The Rule of Luck, page 19
At the entry gate, all attendees were allocated five extra calorie consumption points. I saw them pop up in the calorie monitor on my bracelet with a giddy thrill, then realized I had to use them at the festival or they’d be deducted within the next three hours. Then we were directed to pass through a weapons scanner. I went first and made it without so much as a beep. Petriv followed while I watched with interest. He came out clean as well.
I arched an eyebrow when he took my arm again. “I didn’t expect it to be so easy.”
“I’m offended, Ms. Sevigny. Did you think I would shut down the whole event with a secret weapons cache?”
“I think you’d do whatever you needed to get what you wanted.”
“Well, to your point, I wouldn’t carry it with me. It would already be onsite.”
“Nice to know I wasn’t completely wrong.”
He grinned down at me. “No, not completely.”
He stopped then, looking around the picnic. I followed his gaze, but also tried to determine in which direction my gut wanted me to go. We were standing in a courtyard, with plants and trees arranged to create pathways leading off in numerous directions. Though I saw no overt signage, a check of the CN-net showed the grounds’ layout. The smell of food wafted around me from the food pavilions ahead. In another direction, I heard playful screams and laughter, which must have been where the rides were located. Costumed performers danced to piped-in music, juggled, and worked magic tricks. This was one hell of a picnic; TransWorld certainly went all out when it came to keeping everyone entertained.
“If you win the bid, does all this stop?” I asked Petriv.
“People still need their bread and circuses, Ms. Sevigny,” he answered as he scanned the crowds. “Just because one thing changes doesn’t mean the world changes with it.”
I noticed a group of young women eyeing Petriv: five in total, in their early twenties. They were no more than babies, really, not even old enough to begin the Renew treatments. All wore open-back, tailbone skimming dresses that displayed their tats—sequined butterflies with holographic wings that actually flapped—as well as the latest fad in color-cycling filament braids, linked to their t-mods and changing color depending on their mood. I felt a spurt of envy. Stupid, yet I couldn’t help it. To them, I was a lesser being: an unmodified human, a spook. They were the future. Yet as different as each tried to be, they still looked the same—tall, thin, busty, long straight hair—all striving to reflect One Gov’s predetermined ideal based on gene decisions their parents had made before conception.
The girls stood by a pair of massive stone urns filled to overflowing with colorful hydrangeas. I thought of Belikov and hoped he didn’t cast me in the same light as these bauble-heads as they giggled and shot glances at Petriv. The most brazen of the girls gave me a pointed look, presumably hoping I would drop dead or go away. Part of me nearly laughed aloud at the idea of her trying to handle Petriv.
“You have admirers,” I couldn’t help but point out.
In return, his arm settled around my waist and he drew me closer until my hip brushed his thigh. “No need to be jealous,” he said, mouth close to my ear. “I’m flattered by the attention, but I don’t have patience for giggling females.”
“What do you have the patience for?” The words were out before I could stop them.
He hit me with the smile I’d caught back at the hotel. “I am constantly surprised by the ever expanding list of things I want.” His smile faded and his expression grew vacant until a beat later, he frowned at me. “It seems TransWorld is aware of our presence and is moving to intercept. We need to leave.”
I recalled the mess in Denver and what could have happened if not for Pennyworth. Petriv was right; we had to leave. Except…my gut said otherwise. I looked around as if I could figure out what to do based on sight alone. Useless, as usual. I couldn’t see what I wanted. I had to feel it.
“No,” I said, a hand on his chest to steady myself. “Not yet. If we leave now, we’ll lose…well, we’ll lose whatever opportunity you hoped to gain. I can’t explain it, but I can’t go.”
“Then what do you suggest, Ms. Sevigny?” I heard both frustration and amusement in his voice. “No secret weapons cache, remember?”
“Just…follow me.”
