Extremes: A Retrieval Artist Novel

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  Thousands more spectators watched the feeds from hotel rooms and bars scattered around Armstrong. Those folks hadn’t been able to afford bleacher seats, but they still wanted to be part of the excitement. Armstrong was stuffed with strangers—every hotel room filled, every possible rental jammed—and all of them wanted some connection, no matter how small, with the marathon.

  DeRicci had never understood why anyone would watch this sport. She appreciated the folks who watched the Armstrong Marathon, held every fall inside the dome—it was a novelty to see a pack of dedicated human runners jog through your home neighborhood—but to sit on hard plastic bleachers for hours, waiting for a runner to break a white paper streamer, seemed like a complete waste of time to her, especially when that runner’s entire body was hidden by an expensive environmental suit.

  DeRicci tugged at the pants legs of her cheap environmental suit. She’d put on weight since the last time she’d needed this thing. She hoped the suit would hold.

  The suit alone would have made this case a pain in the butt, although DeRicci hated going Outside for any reason. Now she would have to negotiate her way through one of Armstrong’s greatest tourist draws of the year just to investigate a death.

  DeRicci had investigated deaths at the Moon Marathon before, back when she was a brand-new detective and the job seemed endlessly fascinating. She’d found an end to the fascination at least ten years ago, and she hadn’t been brand-new in more than twenty years.

  She’d been promoted during that time. She was lead detective on most of her cases now. But those promotions were only technical. The kinds of cases she received were the crappy ones, the ones the real detectives with real power managed to avoid.

  DeRicci was too mouthy, too independent, and too difficult to work well within the system. It also would have helped if she believed that what she was doing was just: most of the time, she felt worse than the criminals she pursued.

  The crowd was subdued, watching their own personal feeds, waiting for the lead runners to come into view. Obviously no one had been told about the death—but then, that was standard procedure.

  Deaths at the Moon Marathon had become less common—one every five years or so—but they still happened. And they rarely got reported. Usually they were listed in the statistics part of the annual account as a footnote, and almost always, according to that footnote, the death was caused by the runner’s error, certainly not by anything the marathon organizers had done.

  Van der Ketting finally joined her. He was a short, slim man, barely coming up to her shoulder. When DeRicci had first seen him, she had asked the chief of the First Detective Unit, Andrea Gumiela, how he’d managed to pass the physical exams.

  Gumiela had grinned at DeRicci. He’s a lot stronger than he looks.

  DeRicci had hoped so. She hadn’t seen any evidence of it. And it still disconcerted her that van der Ketting was shorter than she was. She was one of the shortest women on the force.

  “How the hell do we get Outside without calling attention to ourselves?” van der Ketting asked, parroting the words Gumiela used when she had given them the assignment.

  “Trust me,” DeRicci said. “The organizers aren’t going to allow the crowd to figure out what we’re doing.”

  She checked his suit as if she were his mother making certain he was dressed properly for the first day of school. His suit was newer than hers, but no better. The material was thin and not nearly as sturdy as it should have been. She checked the hood and the faceplate, looking for rips and finding none.

  “Do I pass?” van der Ketting asked.

  “You joke,” she said, “but one mistake and you die out there. That’s probably what we’re investigating.”

  “My death?” He always seemed to have a quip, especially when he was nervous.

  “No,” DeRicci said. “Someone’s mistake.”

  She grabbed the evidence kit that she had set on the ground and carried it toward the bleachers. The air smelled of fried pork, slow-cooking sugar candy, and instant chips. Not the healthiest of foods for people who seemed to have an interest in watching healthy athletes test their own limits.

  Van der Ketting let her take the lead, as he always did. Just once, DeRicci would like a partner who had more experience than she had, who knew exactly what he was doing and why.

  She had a hunch she would never get that. Not without a lot of work cleaning up her reputation.

