The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12)

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  He had felt nervous: What if Deshin wasn’t here?

  Then he realized that if Deshin hadn’t arrived, they would simply leave.

  Flint’s nervousness, however, had affected Talia. Or maybe she was just uncomfortable being outside the apartment.

  Or perhaps he was being insensitive, taking her to a law office after a bunch of lawyers had tried to destroy the infrastructure on the Moon.

  Deshin hadn’t made things any better. Talia had recognized him.

  Flint’s gaze met hers. They were of a height now, as strange as that seemed to him. But for the first time since he’d known her, she seemed like a frightened child.

  I am here for him. He has information that the investigation needs.

  Her lips thinned, but to her credit, she didn’t look at Deshin. Instead, she let Flint lead her out of the elevator and into the corridor.

  Deshin said something about being down the hall. Flint knew he was supposed to follow. He didn’t like this situation any more than Talia did. It felt odd.

  He didn’t really want to be alone with Deshin in a suite of offices that neither of them owned.

  Which investigation? Talia asked.

  Anniversary Day, Flint sent back, although he wasn’t certain. Deshin hadn’t specified.

  What can he know that you can’t? she asked.

  A great deal. His contacts are a lot shadier than mine, Flint sent.

  She sighed, then glanced down the hall where Deshin had disappeared. I don’t trust him.

  Good, Flint sent. Because I don’t either.

  I’m coming with you, she sent.

  I don’t think he’ll talk to me if you do. Wait here. I’ll make certain my links stay active. You can come and get me if you need to.

  She bit her upper lip, as if she were trying not to speak up, and then she nodded. Flint didn’t wait. He turned and walked down the hall.

  All of the doors were closed. The lawyers were gone—to a funeral, the automated reception had told him. He didn’t need to ask what the funeral was connected to. For the past few days and the next several, funerals were the biggest business in Armstrong, maybe on the Moon itself.

  Even though the Peyti clones hadn’t been successful inside any domes, there had been a lot of collateral damage, more than Flint liked to think about, and there had been some deaths outside the domes.

  He had ceased paying attention when he realized that Talia was falling apart.

  His breath caught when he saw the only room with lights on. It was a conference room. Deshin sat at the head of a long black table, his coat draped over the chair behind him. The exterior windows on the far side had been opaqued, but he left this one clear.

  Flint hoped that Talia wouldn’t have to come here to find him. This view from the hallway into the conference room might make her regress. Not that she had made a lot of progress. But at least she was out of the apartment, and she wasn’t crying.

  She had seen Kaleb Lamber die in a conference room filled with lawyers, through a clear barrier. She had tried to pound her way in. Kaleb Lamber had been trying to pound his way out.

  She had seen the whole thing, and she had found that more upsetting than anything else she’d witnessed in her short, eventful life.

  Flint slipped through the door, then pulled it closed. As he did, he had his personal systems check for active recording devices.

  “I’m leaving my links on for my daughter,” he said. “I promised her.”

  “You’ll be on your honor then.” Deshin did not stand up.

  Flint sat down at the other end of the table. “You’ll be on yours as well.”

  Deshin smiled. “We’re like old enemies facing a new threat together. We have no choice but to reluctantly trust each other.”

  Deshin made the moment sound like a grand adventure. Flint didn’t see it that way.

  “I think reluctantly is the key word,” Flint said. “And with that in mind, I’m not going to ask if Celestine knows about this meeting.”

  “Good,” Deshin said with enough emphasis to give Flint the truth anyway. Gonzalez didn’t know about the meeting.

  Flint tried to suppress his irritation. Gonzalez had been doing them favors the first two times she got them together. And then Deshin repaid her like this? This sort of bending of the rules was what made him dangerous.

  Then Flint felt a tinge of amusement. DeRicci would probably have said the same thing about him.

  “What was so important?” he asked Deshin.

