“We didn’t make the laws,” Flint said.
“Oh, yeah.” She sneered at him. “Like you’re going to be able to give that baby back.”
He froze. “We lost him too? We have proof about his parents?”
“No proof,” she said. “Not yet anyway. But the Wygnin had the right warrant for the Wilder kid. Their warrant for the baby’s right too.”
Flint knew that. He’d been trying not to think about it, trying not to remember how that child had felt cradled in his arms. He didn’t want to be the one to hand that child to the Wygnin.
He couldn’t be.
“We’ll figure out something,” he said, more out of hope than conviction.
“Right,” she said. “Of course you can.”
The computer beeped. The searches were done. Flint had forgotten all about them.
He touched the darkened screen and saw the information displayed there.
“What’s that?” DeRicci asked.
“Did Mrs. Wilder mention a Disappearance service?” he asked, staring at his screen.
“Yes, she hired one.”
“Did she say which one?”
“Not to me,” DeRicci said. “But she probably told Carryth. Want me to check?”
He nodded.
DeRicci touched her link, and murmured into it, while Flint looked at his files.
Only one Disappearance service had bought this model space yacht. They’d got an entire fleet of them at a discount when the model’s flaws had become apparent.
Disappearance Inc. Flint stared at that for a long time. He had heard, over the years, that Disappearance Inc was a reputable company. Not all Disappearance services were, and those that weren’t usually went out of business quickly.
But Disappearance Inc was one of the oldest and the best, and one of the most expensive. Everyone in this solar system knew that.
He requested more information, the public kind on Disappearance Inc. The history of the company, the ways it avoided legal entanglements—he skimmed all of that until he found what he was looking for.
Six months ago, Disappearance Inc had been sold. It had new owners who publicly announced they were going to update the service.
“He says she used one of the usual companies,” DeRicci said.
“Which one?” Flint asked, although he already knew.
“Disappearance Inc.”
He nodded, then explained what he found. “I don’t like it. Ekaterina Maakestad makes sense. She’s a new Disappeared. And technically, so were the Disty vengeance killings.”
“But it’s the old customers that bother you,” DeRicci said.
“Don’t they bother you?” he asked.
She came around the desk, tapped a few more screens, going deeper into the information about Disappearance Inc. “Look. They’ve divided up the company. They’re taking it apart and selling the pieces.”
Flint let out a small breath. “Including the files.”
“That’s probably where they’re making back their investment,” she said. “Think of how much the Disty alone would pay for any criminal’s new identity.”
“Not to mention the Rev and the Wygnin—”
“And half a dozen others.” DeRicci leaned hard on the desk.
“They’re selling one file at a time,” Flint said.
“Bigger profit,” DeRicci said. “When they get to the less valuable ones, they’ll sell them all at once.”
Flint felt light-headed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a breath. “How many clients do you think they’ve had over the years?”
DeRicci shrugged. “Hundreds? Thousands? They’ve been around for a long time, and most of these people are probably still alive.”
“People,” Flint repeated. “Are they all human?”
“Most of them. We’re the ones who invented Disappearance services. The other cultures either don’t interact or have different laws.” DeRicci stared at the screen.
Flint could see her face reflected in the clear surface. Her eyes did look haunted. He wondered how he looked. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people.
Many of them with children. Many of whom had crossed the Wygnin.
“Do you know what this means?” she asked. “We’re going to get inundated with cases, down to the Port, more people just like these poor parents—years with their kids, deeply into a new life, and then sold out by people they trusted.”
The queasiness in his stomach had become a lump. He wasn’t sure he would be able to give Ennis to the Wygnin. He couldn’t imagine having to repeat the scenario, over and over, with dozens of other children, all of whom had parents who thought they were safe on the Moon.
Flint made himself take a deep breath. “It’s not illegal.” Even though he wished it were.
“It’s brilliant,” DeRicci said. “Cruel and brilliant.”
Flint touched the screen, shutting it down. “We need more information.”
“What kind of information? I bet if you ask that nice family with the baby what service they used, they’ll say Disappearance Inc.”
“I know.” Flint couldn’t think about the Kanawas right now. They would distract him too much. He needed to figure out how to stop Disappearance Inc. while still upholding the law. “But we’re making some leaps of logic. This might be a rogue group of staffers, illegally searching the files and making some extra money on the sides.”
“How’re we going to figure that out? And why would we try?” DeRicci said.
“Because if it is, Disappearance Inc will be grateful,” Flint said. “They’ll stop the practice and fire the employees, and we won’t have this flood of vengeance killings and Wygnin kidnappings and Rev prison ships.”
“We’ll still have to give up that baby,” DeRicci said.
“We don’t know that yet,” Flint said, standing up. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” DeRicci asked.
“We’re going to get some proof,” Flint said.