  She headed down the makeshift aisle, weaving underneath the stands. They wobbled a little, unsteady even though the crowd wasn’t doing a lot of moving. She was glad that the stands weren’t set up for more boisterous events—then she might be investigating an even worse disaster.

  Of course, if something horrible happened, such as the stands caving in, other detectives would investigate, detectives with less seniority, but a lot more clout.

  Van der Ketting followed closely behind her. She could hear him breathing through his mouth. He did that when he was nervous, and anything out of the ordinary seemed to make him nervous. His nervousness didn’t affect his performance, just his metabolism.

  The bleachers narrowed as they got lower, and the aisle seemed even more cramped. The spectators’ area smelled strongly of spilled beer and cheap wine. This part of the bleachers had been set up on a sidewalk, and the surface was sticky. Her boots made small sucking sounds as she walked.

  “They’re so quiet,” van der Ketting whispered.

  DeRicci nodded. She’d always hated that too. The crowd should have been louder, conversing among themselves about trivial things while they were killing time, or cheering runners even though the runners couldn’t hear the cries. But year after year, the crowd watched in silence. The cheers never started until the first runner appeared on the horizon.

  She reached the other end of the bleachers. The front row was only two meters from the dome. This section had been cleaned and some of the panels replaced, so that the view Outside was clear and crisp.

  DeRicci stared through it for a moment. The finish line was painted across the surface built for near-dome vehicles. The paper ribbon stretched between two temporary posts. One year the winner came through the posts so hard that he knocked them over, sending them bouncing into the dome itself. The dome hadn’t shattered-it was built to withstand greater forces than that—but the event scared a lot of spectators, causing quite a scandal.

  The deaths and injuries never caused scandals, unless they happened inside the dome.

  DeRicci sighed. She wished she could see more of the surface than this small section through the cleaned dome; she loved the Moon’s bleakness, its clean lines and vast expanse of dark.

  Two elderly men whose long and lean bodies marked them as former competitors in the Moon Marathon flanked her. Like many athletes, they had eschewed enhancements rather than alter their bodies. As a result, their faces were wrinkled, their hair—what was left of it—the steely gray of moon rocks.

  “Officer?” one of them said softly.

  “Detective.” DeRicci always corrected people who called her by the wrong rank. She had worked hard to become a detective, and even though the brass gave her the worst assignments, she still ranked higher than a simple beat officer.

  “Come with us,” the man said, ignoring her correction.

  She looked for van der Ketting. He walked just behind her, taking in the spectators instead of the view.

  The spectators were mostly human. Track-and-field sports didn’t appeal to most of the alien races. The Disty liked tennis, which seemed to match their passion for Ping-Pong, and the Rev liked hockey, boxing, and wrestling, probably because the sports were so violent. But endurance sports seemed to appeal only to the race involved. Humans thought the Pochae’s eating contests as ridiculous as the Pochae found marathoning.

  “This way,” the man was saying, hurrying DeRicci and van der Ketting along.

  DeRicci had to hurry to keep up with the man in front of her. Finally they reached the far side of the bleache
rs. A small white bungalow, temporary and movable, had been set up as a gathering place for participants.

  The man ushered DeRicci and van der Ketting inside. The other man closed the door behind them. They walked through a small anteroom into the main part of the bungalow.

  The live images of the race covered all the walls. On two of them the image tracked a single runner. On the other two walls, tiny images of all the runners aired simultaneously.

  Three women and a man, all of them as elderly and gaunt as the two who had found DeRicci, sat in white plastic chairs, watching the race. They seemed oblivious to the newcomers in the room.

  “Sorry to hurry you out of there,” the man said to DeRicci. “We didn’t want any of our people asking questions.”

  It took her a moment to realize that “our people” meant the spectators, many of whom had paid small fortunes for seats.

  He held out a hand. It was bony and bent, looking as used as the rest of him. “I’m Alfred Chaiken, the chair of this year’s race.”

  DeRicci took his hand gingerly. “Noelle DeRicci, and my partner, Leif van der Ketting.”

