, waving a hand to take in the clone's white-blond curls and spacer-styled suit.
The Silver-her shrugged. "I changed into it after I got away from Station Two, so I could do a job that didn't take much history-recall. I've been hanging around in it almost exclusively ever since, for one reason and another."
"Mm. I suppose I'll have to arrange for a persona for you," she muttered, considering what would be safest.
Her clone looked uncomfortable. "Ah, I've got a job with this one."
"A job." She kept her voice level.
"You're not going to like it."
"I'm sure I won't," she agreed pleasantly.
"Pilot on a little fringe merchanter." Her copy hastily continued, "The NovaTech shuttle got shot up when I was escaping from Station Two, and I had to ditch it at Pelageos. The fringie ship was making a detour there for some fast cash -- kilgar oil -- and apparently saw the shuttle go down. They needed a pilot, and I was trying to get back to New Garavar, so I could get the 'tapes from Seth. When I found out that Seth'd gotten blown up by the 'Big-O,' I was stuck with no cash, no way to find out how much credit I had in the blind accounts, and no clue what my other resources were. I figured that hanging with the _Albatross_ would be a safe enough place, out of the way, for me to try to get my life back together enough to rescue your 'tapes. I figured it would be harder to hit a moving target."
*Dance or fall...* She scowled, but didn't argue. "So you want to keep the Quicksilver ID," she stated, aware that she was more annoyed than any little ID card merited -- Stars knew she could make more -- and uncomfortably aware that she'd be almost as possessive of even the dregs of her IDs, like that prospector Sadi.
"It has an income of its own," the clone explained, uncertainty and defensiveness making an appalling mix in her body language and voice.
"Fine. Yours." It felt like giving up a bloody chunk of flesh, from somewhere inside her chest. She made a note to dig out the name-books, and create another spacer. Maybe a shady merchant-type, this time. Quicksilver was probably too high-profile anyway. "I want the rest of the cards *back*, though," she added through her teeth.
The Silver-clone nodded. "I got Flare to get me a duplicate suit. The cards are in your belt, not mine."
Simone reached behind herself, thumbing open the secret pocket, and pulled out the cards. It wasn't that she didn't trust her clone-copy -- the old phrase, "If you can't trust yourself, then who..." drifted through her mind -- but that she wanted to *feel* her cards, and know that this other-her hadn't stolen any more of her life.
Scherazade's card wasn't there, and neither was Sadi's. That was right, those two were together, in the Thrallia cache. She frowned at the Serena card -- hadn't she left that in the luggage on Kintara Station? And Sherinford and Salome, those were supposed to be in the New Garavar locker. Obviously... Obviously something, that floated just outside her mind's syrup-slow grasp.
"I was looking for resources, and figured that I could do that and quit paying for lockers at the same time, so I talked the ship into swinging by Kintara Station after I found out Seth was toasted," the clone explained. "The Salome card, I picked up 'cause I needed it."
Simone scowled harder for a moment before telling herself that at least her brainwiped copy ought to be good in bed, where it was reflexes more than memories that were needed. "Why?"
"Tscheya went after the White Lady. He was taking her out to night-clubs and such, and got her to tell her AIs not to 'dig up dirt' on him, or monitor them when they were together. Her AIs weren't amused. Sapient Diana contacted me and asked me to get some scans of the pair. She suggested Serena, but Ms. Holmes'd already seen that ID and I didn't want her blowing my cover to Vlad-darling, so I got Diana the invisible flying wonder 'bot to get past the Big-O traps on the locker, and got Salome's card. It worked, too."
Simone bit her lip, discarding vague perplexities about the nickname of "White Lady" and Sapient Diana with a stealthed robot body. There was something more important, about Salome... Ah, yes. "Did you get the client-recordings?"
The Silver-clone nodded. "And a good thing. Thorvold Jonson, NovaTech accountant-slash-corp-spook, showed up on my doorstep -- and after he'd hired out the _Albatross_. He didn't twig, though," she added quickly. "He'd turned me down as Silver, so I can't think why he'd have paid for me as Salome, if he'd noticed."
Simone rubbed her temples again. True enough, people would see what they wanted, if given half a chance. Especially when it came to a favored Professional. She'd have to review the client logs, though. The name was vaguely familiar, so he hadn't been as forgettable as some... A regular, undoubtedly. "Did you record the event?"
"Oh, yeah. All of them, but definitely his."
"Good. Any other close calls? Besides the Artemis lot, of course." She knew she was going to regret asking that, but couldn't help herself.
Her intuition was confirmed the instant the clone's eyes dropped. "James Occident. The White Lady hired him to check on some stuff in a system that the _Albatross_ was heading to, so he took passage on it. But by that time, the computer'd thought it was stolen and cried home to mommie, so Jim was looking for it as well. He thinks Sheri was undercover, and-or that I gave her Holmesness a fake ID, or something. I could probably get Ms. Holmes to corroborate anything we wanted -- that she thought I'd have been undercover as Scherazade, so that's what she told him, or something like that."
Occident with a Clue about her. Simone considered throwing up, and only decided against it because she didn't want to have to move out of her rooms while Kato cleaned them. "That has got to be one of the *stupidest* screw-ups..."
The Silver-copy flinched. "I didn't know he was after the computer! I didn't know he knew m--you! I did the best I could! At least I managed to confuse him some. I implied somebody'd done something so that my memory was messed up a little, and I was dealing with it."
Simone bit down on the "Idiot" that was writhing behind her teeth. Keeping close to the truth was sometimes safest... It was still a wretched mess for her to clean up after. "Anything... else?" she asked, still chewing on the insult.
The copy thought for a while, then slowly shook her head. "Just the Snow Goddess. She doesn't know about Sadi, and I don't think she knows about Salome. Diana, at the least, knows about Salome, but not Sadi."
"What a charming refuge," Simone sniffed drily, gathering up the pile of cards on the bed and returning all but her Simone-card to her belt.
"At least Ms. Holmes got me access to the third layer without looking at it," the clone said, with smooth tension.
"You're sure?" Simone vaguely wished she'd stifled the mockery in her own voice.
"Yes. She read my personal logs, but I don't think she even cared about the rest."
"Personal logs?" It just got worse and worse...
"I figured that I should keep some kind of record, in case I crossed paths with Seth again, so that you'd know what happened if I played your 'tapes back into this head."
That, unfortunately, made sense. The copy had been being loyal. And clumsy and stupid, but...
The Silver-copy added, "Oh, she also found out about Secret Helper, sort of."
"What?!" Simone felt her jaw dropping. It *did* get worse!
"He called me -- sent Email to all the accounts, till I came back with a voicelink. He wanted data on the NovaTech Station Two stuff, and I didn't trust him, so I proposed that somebody else check his credentials and vouch for him. I'd already seen her Holmesness go digging through Byte for data on m--*your* cards, and finding the privacy flags, so I figured that she'd root out any fakes."
Now that was an interesting notion... Not to mention she hadn't known Selene could see internal Byte flags. "And?"
"She called up, looking *really* weirded, and said that Secret Helper was okay, but it was really strange. I kept the record of the incoming call. I told Secret Helper she'd said it was weird, and he said she talked too much. I wrote back to the White Lady, asked if he were a relative or something, and got back this mega-encrypted letter saying it wasn't wise to talk too much about him." The Silver-copy shrugged. "So I said okay, and thanked her, and left a reminder in my head not to think of all that too hard most of the time."
Simone nodded slowly. "That's very interesting. I wonder if he's some kind of agent. Byte security, maybe? NGIA?"
The other woman spread her hands and shook her head wordlessly.
"Still, that's interesting. Anything else you've learned about Ms. Holmes?"
"The Artemis Superdrive is real."
"What?" Simone snorted. "You're kidding."
"I've been in it. It's some kind of instant hyperdrive, but it's revolting enough that you have to travel sedated, or stoked up on Soothe. Her Holmesness also used it to get the NovaTech shuttle I crashed on Pelageos, and moved it down to Irar space quicker than anything I can think of. I guess they don't use it much."
She snorted again, more thoughtfully. "And is her stealth tech military-grade?"
"Apparently. They can mimic being another ship a bit, too. Faked out Tscheya's station boats. *And* they've got some kind of ship-mounted hypno-ray! I don't know where they got it from, though. It doesn't go through force-screens, but once inside them... They used the superdrive to get to Station Two before Tscheya did, faked being his shuttle to get inside the screens, and then knocked the whole place out. They had some Kylaran-tech personal forcefields that they used to keep from getting knocked out by the hypnobeams themselves, if they were right there."
"I wonder how much the government knows about that," Simone murmured to herself.
The copy shrugged yet again. "I got the feeling that they don't want people knowing much about their resources, though -- they were looking oddly at me, until they decided that their boss had dirt on me. Oh, right -- I *think* the _Bow_ doesn't have the Superdrive, nor the shuttles. Only the _Bat_ and the _Hell_. They've got sensors far and away better than what they sell, too, but I couldn't get an exact range out of them. Probably at least five parsecs, though."
"Curiouser and curiouser."
"And that story about an alternate dimension might well be true. I saw the kids that one of the Kintarans had. They're either a masterwork of gengineering, or something weird, and their mom claims they were conceived the natural way. Ask Flare about it -- he's made friends with Moonfur lately."
"I'll remember to do that. Anything else?"
The copy thought a bit. "Just Diana Falcon -- F-A-L-K-A-Y-N-E. Sapient Diana decided she was bored hanging in orbit around New Garavar, so she cooked up a body. When she's not being the invisible flying wonder'bot, she can pass for human. Station Security tossed us in together one afternoon, and didn't twig. She got the ID from Flare."