Twenty-Three
Ekaterina’s feet ached. When she had put on these shoes, in her old home in San Francisco days ago, she hadn’t planned to walk miles in them. Her feet had swollen inside them, and blisters covered her heels.
She was limping and not even caring.
The Dome lights were growing brighter, simulating an Earth day. The quality of the fake sunlight was different than real sunlight—thinner somehow, less real, less rich. She had noticed that when she’d visited the Moon in the past, and used to wonder if her reaction to the fake sunlight was simply a snobbish one: if she hadn’t known it was different, would she have noticed it?
Ekaterina had taken a risk shortly after she left the abandoned house and had asked for directions. She had planned it carefully, watching a fast-food mart until a large group of people came by. Then she joined them just outside, lifted her index finger as if she were asking the group to wait, and then went inside.
She asked directions to Dome University’s Armstrong campus. She figured if she could find that, she could find the student apartments where Shamus used to spend most of his time.
The campus was about five miles from where she had slept, and she had no funds to use public transportation. She had thought of flagging down a cab and then getting out before she paid, but then realized that would be too visible.
So she walked, and walked, and walked.
She used main streets because it was daylight, and Armstrong was a walker’s city. Most people lived near their work, and walked there or took public transportation to somewhere nearby and walked the rest of the way. The number of personal vehicles had always been limited in domed colonies—it took a variety of special permits just to own one. So no one would think it odd to see her walking down the street.
Before she got too far, however, she altered her appearance as best she could. She turned her shirt inside out, revealing its white interior (which still looked clean) and she rolled up her pants so that they ended just below her knees.
&
nbsp; Even though she felt that would keep her away from all but the most observant police, she was still cautious. She listened for the hum of aircars, and ducked behind or went into buildings whenever one was around.
One of her stops had been in a bakery, and she had resisted the urge to steal a donut off a stack of them on a table in the center. If she found Shamus, she would beg him for some food, but until then, she had to be as careful as possible.
It was getting harder, though, to resist the urgings of her stomach.
Even though the government kept Armstrong’s daily temperature moderate, Ekaterina was sweating when she reached the outskirts of Dome University.
The Armstrong Branch had been the first university built on the Moon, and its buildings had the grandeur of an old school. They were a rich gray brick. The bricks were made from Moon dirt, in a painstaking process that had cost a fortune over one hundred years before.
The process had been worthwhile, however. This campus was one of the prettiest that Ekaterina had seen off Earth.
She stopped near the main sign, a neon affair that blinked off and on, wasting precious energy—yet another example of the university’s ostentatious use of its wealth. If she remembered her Armstrong geography right, the apartments that students rented off-campus were down the road to her left.
Shamus tried to live there whenever he could. But she would try his old apartment first. He had told her more than once that he was a creature of habit. He didn’t want to think about his living environment, so that he could concentrate on the informational world instead.
The apartments were even shabbier than she remembered. They’d been built around the same time as the university’s earliest buildings, only not with the same care. That had been in the era between permaplastic and the new molded synthetic forms. Whoever had invented this material had designed it to look like a cross between plastic and wood. Only over time, the fake wood veneer had faded and cracked, showing the scratched plastic beneath.
Most of these apartments had only one window, on the street side, and that window was decorated with a variety of signs, posters, and blankets, making each apartment a statement. People in their early twenties sat on stoops, conversed in doorways, and sprawled across the cheap artificial turf, reading their palmtops.
No one looked at her as she passed. She felt calmer here. She hadn’t seen police since she arrived in this neighborhood. She had a hunch they would seem even more out of place than she was.
The building that Shamus used to live in was taller than the rest, but she wasn’t sure that could still be a measure. It also had had a bright red doorway, something he had loved.
She walked two blocks, past apartment complexes that all looked the same, some taller than others, until she finally saw one with a red doorway. She went around the side, walking on a cracked path that led to some stone steps. This all felt familiar.
She knocked, and got no immediate response. The window beside the door was small and had a cheap privacy cover. Shamus used to have a privacy cover, so that he could work uninterrupted.
The floor creaked inside, and then something fell. She knocked again, and a voice shouted, “Coming! Can’t you blokes give it a rest? You have me trapped in here like a ruddy—”
The door opened and the speaker stopped mid-sentence. It was Shamus. His hair was redder than she remembered, and his skin darker. He was heavier too, as if his sedentary habits had finally caught up with him.
“Oh, crap,” he said.
“Shamus,” she started, but he put a sticky hand that smelled of marshmallows over her mouth. Then he held a single finger to his lips, indicating silence.
She nodded.
Slowly, he let his hand drop, as if he were ready to cover her mouth again should she try to speak. When he appeared certain that she was going to remain quiet, he pointed first to his ankle and then to the door.
She looked at the door first. Tiny red chips, flashing at irregular intervals. Then she looked down at his ankle. He was wearing a clear ankle bracelet, its red lights flashing in unison with the lights on the door.
