Free The Clone Empire by Steven L. Kent Page B

her that I’m here?”
    The kid scampered backward a couple of paces on his hands and ass, then climbed to his feet and disappeared into the building. I would not set foot beyond the lobby of the girls’ dormitory; some taboos cannot be ignored. Doctorow might overlook my assaulting his three armed guards, but he would not look kindly upon my entering his home for orphaned girls.
    As it turned out, my decision to semibehave proved wise. The next person to enter the lobby was not Ava, as I had hoped, but the Right Reverend Colonel Ellery Doctorow. He stormed out of the elevator, came halfway across the lobby, saw the shattered door, and froze where he stood.
    “What happened here?” he barked in a voice that was nearly as loud as gunfire.
    Only then did I notice the blood on the ground. There was a small puddle to my left, where the second guard sat wiping his face. Blood ran down from his cheeks and squeezed between his fingers. The flying glass must have slashed him.
    “Your men pointed their weapons at me, I felt I had to take them away,” I said. “The blood and the door, they did that on their own.”
    Outside the door, that first guard managed to sit up but remained on the concrete rubbing his chest, his rifle still resting on the ground beside him.
    A dozen people crowded behind Doctorow gaping at the destruction that had been the door of the lobby. They chattered in tiny, half-whispering voices. No one came any closer than Doctorow, who remained thirty feet from me.
    I had come unarmed, and I remained unarmed, having given the rifles back to the guards. Standing there in my Charlie service uniform, I tried to look as harmless as possible. If the locals ignored the bits of glass and blood on the ground, the injured men, and the rifles, they might have found me charming.
    Attempting to compose himself, Doctorow asked, “What are you doing here?”
    The words had barely left his mouth when an elevator opened, and Ava stepped into view. She saw the destruction around me and gave me a somewhat motherly smile—the smile mothers must sometimes give their children as they prepare to scold them. She worked her way through the crowd and stood beside me.
    “What are you doing here, General? You know this building is off-limits to you and your men,” Doctorow repeated. He was right, of course; I did know. Until this moment, I had always honored that rule. Even now, I stood just outside the building. I had barely entered its threshold. Once the guards were down, I could have waltzed in at leisure; instead, I remained at the door.
    “I came to tell Ava good-bye,” I told Doctorow.
    “So you attacked my men and shot up my building?” Doctorow asked.
    I did not know how to respond. The way he spun the story, I was the aggressor.
    “Honey, next time, why don’t you paint your message on a tank of poison gas and leave it outside the building?” Ava said in her tart voice. Her sarcasm was biting, but it was not aimed at me.
    Ava saw things that completely skirted my range of vision. In the bigger scheme of things, Doctorow had fired the first shots.
    He lifted a hand to his face and ran his fingers along his beard. “You’re leaving?” he asked, sounding more in control.
    “I came to say good-bye,” I repeated.
    “You stepped way out of line, Harris; but under the circumstances, I suppose we’ll overlook it,” Doctorow said. What else was he going to do? If he threw me in jail, I couldn’t leave his planet.
    Doctorow turned and went back to the elevators, his entourage following after him like a pack of well-trained dogs.
    The three guards remained, though they now kept well away from me. Congregating in a distant corner of the lobby, they looked in my direction and whispered among themselves.
    “Thank you so much for not making a scene,” Ava said. Now the scorn focused on me, and I wished I hadn’t come.
    “Sorry,” I said. It might not have made any difference to Ava, but I felt embarrassed. As we walked