I walked farther into the gardens to where the rides were located. The crowds grew dense, the noises louder. I pushed through it, keeping a hand on Petriv’s wrist, afraid I’d lose him if I let go. Or rather, he’d lose me. The smell of manure wafted through the air, strong and pungent. A minute later I saw the reason: we’d stumbled across a petting zoo with real, live animals.
I entered the gated enclosure, unconcerned about those waiting their turn or the gatekeeper who barked in protest as we passed. Straw crunched and snapped underfoot. I stepped around small children, overturned food bowls, and a parade of tiny chicks. I led Petriv by the pigpen, past several cows, and around the goat stall. Something was there. So close. Only a little farther now. My gut was so insistent I would have started running if not for the fact that it would have been impossible given the crowds.
Past the sheep, I saw what my gut wanted me to. I stopped in my tracks, staring, trying to make sense of it. Pony rides. There were seven ponies in all, each a dull brown and white color, indistinguishable from one another. They walked a predetermined circle, moving with docile gentility. On each sat a child. The youngest was three or four, the oldest no more than ten—all girls. Beside each was an adult, either male or female, ensuring their charges remained in their saddles. It made sense for the youngest children, but not the ten-year-old. Looking closer, I noticed that none of the children laughed or smiled. Gods knew I’d wished for a pony often enough, and the fact that they didn’t seem to care struck me as odd. Some had contented looks on their face, but for the most part, they were blank slates without emotion. There was something…off with these girls, something that didn’t add up.
Petriv was speaking. Words came out of his mouth, but I couldn’t grasp their full meaning. I tore my eyes from the girls.
“They seem to have a form of neurological impairment, though I don’t have enough information to judge what the cause might be. That would require neural scans and testing to determine the full extent,” he said. I looked at him blankly. “The development of their brains and central nervous systems has been tampered with, causing a host of mental and emotional disorders. There are no other known cases of such neurological damage in the world at present. Genetics therapy would have eliminated it.”
“And yet here they are,” I whispered. “But there’s something else. Those things…You wouldn’t know this…I mean…how could you? How thorough could your background research be?”
“Say it, Ms. Sevigny. We’re rapidly running out of time.”
“They look like me.” I glanced up at him. “Back when I was a little girl. All of them. They are…identical to me when I was growing up. Honestly, I’d say they could be me.”
He swore under his breath. I followed his gaze and froze. Standing beside the pony circuit, arms crossed, overseeing the entire production, was my mother. Blond hair was pulled back from her flawless face; she was as gorgeous as she’d been in the picture Petriv had shown me days ago. She watched over the ponies, nodding at the girls when they deigned to look at her. These were the children my cards had seen. I wasn’t the only child my mother had produced. She’d gotten around the Shared Hope program regulations…Or had she?
“Clones,” I breathed in horror. “Those are clones of me.”
A beat of silence from Petriv, then, “You’re sure of this?”
“Wish I wasn’t, but yes, I’m sure.”
I didn’t know what to do next. Confront my mother? Pull the clones off their ponies and take them with me? But it didn’t matter. In that moment, as if she’d sensed me, my mother’s eyes met mine. A touch of shock crossed her face before it smoothed over. Then she nodded, small and precise as if greeting an old friend. Or an enemy. She knew me. Yes, she knew exactly who I was.
Petriv grabbed my arm. “We’ve got company. Time to go.”
Like at the auction, TransWorld security had found us. I counted four beefy guards closing in. Petriv backpedaled us through the crowd. Animals and people dashed out of the way as we charged by. I threw a backward glance at our pursuers. They were closing in.
“What now?”
“We run.”
* * *
Our escape from the botanical gardens wasn’t as dramatic as it seemed. Petriv’s people quickly stepped in and dealt with the TransWorld goons. We left unscathed with relative haste, jumping into the waiting flight-limo just outside the gardens. I wasn’t sure what fancy maneuvering had been required to have a getaway vehicle in place given the trouble we’d had on the way in, but we made it out with little fuss.