Shamus was under house arrest. Her first thought was that some judge had been stupid to order that; most of Shamus’s work occurred from his house. Then she realized the nature of her dilemma.
Anyone under house arrest could not leave without the court’s permission. Nor could anyone go in without that self same permission. And, if this were a standard house arrest, Shamus’s voice would trigger monitoring devices, so that his conversations and his visitors would be recorded.
This was a dead end.
She looked back up at his compassionate brown eyes, and realized that her luck had finally changed.
* * *
Flint had been to the hospital next to the Port several hundred times, mostly to interview suspects or people who had had trouble on various commuter flights between the Moon and Earth. The routine was familiar to him: enter, show identification, say hello to old friends on duty, and then go to the room.
This time, he didn’t say hello to anyone. He and DeRicci took the stairs to the only crew member of Maakestad’s space yacht who was well enough to speak.
That crew member was the pilot. He was in a standard single room, monitors displayed on the wall behind him, the biobed taking all the readings. The readings were also displayed on the tiny screen outside the door. The door was locked, and Flint had to use identification to enter.
Apparently the pilot and his crew were under arrest until someone in the Port figured out why they had been on a Rev prison ship.
Flint and DeRicci went inside. The pilot was a large man who made the regulation-sized bed look small. His arms, which were outside the covers, were very muscular. Either Maakestad had been very strong, or she had had another way to subdue the pilot.
Flint suspected Maakestad had used the laser pistol, the same one she had smuggled into the aircar.
The pilot watched them walk to the side of his bed. His skin was a sickly grayish green, his eyes yellow, and his lips cracked. The room had the faint odor of vomit.
DeRicci showed him her identification. “We have a few questions,” she said. “Do you work for Disappearance Inc?”
The pilot closed his eyes.
“I suggest you answer,” she said. “You’re in the prison wing of the portside hospital. You were taken off a Rev prison ship, and right now everyone thinks you’re guilty of something. If you’re doing what I suspect, you’re not guilty of anything and we can move you somewhere more comfortable.”
Flint clasped his arms behind his back, his admiration for her growing. He might have been used to talking with people in this facility, but he still wasn’t used to the delicate side of talking to people he didn’t respect. DeRicci knew how to have those conversations.
The pilot’s jaw tightened as if he were clenching his teeth.
“Oh, come on,” DeRicci said. “We already know you sold one of Disappearance Inc’s clients to the Rev who were looking for her, and that she managed to turn the tables on you guys somehow. What we don’t know is if you’re being a good citizen by yourself, with friends, or on your boss’s orders.”
He opened his eyes. The movement was slow because his eyelashes stuck together. There was a gummy mucus between them that Flint hadn’t noticed before.
“Does it matter?” the pilot asked.
“It matters,” Flint said.
“Do I get better treatment if I tell you I was working alone?”
“You get better treatment if you tell us the truth,” DeRicci said. “Remember, we also have your friends in custody and your stories had better match.”
“Yeah,” Flint said. “And I think you were all too sick to coordinate your stories when you were tossed off that Rev ship.”
“Taken off,” the pilot said.
“After we bargained for you,” DeRicci lied. “Want us to send you back?”
The pilot shivered. The reaction made some the brightly colored lines on the wa
ll diagnostic rise. Apparently, being held on a Rev prison ship hadn’t been a pleasant experience.
“It’s a new policy,” the pilot said. “We get Disappeareds and we give them to the group they’re running from.”
“You haven’t always done this, have you?” DeRicci asked.
The pilot shook his head. “Most of the staff quit when we got new management, but those of us that stayed got bonuses for each successful transfer. That’s a lot of money.”
“So you don’t mind selling out desperate people,” DeRicci said.
“Desperate criminals.” The pilot slowly lifted a hand and rubbed his eyes with his thumb. “I was never really comfortable with the way we were flaunting the law.”
“Then why’d you work for Disappearance Inc?” DeRicci asked.
“Pay was good,” the pilot said, “and I got to fly space yachts all over.”
Flint shook his head. “How long have you been turning in clients?”
“About three months,” the pilot said.
“Only newly Disappeared?” Flint asked.
The pilot frowned. His hand fell to the side of the bed as if he couldn’t hold it up any more. “What else would I be doing? Finding old ones and giving them up? As if they’d come with me.”
“But something is happening to the old Disappeareds?” DeRicci asked.
“What do you guys care?” the pilot said. “They’re all criminals. They deserve to be caught. Right?”
“So long as we can prove that the aliens are picking up the right people,” Flint said. “Sometimes that’s hard after twenty years.”
The pilot licked his lips. The cracks on them were deep, and in some places had developed into sores. “Why should I care?”
“Because,” Flint said, “if you’re delivering innocents and lying about their identities, then you’re committing the crime.”
“Well, I never did. And things went well until that Palmer broad stuck a laser pistol in my ear. The Rev had already transferred the credits to our account. They weren’t real happy about losing the woman.”
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