The door opened. A tall man, with a pencil-thin mustache and matching eyebrows peered out. The eyebrows were darker than his chocolate brown hair, and Flint wondered if the man had enhancements for the facial hair.
“Mr. Flint,” the man said, hand extended as he stepped into the room. “I’m Evando Llewynn. I’m a coordinating therapist here at Armstrong Comfort Center.”
Flint took Llewynn’s hand. It was warm and dry, the perfect handshake. Maybe Llewynn had enhancements for everything. His face had a perfectly neutral expression, his hands were the perfect temperature, and his voice was modulated to the perfect depth and softness.
Flint felt himself calming, and he didn’t want to. He wondered if actively fighting the calmness was worthwhile. Then he realized how stupid that thought was, and had his links search for additives in the environmental system.
“I understand that you would like to bring your daughter here,” Llewynn said.
“I have questions first,” Flint said.
“Of course.” Llewynn seemed unconcerned about Flint’s questions. Most people in service industries would have wanted to know if Flint had looked at the data the business provided before coming in, so they would know where to start.
Llewynn didn’t ask, didn’t even seem to think of it. Instead, he led Flint through a corridor that seemed remarkably empty. The walls were bare, the carpets were just plush enough, and there were no doors.
At least, until they reached a small L in the corridor. There Llewynn stopped at a dark wood door. He opened it, and stepped inside, leading Flint into an office filled with more dark wood and cream carpets. The furniture was the same mixture of dark and cream, and looked incredibly inviting.
Still, Flint slowed as he entered, brushing his hand over the door. It sure felt like real wood, complete with ridges sanded smooth. The expense of having that much wood imported from Earth was staggering. Even using Moon-grown wood, from one of the Growing Pits near Armstrong was outrageously expensive.
When Flint had logged into the therapy office’s systems, the quotes he received for Talia’s care hadn’t seemed outrageous to him. Now he was wondering if the years of wealth had made him jaded somehow, if he even registered the real cost of something.
He frowned a little, not liking that thought.
Llewynn slipped into the captain’s chair facing the door. He rested his elbows on the wide wooden armrests. The chair looked like it was built for him, the seat extra long to accommodate his thin legs.
Flint took a seat to the side of Llewynn, not directly in front of him like a patient would. Even though the chair wasn’t all fabric, Flint was surprised at how comfortable it was.
Apparently everything in this office was designed for comfort.
“I understand you’ll be bringing your daughter here,” Llewynn said.
“I’m not certain about that,” Flint said. “You come highly recommended, but I’m going to reserve judgment until our conversation has ended.”
Llewynn threaded his fingers together. “I was simply going to say that sometimes, when we see a child, we find it necessary to bring the entire family in for discussions.”
“My daughter is sixteen,” Flint said, “and if you called her a child, she would show you how adult she really is.”
Or she would have, before last week. But he didn’t add that.
“Sometimes, a child seems adult—”
“Don’t,” Flint said. “I used to be a police officer. I’m familiar with behavioral patterns. We had to learn them for each branch, and I became a detective. I was a programmer before that. I understand the human brain, and I understand human emotions.”
He even understood some alien emotions, which he didn’t want to tell Llewynn.
Llewynn’s posture had changed ever so slightly. Flint suspected the man believed Flint hostile to therapy. Flint wasn’t, but he was concerned.
“My daughter has been through multiple traumas in the past three years. I’ve been able to help her through some of them, but she watched a group of people die at her school last week during the Peyti Crisis. It shattered her. All that strength she had built up is gone, and honestly, I’m unable to help her.”
“Why is that?” Llewynn asked.
Flint narrowed his eyes. He did not want to be manipulated, but he was.
Apparently, Llewynn realized his mistake. He separated his hands, raised them, and said in that maddeningly calm voice, “I respect your training and perspective, Mr. Flint. Which is why I am curious that you believe you can no longer help her.”
Flint bit back irritation. If there were calming influences in the environment—subtle ones that his links didn’t pick up—they weren’t working.
“I don’t exactly know,” Flint said. “It could be because this is a last straw for her, as one of my friends believes.”
It was a stretch to refer to Popova as a friend, but he didn’t correct himself.
“Or it could be because I was working for the United Domes of the Moon’s Security Office when the deaths occurred. I helped find the Peyti clones.” He didn’t have to say any more. The entire Moon knew what happened next.
Llewynn nodded. “So you believe you might be at fault for your daughter’s reaction?”
“No,” Flint said. “But I can’t summon the warmth I need to be completely understanding. It saddens me that people died that day, but if we hadn’t acted, millions would have died. It seems a small price to pay for all those lives saved.”
“Each small price—”
“Was loved by someone,” Flint said. “I get it, Mr. Llewynn. I know what we did, I know the effects, and I’m seeing some of the devastation first hand. But if I had it to do all over again, I would do it.”
Llewynn nodded. “All of this we could have covered in your daughter’s first interview. There’s something else you want to discuss.”
