Consequences

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  He sank into his chair, put his face in his right hand, and rubbed his eyes. He knew the law. He knew how public this case was going to be, and how ruthless DeRicci would have to be.

  All the factors—the judge, the family politics, and Etae itself, not to mention the fact that Carolyn was a newly recovered Disappeared—would play all over the media. DeRicci’s involvement, as much as she wanted to joke about it, gave the case cachet.

  And Gumiela already had a sense of what a political nightmare this case was going to be when she assigned DeRicci to the case. DeRicci’s record this past year or so had been impeccable. Before, it was filled with reprimands and demotions and citations.

  Poor thing. She knew what a mess she was in, and in typical DeRicci fashion, she let her dry sense of humor speak for her. But he had seen the stress in her body, the way that the old exhaustion was reaching for her. By the time this case was over, she’d be as destroyed as she always was by cases.

  Maybe more so, because she had found a link to him.

  She had played fair with him. More than fair. And she would get in trouble for it if things went badly for her. She had given him a chance to run.

  He knew how. Every Retrieval Artist did. And he had more than enough money to survive for the rest of his life.

  Unlike most Disappeareds, he wouldn’t even have to change his identity or his lifestyle. Even if something went horribly wrong, and he got charged in this case, all he had to do was go to a world outside of the Alliance. Unlike many of the aliens cultures he interacted with, humans did not track their ordinary criminals to the ends of the universe.

  Only the really dangerous ones—the mass murderers—got that treatment. And, he’d learned, not even all of them.

  It would be so easy. All he had to do was clear the accounts he had in Moon banks, and take the Emmeline wherever the spirit moved him. He could travel for the rest of his life, finding new places to live, having adventures that would take his mind off Armstrong forever.

  If he were that kind of person.

  He raised his head. DeRicci had reached her car. She stood outside it, staring at it as if she didn’t see it.

  She had sensed the change in their relationship. Had she heard his warning? Because if he stayed, he would fight, and he would fight dirty. He knew more of her weak points than she knew his.

  He would survive, if he could. And he would do what it took.

  He had learned that side of himself a long time ago. He had a ruthlessness that most people didn’t expect to see in him. A ruthlessness that enabled him to survive the loss of his daughter and his wife, and to go against some of Armstrong’s laws in the first place.

  A ruthlessness that allowed him, in DeRicci’s presence, to slide a chip off his desk, hide it in his hand, and then use it to erase that card DeRicci had handed him. He had destroyed the information on all three chips in the card.

  He left the watermark and the handwritten number, although he could have deleted those as well. He had figured, even before she told him, that DeRicci had made a record in her personal log.

  She was a good detective, and she was meticulous.

  He didn’t want to be on the wrong side of her.

  Finally, she opened the car door and got inside. Then she leaned her head against the steering wheel.

  She knew, then. She knew how difficult this would be.

  Only she didn’t know the depth of his involvement. That he’d worked with the Lahiris for more than six months, that he’d found their daughter, that he’d reunited them—in a public place.

  She would find all of that out, and she would have the beginnings of a case—not necessarily for murder, but as an accessory. Particularly if she could show that the death of the Lahiris happened because Carolyn had returned to their life.

  He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. He felt an overwhelming urge to talk to Paloma, but he knew better. He had learned, in the last year, not to trust anyone, not even his mentor.

  To get through this one, he would have to rely on himself.

  Sixteen

  The bullet train took Soseki from Armstrong to Littrow in thirty-five minutes. Littrow was the dome nearest Armstrong, just over the Taurus Mountains. The Moon’s governing council had its seat in Littrow, a fact that had annoyed the citizens of Armstrong since the Moon’s domes unified.

  An aircar had been waiting for Soseki when he got off the train, and had taken him directly to the governor’s mansion. The mansion sat in the exact center of town, only a block from the executive office building, and two blocks from the council chambers. The mansion had—like so much else in the domes—been built from a Moon-based concretelike substance made of regolith. Only the regolith found in the Taurus-Littrow valley was the darkest on the Moon, and this building wasn’t the gray of most Moon-based concretes, but almost black.

  The mansion made Soseki feel small. He hated walking across the ceremonial sidewalk, next to the thick green lawn (planted centuries ago, and maintained with precision), to the tall front door. In the very center of the door—just above his head—was an old-fashioned brass knocker, imported from some famous building on Earth, and everyone who came to the mansion was expected to use it.

  Soseki hated grabbing the brass bar, pulling it back, and hitting it against the knocker’s frame. The action always made him feel like a child, holding something above his head and pounding with all of his might.

  The mansion’s door eased open—apparently it had known he was coming and had been instructed to let him in—and a digitized voice bid him welcome.

  Soseki stepped into the hallway, which was almost as wide as his office, and waited until a bot floated up to him, told him in a preprogrammed voice to follow it, and led him up the winding staircase to the second floor.