  “Thank you for coming so quickly,” Chaiken said. “We were hoping you’d arrive before the first runners crossed the finish line.”

  DeRicci glanced at one of the wall-sized images. A runner, wearing an environmental suit with a real helmet, half ran, half jumped past a small group of pointed rocks. She had no idea where he was on the trail, and she had no idea how the people watching their tiny screens knew either.

  “How long do we have before the winner arrives?” van der Ketting asked.

  DeRicci frowned. With that question, van der Ketting put the investigation on the race’s timetable, not theirs. She would change that later.

  “About thirty minutes.” Chaiken glanced at the same wall DeRicci was looking at. The runner looked like all the other runners, face hidden by the helmet’s reflective visor. The runners wore numbers on their fronts, but that and the design of the various suits seemed to be the only differences.

  “You can stay out there as long as you need to,” Chaiken was saying to van der Ketting, “but we’d like to get out through the dome as quickly as possible.”

  So that the attention wasn’t on the police when the first runner arrived.

  “All right,” van der Ketting said. “What do—”

  “First,” DeRicci said, stepping in front of him as if he weren’t there, “tell us what you found.”

  Chaiken glanced from her to van der Ketting, then bobbed his head as if suddenly realizing who was in charge. “We didn’t find anything. This is the management team. We stay inside the dome. We have staff outside the dome, including a medical response team.”

  “All right,” DeRicci said, pressing a tiny chip inside her suit’s glove. She was going to record this interview after all. “Who found the body?”

  “One of our runners, a Mr. Brady Coburn. He has since left the course, even though we offered the opportunity for him to finish the race.”

  How kind of them to let him finish. DeRicci wondered if he got a time break for finding one of the more unfortunate contestants.

  “There’ve been deaths at this marathon before,” she said.

  “It’s one of the risks of participation, although not something that happens as much as it used to,” Chaiken said, and it was clear he had launched into remarks he made often. “We still have a number of injuries every year, but we’ve modified the system so that those injuries rarely result in death.”

  “Our runners do sign a release,” said the other man. He was still standing by the door, almost as if he were guarding it, so that DeRicci and van der Ketting couldn’t escape and alert the spectators of the crisis outside the dome.

  DeRicci gave the man a sideways look. “You are?”

  “Jonathon Lakferd. I’m the assistant chair.”

  “You have them release you of all responsibility in their deaths?” DeRicci asked.

  “Or for injury.” Lakferd said. “We’re very clear about the risks. We don’t want anyone to be surprised.”

  “We also don’t want the negative publicity,” Chaiken said. “We’d prefer it if you don’t speak of this—”

  “How we handle this is the department’s call,” DeRicci said. “If it’s anything like the last few deaths I’ve investigated in the marathon, caused simply by the race itself, you can bet the department won’t say a word.”

  She had to struggle to keep the sarcasm from her voice. She hated being asked to do a job, only to have the department ignore her work for political reasons. And the marathon was definitely political.

  Chaiken smiled at her, as if his greatest concern was not the dead body out on his track, but the negative publicity that body would generate.

  “Where is this Mr. Coburn now?” DeRicci asked.

  “He’s in one of our buildings nearby,” Lakferd said. “Would you like to see him?”

  “Not yet,” DeRicci said. “How did he notify you?”

  “With his panic button,” Chaiken said. “Every runner—”

  “I’m familiar with the system.” DeRicci frowned, staring up at the walls. “The runner who died didn’t contact you?”

  “No,” Lakferd said.

  “Isn’t that unusual?” DeRicci asked. “Wouldn’t someone with a serious problem push the button?”

  “If she could,” Chaiken said. “Sometimes things happen quickly and a situation might not allow it.”

  “She?” DeRicci asked. “You know who the victim is?”

  Chaiken nodded. “One of our more experienced participants, and a former winner. Her name is Jane Zweig. She runs Extreme Enterprises. You’ve probably heard of them. ‘Extreme sports for the adventurous traveler.’ That’s their tag line.”