  Deshin’s expression grew serious. Not that he had been smiling before, but he had seemed welcoming, friendly. All of that was gone now.

  “This morning,” he said, “I met with some people who claim they can lead me to the creator of the clones. These are not designer criminal clones. They’re something rarer, and much more expensive.”

  Flint froze. Here it was: the thing that would cause him to regret working with Deshin. Deshin was going to hit him up for money, even though Deshin was reputed to be worth five times more than Flint.

  “How expensive?” Flint asked.

  “Minimum, one million per clone,” Deshin said. “She told me that the buyer would have to pay for the nonviable as well as the viable.”

  Flint was glad he hadn’t let Talia come here with him. She would have hated the way that Deshin was talking about clones. Hell, Flint hated it, but he couldn’t show it.

  His daughter was more than a commodity that was “viable” or “non-viable.”

  And then his own thoughts made him freeze. She was, and so, in some ways were those Frémont clones. They had to feel something, think something. They weren’t just “villains.”

  Deshin had stopped talking, clearly noting that Flint’s thoughts had moved away from the discussion.

  “Anything you want to share?” Deshin said wryly.

  “No,” Flint said. “Please continue.”

  Deshin raised an eyebrow, as if Flint’s comment amused him. Then the amused expression left Deshin’s face.

  “Miles,” he said quietly, “if my math is correct, we’re talking a quarter of a billion dollars that we could trace just for the Anniversary Day attacks, not counting what happened last week.”

  It took Flint a moment to understand what Deshin meant. Deshin wasn’t talking about borrowing money from Flint to buy a clone. Deshin was talking about the attacks themselves.

  Flint frowned, trying to both change his expectation of where the conversation was going and to absorb what Deshin was telling him.

  Millions? Per viable clone?

  Flint asked, “Does that include the raising and training?”

  Deshin opened his hands slightly as if he was confused. “She implied that it did, but I don’t know for certain. She claims that she can put me in touch with the people who are creating those clones, but I’ll be honest. It’ll be dicey, and I’m not sure I want to go that far.”

  Flint wouldn’t either. But that was one reason he had contacted Deshin. He figured Deshin was used to dealing with criminals. Deshin had mocked him for that assumption, but they both knew that it had its basis in fact.

  The idea that Deshin felt going into business with the real creator of the clones was too dangerous put Flint on edge.

  “So,” Flint said, “is this as far as our investigation goes?”

  “No,” Deshin said. “I didn’t mean to imply that. But already we’re going in a direction I hadn’t expected. I don’t have that kind of money, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t invest it in such a long-term scheme, one that would take a minimum of 25 years and would have a high degree of failure.”

  Flint rubbed a hand over his face. Again, Deshin mentioned money, but Flint was too tired—too distracted—to understand if that was a request for a contribution.

  “I’m sorry,” Flint said, deciding honesty was the only solution. He couldn’t do the subtlety dance right now. “I don’t quite understand why you contacted me. If you’re not done, then what do you need me for?”
>
  Deshin smiled slowly. His eyes narrowed. Flint suddenly felt like the man could see through him.

  “I need you for money,” Deshin said.

  Flint suppressed a sigh. He hadn’t wanted to be right.

  “We need to track it,” Deshin said.

  “My money?” Flint asked. “Whatever I give you?”

  “No, no,” Deshin said, that glint still there. It almost felt like a test, as if he were trying to see if he could mess with Flint.

  Clearly, he could. Flint was off his game. Half of his brain was with Talia. Flint felt his cheeks heat. He was actually embarrassed that his thoughts had been so clear.

  “Years ago,” Deshin was saying, “someone made a huge expenditure on clones. Clones of two different Earth Alliance mass murderers, from two different species. It feels targeted.”

  “It does,” Flint said. They’d discussed part of this before. But not all of it. They had discussed this point before the Peyti Crisis.