Simone blinked. "Isn't it illegal for an AI to pretend to be human...?" She mused on that a moment. "Hm. Probably only if it's with intent to defraud. So, has Flare made a pass at her yet?"
"He didn't get a chance. Did you know that some 43% of Sapient Diana's seed personality comes from Quicksilver?"
Simone let her expression register shock. Obviously not something the great programmer Holmes would brag about...
"Some grad student did up a paper. Another 40-something percent of Diana comes from some fictional guy called Han Solo."
"There are definitely too many H's and S's in that AI's genealogy."
"That's what I told her, especially with her creatrix. Diana's taken to calling me 'Mom,' though."
Ah, that explained the "Mom" when she'd woken up -- obviously Simone was the "seed personality" for this brainwiped copy. An elegant enough solution to the dilemma of who was what to whom.
Her daughter-copy continued, "The rest of her's just random 'hot pilot' seed-stuff. Anyway, Flare didn't get a chance to proposition her. And let me tell you that it is rather surreal to be in a menage a' trois with a Kintaran and a virgin AI. Oh, yeah, and she can zap people if she wants."
Simone could imagine how *that* little tidbit of information had been used. Flare had a kinky streak that went all over the map. "I suppose," she mused, still trying to convince herself, "that between her AI's little misdemeanors and her spot of piracy at NovaTech Station Two, Selene Holmes won't be likely to force any blackmail issues."
The other woman shrugged. "The only thing she asked me for was the black box from the NovaTech shuttle, after she bought the salvage rights on the shuttle from Captain Parvari. And the data on Station Two, of course."
"Little enough, I suppose." She closed her eyes. "Enough history. I'm getting a headache."
"Sorry."
"Mph." It was true. Absorbing all the new data was being difficult. She was sure nuances were slipping away from her, along with the questions she ought to be asking. On the other hand, she wasn't entirely *sleepy*, and her mind was slowly skittering through thick honey, trying to find something to occupy itself with. *Move or die...*
Her daughter-copy moved from the edge of the bed to next to her, massaging her scalp lightly. Simone purred a little. No wonder it was so easy to fall into narcissism, with such perfect understanding of pleasure between oneself and another. Lazily, she rolled fully onto her back, looking at the Silver-clone through half-lidded eyes. The copy paused, then moved back into position to rub Simone's temples lightly. "Mmmmmmmmmm." She stretched, arching her back, knowing it was attractive, knowing that her attractions would be reciprocated in her copy-daughter's subconscious.
Her copy-daughter's equally- knowledgeable hands moved down to Simone's neck, requiring the pale-haired woman to lean over her a little. It was easy, easier than any time she'd done it before, to just reach up and stroke her Silver-self's cheek, exerting just precisely enough pressure to bring her lips into range.
*Indeed, I would never have gotten anything done, with a true copy...* Identical blue-on-blue patterns within their eyes, silken hair, nerves, reflexes... They drew apart a fraction, pupils wide and dark. Her daughter-copy swallowed, then bent to kiss, feather-light, down her neck.
Simone toyed with the other's hair, felt the slowness and hesitancy, realized as her copy stroked open her suit, that *she*, Simone, was most definitely in control of the situation.
Her daughter-copy moved downwards, lingering at Simone's breasts just the perfect amount of time, then kissing lower still. Simone made a throaty purring sound in her throat, arching against her daughter-copy's lips, one hand twisted just short of pain in white-blond hair. *Mine. She is _mine_. Mine...*
Afterwards, a three hour and seventeen minute nap was in order -- slightly to Simone's embarrassment, since she hadn't had the energy to return her copy-daughter's skilled favors. Truth be told, she had nearly fainted. It was probably not accepted clone-rehab practice to engage in such recreational activities, but obviously "Snow Goddess" Selene had not thought to caution the Silver-copy against it.
After the nap, Simone tried some soup and another English muffin. It went down well enough, but the notion of starting anything narsey became a lot less appealing. For want of anything better to do, she leisurely grilled her copy-daughter on background -- Sherlock Holmes, the Saint... Despite the annoying revelation that "her Holmesness" has suggested the Charteris books in the first place, the topic was gratifyingly innocuous. There were a few other flatscreens that, while not directly relevant, were worth adding to the Silver-copy's education. This provided a welcome excuse to cease thinking of the problem entirely, and lulled her back to sleep in the middle of the second Old Earth "Batman" movie.
When she woke up, Simone realized that she and her copy were intertwined on her bed -- and that she'd managed to skip the nightmares this time around. Either the old flatscreens had helped, or the presence of blood of her blood. The latter, she finally decided, was a security risk that she would have to assess.
"Mmmmm..." She arched and curled around, pulling away a bit. Her copy-daughter was still sleeping, looking as angelic in her repose as Simone had hoped Quicksilver would.
Quietly, she murmured, "Any packages yet, Kato?"
Taking its cue from her query, the personality program replied at low volume. "The wheelchair was delivered this morning and is waiting in the garage. Kevoni's says the modified cane will be delivered tomorrow. There have been three invitations and one personal message since your return."
"Let 'em wait. I'll titillate the masses later. Breakfast for me -- two 'glish muffins, squared again, and a protein drink."
"Understood, ma'am. And what will Ms. Hawke be having?"
Simone considered her still-sleeping copy a moment. Obviously she wasn't the only one to feel dangerously secure around her genetic double. Unless, of course, it was something to do with the copy's hidden brainwipe damage. "She can order when she wakes up."
"Very good, ma'am."
The 'bot's arrival was enough to de-angelicize her bed-partner. Simone watched cooly as her daughter-copy stretched and arched her back -- and allowed herself a smile when the copy rolled over and imitated a cat-stretch. "Watched the whole thing, did you?"
"Mm-hm." The copy cricked her neck around and slid off the bed, moving to the large clear space Simone kept in her bedroom, and started toe-touches.
Simone nearly choked on a bite of muffin, and waved away the copy's worried look as she coughed -- Stars, but it was like watching *herself*! She'd done exactly that, countless times, and to be forced to watch someone else... It made her feel almost ghostly, as if this daughter-clone were sucking Simone's life out of her, turning her transparent while her copy became more solid. *No, no. She cannot steal anything more from me than what she has. She is mine now, not a threat. She will do as I will.*
"Kato says the wheelchair arrived, and is in the garage. It needs to be brought in, eventually," Simone informed her disturbing daughter-copy.
The other woman saluted casually. "I'll go get it -- can you have Kato leave a protein drink in the kitchen?"
Simone waved at the ceiling. "Kato, you heard your name."
"Yes, Simone. A protein drink will be in the kitchen."
The Silver-copy nodded. "You want me to scan the 'chair, or just bring it up here?"
"Only scanners are in my private workroom," Simone murmured, starting to shake her head.
"I can get in there."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Diana 'n me did a little tour -- she'd ferreted out the properties you owned, and the home addresses. Here, Sheri's office, and Scherazade's apartment."
"You... let... Sapient Diana hear my passwords?"
"No!" Her copy-daughter shook her head violently, sending sleep-tousled curls into a streaking halo. "I asked her to turn herself off if I needed to do a password."
"And she did, just like that." Simone didn't even bother to stifle the sarcasm.
"Why wouldn't she? For one thing, she *likes* me -- I'm her 'Mom,' remember? For another, she's got enough dirt on me to *make* me do what she wants if she were the power-hungry type -- but she's not! She's not *programmed* to be power-hungry. And for a final thing, she could excavate the place herself if she wanted to, since *she* pointed out it was there in the first place. It was the one shielded spot that her sensors couldn't adequately scan."
Simone glared, lips tight. She drew in a deep breath and blew it out her nose. "Fine. I'll just have to go changing the passwords. Go get a cursed scanner and make sure that there aren't any bugs on the 'chair. Kato wouldn't have let it in if he'd found any, but it doesn't hurt to check twice."
The clone bowed, a bit sharply, and all-but-ran out of the room.
*Stars above,* she thought. *What am I going to _do_ with her?* She bit savagely into one of the muffins.
The 'chair was clean. Simone hadn't expected otherwise -- this was New Garavar, not Thral -- but it was good to check that her absence from the social scene hadn't prompted some bored little socialite into snooping around.
Showing great restraint, her copy-daughter did not ride the wheelchair into Simone's presence -- though she was sure she'd heard it whirring downstairs. Fortunately, by that time, Simone had recovered her composure again and was able to put on her usual calmly amused expression as the copy put down her drink and helped Simone into the chair.
"I should have ordered the contragrav model, probably," she sighed a little, plowing through the carpet. "It would have been more useful than taking the elevator all the time. Still, this will do till the cane arrives. Come -- we're going to tour this place and I'll see what you've figured out."
Simone led the way, heading first for the "secret" hallway behind a bookshelf in her bedroom. It responded to her palm-print, unlocking and swinging away -- but she'd had to stretch to reach the concealed scanner. Her daughter-copy seemed unsurprised.
"Your Diana scanned this, I presume?"
The copy shrugged. "It's not all that hidden."
"Of course not. It's an affectation, not a serious secret. Half my associates know about the secret elevator, and that it leads to my... sitting room." She smiled, and experimented with the door at the other end of the hall. The sensor-equipped handle wasn't a stretch this time, but she had to back the wheelchair hastily to allow the door to swing open, towards her. At least she didn't have plush carpeting in here to really slow the 'chair down.
"Only intimates know about the bedroom access?" her daughter-copy speculated.
"Very good. Not all of them, either, though."
She let the door swing shut again and backed the chair up, looking over her shoulder as she tried to back against the elevator controls. She bumped into the wall and had to shove the wheelchair's joystick forwards to maneuver again. Her reflexes really were all but destroyed. Finally, with much wall-scraping, she got the wheelchair into the tiny elevator. "Follow me down," she told her copy-daughter, and touched the "first floor" button.
