Extremes: A Retrieval Artist Novel

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  Old Armstrong attracted a handful of tourists each week, all of whom wanted to see what remained of the initial colony. Most of the initial colony had been rebuilt in Armstrong’s Museum of Moon History, which was part of the City Center downtown. About four blocks of the old buildings survived, however, and tourists came for those.

  At this moment, the screen showed a woman striding purposefully toward his office.

  Her hair was pulled back, her pointed chin jutted out, her gaze directly on his door. Her clothing was inappropriate for this part of Armstrong; her long coat covered a tight skirt with a slit up the side and her bare legs were already coated with dust. Her shoes were as flimsy as her clothing—the heels high in a fashion sported only by the extremely rich of both sexes—and she wobbled as she walked.

  Flint studied the screen, then pressed its right upper corner to zoom in on the woman. She didn’t look familiar, so she wasn’t a resident of this section of Armstrong, but she had walked some distance or she wouldn’t have had dust along her legs.

  If she had an aircar, she had parked it a few blocks away, probably where the streets narrowed to the early colonial width.

  Flint hit the small button on the front of his desk that slid the keyboard from its pocket. Paloma hadn’t believed in voice recognition or in touch-screens. She thought they were too easily compromised by even the most average of hackers. She preferred a silent keyboard, so that no one could use audio of the clicking to break into her system.

  Eventually she convinced Flint that her method was the best. He still missed the convenience of a touch-screen, but the keyboard made him feel as if he had the secrets of the universe at his fingertips—a feeling he had never had before, not even when he had designed computer systems.

  Flint tapped a special key three times, and more images appeared on the screen. He got a 360-degree view of the block around his office. More ancient, yellowing permaplastic buildings, dusty streets, and some slapped-together, postcolonial rock homes filled the block.

  The only local merchant, owner of a discount grocery selling dry items past their use-by date, stood outside his store, arms crossed. He spent a lot of his time standing like that, looking at the street, as if he were waiting for someone to take him away from his life.

  He and the strange woman were the only people visible in Flint’s security perimeter. Still, Flint didn’t like it.

  Flint tapped the keyboard again, moving her real-time image into the corner of the screen so that he could watch her current movements. Then he called up all the images of her that he had, from the moment she had arrived in the perimeter until now.

  One of the images caught the woman’s face. She wore expensive jeweled frames around her eyes. The jewels seemed bright against her golden skin. Her hair was dark, her chin narrow, and her thin mouth had no lines around it at all, indicating either youth, enhancements, or both.

  She had crossed into Flint’s security perimeter and headed straight for the office. Flint backed the images up even farther, caught a glimpse of an aircar, hovering in one of the pay parking spaces near a newer section of dome.

  Flint fast-forwarded again, caught the image of the woman’s face, and sent it through the extensive database Paloma had left him. The database contained all the information that Paloma had gathered through her long career—or at least the stuff that she did not consider confidential. It included histories of people she had never encountered as well as histories of people she had; it included as much information about the various known worlds; in short, it included everything Paloma felt relevant to a Retrieval Artist, whether the information was or not.

  When Flint put in an image of a human face, what usually came up on the screen was a primary identity—the kind found in news reports and official biographies. Only he wasn’t getting anything on this woman.

  And that bothered him. It meant the system would have to delve into government identification records and private company databases to discover who she was. The search would take longer, and probably wouldn’t be completed by the time she knocked.

  Another screen went up, and a silent alarm buzzed against Flint’s hip. He had added that alarm so he would know if someone came close to his building. He shut off the hip alarm, powered down all the screens but one, and waited.

  The woman paused outside the door. Most people did. Flint liked it that way. The more he could do to discourage a client from hiring him, the better he felt.

  Retrieval Artists specialized in finding the Disappeared, people who went missing on purpose, usually to avoid prosecution or death by any one of fifty different alien cultures. The Disappeared were usually guilty of the crimes they’d been accused of, but by human standards, most of those crimes were harmless.

  The problem was that the Earth Alliance, in making treaties that allowed trade with various alien cultures, also allowed instances in which humans could be prosecuted for crimes committed against those cultures. Those prosecutions were often brought before one of thirty Multicultural Tribunals. If the human was found guilty, she would be remanded to the offended aliens for punishment.

  In many cases, punishment for the simplest crime was death.

  Over the years, humans found a way around the Tribunals’ verdicts: the humans disappeared—vanishing under a new identity into the known worlds. Gradually, companies that disappeared people for a fee sprang up, and some of these companies were sponsored by the very corporations that needed trade with the alien cultures.

  Helping established criminals disappear was illegal; finding them was a matter for commendation.

  Except for Retrieval Artists.

  Theoretically, Retrieval Artists did not work for the law. They worked for the Disappeared’s family or for an insurance company who needed the Disappeared to settle a claim or for a variety of other business reasons. Retrieval Artists did not reveal the Disappeared’s location without permission nor did they ever retrieve a Disappeared for a legal proceeding.

