Wolf Boy, Chapter 2, Part II

Junad, the assassin, didn’t stop his rant. “He stays with non-Anthros. He stays with another manufactured thing.”

Lider caught Rhys’s quick glance in his direction. So it was Allec as a clone that bothered Junad.

Rhys said, “You think Panfilo is—”

“Made on the Moon. That monument to vice and hedonism.”

“Adult cloning was shut down five years ago.”

“That Anthros-looking boy was made and dumped on Earth before then.”

Panfilo was abandoned. But then fanaticism eschewed the kinder words.

Junad said, “Humans and Siphons belittle Anthros’s morality. They fear it. They want to destroy it.”

“Through a boy?”

Rhys's incredulity bled through—not much but enough, Lider saw, to raise the equivalent of Junad’s hackles, who turned his face away.

Rhys’s shoulders slumped. He stood slowly and crossed to Lider. He could see Lider now or at least shades of him. He settled at Lider’s shoulder, as if he could touch him, as if he would touch him the moment he could.

He murmured, “Panfilo was in the news right after he was discovered, before Quin and Allec became his guardians. Junad would have had time to get on the next ship to the station.”

“The ships were packed because of the Species in Space Conference.”

“Maybe he bought a ticket from a passenger. At any price.”

“Celebrity stalking.”

“All the way to Mars?”

“Obsessions are like that.”

“Or a dire need,” Rhys said and frowned.

Lider knew Rhys. He was cycling through all the options, like a Rolodex from the historical films Lider liked to watch.  

Lider said, "If I question him now, he'll shut down or lose his wits. Better save me for a dire need."

"I know," Rhys said, still frowning. 

Another possibility was for Lider to enter Junad's head. Rhys wouldn't ask it, not just because Junad was an Anthros.

Cubi couldn’t feed off Anthros due to a fundamental incompatibility in brain chemistry. Years before he was tagged, Lider would dive in the occasional head of a bear or cat or elk-type Anthros. The images were haphazard, swarming. Closer to real memories than the stories that humans so carefully constructed inside and around themselves, the stories Cubi relied on.

Diving into Junad’s head might produce a useful image but there was no guarantee and the investigation here needed to stand up to future scrutiny. Rhys had recorded his interview.

Rhys had another reason. Lider’s set-back a few years earlier had frightened him badly.

Lider had performed what the church decided to call an exorcism—and the church had given Lider the title of Canon for that action. Yet for over a month, Rhys couldn’t hear Lider, not even in dreams. A bad time. For both of them.

“Junad’s behavior does seem out of proportion,” Lider said. "A review of popular conspiracy theories might reveal a connection."

"As random and self-serving as memories," Rhys muttered, which proved he had been thinking of Lider entering Junad's mind. 

“We are sensible men, you and I,” Lider said and grinned.

Rhys caught that expression despite Lider's shadowy form and also grinned while across the infirmary, Junad kept his face turned to the great transparent wall that showed space in its glory—as if he could pretend that neither Rhys and Lider and a host of other sentient beings existed.

Maybe, in his mind, such pretense was possible.