  DeRicci had heard of them. She had seen their ads—happy, thin people with too much time on their hands, swimming in pale red liquid, and climbing gray spirelike mountains in obviously alien places.

  She said, “I find it odd that someone who specializes in extreme sports would die on your course. I thought the Moon Marathon went mainstream more than a century ago. The extremes don’t even bother with it.”

  Van der Ketting watched the whole proceeding with interest. He caught her hint that he had been out of line and he hadn’t tried to participate since.

  “This is still a difficult event.” Lakferd’s thin body seemed to close in on itself. “We have a number of extremes each year. Jane Zweig participated every time she could.”

  “Why?” DeRicci asked. “I would think that extremes wouldn’t find this marathon to be a challenge.”

  “But it is,” Lakferd said. “As you can see by today’s event.”

  He seemed almost buoyed up by it, as if the death had proven the race’s legitimacy yet again. DeRicci gave him a hard look. His face was as grooved as the Moon’s surface. She had taken him for being a natural—someone who never had enhancements. But he might have enhanced at least once. If so, he was old enough to have been part of the race when it was an extreme event. Perhaps that meant something to him.

  She filed the theory away, just like she filed all other random thoughts away. At this early part of an investigation, she wasn’t going to throw anything out.

  Besides, if she could stop the deaths at the Moon Marathon, she’d feel better about it. She’d love it if the city prosecuted the marathon for reckless conduct, but as long as the marathon brought in this many tourists and this much money, she knew that wouldn’t happen.

  “My point is,” DeRicci said, “that an extreme athlete should have prepared for all the dangers. I always thought it was the first-timers who died here, not the most experienced people.”

  Lakferd shrugged. “She was probably overconfident. That’s usually what happens with these people. They forget to take the normal precautions. A first-timer would risk losing the race—or not concentrate on a personal best—just to make sure that everything was fine. Someone as experienced as Jane . . .
well, you know.”

  DeRicci didn’t know, but she was sure she would find out.

  “You knew her?” van der Ketting asked Lakferd.

  “Of course,” Lakferd said. “Everyone did.”

  “And liked her?”

  Lakferd frowned. “What does it matter? Her death was accidental. How I felt about her should be irrelevant.”

  “We haven’t seen the body yet,” DeRicci said. “We have no idea if her death was accidental.”

  Two of the women looked up, as if they had just noticed the conversation. Lakferd bowed his head, revealing a thin spot in the hair over his crown.

  “Well, then,” Chaiken said. “Let’s get you to the investigation site.”

  DeRicci didn’t move. “How long ago did Mr. Coburn discover the body?”

  “Whenever you folks received the call,” Chaiken said.

  “How long ago?” DeRicci asked.

  “An hour, maybe less. Mr. Coburn was up near the front of the pack. He was the first to call in.”

  “You let the race continue?” van der Ketting asked.

  DeRicci suppressed a smile. She couldn’t have put that level of shock into her voice even if she wanted to.

  “We have no choice, young man,” Chaiken said. No “Detective,” no sign of respect. Just a sharp tone and an even sharper phrase.

  DeRicci could feel van der Ketting stir beside her. He was angry, just as she would have been in his place, just as Chaiken wanted him to be.

  She put a hand on van der Ketting’s arm. “You didn’t divert?” she asked. “You made the runners go past the body?”

  “It’s not as heartless as you make it sound,” Chaiken said. “We don’t dare divert. We don’t have alternate routes. If people went around the body, even more runners would get hurt.”

  “How many injuries have you had in the race so far?” DeRicci asked.

  Chaiken shrugged. “The usual number.” “Which is?”

  “About fifteen up front, nothing really serious,” Lakferd said. “Just serious enough to put the runner out of the race. We expect more as the race continues. Usually around the twenty-mile mark or so, where the average first-timer ‘hits the wall,’ as they used to say. Tired runners are careless runners.”