They browsed around the house for over an hour, and Simone tried to decide if her copy-daughter were an asset -- a quick study, oh yes, with the instincts to be expected from the decade of Simone's own life -- or a horrible threat to Simone's security, since those instincts were muddled with the naivete' of a... Descriptions failed her.
They wound up in the basement shooting range, with Simone watching her daughter-copy pegging a moving target with an sport-laser. *I should probably count my blessings -- she is less than a year old, with only instincts. She has had no training, no trial by fire... No wonder she is so hungry for identity.* She smiled a little, sapphire eyes hooded, as she understood some of her brainwiped copy's obedience. *I can give you that, blood of my blood. I can be anyone I want. I can be what you need.*
Simone took a sport-laser of her own, and grimly set herself to recovering her previous skill with as much grace as she could summon.
The next day, the cane arrived, and Simone descended and climbed the stairs from the top floor to the ballroom, twice, without assistance. At her second arrival at the top, she stood, one hand on the cane and the other on her hip, and fixed her daughter-copy with a haughty gaze. The worried-puppy expression on the clone's face only shifted a few nuances (adding in puzzlement), so Simone narrowed her eyes.
Her copy-daughter finally blanked her emotions, smoothing out her face and leaning against the balcony rail with perfect insouciance.
With a final study of the copy's face -- there was still vulnerability lurking around her eyes -- Simone nodded and paced carefully to her room, not allowing herself to pant or waver or fall.
"I think," she said as she got into her room, and then had to take a breath and adjust her pitch. "I think I shall take a bath now."
"Yes, ma'am," said Kato, and the sound of running water started up in her bathroom.
The Silver-copy asked, "With the cane?"
She snorted. "If it isn't waterproof, I'll send it back to Kevoni's."
"That would bother them," her daughter-copy murmured.
"As it should." Simone smiled tightly and proceeded into the bathroom, wishing that she didn't have to clutch the brassy cane-handle quite so tightly. White knuckles were not part of her carefully cultivated image of elegant perfection.
After deliberately dropping the cane into the filling tub, Simone hooked a finger into her collar and opened her biosuit down the front. A wave of dizziness convinced her that sitting on the edge of the tub was not out of the question. Besides, it made it easier to retrieve the cane and set it within reach.
Her copy-daughter had followed her in, and leaned on the cabinet opposite the coral-marbled tub. Her expression was more introspective than Quicksilver should ever show in public, but at least it didn't have emotions painted on it like a clown-face. Diffidently, her pseudo-copy murmured, "You should dry it off before you use it again -- it may not short out, but it is going to be more slippery when wet."
Simone chuckled deliberately in her throat. "Slippery when wet, eh? Standard for the persona..." She smiled teasingly as she handed the slick cane over. "Towels are in that cabinet you're leaning on."
The hint was taken, and her daughter-copy both dried off the cane and got a towel out for Simone. It was eerie to have someone else open the cabinet door, glance in, and pull out one of the large, fluffy, cream-colored towels that Simone preferred. Every other house-guest Simone had ever entertained in her bedroom had taken a moment to check them, stroke for softness, perhaps even unfold one to see if it were the large or medium size.
Perhaps it had been a habit, a reflex that was so deeply absorbed that even brainwipe could not erase it, Simone reflected moodily, dropping the opened biosuit on the floor next to the tub and swinging her legs over, into the perfect-temperature water.
She settled herself, pretending she didn't notice her copy-daughter watching carefully, against the tub-wall near the still-outflowing golden faucet. The water poured against her shoulder and down her front, and she leaned her head back into the corner. *Mmmmm... What was that fragrance again? Wood something... Ah, Berrywood.* Her thoughts still had a tendency to drift slowly into position, like someone jumping randomly in micrograv, but at least the simple things were retrievable. "Berrywood salts, Kato," she murmured.
"Yes, ma'am." A panel in the wall slid open after a moment, with the desired additive to the front.
With extreme caution and care, Simone reached over, took the bath salts, and spooned out the recommended amount. Trying to put the lid back on, she fumbled it -- saving the jar at the expense of allowing both lid and spoon to fall into the water. Scowling darkly, she held the jar in both hands above her head and looked for some place to put it where she would be sure not to knock it over.
Her copy-daughter came over and knelt beside the tub to fish out the lid and spoon. Simone snapped, "I can--" before she could stop herself. As the clone looked up at her, Simone sighed out through her nose, banishing the spark of anger, and smiled, consciously ungritting her teeth. She shook her head, imposing self-amusement on her emotions, and held the jar out to be dealt with by more nimble fingers than she currently possessed. "Thank you," she murmured urbanely.
"No problem," her daughter-copy replied, sounding a bit uncertain. She set the jar to one side, dried off lid and spoon, and consolidated them. Then she leaned across the tub to set the jar back in its niche.
As her copy-daughter released the jar and began to draw away so Kato could close the niche, Simone reached up with her left hand, stroking the underside of her clone's breast with the back of her fingers. The resulting intake of breath was gratifying, though as out of character as the way the daughter-copy shivered and closed her eyes. Ah, well, a true Quicksilver would be far more activity than she could face at the moment, anyway. Simone asked, "Join me?" even though she knew the question was hardly necessary.
The other woman swallowed and straightened, undoing her suit hesitantly at first, but with more firmness as Simone only watched from half-closed eyes. *I am the center of your existence, aren't I, my blurred little copy?* She swung herself around, shoulders against the back of the tub, toes luxuriating in the outflow, as her copy-daughter slipped in beside her.
"Mmmmmm." The bath-salts had dissolved and were releasing their faint, soothingly rounded perfume, and her copyling sniffed appreciatively. "Cedar and strawberries?"
Simone giggled. "That's the usual way to describe it, though with a 'smells better than it sounds' following. Actually, it's a wood from Sparrion, a few herbs from Kintara, and those strawberries from here. I wish I could wear the perfume directly, but it goes rancid within five seconds of meeting my biochemistry. But for some reason, the salts are fine."
The tub was finally full, and the water stopped for precisely thirty seconds before the jacuzzi attachments started up. Simone watched her copy-daughter melting into the scented wavelets. *Been starved for decadence, haven't you?*
As they both relaxed, Simone reached out her hand, brushed the other's cheek and marveled again at how easy it was to draw her near. She didn't think she could hold her breath easily, so she contented herself with nibbling at ears and face and throat while her hands busied themselves elsewhere. She was quite proud of herself -- even clumsy as she was, it only took one hand (and the left, at that, for her right arm was holding them breast to breast) to make her copy-daughter cry out and arch and clutch her shoulders. Several times. She stole a little pleasure of her own, trapping one of her copy-daughter's thighs between her legs and arching a bit herself, rationing her energy so fainting would not be an option.
Afterwards, floating in the mellowness of endorphins and perfumed waves, Simone held her daughter-copy close, damp pale-blond curls against her shoulder and cheek, arms around her waist as her own were around the other's shoulders.
They were both wrinkle-fingered when Simone finally decided that she'd had enough soaking for the day. She staggered a little as she tried to lever herself out of the tub, and her daughter-copy had to catch her. Simone shook her head when she stabilized, one hand on the wall and the other on her copy's shoulders. "I really should stop indulging myself," she sighed, moving a little so she could be toweled off. "It's probably slowing down my recovery with systemic stress..."
The other woman looked up, faint distress in those cursedly vulnerable eyes.
"You're Quicksilver, you're supposed to be proud and amused to hear that sort of thing," she scowled.
Her copy-daughter didn't adopt any arrogance, but at least her expression closed up while she draped the towel over Simone's shoulders and fetched the cane for her. Simone smiled and nodded approvingly. Perhaps this little ingenue *could* be taught.
Letting the towel slip to the salmon-pink tiles, Simone took the cane and made her careful way back to her bed. Behind her, the copy gathered up the two biosuits and followed.
*Day four,* Simone mused to herself, *and I really ought to be working on catching up.* She rolled over to keep from bemusing over the abstract patterns in the ceiling any longer. *That* brought her sleeping copy-daughter into view, which was even more distracting. *I've got to get her trained and find something for her to do, or I'll _never_ catch up!*
She slid out of the bed and worked on some minor stretching exercises on the floor -- no toe-touching for her today. With a quick peek to see that her daughter-copy was still asleep, Simone crept to her wheelchair on hands and knees and clambered into it with little grace.
Her little fledgling Hawke only murmured a little and twitched a hand as Simone sent the wheelchair humming out of the bedroom and towards the official elevator. On the first floor, she paused, then turned to her right. She could spend some time in her office any day, but if her luxury-starved copyling was going to be sleeping in...
In her kitchen, she halted in front of the door to her walk-in freezer. "Kato, if Ms. Hawke asks where I am, tell her I'm in the house, working, and do not wish to be disturbed."
"Yes, ma'am."
Simone pushed the wheelchair joystick forward and entered the freezer. When the door had slid shut behind her, she murmured, "Seraphim."
The floor of the freezer sank, lowering her through the force-screen that kept the cold air from making her sanctum uninhabitable. When the elevator had reached the bottom, she turned the chair around and moved over to the house-computer's body. "Kato, I only want to work for a few hours here. Please remind me after two-point-five hours." She could usually trust her inner timesense with details like that, but saw no reason to risk it. She'd been convinced her body would never betray her, either, and here she was wheeling around like a hive-beetle queen... Minus the attendant drones (save maybe her copy-daughter?) and sick sense of humor, of course.
Kato acknowledged the order with another "Yes, ma'am," while she shoved the existing chair to one side in front of the console.
"Kato, display all data gathered for Artemis Enterprises and Selene Holmes."