I stared out the flight-limo’s window, reliving what I’d just witnessed. I couldn’t think what it meant; my mind refused to process the details. My mother was making illegal full-body clones. Not just clones, but ones with impaired neural development. How did this relate to my blacklisted status? No, my whole family’s status? I drummed my fingers on my lap. I needed my cards. My palms practically itched with the need to consult the Tarot.
Abruptly Petriv placed his hand on mine. “I realize you’re anxious, but please stop.”
“Sorry. Nervous habit. Just thinking about running my cards,” I explained, feeling sheepish he’d caught me struggling with myself.
“You believe they will provide some insight?”
“I know they will. I ran them this morning and saw the children. I just didn’t know what it meant. Sometimes the readings don’t make sense because they defy my own logic. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I can refocus.”
“I know what she’s looking for.” He glanced out the window and ran a distracted hand through his hair. “In fact, I suspect she’s found it and is researching how best to exploit it.”
I watched his profile and bit my lip. “The luck gene. Did you know she wanted to manipulate luck this the whole time?”
When he swung back to face me, he looked so serious, I swallowed my questions.
“No, not at first,” he said, settling back in his seat. “I surmised it based on the research I’d uncovered, but I couldn’t fathom the expected outcome. First, luck is a fickle thing. How do you quantify it? What’s lucky for one isn’t necessarily lucky for all. Second, if she could mass-produce luck, no one would truly be lucky—each person would cancel out the other. No one would hold the advantage. There’s no far-reaching financial gain for any multinational if only a select few benefit in the short-term. Yet somehow TransWorld has found a way to profit from it. Perhaps not as they intended, but certainly in some way. It’s obviously through the children, but I don’t understand how.”
“Did you know about them?” I pressed. “Did you know about the clones? Did you ever suspect I was just a science experiment to her? That all she wanted from me was my luck gene?”
“No, I didn’t.” He said it gently, as if I were some wounded animal he might spook into fleeing. Maybe it would have been better if he’d told me some fabulous lie. But no, I refused to live in a cocoon anymore. “It could be there’s more going on we don’t yet know.”
“Neither of us believes that. I was a means to an end.” I sighed and looked at my hands. “I’m not going to whine about my life being awful because I grew up without a mother. It wasn’t. But it still hurts. She was there all along and I didn’t matter because she already got what she needed from me. It pisses me off knowing how thoroughly she manipulated my life.” I shot him a look from the corner of my eye. “You’re right, by the way. Part of me does want to kill her.”
“For making you her experiment,” he clarified.
“Not just that. She cloned me! Was the real thing not good enough for her? We only saw seven. Who knows what else she’s done? Full-body cloning is illegal, though she’s obviously not concerned by the fact that they’re not legally human.”
“So you’re not opposed to the clones. Just their treatment.”
“Everyone grows partials to replace failed organs; hell, it’s part of the Renew program. It’s that she’s taken some essential element of me and twisted it to suit her needs. The fact that I’m a person with feelings and wants doesn’t matter. In her eyes, the clones hold more value than the original. I’m a second-class citizen to…to myself. And what is she doing with them? Why would she make these…things and purposely take away their wills and thoughts so they’re mindless slaves? What kind of lives do they have? What does it say about her as a person that she could do this?”
“I would venture to say people have done worse with better intentions,” he answered. He sounded both unhappy and thoughtful, or maybe I was just projecting my feelings onto him.
“Funny, but that doesn’t make me feel better.”
We both resumed looking out our respective windows until we reached the hotel. Petriv climbed out before turning back to help me from my seat. Chain-breakers closed around us, escorting us through the lobby.
“Now what?” I asked after we stepped into the first available elevator. Three chain-breakers followed us inside, making for close quarters. My shoulder bumped Petriv’s chest. His hand went to the small of my back, steadying me. The move felt possessive and I turned my body into his.
“Now I firm the specifics for the next phase in the plan.”
Ah yes, the plan. For Petriv, I was also a means to an end.
The elevator stopped at my floor. From what Oksana had told me, Petriv occupied the penthouse one floor up. I wasn’t sure why we weren’t all staying nearer to one another or in a suite of rooms, but I wasn’t footing the bill.