  If a Retrieval Artist screwed up, more often than not, the Disappeared died.

  So discouraging a client was always good. Casual clients did not belong in Flint’s office.

  He watched the woman hesitate. She pulled down the frames she wore as decoration around her eyes, and examined the plaque on the wall, which mentioned that the building was an historical landmark. Beneath it was the tiny sign—barely as wide as a standard-issue wrist computer—advertising that a Retrieval Artist worked in the office.

  Her eyes had tiny tucks in the lower corners, and her nose was wide in the center, almost blending with her cheekbones. The decorative frames had added structure to her face, accenting the narrow jawline and hiding the flatness of her central features.

  This was a woman who knew what made her look good.

  Flint glanced at the other section of the remaining screen. No history on her, no identification, not even preliminary.

  She raised her hand to knock. He shut down the entry protocols, deciding to listen to what she had to say, but he turned on an added security feature. If she touched anything inside or outside of the office, he would collect a small DNA sample. If he needed to, he would use it to identify her.

  Using DNA for ID without the person’s permission was illegal, but he didn’t care. So much of his work since he’d become a Retrieval Artist had been illegal, and he found that bending laws he didn’t like suited him better than enforcing laws he hated.

  Her knock was as confident as her walk had been.

  “Come in!” Flint called.

  She grabbed the door and pushed in, blinking at the interior darkness. A bit of dust swirled in after her—apparently the material of her skirt attracted it, almost like a magnet.

  She seemed startled as she walked across the threshold, not just because the eight-by-eight office was so small, but because Flint had just shut down all of her personal links.

  Her links had to be subtle. Most people wore them like decorations on the skin, but she didn’t. The links hooke
d her up to someone or something on the outside, although Flint couldn’t tell who or what.

  “If you want to come in here,” Flint said, using the script that Paloma had given him, “you come in alone. No recording, no viewing, and no off-site monitoring.”

  The woman blinked at him, almost like someone coming out of a deep sleep. So she was someone who preferred to be linked, who used her links for downloads to keep part of her brain constantly entertained.

  People like that bolted when their links were severed. Flint waited for her to leave.

  Instead she shut the door, and the lights went up ever so slowly. Flint wanted to see her better.

  “You’re Miles Flint?” she asked, still clutching her frames in one hand.

  “Yes,” he said, seeing no reason to deny it.

  “You’ve taken over Paloma’s service?”

  “This used to be her office.” He leaned back, pretending at a relaxation he didn’t feel. He was excited about having a potential client, and he knew that emotion was bad. He would have to proceed with caution. He couldn’t let his enthusiasm get in the way of his judgment.

  “But you are a Retrieval Artist too, right?” For the first time, she sounded uncertain.

  “Yes,” Flint said.

  His computer finally found her identification. From the city courthouse’s database, one used to confirm the ID of lawyers to be admitted into one of the courtrooms.

  Astrid Krouch, granted her degree ten years before from Glenn Station University after passing the difficult Armstrong bar on her first try, hired directly out of law school by the large and well-heeled law firm, Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor Ltd. She hadn’t yet appeared in a courtroom, although she’d been to the court many times to do filings for other attorneys.

  So she was still at the beginning of her career, a lawyer with a good salary whose entire life was at someone else’s beck and call.

  No wonder Flint had trouble finding her. She wasn’t anyone important yet—and that alone put him even more on alert.

  “I have a case for you.” She made it sound like a gift.

  “Well, that’s good,” Flint said. “I wouldn’t want to think you stumbled in here by mistake.”

  She blinked once, as if she were reassessing him, and then smiled. The smile was as artificial as the silk in her suit.

  “I work for Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor, Limited. We have a client—”

  “Excuse me.” Flint stood up. He decided to play her differently than he played most of his clients. “You look uncomfortable in those shoes. Have my chair.”

  He lifted it around his desk and set it in the center of the small room. She looked confused, glancing at the chair, and then glancing at him.

  “I really don’t have time, Mr. Flint. I was just going to tell you about our client—”

  “Have a seat, Ms. Krouch.”

  Her mouth opened, then closed, before opening again. “I didn’t tell you who I was.”

  “It’s my business to know everyone who comes through my door,” Flint said, crossing his arms and leaning against the front of his desk.

  “You scanned me without my permission? I’m not in any public data bases.” She shook the frames at him. “If you figured out who I am, then you went through illegal sources.”

  “Really?” he asked calmly. “You don’t think your office could have notified me of your pending visit?”

  Two spots of color rose on her cheeks. “You’re toying with me, aren’t you, Mr. Flint?”

  Yes, he wanted to say, and it was remarkably easy. But he didn’t. Instead he shifted slightly against the desk. “Has your office ever used a Retrieval Artist before?”

  “Of course,” she said. “In case you didn’t catch my credentials, I work for—”

  “I heard you. Am I supposed to be impressed?”

  “We have offices all over the known worlds.”

  “If you’re that important a law firm,” he said, “then you probably already have a Retrieval Artist or two on retainer, along with your Trackers.”