The data was only two months' accumulation. Simone froze. *She was here. With that Diana. One of them must have done it...* She gripped the wheelchair arms, squeezing and releasing. *I was going to do it myself, when I got back, of course. I don't have enough space to keep _everything_, especially since I'd decided she wasn't Ungodly. I've got other tracks that are more interesting, like that Dillings fellow, or that hive-beetle smuggler. Or Tscheya... Mmmmm.*
"Display all data gathered for Vladimir Tscheya and NovaTech Station Two."
She browsed through that data for a while, then leaned back and murmured, "Vanished, is he? What, my sweet shadow, didn't you save him for *me*?"
Simone was back upstairs and in her office by the time her daughter-copy came looking for her. She glanced up from a polite "maybe" RSVP she was crafting, for one of Mrs. Hart's "invite everybody on the planet" so-called "gala events." The woman was a dear, but such an air-head at times, and without any sense of exclusivity. It might be a good place for Simone to be elegantly mysterious with her cane, though.
"Um, you had breakfast yet?" her copyling asked.
Simone nodded. "The usual. I may try something more substantial for dinner, though. Oh, was it you who wiped the records on Artemis Enterprises?"
Her copy-daughter caught her breath. "Um. I was trying to make room..."
Simone nodded crisply. "I just wanted to be sure it wasn't your Diana friend. I'd intended to do as much myself. Go have breakfast or otherwise amuse yourself while I finish responding to the most recent messages."
"Right." With a duck of her head, the Silver-copy left.
"You're supposed to toss off a salute," Simone snapped after her. Her voice dropped to a mutter, "Really, what *am* I going to do with her?"
She saved her out-going messages for a later perusal, to make sure that she hadn't said anything out of persona, and went looking for a snack. *At least my appetite's coming back.*
In the kitchen, she had to stand up and edge into the pantry, bracing herself against the shelves as she rummaged through various jars. "Applesauce, applesauce... Kato, where's the star-crossed applesauce?!"
A knee-high house-'bot emerged from its hidey-hole in a corner and whirred around, nearly underfoot. It extended a sensor to scan a shelf above Simone's head, then extended a grasping manipulator. From the ceiling, another manipulator arm emerged, grasped a small jar with an apple design on it, and handed it to the 'bot -- which promptly presented it to her.
"Good -- now put it on the table. I'm not able to carry things right now."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And grill me another English muffin! Don't bother cutting it up."
"Yes, Simone."
She made her way out of the pantry and plopped into the wheelchair again to oversee the scurrying robots while they fetched food and cooked it.
As a 'bot wheeled past, putting the plate on the breakfast-nook table, Simone started to say, "And move a chair--" She broke off with a "Nevermind" as her copy-daughter appeared and tugged one of the chairs away from the table.
"So where have *you* been?" Simone asked as she wheeled up against the table.
The copyling shrugged. "Around." She held up a plastic packet, half-filled with little ivory spheres. "Got Kato to synth me up some spacer-popcorn."
Simone slathered applesauce on her muffin. "So I've got some strange food-synth programs tucked away." She smiled her best enigmatic smirk.
Very deliberately, her Silver-copy slid cater-corner into a chair and propped her legs on the corner of the table. She unsealed the packet and took out one of the spheres. As she munched on it, she also hooked her elbow over the chairback, with the bag dangling from that hand. The whole posture was precarious as hell, yet radiating the confidence that she could maintain it without falling over, dropping the bag, or otherwise embarrassing herself.
"Very good." Simone nodded and bit into her English muffin, taking care not to drip applesauce on anything. "Very Quicksilver."
The other woman gave a casual shrug and tilted the chair back, balancing on only one chair-leg. "Hey, I'm good."
Simone sniffed. "Don't get too cocky with me, daughter. I'm the original."
Her copy-daughter let the chair thump back to all fours again and munched on popcorn spheres, face a brooding mask.
Simone blew air out her nose and savaged her English muffin. She was nearly done by the time her copyling had finished off the popcorn. "Trash against the wall there," she murmured with a flip of her hand behind her. "Can you fetch my cane while you're up?"
Her daughter-copy nodded and got up, pegging the crumpled packet into the trash-chute from a distance before leaving the room. Simone glared at the final bite of muffin in her hands, remembering the trivial satisfaction *she* had always gotten from doing that. She chewed that last bite slowly and carefully, to spare herself a bitten tongue or cheek. *My condition is temporary. She's not taking over my life -- just the Quicksilver persona. She needs me, alive and well, more than I need her.*
The pseudo-copy showed up quickly enough, and handed Simone the cane. She took it and pushed herself out of the chair. Though still uncoordinated, her strength finally seemed to be coming back. "Good. Come with me."
They set off down the hall towards Simone's office. Along the way, she asked, "So... are you limiting yourself to the Silver persona, or have you thought of taking up the family business?"
Her daughter-copy's head came up a little as she drew in breath. "I'd figured I'd do what I could as Silver, once you were back in action. I couldn't hide myself away for long. It's part of me, my blood. If I tried to pretend I was just an innocent bystander, it would kill me eventually."
Simone nodded. "Good. I'll have you check over some of the letters I was writing. You might have to take up the socialite role sometime."
Scanning over the messages, her daughter-copy made only a couple of suggestions, which Simone mulled over thoughtfully. She accepted one, but not the other. "I've talked to Yocinda before, when she had a problem I helped her with, three years back. She *expects* me to hint a little more strongly than most people will. Sweet girl, really. I think she's still got a crush on me." And someday, when the edge was off Yocinda's innocence, maybe... She was only three years younger than Simone herself, skin and eyes the lovely mahogany of a somehow-pure genetic strain. Mostly het, but she'd given off signals...
Her copy-daughter finished checking the messages and leaned back. "They look good to me."
"Then I think I'll send them." She reached over and tapped the Send icon. "There. I'm officially back."
"Congratulations, 'mom.'"
"Thank you, dear." She smiled graciously. "Now, since I'm officially back, I want a full data-dump on what's been going on."
Her copyling reached into a belt pouch on her hip and pulled out the little personal computer that she-Scherazade had bought from the Holmes woman. "I did up a written version. It's not entirely up-to-date -- stops three months back -- but it would probably be faster."
Simone nodded. "Undoubtedly. Download it here, I'll transfer it to the main computer later."
Looking uncomfortable while she sent the file, her daughter-copy said, "There's an earlier version of this down there already, on the off-chance something happened to me."
"What," Simone snorted, "could possibly have happened to you that would leave *me* able to see the data?"
"Well, Seth *did* show up, later -- he might have eventually gotten his Unar cache. And there was a time I didn't know if I'd have the money... Thought you might get played back into this head." She tapped her own, bouncing the white-blond curls there.
Simone let her lips go thin and tight, considering the mixed emotions she had on that notion. Then she shrugged, glancing away a moment. "What, and have me wake up *alone* on _Diana's Bow_? That would have been rather more messy. What's done is done. Off with you, so I can read this."
This time, her copy-daughter remembered a casual salute before leaving, and Simone smiled.
She was not smiling when she asked Kato to summon her little shadow copy. The diary was complete enough in the factual details, but a great many things had been edited out -- Simone was sure that there had once been personal content. More annoyingly, it stopped shortly *before* mentioning the station-raid.
She leaned on the edge of the desk as her copy-daughter showed up. "Finish it?"
"Yes." Simone considered the other woman's posture a moment. She didn't *seem* to be overly apprehensive. *Why would she have left off that part, unless she were hiding it? Could she be good enough to fool _me_ with her body-language?* Aloud, she said, "I finished what was there, but it's not finished."
"Hadn't gotten around to writing that down," the duplicate said glibly. "Okay, third night after entertaining our favorite NovaTech accountant-spook, I got a comm-call from the White Lady herself, wanting me to get over to her ship instanter. I figured his spell'd been broken, else Diana would have warned me. I told the Crimson Lotus that I'd sprained my ankle and couldn't show for a while -- they weren't happy, but priorities. Captain Ryder picked me up in the _Handbasket,_ I got in, told Ms. Holmes that I had dibs. She agreed with me."
Her copy-daughter looked pensive a moment, leaning against the desk an arm's length away, in an apparently unconscious mirror of Simone's pose. She traced abstract patterns on the desk with a finger. "I think she'd been crying, though stars know it's hard to tell what's gone on behind that visor of hers. Of course, when she's doing her 'I'm perfectly fine' act, there's no way to contradict her."
*Why would you _want_ to?* Simone wondered. *Stars above, don't tell me you're emotionally _attached_?*
"Anyway, we used the Superdrive to get to the station ahead of Vlad-darling and his tail -- our dear accountant Thor. One of the defense boats came out to meet us, but we zapped the pilot with hypno-beams, and I convinced him everything was what we said: his boss'd escaped a pirate attack that took out the comm, and he should escort us past the shields.
"When we were docked, we zapped everybody there. Moonfur and Captain Ryder went into the main part of the station with Morphazine. I went in the _Handbasket_ with Diana's 'bot-body and Larana, the Kylaran security, around to the concealed entrance to the secret side of the base -- the one that I'd scatted out of when I escaped.
"We hacked the lock, but the security fellow over there was in some kind of heavy suit, damped the beam that Handy.could produce. So Larana -- in her invisible battlesuit thing, mind -- walked up, unscrewed his helmet, and dosed him with Morphazine. I'm pretty sure I could get holo-recordings off of Diana, if you want." Her daughter-copy grinned at her.
The image was far too amusing for Simone to resist a small smile in return. "Definitely. I'd like all the data you can get from them."