  He made himself focus, and reminded himself that he didn’t have time for personal reactions, for a variety of reasons. Because of Talia in the other room, because Gonzalez and the other lawyers would return soon, and because he had the awful feeling that these attacks were just the beginning of something else—what he didn’t know.

  Deshin wanted Flint to understand something, and understanding was coming slowly.

  Not that Deshin had explained things clearly.

  “We’ve been acting as if there’s a mastermind,” Flint said.

  Deshin nodded.

  “And you’re saying there isn’t one.”

  “Not an individual in the sense that one person is financing it, and running it. I think this is a lot bigger.” Deshin leaned forward. “The amount of money astonishes me, and that’s what got me thinking. You’re a hell of a lot smarter than me about systems and stuff. I need a second brain on this before I go any farther. I’ll look dumb and obvious if I go in to buy clones of the Frémont variety if the previous purchasers weren’t individuals.”

  Flint leaned back. He finally understood what this meeting was about.

  “Obvious,” Flint repeated, because on some level, this wasn’t obvious to him. “They wouldn’t expect you to investigate this for law enforcement. They’d think—”

  “They’d expect me to investigate,” Deshin said quietly. “I lost a lot of friends on Anniversary Day, and several more a few days ago. Men like me, we’re known for exacting revenge.”

  Flint noted that Deshin didn’t say that he was noted for exacting revenge. That man was used to making context say a lot while his words admitted nothing.

  “You believe they’ll know you’re not serious about buying clones,” Flint said.

  “Yes,” Deshin said. “And once they know that, they won’t treat me well.”

  Such understatement.

  Flint tried not to look surprised. That amount of money, and all that it implied, had frightened Deshin.

  Deshin had threaded his hands together, to try to stop himself from twisting them. “I backed off when I realized the price of the clones. I can continue with the meetings, but I’m not sure that’ll be of value.”

  He was right. Flint wasn’t certain the sellers of the clones would let Deshin trace anything. They might try to entrap him. He might put himself in danger for no reason.

  Flint activated his internal timer. He had been in the conference room for twenty minutes already, and he had arrived late. He had no idea how long Gonzalez and the others would be gone.

  But he was interested in this conversation now. He understood the reason for it. He was glad that Deshin had contacted him.

  “If there’s no mastermind,” he said, “what are we looking at?”

  “That’s what I was hoping we could figure out,” Deshin said. “We might not have a lot of time here, but we need to be looking at this all differently.”

  He’d said that last week, before the Peyti Crisis. He had been right. Maybe if Flint hadn’t been focused on the Frémont clones, then he would have already figured out that this attack was too big for one person to pull off.

  “Here’s what I put together, and I might be wrong.” Deshin spread his hands, then flattened them on the table top. Clearly this made him uncomfortable. “Remember, I only have had a few hours to think of this too.”

  Flint nodded. How had they missed this? It seemed so obvious in retrospect. The cost of doing this scheme would have been outrageous…

  Unless there was a mastermind, who somehow owned all of the DNA used, and didn’t have to pay for the cloning. Still, any mastermind would have to pay for the raising of the clones and the training.

  That all by itself was expensive. And it would require decades of patience.

  For what? And for what reason?

  “What I figure is this,” Deshin said. “There has to be an architect. Or there was an architect at one time. Someone had to have the vision, and someone had to set that vision in motion.”

  Flint raised his head and really looked at Deshin. Beneath that surface, the one who had played that head-game with Flint, was a man who was deeply upset by all he was contemplating. The shadows under Deshin’s eyes, which had been visible when they were talking on the links, seemed even deeper now, as if just thinking about these clones made him ill.

  “This kind of plan, though,” Deshin was saying, “this kind of plan would take a lot of staff to put into motion. And dedicated staff over years. Staff that wouldn’t talk. And that sounds, to me, like some kind of organization.”

  Flint tilted his head. He hadn’t thought of that. But then, he was a loner. He had worked for the Armstrong Police Department as well as Space Traffic Control. But he never ran a company filled with people. He never even had his own division when he was in working in computers.

