The Ghost Brigades Read Online Free PDF Page B

year under the dirt. He noted the ruined skull, fatally misshaped by the shotgun blast that carried away its top third, along with the life of its owner, the man who might have betrayed humanity to three alien races. Then he looked up at Captain Winters, Phoenix Station’s medical examiner.
    â€œTell me this is Dr. Boutin’s body,” Colonel Robbins said.
    â€œWell, it is,” said Winters. “And yet it’s not .”
    â€œYou know, Ted, that’s exactly the sort of qualified statement that’s going to get my ass reamed when I report to General Mattson,” Colonel Robbins said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to be more forthcoming.”
    â€œSorry, Jim,” Captain Winters said, and pointed to the corpse on the table. “Genetically speaking, that’s your man,” Winters said. “Dr. Boutin was a colonist, which meant he’s never been swapped into a military body. This means that his body has all his original DNA. I did the standard genetics testing. This body has Boutin’s DNA—and just for fun I did a mitochondrial RNA test as well. That matched too.”
    â€œSo what’s the problem?” Robbins asked.
    â€œThe problem is with bone growth,” Winters said. “In the real universe, human bone growth fluctuates based on environmental factors, like nutrition or exercise. If you spend time on a high-gravity world and then move to one with lower gravity, that’s going to influence how your bones grow. If you break a bone, that’s going to show up too. Your entire life history shows up in bone development.”
    Winters reached over and picked up part of the corpse’s left leg, which had been sheared from the rest of the body, and pointed to the cross-section of the femur visible there. “This body’s bone development is exceptionally regular. There’s no record of environmental or accidental events on its development, just a pattern of bone growth consistent with excellent nutrition and low stress.”
    â€œBoutin was from Phoenix,” Robbins said. “It’s been colonized for two hundred years. It’s not like he grew up on a backwater colony where they’re struggling to feed and protect themselves.”
    â€œMaybe not, but it still doesn’t match up,” Winters said. “You can live in the most civilized place in human space and still fall down a flight of stairs or break a bone playing sports. It’s possible that you can get through life without even a greenstick fracture, but do you know anyone who’s done it?” Robbins shook his head. “This guy did. But actually he didn’t, since his medical records show he broke his leg, this leg”—Winters shook the chunk of leg—“when he was sixteen. Skiing accident. Collided with a boulder and broke his femur and his tibia. The record of that isn’t here.”
    â€œI hear medical technology is good these days,” Robbins said.
    â€œIt is excellent, thank you very much,” Winters said. “But it’s not magic. You don’t snap a femur and not leave a mark. And even getting through life without breaking a bone doesn’t explain the consistently regular bone development. The only way you’re going to get this sort of bone development is if it develops without environmental stress of any kind. Boutin would have had to live his life in a box.”
    â€œOr a cloning crèche,” Robbins said.
    â€œOr a cloning crèche,” Winters agreed. “The other possible explanation is that your friend here had his leg amputated at some point and had a new one grown, but I checked his records; that didn’t happen. But just to be sure I took bone samples from his ribs, his pelvis, his arm and his skull—the undamaged portion, anyway. All these samples showed unnaturally consistent, regular bone growth. You’ve got yourself a cloned body here,