"I'll send Diana some Email. Anyway, we got in, dosed the doctorling, and rescued Sorla Horvath, their next victim. She's apparently some economics expert from the university, got kidnapped for some reason. She wasn't awake much, mostly thought we were NGIA or something, I think. We dropped her off at Unar."
Simone blew air out her nose. "Yet another loose end..."
Her daughter-copy shrugged. "Sorry. I just couldn't leave her at the base, strapped down to that bed..."
"I understand," she sighed. "Go on."
"The doctor couldn't get into Vlad-darling's files... Oh, I should mention -- the passcode you used to get into his office? It wasn't changed when I got into his office the first time, and it was *still* the same after that. Saved us shooting the lock out. We had a few hours yet till Vlad-darling showed up, so we appropriated all the braintape discs in his office, all the clone samples on that side of the base, and his computer. They picked up one of the portable clone tanks there, too. Why, I don't know. 'Expenses,' maybe."
"Artemis Enterprises, pirate band," Simone mused.
She got a smirk in return. "Don't forget all the Morphazine we stole out of their medical supplies. And they had a lot of dubious supplies there -- Soothe, Morphazine, Credaline... While we were waiting, they discovered the mechanical side of The Procedure. Nearly everyone in the base had a stealthed neural implant, and the minifacs there were churning them out, too. I got a sample, they got a sample, we left a couple for our friend Thor to find and wiped the program from that minifac. I'm sure there were backups, though." The copyling sighed.
Simone sighed as well. "We do what we can. And when Tscheya showed up?"
"It went *smooth*. Captain Ryder and me took the defense boats for when he showed up, Bessie -- the _Bat_'s AI -- hacked audio-visual. *He* gave a story about being chased by pirates. Probably figured the _Bow_ was going to be after him or something. When he docked, we zapped everybody with the hypno-beam and pulled him and all his luggage out. Left his bully-boys in the entry-way, dosed with Morphazine, and I flew the shuttle around to the secret side, left it half-in and half-out of the concealed docking bay."
Her copy-daughter suddenly looked a little uncomfortable. "Ah, the _Pathfinder_ raid got mentioned, you saw?"
Simone nodded and pinched the bridge of her nose with fingertips. "That it did. So Holmes knows about that, too."
The other woman shrugged, guiltily. "Yeah. She fabbed up a card, handed it to me. I thought it would confuse the issue, so I gave her the real patterns. She encoded an orchestra version of the music on the back, though."
*Perhaps I begin to understand the attraction.* Simone suppressed the blackmail-nausea and let herself chuckle at the notion of using the ShadowHawk's calling card to mark the theft of a station director.
It was nearly revolting how her daughter-copy lit up at that chuckle, yet... interesting. "We left one propped on a chair in the middle of the standard entry-way, and another in Vlad-darling's seat on the shuttle. I left the door open to the secret side of the base, and did everything but spray-paint arrows to it. Moonfur hacked into the security cameras and their comm-system -- she found somebody else's there, too...?"
Simone nodded. "Sandra Houston had every right to be poking around behind wall-panels. Did you recover the equipment?"
A rueful shake of white-blond curls. "I'll have to ask Diana for that as well."
"Whatever. Go on."
"All right, so we dosed everyone with Morphazine one last time, just before Thor's shuttle got in sensor range. Then we pulled back, stealthed, and watched the show." Her copy-daughter giggled madly for a few seconds. "I can't describe it. The expression when he saw the card, him hacking into Vlad's office, finding out the computer was gone and nothing but a terminal was left there, waking up the guard Larana'd dosed and hearing about *space-ghosts*... And all through it, Larana's doing this deadpan innocent, 'I don't know what the universe is coming to when *respectable employees* of a *respectable corporation* are picking locks and carrying drugs!'" The mimicry sent her into giggles again.
Simone contrived to raise one eyebrow and look bemused. "I shall *have* to get a copy of that, especially the commentary..." *Among other reasons, it would be handy reverse blackmail if things ever became sticky between myself and the mistress of Artemis Enterprises.*
"I'll tell Diana. Right. So after that got boring, we woke up Vlad-darling. Strapped down in the auto-med with a psi-detecting crystal in his head -- it detected psi, and he got a zap in the pain centers." The copy's toothy grin was positively Shannon-esque.
Simone matched it with one of her own. "How clever!"
The Silver-copy shrugged. "We had to take the batteries out of his head-comp as well, to keep him from running some kind of catatonia program, but after that..." She bared her teeth again.
"The White Lady didn't hang around for more than the beginning, but Larana got some monowire while I cut his clothes off with a vibroknife. He broke right there, gave us the decryption codes. Turned out..." She winced. "Turned out I'd stolen *your* tapes from the start, in the few I grabbed when I escaped. All my nightmares of you *after* me were for nothing, praise the stars."
Simone herself shuddered, echoing fervently, "Praise the stars!"
"We'd brought along his little doctor, so we decided to head for Kylar -- not entirely my idea, but with Kylaran nobility for corporate security, what could I say?"
She wrinkled her nose for a moment. "Mmmm... Kylarans keep to themselves. *They* didn't find out everything, did they?"
"No way." Her daughter-copy shook her head, tossing pale curls again. "They only knew that they were doing The Procedure on him, and imprinting him on me, Quicksilver."
Simone shivered again, in mingled disgust and pleasure at the poetic justice. "So that's how you got all his money, and had all his puppets go to hospitals."
"Basically. He'd have done anything for me." Her copy-daughter looked repulsed as well. "I managed to question him about stuff, I'll write that down later. Turns out he hadn't gotten around to doing anything with the White Lady -- but he was planning to keep her around as a favorite after the Procedure and a bodysculpt." She went on pensively, "I didn't tell her that. Even when she was wandering around, looking so lost... She's too cursed civilized for her own good. I offered to let him imprint on *her*, since I'd terrorized him into catatonia on the way to Kylar, but she gave Tscheya to me..."
"Did she..." Simone murmured, feeling her Shannon-aspect stir, dreaming of blood.
"Yeah." Her copy-daughter looked down and shrugged.
After a few moments, Simone realized that the Silver-copy was trying to be evasive. "Don't tell me you screwed up again," she said, having to struggle to keep her face blanked of disgust, and failing to mask the harsh edge in her voice.
"What was I supposed to do?" her copy-child demanded suddenly. "He was like a stupid *pet*, and I wasn't too sure that the White Lady wanted his blood staining her deckplates anyway!"
Simone froze, frowned. "If he's not dead," she started carefully, "then what *did* you do to make him disappear?"
Her daughter-copy still wouldn't look her in the eyes. "We took a final braintape -- have a couple still from before -- and installed the one we took just before we woke him up the first time. Left the Procedure implant in him, and the psi-jamming crystal, and didn't put his head-comp's power cell back."
"And did *what* with him?" Simone reiterated icily, beginning to seethe.
"Left him on the bad side of New Boston. For the cops or NGIA to find. But he vanished."
"Vanished." Simone gritted her teeth and clenched her right hand around the cane's handle. She was almost sure she would be putting scars on her desk with the left. *Vanished, gone, still running around after you had the Ungodly in your _hands!_*
The copyling finally looked square at her, straightening her shoulders, eyes bleak. "Vanished. White Lady couldn't track him past one attempt to use his credcard. Don't think NGIA got him. Don't know where he is."
Her jaw clenched past her ability to suppress. "You. Don't. Know...? You *IDIOT*!" She lashed out with her left hand, knowing the gesture was hysterical, anticipating the jarring block on her forearm... It didn't happen. Her palm stung, and she lurched as she regained her balance, standing breathing heavily, nearly trembling.
The copy was just frozen there, eyes closed, arms barely raised, head slightly turned. She still had one hip against the desk. A clenched jaw and tightened brow were all that broke her apparent poise, despite the red mark on her cheek where Simone had connected. Simone clenched her prickling hand, her nails making sharp crescents there. *What did I do?*
*She's a fool, she let him _go_.*
*She's blood of my blood.*
*She's incompetent. She does not do what I would. Broken, weak, brainwiped.*
*We have one soul. I know what she was, what she could be again... What I can make her.*
Haltingly, she reached out. Her palm still tingled, impact-pink. She brushed the backs of her fingers against her daughter-copy's jaw, below the red mark, so vivid against her spacer-pale skin. Her copy-daughter flinched a little, partly opened her mouth.
Simone moved closer, sliding her hand up the jawline, stroking past ear, tangling fingers gently in white-blond hair. Her copy's lips were trembling as she kissed them; eyes still closed as she finally responded, kissed back, slid her hands up Simone's ribs and to her shoulderblades.
Simone trailed her hand down her copy's neck, drew back just a little as she hooked a finger there and began opening the biosuit, tracing the curve of the other's breast, down ribs. Their foreheads were nearly touching, breath warm between their mirrored faces.
She stopped at the hip, folded the biosuit corner back, and cupped her copy's breast in that hand. Spacer-pale, both of them, with nipple and areola becoming more vivid with each heartbeat, each ragged breath.
Simone stepped away from the desk and ignored chairs, drawing her copy with her, stroked up the other's breast flat-palmed, fitted the point of shoulder to the hollow of her hand.
Just the slightest pressure, and her copy slowly knelt, hands slipping downwards to the outside of Simone's thighs. She felt goosebumps as each hair on her body tried to become more sensitive, discern more touch, even through the bioplastic of her suit. She also knelt, careful to balance with cane and the hand on her copy's shoulder. Then she drew her copy down further.
It was surreal, dreamlike. Without words, only touch and pressure, and yet her copy responded perfectly, flawlessly, to everything she wanted.
Afterwards, she pillowed one shoulder against her crumpled heap of biosuit and gathered her daughter-copy against her, rocking her when she unexpectedly cried, humming soothingly till she stopped.