Here it was. Flint took a deep breath. He had to be careful here.
“I’m a Retrieval Artist,” he said. “I was one before my daughter moved in with me. I retired, but circumstances have reinstated me. I deal in confidentiality. I know secrets so explosive that if I reveal them, I will get even more people killed.”
“I am aware of the difficulties of your profession,” Llewynn said, without indicating if he approved of that profession.
“My daughter has helped me with some investigations, not through my instigation, but her own. I understand therapy. I know that secrets and therapy are incompatible. I have to know this: If I bring my daughter to you people, her secrets—our secrets—will never be revealed.”
“Are you asking for a guarantee?” Llewynn asked.
“I am,” Flint said.
“I’m sure you have already read our documentation that we will sign, keeping any information that we receive confidential.”
“I have,” Flint said.
“What more do you want?” Llewynn asked.
“It’s not enough to be able to sue you and win after information gets out,” Flint said. “I need a guarantee that it will never get out.”
“No one is perfect, Mr. Flint,” Llewynn said.
Flint’s heart sank. In other words, Llewynn could not give him that kind of guarantee. It was too much to ask anyway.
He took another deep breath to steady himself.
“Then,” he said, “I wanted to ask you this: Can my daughter come into this kind of therapy and retain some of her secrets?”
“Your secrets?” Llewynn asked, obviously trying to clarify.
“Hers,” Flint said. Her one big secret. The one that would destroy her with her friends here in Armstrong, especially considering how bad the anti-clone sentiment had gotten.
“She won’t get the full benefit of our services,” Llewynn said.
“I know,” Flint said. “That’s not what I’m asking. She’s in a bad way. I’d like her to get some kind of help, but if the kind you offer requires her to tell you everything, she can’t.”
“She
knows this?” Llewynn asked. “How your job affects her?”
It’s not my job, Flint wanted to say, but he didn’t. Because he didn’t want to give that away.
“She’s very aware which secrets threaten lives,” Flint said. “I need your assurance that she won’t be forced to choose between those secrets and her mental health.”
“I can’t do that, Mr. Flint,” Llewynn said. “If those secrets are causing her decline, then we will do our best to lift her out.”
Flint sighed, and stood up. It had been a long shot anyway. “Thank you for your honesty,” he said, and headed for the door.
“Mr. Flint,” Llewynn said. “Sometimes, you must trust that others will do the right thing for all concerned.”
“And you need to understand that a strict adherence to rules might damage my daughter even more,” Flint said.
“Must you be involved in her therapy?” Llewynn asked.
And Flint suddenly understood from that question that Llewynn believed Flint was somehow harming his daughter. He hadn’t wanted to lead Llewynn in that direction, but he had.
“No,” Flint said. “I’ll need to know if there are things I can and cannot do to help her, but this is about her, not me. I wasn’t planning to sit in, and I wasn’t planning to monitor. I do need to know that she will be safe.”
“Do some of her secrets threaten her life?” Llewynn asked. He was still sitting, but his posture was more alert than it had been a few minutes ago.
“Yes,” Flint said.
“Can she tell us when we get close to those secrets?” Llewynn said.
“Yes,” Flint said.
Llewynn nodded. “Then give us a chance. We might be able to help your daughter.”
Flint actually liked the word “might.” Certainty disturbed him, particularly in an area like this.
“All right,” he said, as he walked back into the room. “Let’s schedule an appointment.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE PRISON THAT held PierLuigi Frémont no longer existed. It had been torn down thirty years ago, after major riots and an internal fire that no one ever got accused of. For decades, rumors of mismanagement had plagued the place—and Luc Deshin just happened to know that those rumors were true.
Because, even though the prison no longer existed, the black market in the prison’s wares still existed.
It had taken Deshin days and a lot of personal reassurances to track down the market. As laws against selling designer criminal clones grew tighter, black markets like this one grew harder and harder to find.
Many had moved to the edge of the known universe. But those that had established themselves in that distant backwater had often died miserably or had lost everything.
Other black markets thrived on the Frontier. Initially, Deshin had been worried that he would have to travel somewhere out there, burning weeks before he ever got any information. And he worried that he would spend all that time getting information that turned out to be useless.
Fortunately, he discovered that the black market he was searching for had changed locations from a space station near the prison to the smallest moon of an uninhabitable planet in the Aebib System.
The Aebib System was one of the first entire systems to join the Alliance. Its governments were old and established, the aliens known quantities.
Deshin found months’ worth of data on how to behave with those aliens in every circumstance. He spent the last part of his trip making certain that the assumptions his so-called friends had told him were correct—that there were no alien governments on this particular moon, just a loosely connected group of human cities that pretended to follow Alliance rules.
He was traveling in one of his cargo vessels, along with a security team of fifteen, most of whom did not know the reason for this mission. Keeping things secret was easy for him; his entire business had been built on secrecy.
The ship was transporting cargo, mostly legal, to one of the planets in the Aebib System. The illegal materials were mostly hard-to-find minerals which Deshin had heard were at a premium in this market.