  Flint understood these things, but he had never participated in them, which meant that he missed details—things he couldn’t really know.

  Deshin, on the other hand, had an organization large enough that some called it an empire. Deshin might think that Flint was the smarter of the two men, but when it came to running businesses, Deshin knew a thousand times more than Flint ever would.

  “You’re thinking this is a corporation?” Flint asked. “That a corporation is attacking the Moon?”

  “I don’t know,” Deshin said. “That’s why I’m talking to you. Whatever’s attacking us has the money, and the time. Once I figured out the cost, I started thinking about the execution of the attacks. Someone had to put the events of Anniversary Day into motion. Then someone had to initiate the Peyti Crisis. Those lawyers—lawyers!—were in place for years and years. They’re not programmable like androids. And the masks weren’t something that could sit around for months and months.”

  Flint let out a small breath. He hadn’t even thought of the masks. Someone had given the Peyti masks that doubled as bombs. And those masks had looked relatively modern, but Flint had done no investigating since he found Talia in tears at Aristotle Academy.

  Oh, he had niggled at it. But he hadn’t really concentrated on it.

  “This kind of plan—it takes a lot of people, both human and Peyti.” Deshin was still twisting his fingers together. He didn’t like this either.

  The Peyti component should have tipped Flint off. If he had been thinking clearly, which he had not been.

  He doubted any human would have come up with the Peyti connection without a reason.

  “You don’t think they’re sending a message?” Flint asked.

  “That’s what the press has been saying since Anniversary Day,” Deshin said, “and it doesn’t make sense to me. The message is in the bombings, not in the delivery. At least that’s what I’m thinking.”

  “I thought before the Peyti Crisis that the clones were about distraction,” Flint said.

  “Look,” Deshin said, finally untangling his fingers. “Here’s what I’d do. I’d set up the attack. I’d have a back-up attack if the first didn’t work. Mayb
e one more failsafe.”

  Flint leaned forward. They had been in this room for nearly an hour, but he didn’t want to leave. He would face Gonzalez if he had to. He would pay her or apologize to her.

  Deshin was right: this conversation was important.

  “But, if you think about it, the Peyti thing, it’s not really a back-up.” Deshin’s gaze met Flint’s. “You know what I’m saying?”

  Flint felt like he was more than a few hours behind. He felt like he was days behind, months behind, like he didn’t have the capability of thinking ahead.

  Was that what whoever the architect was had counted on—that the normally smart people on the Moon, the ones who survived, would be so overcome by stress and grief and the very situation that they wouldn’t be able to think clearly?

  What about the rest of the Earth Alliance?

  “Just spell it out for me,” Flint said, trying not to sound annoyed. He wasn’t annoyed at Deshin. He was annoyed at himself.

  “Peyti, they’re lawyers, right, most of them? At least on the Moon. And the ones that were the clones, the bulk of them were lawyers, right?”

  “Yeah,” Flint said.

  “So, the bombs go off on Anniversary Day. They destroy the domes. Kill a lot of people. Even a few of these Peyti clones. But think it through. They wear masks.”

  Flint let out a breath of air. “The destruction of the domes wouldn’t have killed them, if they were nowhere near the blast site.”

  “That’s right,” Deshin said. “They could breathe. They might even have some of those skin-tight suits that some Peyti have. Maybe they wore them that day under their weirdo suits.”

  Flint almost smiled at the description. He had always hated seeing Peyti in human suits. It made them look like starving children playing dress up.

  He tapped his forefinger against the table.

  It felt like his brain was starting to return.

  “If the Anniversary Day bombings had been successful, then the survivors would have met with Earth Alliance officials,” he said slowly. “Lawyers in particular, because they would have been privy to decisions that the dome governments made.”

  Deshin leaned his head back. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I just figured that, you know, the surviving bombers would need lawyers, and the Peyti would step in and destroy the bombers.”