Later, Simone had to be helped back to her bed, one arm 'round her daughter-copy's shoulders and the other hand clutching her cane. She dropped the cane beside the bed, reached up to turn her copy-daughter's face toward her. She wasn't sure why she was searching her copy's expression, what she was looking for, or if she found it. Her supporting arm gave out and she had to lie down, hand trailing down her Silver-copy's bare arm to wrap loosely 'round the wrist.
Her daughter-copy's unfocused gaze finally resolved into a faint frown. She looked over her shoulder, towards the bedroom door, then back to Simone. Simone nodded and released her wrist so she could go fetch up their biosuits.
She was asleep before her Silverling returned.
It was evening, 19:21:05, by the time she woke up. *Trashed my sleep cycles,* she thought as she stared at the ceiling. When she looked to the other side of the bed, no one was there. She frowned and looked around the room. Nobody. Her cane was on the floor, within easy reach and next to her neatly folded biosuit.
She took the cane and headed for her bathroom. *Ah, of course.* Her daughter-copy was at her makeup table, chin on tucked-up knees, arms around legs, staring into the mirror. The red mark had faded entirely. She went very still when Simone's reflection appeared in the glass.
Simone herself paused a moment in the doorway, trying to analyze the non-expression. She finally nodded in strangely troubled approval and flipped up the commode lid, privacy preserved by the towel cabinet that was between the toilet (right next to the door) and her makeup chair, in the other corner.
She dealt with what her bladder'd complained about, but stayed sitting. "Did you write down Vlad-dear's plans? There might be some clues about where he'd gone. I can get some Memory-Beta if you want..."
Her copy-daughter shook her head slightly. "I haven't written down the first draft yet. I'll work on that, then you can run me through it on Memory-Beta."
Simone nodded. "A good plan. I'll fetch the 'Beta for when you're ready." She finished the toilet processes and left, putting on her suit before she went to her workroom.
The writing and reading of the report, and the following Memory-Beta assisted debriefing, ran till past midnight. It went well enough, though they hit one laughing jag ("respectable employee" again) and two bouts of near-hysterical tears. Her daughter-copy wouldn't explain what the first one was for. That was a shock, and Simone had to abort a reach for the Credaline she hadn't brought; she wasn't used to interrogating a willing, un-credded subject.
The second spate of crying got answered eventually, after much coaxing and a bit of cuddling. Apparently, for reasons of pity and curiosity and revenge-lust, her little blurred copy had done her best to rape Tscheya -- and naturally regretted it afterwards. Simone initial reaction was a combination of disgust and understanding, and other emotions that she squelched ruthlessly.
When she was sure that she'd dragged her daughter-copy through every moment with dear Vlad at least once, and recorded every word said to or by him, Simone administered Purge. Her Silverling slumped into her arms immediately, shuddering. "Stars," she whispered. "That's *still* awful."
"Useful, though," Simone reassured her, stroking her white-blond hair. "I'll go through it later, do some more work. There's a chance I'll be able to trace him where Holmes couldn't."
"Good," she croaked. "Ah, stars... I'm tired. Feels like I *lived* all that over again."
"That's why we're in one of the spare bedrooms, my little one," Simone smiled. "Here, lie down..." She'd known she wouldn't be able to help her daughter-copy even from a chair to a bed, and didn't particularly want the memory of an interrogation in *her* bedroom. She had enough spare bedrooms to make one "uninhabitable" to her fledgling.
"There," Simone murmured, pulling the blanket over her copy-daughter's shoulders. "That's right. Sleep now." She stayed by the bed, stroking that fascinatingly soft hair, until her daughter-copy finally relaxed. Then Simone went as quietly as she could, down to her workroom to puzzle over vague hints and potential trails for the next three hours and forty-nine minutes.
*And on the fifth day, the Seraphim tore her hair out in tufts.* Between the way her mind was dragging -- she'd almost gotten used to it, but it truly annoyed her when she was looking for hunches -- and her utterly twisted sado-narsey dreams, Simone hadn't come up with something brilliant by means of tracking Tscheya. *Curse it, I'm _better_ than some ivory-tower corporate genius. I should at least know where to start looking, have some way to narrow it...*
It was, plainly, a job for Sherinford: much tedious footwork and discreet questioning of the locals. Also plainly, she wasn't yet ready to take up that mantle just yet -- since when she did, she'd have to be able to spin a story that would keep Occident from wondering about her triple identities. And while Jim was an annoying lech, without the slightest concept that any woman would *want* to say no to him, *and* a hotshot cowboy of a private investigator -- he wasn't stupid, nor entirely easy to lie to.
At least she'd felt well enough to have a real breakfast of an omelet, instead of ever-present English muffins. She'd insisted that her copy-daughter have one as well, as "One never knows what a persona might want to eat. Having a socialite who's more at home with ration bars and protein drinks *will* make people curious."
Simone leaned back in her office chair, kicking her heels beneath her desk. Finally she sighed and sent the Tscheya-data back down to her workroom. "I'm just going to have to wait until either he tips his hand, or I'm well enough to go ask questions of everyone in the neighborhood." She transferred to her wheelchair and headed for the media room.
On the way, she said, "Kato, ask Ms. Hawke if she wants to watch a movie."
"Yes, ma'am." A pause. "She says she will be right up."
"Good. Tell her it's the room with the wide-angle holo-'mitter."
"Yes, Simone. She says, 'Gotcha.'"
"Good kid. Thanks, Kato."
She'd called up the first of the old flatscreen "Pink Panther" movies, lounging on the folded-out couch-bed, by the time her copy-daughter showed up.
"Had to put away the sport-laser," was the explanation.
Simone nodded. "Now, pay attention to this flatscreen, for there may be a quiz later..."
The movie itself was perfectly comfortable. After it was done, and credits rolled away into the ceiling, though...
She had her back propped up against the back-cushions of the couch. Her daughter-copy had stretched and slid down, so that she now gazed up, nearly upside down, at Simone, one arm crooked under her head. Simone'd seen the occasional housecat in similar poses, and seeing it in her copy-daughter... It was a pose at once sweet, amusing, and jarring. It didn't go with the white-blond curls and glittering blue eyes of Quicksilver. Quicksilver was many things, but "cute" was never one of them. The only image Simone could think of as *more* disturbing would be Shannon in the middle of Scherazade's stuffed-toy-overloaded bed.
The open expression faded on her daughter-copy's face, making Simone aware she was frowning slightly. She waved one hand vaguely before rubbing her forehead with it. "That pose," she explained. "It's not very Quicksilver. Scherazade, more like. Maybe Serena in a weird mood, but not Quicksilver. Quicksilver's never... cute."
"Sorry." Her Silver-copy rolled herself over in one smooth, boneless motion, propping herself up on folded arms. "This better?"
Simone nodded. "Yes. Face needs more... mmm. Irony," she lectured. "Quicksilver should always give the impression that she knows something amusing the rest of the universe doesn't."
Her daughter-copy crooked her eyebrows a little and raised her head up.
"Yes, good. Perfect." Again, Simone was struck by the utterly unreasonable sensation that this clone was taking over her reality. She frowned and ignored the chills in her belly.
The frown apparently ripped right through the persona, because the supercilious expression changed to slightly hurt worry, with the tiniest cringe.
"Stars, don't *do* that," Simone snapped. "I was just thinking of something!"
The errant emotions faded to a closed watchfulness. It didn't fit Quicksilver, but at least it was neutral instead of blending into some other persona.
Simone took a breath, found something to frown about. "I couldn't find any leads on Tscheya, and I'm not ready to go canvas that neighborhood as Sheri yet."
"I could do that," her daughter-copy murmured.
"No!" Simone gritted her teeth against the stupidly possessive reaction. "You're not ready either -- I don't think you could fool Jim over any length of time, and he'd find out if Sheri were around. Not to mention I know which Organization folks to watch for and you don't. No, I'm going to have to wait until my brains are up to speed, along with my reflexes. Either that, or wait till something about dear Vlad shows up in the data feeds."
"All right."
"I don't like it either. Wish you'd hung onto him till I got there -- wouldn't Holmes spring for a freeze tube? You could have installed it here." She tried to decide if she were whining.
"I didn't want to push my luck," her copy-daughter replied quietly. "I'd already talked her into using that mini-cloning tank, for cheap. Way she was acting, I didn't feel like reminding her of the whole situation would be a good thing."
"Denial is *such* an ugly stage," Simone muttered, leaning back with arms folded. "It's so useless. Something happened. Deal. Get even. Don't pretend that if you ignore it, it will go away."
Her fledgling sighed again.
"Well, I suppose it's done. If Holmes catches word of him, she might pull you in again, or me. I... could work with her for that." Simone pursed her lips thoughtfully.
"She won't try to blackmail us."
"So you've said." She tried not to sneer it. "Shame you didn't manage to get hold of him on your own."
The copyling stared down at her hands. "I didn't know he was going to go after her. I was cultivating Kelly."
"You should have been able to do it yourself!"
Her copy looked up, glaring. "I didn't have the *time*! I didn't know what my debts were, what was going on, who I knew and didn't know -- I had to get you back before something crumbled I didn't know about! I didn't *have* any three years--!" She stopped abruptly as Simone felt her own face going livid, ice forming in her blood as the decade-old memories of Sparrion unburied themselves unexpectedly, cold as a lost spacer's grave.
"You *don't* remember," she hissed, clenching her hands on her arms lest she lash out again. "Go! Get out of my sight."
The brainwiped copy rolled off the bed instantly, and was gone as if through hyperspace.
Simone raised her fisted hands, pressed them to her forehead. It was part of braintape settling, it had to be. She wasn't so undisciplined, the memories were old, long forgotten, buried deeper than this...