  Soseki had been here several times. The second floor housed the governor-general’s office. The entire floor had been turned over to the business of Moon government; Soseki doubted the governor-general even went to the nearby executive office building most days.

  She was waiting, standing in the center of her office, dwarfed by the ceremonial mahogany desk that had been a gift from the Council of the Governments of Earth when the United Domes of the Moon had been formed.

  The blue-and-gold rug beneath the governor-general’s feet had been woven in Glenn Station; the paintings on the wall behind her—of the Taurus mountain range—had been completed in Armstrong; and the rest of the furniture had all been hand-built in Tycho Crater. Soseki was certain that everything in the room came from various other domes, but those were the only things he recognized.

  The bot veered off. Soseki stepped into the large room and resisted the urge to wipe his feet before he stepped on the beautiful rug.

  “Arek,” the governor-general said, hand extended.

  He didn’t like the informality. He was here as the Mayor of Armstrong, not as one of her political cronies. “Governor.”

  She smiled. He’d always thought her smile impish and insincere. “Whatever happened to Celia?”

  He almost answered whatever happened to Mayor? but thought the better of it. He wasn’t here to antagonize her. He was here to get her to work with him.

  “I’m afraid I’m only here on business, Governor,” he said, keeping the formality in his tone.

  She assessed him for a long moment. She was a tiny woman who barely came up to his shoulder, and yet when she studied him with her large black eyes, he always wanted to back away.

  “You’re that disturbed by the Etaen hangers-on?” she asked.

  “Did you look at the documentation?” He regretted the question the moment he asked it. It sounded too harsh and critical.

  “Of course,” she said, turning away from him and heading to her desk. “We’ve let in other suspect peoples.”

  “The names Döbryn gave us are from known watch lists, and many of these people had some association with crimes committed off Etae,” he said.

  “I said I read the d
ocumentation.” The governor-general walked behind the desk and sat down, looking suddenly taller. Apparently someone had put the chair at intimidation height.

  “Then you know that these are people whom we can’t trust,” Soseki said.

  “Whom we couldn’t trust,” she said. “Now the Alliance want to meet with them to determine if their petition for membership is legitimate. And a mayor from a rather unimportant city from a moon—not even a planet—wants to interfere with decisions made by representatives from various parts of the known universe. Somehow I don’t think that’s right.”

  He felt the muscles in his shoulders tense. She had brought him here to reprimand him, not to listen to his arguments.

  “Governor,” he said, walking toward the desk, “she didn’t even give us the names of all the people traveling with her. For all we know, they could be assassins, hired to get rid of the Executive Council of the Earth Alliance. I wouldn’t put it past the Etaens.”

  The governor-general templed her fingers and stared at him over them. “You wouldn’t put it past them?”

  “No, sir, I wouldn’t.”

  “You, the interstellar expert. The man who has a history of working in the diplomatic service, the man who of course has traveled all over the known universe, so that he could form these opinions.”

  Her sarcasm was great because she knew that he hadn’t been outside of the solar system. She also knew his history. She was the one who had approached him to run for mayor of Armstrong when the position became available. But she hadn’t liked the fact that he was an independent thinker, that he didn’t always follow her lead when it came to Moon business.

  “I have studied the history of Etae,” he said, “and—”

  “Studied the history of Etae.” She tapped her templed fingers against her chin. “Of course, you did so on the nets and in databases and through other people’s writings. The Alliance makes a point of visiting the places that petition for membership. The evaluation process includes months, sometimes years of hands-on work before a determination is made. Your ‘study’ is, of course, more valuable than theirs.”

  “I’m not saying that.” Soseki had to struggle to keep his voice level. “My complaint is that Döbryn is trying to bring a group of unknowns into my city, without following protocol or the rules. She even caught the Alliance by surprise. They thought she was coming alone.”

  “They’ve already determined that she can enter with her security team. You’re the one holding things up, Arek.”

  He stared at her. Her return stare was cold, her features impassive. He wasn’t going to convince her with polite logic. He doubted he would convince her at all, but he had to try.

  “Do you know who Anatolya Döbryn is?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “Everyone has—”

  “They call her the Butcher of Etae,” he said, talking over the governor-general. “It’s said that she personally killed one hundred Enison in retaliation for her father’s death. Whether she did or not, she ordered the death of all the Enison in custody, and destroyed entire cities—”

  “Enison?” The governor-general tilted her head up. She had clearly never heard the word.

  “The humans who formed the Etaen regime,” he said. “You’ve heard them called usurpers and rebels, but they actually controlled the government for nearly forty years.”

  “I really don’t care about the history,” the governor-general said. “I’ve found political conflicts on other worlds are simply too esoteric for me. The details of Etaen politics belong with the Alliance, not between you and me. And you, Arek, are interfering with Alliance politics. If you don’t cease, I’ll have to override you.”

  He felt a desperation that he hadn’t felt since the days after the Moon Marathon, when he realized just how close to a disaster that event could have been.