  “We don’t use Trackers, Mr. Flint. We’re a corporation-friendly organization.”

  The assumption being that corporations, more than any other business, needed to disappear their employees. Corporations didn’t want the employees caught any more than the employees wanted to get caught, and so the corporations wouldn’t work with Trackers.

  Flint had known that assumption was wrong back when he worked as a detective. A lot of times, corporations hired their own Trackers to go after one of their former employees so that person could take the fall for something someone else did.

  “But you do have other Retrieval Artists on retainer,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

  Because she was a new attorney, and this was her first visit to a Retrieval Artist. Someone had planned this visit well.

  “We have done business with Paloma in the past,” she said.

  Flint nodded, waiting.

  “I’m sure my superiors thought she was still around,” she said.

  He doubted that. He was certain they knew exactly when Paloma quit. He was also certain that they knew exactly how new he was.

  Paloma had warned him that he’d get a lot of lawyers, insurance agents, and other people who fronted for Trackers in his first few years of business. These people would have assumed that any new Retrieval Artist was too green to figure out that a Tracker could piggyback on their research and then find a Disappeared.

  Eventually the requests from lawyers, insurance agents, and others would become the foundation of his business—the honest group who didn’t hire Trackers. But up front, Paloma had warned, Flint would have a hard time telling the legitimate cases from the manipulative ones.

  “Well, she’s not,” Flint said. “Let them know that. Tell them to go to their second choice. I’ve already got enough work.”

  Krouch frowned at him, as if she had never heard anyone say they had enough work. “I think you might want to take this case, Mr. Flint. It’s easy and it’s quick and if you’re just starting up, it’ll be good money for you.”

  Now she was moving into the financial argument, one he was also insulated from. A year ago he had stumbled into a case that had paid him so much money he would never have to work again.

  “Thanks but no thanks,” he said, reaching for the chair she was obviously not going to use. He lifted it over his desk and placed the chair in its usual spot. “I’m not interested.”

  “Not interested? But it’s easy.”

  “You already said that.” He walked around the desk and sank into the chair. “Believe me, that’s not a selling point.”

  “Fast money isn’t a selling point for you?” Apparently she hadn’t run across anyone like that either.

  He shook his head. “Easy cases that offer me fast money are precisely the types of cases I avoid.”

  “But—”

  “Good day, Ms. Krouch,” he said.

  She didn’t move. “But—”

  “You can leave the office now,” he said.

  “I’m—”

  “Or,” he said, raising his chin, “I’ll show you out myself.”

  She did that odd little open-close thing with her mouth again, only this time, she apparently decided to keep her mouth closed. She spun on one of those uncomfortably high heels and let herself out of his office, shutting the door so hard that the permaplastic shook.

  Flint keyed on his security screen. Krouch stood outside, her back to his door, as if she were trying to decide whether or not to come back in. He smiled. She had thought this assignment would be easy. He wondered if it was the first assignment she’d failed for her powerful bosses.

  After a moment she stalked away, leaving the perimeter as quickly as she had entered it. He watched her struggle with her skirts for a moment before she turned a corner and disappeared from view of his primary security systems.

  Flint leaned back in his chair. Something about this mee
ting disturbed him. He should have gone back to his reading—after all, he had just rejected the case—but he was too intrigued.

  Why had WSX come to him? And why had they sent someone like Krouch, someone whose identity didn’t show up on the traditional image-ID search?

  Were they trying to get him to investigate them? Why would they do that?

  The only reason he could think of was that they wanted to use his search as a back-door into his security systems. But there could be a hundred other reasons, and discovering which of them was the truth would take some research.

  Flint double-checked his system. So far, no breaches. He set everything on highest alert, so that he would know if anyone tried to access his files.

  Then he stood up. He would go to a public-access portal to do his research on Astrid Krouch and WSX. And maybe, just maybe, he would find out what they were up to.

  TWO

  NOELLE DERICCI REACHED the edge of the marathon spectators’ area and tugged on the wrist of her environmental suit. The suit, not yet activated and with its hood down, felt hot.

  DeRicci’s latest partner, Leif van der Ketting, had parked the aircar in front of the No Parking During Special Event sign, and was struggling to get his environmental suit out of the backseat. Like all of DeRicci’s most recent partners, van der Ketting was a newly minted detective. This would mark his first official case outside of the dome.

  Lucky him. He would see this as an adventure, bouncing in the light gravity, wandering around rocks that most Moon residents were forbidden to touch. But the novelty would wear off quickly enough—especially if the marathon organizers were as uncooperative this time as they had been in the past.

  It would take van der Ketting another five minutes to get ready to leave the dome. DeRicci turned away from him and studied the crowd instead.

  Several thousand people sat on the bleachers especially set up for the marathon. No spectators were allowed Outside. They had to see most of the race on live feed, just like everyone else. But the bleachers gave them the perfect view of the finish line, and they’d be able to see their favorites stumble across—or leap across, as was usually the case.