« Spin State » Chris Moriarty

Major Catherine Li is a veteran United Nations Peacekeeper in a future of world–nations. Humanity has spread across interstellar space by “jumping: teleportation enabled by quantum physics and a bizarre crystal found only on Compson’s World. The jumps destroy memory, so jumpers back up their memories on computer. Despite this precaution, frequent jumpers still lose some memories, a fact that poses a far greater problem for Catherine Li than it does for other Peacekeepers. For Li has a dangerous, potentially deadly secret: she’s an illegal clone. When a UN mission goes awry, Li finds herself shipped on solo duty to Compson’s World — her home world, to which she’d vowed never to return. Her mission initially seems simple: to determine if the death of brilliant physicist Hannah Sharifi was a crystal–mining accident or cold–blooded murder. Like Li, Sharifi is a clone — in fact, she’s Li’s genetic twin. Li swiftly finds herself enmeshed in the intertangled politics of the UN, the multiplanetary corporations, the miners, and the human–created Artificial Intelligences, who have enigmatic agendas of their own.