  “All I want them to do,” he said, “is give their names and their DNA ident, and open up all of their backgrounds. If they have criminal records or are on watch lists, I don’t want them in my city. Everyone else has to play by those rules. I don’t understand why these people should get a pass.”

  “These people get a pass precisely because they’re trying to play by the rules.” The governor-general let her hands fall flat on the desktop. “That’s what you’re missing, Arek. They can’t fit into Armstrong’s rules precisely because their world has been at war for so long. The watch lists aren’t infallible.”

  “And neither are the decon units and the security filters and the weapons monitors. None of the Alliance members will have to stay in the dome after their meetings are done. But what if these people let another virus loose? What if they bring weapons in with them, ones we can’t detect? The Etaens are renowned for their weapons-making abilities, particularly for their abilities in subverting the standard security features of any port, and getting weapons into places that normally don’t allow them. And you want me to allow people like that into my dome?”

  “Our dome,” the governor-general said, “and yes, I do.”

  Soseki waited for the explanation, but she didn’t give him one. She simply expected him to leave here, and let those people into Armstrong.

  “They could be killers,” he said.

  Her smile was slow. “You claim to know your history, Mayor Soseki.”

  Now she was being formal, and he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because she was ordering him about.

  “But what you fail to remember is that terrorists often become statesmen late in life. Rogue states break away, fight for their independence, and then are forced to make a government. It happened here on the Moon.”

  Soseki shook his head slightly. “You’re talking about colonies breaking away from parent states. And yes, that did happen to us. But Etae wasn’t anyone’s colony. It didn’t break away.”

  “Really?” the governor-general leaned back as if she had caught him in a lie.

  “Not among the humans, anyway. The Idonae lost their battle for Etae. They killed the indigenous population and then the humans took over. No one broke away from any parent state.”

  “And yet a government was formed where there hadn’t been one before,” she said.

  “There was a government. They had a civil war,” Soseki said.

  The governor-general shrugged. “That government, if I remember right, slaughtered children. It—”

  “A child,” Soseki said. “It was a political tool. Other children died, on both sides—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the governor-general said. “Your problem is that you’re used to living in the established solar system. We deal with different issues. Someone decided to bring a young state into our world, and we’ll have to deal with it. You’ll have to deal with it, Arek.”

  Back to his name again. She was trying to cajole him.

  “I won’t,” he said. “I won’t take responsibility for them entering the dome. If you want to release the Etaens from port, you have to come to Armstrong to do it. And believe me, I’ll be all over the media opposing it.”

  Her entire body froze. The tendons in her hands showed against the skin. He had never seen her so tense.

  “Do that,” she said quietly, “and you’ll never hold political office again.”

  He shrugged. “Depends on whether you survive the battle, doesn’t it? I’m arguing for people’s safety and security. You’re not.”

  “Safety and security is an illusion,” she said. “Right now, as we’re talking, someone who has met all of the safety protocols of the port is walking into Armstrong and going to commit some kind of crime. And if they aren’t walking in now, they will. I can guarantee it, Arek. The more we pretend otherwise, the more we get surprised by attacks.”

  “We live in an enclosed community. If something happens to that community, we only have ourselves to blame,” he said. “I will not take risks with Armstrong.”

  “You’re not,” she said. “You’re taking a risk with the Alliance. We need the Alliance, and your actio
ns jeopardize our relationship with it.”

  “We’re all independent states. They can’t dictate how we conduct our day-to-day living,” he said.

  “They can and do,” she said. “To believe anything else is to be very naïve, Arek. We live in an intergalactic community, and it’s better to bring in outsiders so that we can control them than let them run amok all over the known universe.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. She actually believed that. She believed that the Wygnin and the Disty and all the other alien groups would do worse harm to the members of the Alliance if they didn’t belong.

  He knew better. He’d seen the damage that interaction with groups so different that they couldn’t understand the same concepts had done, not just to humans, but to the aliens as well.

  “I’m going back to Armstrong,” he said. “I’m telling the ambassadors that if they want Döbryn to speak to their group, they’ll have to do it without her security people.”

  “And if she dies while in Armstrong because she doesn’t have the protection she needs, what then, Arek?” The governor-general asked. “Have you thought about all the reprisals her government will take—all the illegal actions they’ll conduct against your dome because you’ve been so unreasonable?”

  He gave her a small smile. “If we continue to follow my rules,” he said, “they won’t get into my dome. No one from Etae will ever be allowed to land in our port, let alone cross through its doors into Armstrong.”

  She stood, studied him for a moment, and then shook her head. “I always thought you were a good politician, Arek. I thought you’d be an asset—a man like you, with your education, your sophistication. But it’s a veneer, and you don’t even realize how wrong you are.”

  “Funny,” he said. “I’ve been thinking the same thing about you.”

  “I’m sending the order to let them out of the Port,” she said. “By the time you get back, Döbryn and her people will be inside Armstrong, meeting with the ambassadors. You shouldn’t go head-to-head with me, Arek.”