“I’ll run the cards. I’ll see if I can come up with anything useful and let you know what I find. See you tomorrow,” I said, trying to edge toward the open elevator door. Hopefully I didn’t sound as pathetic as I felt.
Petriv had yet to move his hand from my waist. “I’d like to watch, if that won’t disturb you.”
The door started to close. One of the chain-breakers had to catch it with his hand. Sudden heat shot through me at the thought of Petriv in my room and my stomach lurched, but in a way not remotely comparable to a rough flight-limo landing.
“But if you prefer to be alone after today, that’s perfectly understandable.”
“No, it’s fine,” I managed after a ridiculous length of silence. “Sometimes it helps to have another person to trade ideas with.”
He smiled. “Good, though I’m not sure how useful I’ll be. I’m more interested in seeing how you work.”
“You saw in Nairobi,” I countered.
“Then, you were humoring me in an attempt to rush me out the door. This is different.”
Yes, it was. Then, I’d had another set of priorities and thought I knew how events would play out. Now I was at loose ends, attracted to a very dangerous and powerful man from whom my gut and the Tarot cards wouldn’t let me stay away. Frankly, it scared me.
“Just try not to get in my way,” I said, fighting to keep the tone light.
I stepped out of the elevator, waiting as Petriv murmured to his security detail in Russian. They didn’t sound pleased, but he ignored their complaints and followed me to my room. The door opened when my bracelet touched the handle, the lock keyed to the citizen chip in my c-tex. Thankfully, the door opened on the first try rather than the twentieth. The curtains were open and sunlight streamed through the sitting room’s filtered windows. Normally, I would have kicked off my shoes and flopped on the bed. Petriv’s presence left me at a loss as to what to do next.
When I looked back at him, he’d removed his jacket and proceeded to roll up the sleeves of his white shirt. He’d also undone another button on his shirt to expose more of his chest. There wasn’t anything sexy about it, I decided. It just seemed like he wanted to get more comfortable. It wasn’t his fault if it made me drool.
“The cards are in the bedroom. I’ll be right back,” I called, then dashed into the other room.
I caught myself in the mirror. I looked flushed and overexcited, and the green dress, while flattering, was too flattering. I needed to tone down this whole scene. After today, Petriv was right: I didn’t think my nerves could take any more stimulation. Diving into the closet, I found sedate flannel shorts and a cami, both in blue. I changed quickly, though I left my hair alone since Oksana had worked so hard to style it.
When I returned, Petriv was sitting on one of the settees, a low table in front of him. He’d closed the window shades and turned on a lamp. It made the space seem more intimate and my heartbeat picked up a notch. I had nowhere to sit but beside him unless I wanted to make a fool of myself and rearrange the furniture.
“Room service will be here shortly,” he said as I sat on his right. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. We did miss the picnic, after all. Plus I would hate for you to miss out on the extra consumption points before they disappeared.”
“True,” I agreed, shuffling the cards without thinking, their feel and texture as familiar as my own skin.
He watched me shuffle. “What happens next?”
“I think about what I want to know and how complete an answer I want, and lay the spread. Then I interpret what the cards tell me.”
“Are you always accurate in your predictions?”
“Usually, but it depends on how you slant the interpretation. For example, the Death card doesn’t necessarily mean death. It could refer to a change in your life, like the death of a bad habit or a new job, although not necessarily a good one. Or, it can mean exactly what it seems like it means. It depends on the cards around it, influencing events.” I started to lay a ten-card spread, concentrating on keeping my hands from shaking.
“Has the Death card appeared in any readings you’ve done about me?” he asked. I stilled and looked at him, uncertain how to answer. “Come now, Ms. Sevigny. I know how much you rely on your cards. I suspect your accuracy is a manifestation of your luck gene. I also think you’ve done several readings on how this venture ends, as well as on the key players. I just want to know what you’ve discovered.”