He might have to use them to trade for information on Frémont’s DNA.
If, indeed, anyone still had any. Or even knew its history.
The ship remained in orbit above the moon. Deshin had traveled down to the city of Angu in a smaller ship, along with six members of his security team, including Keith Jakande.
Jakande was the best security officer that Deshin had. He didn’t even want to call the man a bodyguard. Jakande was too good for that.
Jakande had been with Deshin on Anniversary Day. They’d both watched friends and colleagues die. And then Jakande had accompanied Deshin in his investigation of the zoodeh used that day, as well as the explosive materials.
Deshin trusted no one on his staff more.
He and Jakande had picked nine members of his security detail to go to Angu a day early as an advance team. They had followed protocol: eight members divided into pairs, while a leader remained at all times in the hotel the team had chosen for Deshin.
The pairs had investigated everything from the black market itself to some of the underground clubs. By the end of the night, four team members had heard rumors that Deshin might arrive, but no one had heard when he would arrive. And more importantly, no one had heard that any of Deshin’s enemies were in the city or even on the moon.
Because of his status in the underworld community, Deshin could not go meet the individuals in charge of the black market. They had to come to him.
That meant he had to have two hotel suites: one he actually stayed in, and one that he did business in. His team had a third suite, one that monitored the business suite.
The expenses of this operation were mounting up. The travel, the staff, the ships, the hotels, all of it cost a lot of money with no return. But he didn’t mind. If he succeeded, he would thwart a major attack and be able to continue doing business on the Moon.
But he also spent time on this journey investigating other places to establish his home base.
The business suite that his team had set up for him wasn’t as plush as most suites he was used to. Yet the team had rented the two best suites in all of Angu. The entire city—if it could be called that—was shabbier than he expected.
Once Deshin had entered the business suite, his team had sent word that Deshin would like to talk to the person in charge of the Frémont DNA.
Deshin half expected to hear that the DNA was no longer on the market. But he heard nothing, which was standard if a meet was going to happen.
He knew that his suite—both of his suites, the one here and the one in his real hotel—had been vetted by his team, but he still double-checked them. He used his own security chips to scan the unbelievably small bathroom, the bedroom with a view of some remote snow-covered mountains whose names he didn’t know (and didn’t care to know), and the living room which could have fit thirty large humans without any difficulty at all.
Five of his personal guards were inside this room, but Jakande was not. Jakande ran the entire operation, and he had determined that Deshin would need five guards, mostly as a show of strength. Living security guards were expensive and much more effective than androids or bots or security monitors. He used his guards to establish his wealth, his power, and his general do-not-screw-with-me attitude.
None of that prevented him from doing things on his own, however. He maintained his weapons proficiency. He had small bone knives in each of his boots, and a laser pistol at his hip. He was also wearing a whisper-thin layer of body armor which could become its own environmental suit. He hated the things. It always felt like his skin was covered in goo, but he had learned the hard way that protection was necessary in uncertain missions like this one.
And he was going to be cautious. Every time he contemplated behaving too aggressively, he thought of the way Paavo smiled at him, of Gerda’s worried frown. He wanted to return to them, and he would, if he followed the procedures he had set in
place years ago.
He brought his own food, as he always did on trips like this, and used his own dishes to make a small lunch of exotic cheeses and black rye bread. He shared the meal with his team. He drank coffee from a pocket coffeemaker—not the best stuff, but good enough while he waited.
And he did wait.
The rudeness didn’t bother him. Black marketeers often felt that being rude gave them power. He saw such behavior as the desperate moves of wannabe tyrants. He also knew that if he didn’t act like the rudeness bothered him, he maintained the power in the relationship.
Still, he had an interior clock that told him when a meet was no longer worth his time. He would give the potential seller an extra few hours, but not an entire day.
He gave this meet one hour more than he usually gave someone he was trying to do business with. It was a good thing that he did, because the knock on the door came about an hour after he would have normally given up.
One of his body guards, Kaielynn, braced her feet a meter apart, a movement that always made her look even more formidable. She was impressive without the bad attitude: over six feet tall, and muscular, she wore clothes that emphasized her power instead of hiding it. This afternoon, she wore a sleeveless tank top over a pair of skin-tight pants. Only Deshin knew that she also had a layer of armor covering everything.
She gripped her hands together. He recognized the movement. She was checking with the team monitoring the room’s exterior to discover what they saw.
Her orders were to open the door to a human only, and to be wary if the human were female. Deshin’s information was that his potential supplier was an older man.
Two other guards disappeared into the kitchen area. One more slipped into the bedroom, and another stood just outside the bathroom door.
Kaielynn’s gaze met Deshin’s. Shall we? She sent on their private links.
Yes, he sent back.
His heart was pounding. He was ready for this—beyond ready. He didn’t want to seem to eager, but he felt like he had when he first started his business. Every opportunity was exciting.
The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) Page 23