"Three years," she whispered through the wet tightness in her throat. "You said, three years, and we'd've saved enough... A little sibling." She curled against the couch-back, pressing her face against the soft fabric and refusing to shed tears. She'd avenged them, avenged them all, and tears were useless and unnecessary now. *I wanted a little sister, more than anything... I want you back. More than anything. She's blood of my blood, but I want _you_ back.*
She stayed in the room, eventually clutching one of the couch cushions and rocking silently till the tears went away, for two hours precisely, counting from the end of the movie's credits. She'd recovered her composure earlier than that, of course, but it vaguely amused her to wait in front of the door for those final ten seconds.
The hall was empty. She checked the kitchen and lower bathroom, but they were equally vacant. "Kato," she murmured, "where's my clone?"
"The clone is sitting on the north staircase, five steps from the top," the expert system replied, matching her volume.
Simone considered, then aimed the wheelchair for the kitchen, cutting around the central ballroom and its twin staircases. The concealed elevator would do. She didn't have the energy to spare, neither to flay her fragile copy's broken spirit nor to listen to undoubtedly sincere apologies.
Once in her own room, Simone took the cane from the wheelchair's carry-pouch and made her way to the door. Carefully, she put her hand against it and slid it open a crack -- it was as soundless that way as she'd designed.
The copy was barely in view, huddled against the right-hand railings, shoulders slumped, facing away from the bedroom door. For a sickening moment, Simone thought of taking the concealed elevator down, fetching the crossbow from her workroom...
*No, Shannon, no. She's blood of my blood, for all her flaws. At the worst, I can spend a few more weeks convincing her to take up some harmless persona and keep out of trouble. Her vanishment now would only intrigue her friend Diana.*
She slid the door closed, again without any noise, and locked it. She went and locked the hidden elevator's door as well, before sitting on her bed.
*Something soothing and mindless, perhaps.* "Kato, display newsreader." Though she had to avoid alt.fan.quicksilver, for obvious reasons, some of the fluff-topic groups were amusing enough. After a time, noticing the quiet of her room, she even had Kato put on some background music.
Hunger finally drew her out -- she'd have had to unlock the door to her room anyway, if she'd had Kato bring her something. She took the concealed elevator, though.
Once downstairs, she stood in the middle of the kitchen for forty-seven seconds, contemplating the things that needed to be done. Deciding what to eat was not one of them, fortunately. "Kato," she ordered softly, "random selection for dinner. Has Ms. Hawke eaten anything in the past six hours?"
"No, Simone."
"Then two orders of dinner, served in the breakfast nook."
"Yes, ma'am."
She nodded and walked through the dining room -- cane ticking quietly against the uncarpeted wood floor -- coming out between the two staircases. She looked up and to her right. Her copy-daughter was still there, barely in sight.
"Are you going to come down and eat something, or do you intend to starve like an abandoned puppy?" Simone asked briskly.
Her copy-daughter moved stiffly to the nearer side of the stairway, looking down.
"Yes, you. I don't have anyone else moping around. Dinner's in the kitchen, probably within the hour." She turned and made her way back to the kitchen and breakfast nook.
Her daughter-copy showed up shortly thereafter, sitting carefully in the far chair and staring vaguely out the window, into darkness.
Kato's random selection turned out to be salad, with the dressing Simone liked, and (synthetic) steak, cooked the way Simone preferred. Her daughter-copy had no complaints, or even any comments. Simone resisted an urge to talk about the weather. When the other woman had finished -- at least half again as quickly as Simone was working on her meal -- she just folded her arms on the table and sat quietly.
Simone flicked an exasperated glance at the ceiling and chewed deliberately. *I am not going to apologize to _her_. _I_ didn't make her take up vigil on the stair.* Though the fact that the other woman *had* done so was obscurely satisfying.
She stabbed a chunk of the synth-meat with her fork, and barely kept it from flying off the plate. She set the fork down, hand trembling just a little. "There. Has got. To be a better way," she hissed at it.
Her copy-daughter glanced up with a cringe.
Simone waved at the fork. "I *hate* this! I've all the grace of an overfed grounder! I am going to *strangle* Seth if I ever meet up with him, no matter *who* I'm being at the time!" She raised her head to look at her copy-daughter. "Or maybe you will, for me..."
She got a return look of high dubiousness. "Me?"
"Maybe." Simone took up the fork again. "I think we'll start training in earnest tomorrow."
Her copy-daughter tightened her lips, glancing away evasively. "In another couple of days, that fringer ship's going to be heading out..."
"Well, then," Simone replied cooly, "you'll have a couple of days to decide if you want to stick with a bunch of misfits or actually make something of yourself. In my current condition, I can hardly stop you if you want to walk out on your life."
"It would be... wrong for me to cut out on them just before they leave. They've only got the two pilots..."
"...and neither are up to your class, of course not." Simone shrugged. "They were doing well enough with only one, when you ran into them."
Her copy-daughter looked uncomfortable. Simone held up a hand, palm outwards. "It's been a long day. You'll think more clearly in the morning. Leave the dishes for Kato and go sleep."
Her fledgling looked at her for a tiny amount short of nine seconds, then got up and left the kitchen.
When Simone finished her meal and sought her own bed, her daughter-copy wasn't there. She nodded thoughtfully to herself, unsurprised. "Kato, where is my copy?"
"Copy is in the bedroom closest the art-gallery," Kato reported dutifully.
*The one where we did the interrogation?* That *was* a little surprising. *She's going to have nightmares...*
She left the door open enough that an agile person could slide in, and turned on the light behind the loveseat in the corner. After a little fiddling, it was dim enough that it wouldn't interfere with her own sleep. She set her internal alarm clock for three-hundred hours, and changed into a grounder-style night-shirt before she snugged into her bed.
When she woke up, her daughter-copy was curled up on the loveseat.
Simone sighed to herself and slid out of bed. Her cane was noiseless in the carpet, and she discovered that she could move quietly enough if she were only slow and careful. She moved a bit faster when she got out of the room, but still had to be careful not to knock anything over in the nearby storage closet. Maneuvering back into her bedroom silently was much harder with the bulky crocheted blanket under her arm.
Even so, her copy-daughter didn't wake as Simone draped the hand-made blanket over her, nor when Simone leaned one of her bed's pillows against the loveseat.
She dimmed the light a little more, and went back to sleep, setting an internal alarm for six-hundred hours.
The next time she awoke, her daughter-copy was on the far side of her bed, wrapped in the knitted blanket.
Simone left her little copy sleeping in the morning and took a careful shower. As she was doing the final rinse on her hair (while sitting on the shower floor), she had Kato put "getting a grav-nullifier for the shower" on the list of things to do with any surplus cash. It might not keep her from falling, but at least she wouldn't fall very *hard*.
She slid open the shower door a little, snaking her arm around the side of the shower to where a towel hung by default -- and finally overbalanced for real, knocking the door open with her shoulder and missing her grab for it as she fell backwards.
She was partly twisted around, half-controlling the fall, when her hips struck the ground, she curled her arm against the side of her head...
...and impacted with something soft, and damp, that went *whuff* in her ear.
Simone caught her breath and carefully said, "Kato, start pricing grav-nullifiers for the master bathroom right now." She tilted her head a little, hearing the rapid heartbeat beneath her ear, and added, "Thank you. I wouldn't have liked the bruise I was heading for."
Her daughter-copy nodded. "I... I came in, to get a towel. I'd forgotten to get one. The guest-bathroom ones were too small."
"I suppose our timing is usually good," Simone said, starting to shift around and take stock of what bruises she did have. Hip, almost definitely, and opposite shoulder where she'd hit the door. "I think I'm going to stick with baths for a while, unless Kato can find a nullifier quickly."
Her copy-daughter nodded. "Good plan."
"Settling braintape or not, I'm not *totally* stupid," she retorted, finally sitting up. "Here, can you pass me a towel?"
Wordlessly, her copy-daughter did, snagging a slightly rumpled one off the floor for herself. As they dried off, she asked Simone, "You -- you wouldn't have seriously hurt yourself, right?"
Simone shrugged. "I don't think so. A nasty bruise, but no concussion. I've taken that fall a time or two before, actually, when I first got the house."
Her daughter-copy nodded. "So you didn't really need a rescue."
She towled off her hair vigorously. "I suppose not. Are you all right?" She looked out from under the towel.
Her fledgling shrugged back at her. "I think I skinned my knee a little." She pulled that knee up and looked at it. "Yeah. Ankle too. Nothing serious."
"Good. There's some ointment in the drawer..." Simone pointed, and her copy-daughter got up and fetched it, and they did some anointing of bruises and scrapes.
After that was done, she accepted her daughter-copy's assistance in standing. "Well, we'd better get dressed. I think I'm going to stick to the wheelchair today -- this hip's going to start aching whether I use it or not."
The unearthed memories of her time on Sparrion were useful, Simone thought. She remembered what she'd learned there, and how hard she'd pushed herself to learn it. *The basement's got a clear enough space, if we push things against the walls... She's been keeping fit enough, I think. I can see how badly the physical skills eroded.*
The answer seemed to be: rather a lot. Her daughter-copy's tumbling was tolerable, her dancing good enough that Salome's reputation wouldn't have suffered, and her knife-work would do in a pinch, but her hand-to-hand was pathetic. Simone called a halt to *that* in a hurry -- hip-sore and clumsy as she was, she'd have tried to show *proper* moves in another five seconds. At least her copy-daughter was more tolerable with laser and stunner and needler. Simone thought about having her try out Shannon's crossbow, but decided against it, for reasons involving the effort to retrieve it from her workroom and rather uncomfortable emotions that she didn't want to think about.
