Chapter 5

Denver, Colorado May 19, 2031

By the time Calum reached the Leary house, he was happy to put the duffel bag down for a while. He wondered if he'd even notice that kind of weight after the Qiin enhanced him. In the two years since the first veterans came back to Earth, he'd methodically studied every scrap of information he could find about them. Most of it was bunk—speculation or propaganda from one side or the other. Even so, he'd picked out a few consistent details.

One thing all his sources seemed to agree on was that enhancement affected everyone differently. All recruits came out of the process at the peak of physical fitness. They all seemed to come out with eidetic or photographic memory. Beyond that, the process varied wildly. Pretty much everyone had seen the video of two veterans fighting by picking up cars and throwing them at each other. Other veterans had demonstrated supernaturally keen eyesight and aim, powerful leg muscles that allowed them to jump higher than any unenhanced human could, or the ability to hold thousands of details in their heads at once and think in massively parallel ways.

One of Calum's unspoken fears was that his enhancement would turn out underpowered or particularly useless and doom him to never advance. But, it was a small fear. Even the least of the veterans could wipe the floor with a normal person.

He put aside his concerns and rang the doorbell. The house looked like a tastefully whitewashed little fortress. Indexers didn't draw the kind of ire that veterans did, but they were undoubtedly involved with the Qiin and that was enough for some people. Beyond that, they were invaluable corporate assets. Able to interface directly with the world's networks, they made modern manufacturing efficient. Entire bureaucracies had been replaced by single indexers who negotiated the information spaces between companies, governments, and the Qiin at speeds no natural-born human could match.

Erin Leary answered the door herself. Colleen's mother looked more like her daughter's twin than a parent. That was no accident. Colleen and her sisters Heather and Holly were clones of their mother, created by the Qiin and vat-grown to puberty over the course of a year. When Calum had first met Colleen, she'd been almost completely tabula rasa. She'd been through the trainers and had all sorts of practical skills, but her life experience went back only two weeks. Now, she could almost pass as normal.

Beyond the similarity born of cloning, Ms. Leary's volunteering for the indexer program had afforded her access to an array of Qiin technology. As a result, she looked like she wasn't much older than Calum, even though she was almost twice his age. She wasn't a veteran, but she wasn't unenhanced either.

"Mr. Ogden." She smiled at him. "Colleen was hoping you would come tonight. She's out at the gazebo trying to talk some sense into her sister."

"Thank you, Miss Leary." Calum turned to go.

"I hear you enlisted," she went on. "Is that true?"

Calum nodded. Erin made him nervous. From Colleen's stories, he knew that Ms. Leary ran her family like the money-making venture it was. In return for raising Colleen, Heather, and Holly, she was drawing a salary and would get fifteen percent of their earnings for ten years. Even the vat-grown indexers who washed out during training could make seven-figure salaries "riding" the indexes created by the fully certified. To have two out of a set of three clones make it to the top was to be set for life.

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "After this, I'm headed to the airport for my flight to Victoria Station."

She made a sympathetic face, "Did your parents throw you out?"

"It would have been ... awkward to stay." Calum kept his features carefully neutral. Whatever problems he had with his family, he didn't need all of Denver gossiping about it.

"You could stay here if you like," she offered. "All of my daughters like you. And, I'm sure they would enjoy your company."

Calum raised an eyebrow. He was one of the few people who seemed to get along with all of Erin's daughters. Most people avoided all of them. They had few friends and even fewer in common. They were very different people who just happened to look exactly like each other.

"That's very nice of you," said Calum, wondering how often anyone applied that word to Miss Leary. "But, I'm hoping to get to the station as soon as I can. My understanding is that the more time you spend in the trainers, the better the enhancement tends to go."

"That is true," said Erin. She spoke like she wasn't speculating. "I do have an ulterior motive behind the offer, though."

"Of course," said Calum before he could come up with something more diplomatic.

Fortunately, Erin grinned as if it had been a compliment, "The next generation of my girls came out of the tanks this week. They'll be here tomorrow. And, you were such a positive influence on Colleen ... much better than the friends we introduced Holly to. I was hoping you'd be available to spend some time with them."

Calum smiled politely. He'd known for a while that his first meeting with Colleen had been deliberately arranged by her mother to help socialize her. The idea of trying to socialize three brand new feral clones scared him on a more basic level than going to war did, "Thank you for thinking of me. But, I really do have to go." He frowned, "I thought you were supposed to introduce them to people their own age."

Erin gave a snort of laughter, "That's the guideline, but my experience tells me that there are very few fourteen year old boys who have any useful social skills to impart."

Even thought Colleen and her sisters were more identical than the most closely matched biological twins, they were easy to tell apart. Colleen wore her hair long and maintained a single blonde streak to break up the red. Heather wore hers in a pixie cut.

The bright blue head of hair he spotted on his approach to the gazebo belonged to Holly. Calum grinned to see it. They ran in very different social circles, but he'd always liked the problem child of the Leary family.

"Cal!" She stood up and waved when she saw him. Her retro aviator-style visor was over her eyes, but apparently not engaged. She had a cigarette in one hand and a long-neck beer bottle on the table next to her. "Are you here to rescue me?"

Calum laughed, "I didn't know you needed rescuing. What from?"

"Everything." She took a drag from her cigarette, "Can you believe I got fired from a government job today?"

"That's quite an accomplishment," said Calum. "How did you pull it off?"

Holly waved her hand dismissively, "Misallocation of federal resources. I was using some of their spare server space to run a lucrative little side business."

She was so unapologetic that Calum had to laugh, "Now, why would you do that?"

"You're not the first person to ask." She looked up at Calum. "It was something to do in the long, boring periods when I was waiting at human speed. Besides, with the crap salary they paid, I thought it was a reasonable fringe benefit." She looked over her visor, "You're looking for the middle sister, I presume."

Calum nodded, "I am."

Holly waved her hand towards the pine forest that bordered the Leary property, "She's out there somewhere, communing with nature, but she'll be back soon. She's been waiting for you. Please, have a seat."

Calum sat on one of the long, white benches that lined the edge of the gazebo. Holly sat down next to him, "She says you enlisted."

Calum nodded, "I did."

"You have a death wish?"

Calum laughed, "I don't think so. Coming home alive is definitely the plan."

Holly flicked her cigarette away and fixed him with her full intention, "How do you plan to do that? The odds are one in 177."

Calum winced, "I try not to think about the odds. They're based on the first two years anyway."

"So, no actual survival plan?"

Calum shrugged, "The plan is 'don't die.' Unfortunately, I don't really know enough about what's going to happen after today to formulate anything specific."

"Your folks must be pissed." She said it casually, but was still staring at him intently. All of the vat-grown seemed to be imperfectly attuned to social gestures, but some had more blend than others.

"They're ... not happy with my decision." Calum made a mental note to keep track of tactful ways to explain his home situation. He might need to start recycling them soon.

Holly laughed, "You should have seen the top of Erin's head come off when I came home today. As pissed as she was at my losing the job, it was the fact that I had a side business she wasn't getting a piece of that really chafed her ass."

"Calum?"

Colleen was dressed in an emerald silk blouse and calf-length skirt of light cotton patterned with stylized orange and brown oak leaves. Her hair was done up in a bun held in place with ornamental chopsticks.

Calum had seen her dressed up more elegantly, but it was a long way from the jeans and t-shirts she wore to school most days. He opened his mouth to say something, but Holly spoke first, "Wow. I guess I should leave you two alone."

Colleen shook her head, "No. Mom thinks I'm out here lecturing you. Stick around. It will save us both a lot of grief. Calum and I will take a walk."