Tool

Chapter two

The room was quiet except for the soft hum of electrical circuits powering the lights and ventilation system. What kind of life was that? Clones weren't robots. They might have been made, but they were still capable of emotion and feelings and everything else that made people people. Yes, Aurelia knew abstractly about the military class and understood their role in society as a whole, but she didn't understand why they were to be treated as nothing more than tools.

"Why . . ." she started, but she couldn't think of a way to formulate the question.

Nicholas understood what was on her mind, drained his coffee, and thought for a moment. "Because it's seen as efficient," he said. "I mean, the military should be focused, undistracted—there's no room for emotion or feelings on the battlefield. There's room only for cold, hard logic. In a way, keeping us in this fashion forces us to be cold and logical. It's quite apart from the biological dangers of clone breeding."

"What you've described is not the way things should be!" she almost shouted, frustrated at not being able to put her feelings into a better argument.

"Aurelia, I'm not saying it is. I'm saying I understand it, not I condone it. Maybe in the past, this was a good way of doing things. Perhaps it's what we clones needed to do, to be, to prove our worth and to save Earth from the war. Now, I can see no reason for it. We're no longer at war, and the chances of another war coming are slim. Everything is so strictly controlled that I don't see how the empire could possibly go to war again. The military class are security, nothing more, and there's no reason for us to live in the old way any longer."

Suddenly, Aurelia could see what a powerful politician Nicholas could be if he were allowed. How clearly he could argue his point.

"We have been created, and now we must be allowed more, or we must be destroyed. We have served our military purpose."

The words rang through Aurelia's head. "You're saying the clones must be given freedom of choice or . . . or what?"

"You heard me," Nicholas said. "Or we must be destroyed. Injected. All of us. Put out of our misery."

"Those are your choices?" Aurelia asked quietly.

"Yes. Those are the choices. No compromises. Simply because you created us doesn't mean you can use us."

Again, Aurelia was silent, trying to take all of the new ideas in. She knew he was right, knew what he was fighting for was the appropriate thing, but she couldn't see how it could come down to a choice between freedom and death.

Nicholas sensed her discomfort. "Come on . . . enough of this talk for now," he said, patting her knee. "Do you know how to play chess?"

She looked up at him, surprised. "No, of course not. Do you?"

Chess was an old game, and very few played it, particularly those who weren't ruling class. Workers had little time for games in general, and definitely not for something as complicated as chess.

"Sure," Nicholas said, getting up and retrieving a box off a shelf. "It's one of the advantages of growing up in Lunar. You learn all kinds of weird things, mostly from rich ruling class teenagers who want to slum it with the clones. I've got bunches of odd skills."

He set up the pieces and gave her a quick overview of the game, then demanded she plays with him. He beat her easily the first time, but Aurelia found her mind adapting to the strategies. It was a lot like diagnosis and treatment, something she'd always excelled at. You needed to look ahead at all possible paths and choose the one least likely to get you a dead patient—or a dead pawn in this case.