Simone had her daughter-copy plot astrogation courses and analyze planetary data, recite standard attacks to electronic locks and ways to discourage intruders with non-electronic means. She could also set a bomb (barely), and break down, clean, and repair most of the lasers and stunners in Simone's armory. Simone would have pushed her daughter-copy harder -- stars knew she *had* to have the instincts to handle it -- but her own brain was starting to skip tracks.
Draped over the back of a chair, her copy-daughter noticed Simone rubbing her forehead. "Lunch would be good."
"Food." Simone considered this a moment. "Indeed. A valid theory. You can vanish the silverware while we're eating."
Her daughter-copy muttered something unintelligible in the Sparrial language. Simone called her lazy in Irari. Her copy-daughter paused, put both hands on her hips, and swore a multi-lingual blue streak in true Quicksilver fashion.
Simone waited out the display, nodded, and said, "Adequate."
After lunch, Simone let her copy-daughter rest (except for doing finger-exercises with a game-token) while she pushed her own recovery with sport lasers.
After a time, apparently bored with watching Simone miss, her daughter-copy asked, "So why aren't you putting me to real work?"
Simone glanced at her in mild irritation. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Give me a target -- even an easy one. See how I do."
"You've got to be kidding." Simone missed her next target by several feet, and decided that she'd do well to quit before she got more behind. She wheeled herself into the armory proper to put the weapon away.
"I'm not kidding." Her copy-daughter had followed and was leaning against the wall, just outside the doorway.
"You *are* kidding," Simone corrected her. "You just don't know it yet." She wheeled out, heading for the elevator.
Still following, her copy-daughter protested, "I'm *not*. All this testing is well and good, but it doesn't say if I can take someone or not. Give me an easy target. Test me that way."
Simone rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation as the cramped elevator rose and opened its doors. She wheeled herself out of the elevator and steered for the kitchen. "The only time you're going to get a target is when *I'm* ready to select a target, and then you can *help* me."
"You don't think I could do it." The copy's voice was more introspective than challenging.
"You certainly haven't shown a talent for it yet," Simone muttered. Louder, she said, "I have a decade of experience that you're lacking. Your instincts are tolerable, but I have to be good enough to haul you out of the fire if you mess up or get unlucky. There will be no targets until I'm functioning optimally again."
"Or Vlad-darling shows up."
"Or that," Simone agreed. "He's a special case."
"Why don't you give me a crash course in being Sherinford? Then I could go ask questions."
Simone considered that for a moment, then shook her head. "No, the Organization won't have cooled down enough from the last stunt Sheri pulled. You'd be at more risk than it'd be worth, especially since I'll be able to take over that job in a few months."
"I could snoop around as Scherazade."
Simone swiveled the wheelchair around so quickly she was actually dizzy for a moment. "You will do no such thing!" she snapped. "It is *far* too dangerous for you to be wandering around getting into trouble!"
"Then what *are* you training me for?" her copy demanded.
"Who said I was training you for *anything*?" Simone retorted. "I'm trying to see what you can *do* first. I'll decide what to do *with* you after I've figured all that out. Until then, you're going to stay put and practice until I'm ready to take on a target."
There was a kicked expression on the other woman's face. Almost gently, she asked, "Then what good *am* I?"
"At the moment?" Simone raised both her eyebrows. "Not much. I'm sure that I can find something for you to do, but I'm accustomed to working alone. It might take me a little while to incorporate an apprentice into my plans."
"Then..." Her voice was still rather soft. "Why do you even want me around?"
"That's very simple." Simone turned the wheelchair around and entered the kitchen, heading for the refrigerator for something to drink. "If you're here, where I can keep an eye on you, you're much less likely to get into trouble than if you're gallivanting around on your own -- and less likely to get *me* in trouble." She hauled out orange juice and stood, leaning on the counter, to get herself a glass for it.
"You don't trust me."
"Fhhhh!" Simone blew air through her teeth. "Look, do you want to spend the rest of your life as an air-headed hotshot smuggler, or do you want to actually do something *worthwhile* occasionally?" She left the bottle of juice on the counter and took her glass over to the breakfast nook.
Behind her, her copy-daughter rummaged in the cabinet for a glass, and poured herself some of the juice. She returned the bottle to the 'fridge and perched herself on the counter.
"And now that that's settled," Simone said, "you're going to go over the tricks you can pull with an electronic lockpick and a three-stage password lock, and when you finish *that*, you're going to explain the theory and practice of hotshotting a civilian laser pistol."
"Yes, Mom," her daughter-copy muttered, before addressing the questions.
For the rest of the day, Simone endeavored to keep her copy-daughter too busy to ask stupid questions or demand unreasonable responsibility. With the floor set to maximum cushioning, the "game room" in the basement was a perfectly good gym for tumbling around in. Simone left her copy-daughter doing backflips after a while, to go and check some of her mail. By the time she got back, her daughter-copy was collapsed in the middle of the floor, sweaty and panting.
Simone thought that her copy-daughter could have pushed herself a little longer, a little harder, but decided that it wasn't worth the confrontation. Instead, Simone shooed her into one of the showers off of the hot-tub room. She took a careful shower herself in the next room, since she'd decided to soak her aching hip.
Her daughter-copy seemed equally glad to relax in the 'tub. Simone considered their various states of soreness and exhaustion and had Kato play general news, so she wouldn't be tempted to start anything narsey.
The next day, the seventh of Simone's recovery, did not start out well. Over breakfast-drinks, her daughter-copy said, "The _Albatross_ is scheduled to leave today. Fifteen-hundred hours."
Simone let her eyebrows drift upwards. "Have you told them you're not going?"
Her daughter-copy turned her head, looking out the window. "I haven't decided yet."
Simone rolled her eyes, setting her empty glass down. "Well, when you *have* decided, I'll be in my office." She picked up her cane and left her copy-daughter staring out the window.
She had finished with checking over the finances when her daughter-copy showed up in her office. The other woman walked over and stood in front of Simone's desk, fingertips resting lightly on its surface. Simone asked, "Well?"
Looking at her reflection, her copy-daughter said, "Give me something to do."
"There's always laser-practice." She closed up the finances program.
"I mean something real. A target."
"I already told you that you weren't getting any targets until I was back in shape. Then you can *help* me track down somebody."
Levelly, her copy asked, "Why won't you give me a goal?"
Equally levelly, Simone replied, "You're not ready."
"Am I ever going to be ready?"
Simone pursed her lips. "Frankly, I don't know. Brainwipe is more damaging than I thought. I'm sure you can be of assistance eventually."
"Eventually." The copy pressed her fingertips against the desktop.
"You're being very unrealistic about this, dear," Simone told her, leaning back in her chair and propping her chin on the back of one hand.
"Unrealistic..." The copy met Simone's cool, admittedly pitying stare for a moment, then clenched her hands. "You have no intention of letting me *ever* do anything of importance, do you?"
Simone stared in utter bafflement for a full second. "I fully intend to give you as much responsibility as you can handle. I anticipate you'll be very useful, eventually, when you've learned the 'family business' better."
A strange, angry, helpless expression was painted onto the other's face, as if with a holo-emitter. "I *have* responsibilities, elsewhere. I'm not a child."
"That's a matter of opinion." Simone frowned, trying to control her rising temper. Didn't her daughter-copy understand that this wasn't a profession for amateurs? Didn't she see Simone was trying to keep her *alive*? "You'll have things to do when you're ready. What *is* your problem?!"
The copy thumped her fists against the desk. "Stars... Dammit, Simone I'm *not* going to play the Holm to your Templar -- nor the Watson to your Holmes!"
Simone narrowed her eyes. *Idiot.* As if she only played the Game out of boredom... "You're hardly good enough to take a starring role yourself," Simone said, realizing her tone had gone mocking as she said it. "And at this rate, you never will be."
The copy clenched her fists, eyes closed and jaw set. "All right. Maybe I'm not a spook. Anymore. But I'm a damned good pilot. I'm good enough to be Quicksilver."
"So run back to your quaint little freighter," Simone invited her coldly, flipping a hand in the direction of her office door, and the starport far beyond it. (*She'd _run out on me_? She couldn't...*) "Just try not to get yourself killed. I can't have people killing the legend that I created, and it would be very inconvenient to come rescue or revenge you."
"Whatever." The copy stayed where she was, eyes open now, challenging.
Challenges had to be answered.
Simone stood up, leaned across her desk, and deliberately slapped the copy on one cheek, then backhanded the other. "You know full well you're not my equal," she murmured. (*But why not? _Why not_?*) "Come back when you're willing to accept that, and I'll see what use you might be." *You were _me_. How can you give this up?*
The copy's eyes glittered. She whispered, "Why don't you just kill me?"
*I was never such a fool.* Simone raised her hand again, this time to trace the copy's jawline with a finger. "You haven't made it necessary yet. Go play on your little toy ship." (*At least it will be safer there; you won't be in my way.*) "I'll send for you if I want you."
The copy stared three seconds longer, seemingly mesmerized by Simone's mere gaze, then turned her head forcefully -- as if she had been held in glue. She moved out of the office quickly, half a stalk, half a stagger.
From the entry hall, Simone heard the front doors open and close again. She paused for a moment, mind blank save for the ever-present passing of seconds, then looked over her shoulder. The copy was power-walking down the drive, to Safe Harbor's gates. Simone faced her desk again and sat down. "Kato, when the copy gets to the gates, let her out, then close the gates again." The copy had her computer, and probably a comm as well. She could call an aircab and get to the starport with plenty of time to spare.
"Understood, Simone."
"Very good. Now, display my email, please."
There were a few more invitations, and some personal correspondences. Simone read through them, then began composing her replies.