Buried Deep

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Or body parts.

  She was also going to have to triage. She knew without asking that the humans would want to know how each human victim of this stampede died. But she didn’t know how to treat the Disty, where she should even keep their bodies, if she should even keep them.

  She would have to ask the brass at the top about that, and at the moment, they were busy, so overwhelmed by not only the panicked Disty but also by the power vacuum the Disty had left as they tried to flee the Dome, that no one had time for niceties like how to handle the dead.

  Handling the dead. The thing that had gotten all of Sahara Dome into this mess in the first place.

  Scott-Olson closed her eyes and sank into a nearby chair.

  She wished it were all over. Instead, it was just beginning.

  Thirty-two

  After Flint left the Domeview Hotel, he walked toward his office. He needed time to reflect without dealing with public transportation or any problems that he might find once he got back to his side of town.

  He had shut down most of his links. He wanted silence, not that he could get much inside the city. People talked loudly in the streets, sometime standing by themselves, forgetting to speak softly as they used vocal links. Music blared from sidewalk restaurants, and aircars honked above him. Some cars simply honked to express displeasure, while a few buzzed by, perhaps hoping to upset pedestrians.

  Flint couldn’t get any more upset. He had been prepared for Costard’s disappearance. He hadn’t been prepared for her death. From all her accounts and from his own double-check of her information, her relationship with the Disty had reached a plateau. They had sent her here to find a way out of her predicament. They weren’t chasing her.

  That was one of the reasons he believed she could safely disappear. The Disty were trusting her. What they didn’t know was how impossible it seemed for her to solve the Jørgen case. Other Retrieval Artists probably wouldn’t have been able too. Flint’s police training, combined with his data-recovery skills learned in his first job, made his research go three times faster than most people’s, probably much faster than the average Retrieval Artist’s.

  Of course, he still hadn’t solved the initial problem: he hadn’t found any of Jørgen’s family. He wasn’t even sure if Jørgen had had any living family when she began her life of crime.

  He had most likely found the reason for Jørgen’s murder, and that was about it. If he had it to do again, he still would have told Costard to Disappear.

  He was shocked that she failed.

  Flint made sure he walked around the area ruined by last year’s bomb. Usually, that made this long walk easier. But nothing was going to make it easy today. Not even the part he had just reached, his favorite part of the walk, improved his mood.

  This section, far enough from the university to attract a higher-end crowd yet close enough to bring in some students, had become the new Restaurant Row.

  The restaurants in the new row were a mixture of cuisines, many of them from Earth, but some from the far reaches of the known universe. Buildings, many of them remodeled to accommodate a large clientele, had windows that faced the street, windows that opened at certain times of the day.

  Before Dome Dawn was the best time: so many bakers plied their trade that the entire street smelled of bread and cakes and various sweets. But even this late in the day, the row had an odor all its own—a mixture of ginger, garlic, and grilled beef in the lower quadrant, and an equally tantalizing mixture of hot peppers, chili oil, and lemongrass in the next quadrant.

  Often he stopped in this area for dinner, picking that night’s place to eat based entirely on smell.

  Only this afternoon, the cooking aromas didn’t sooth him. They made him realize how queasy he had become.

  The fact that Costard had been killed in the closed office of a Disappearance Service surprised him. No one should have caught up with her there. The service should have protected her.

  He wasn’t willing to believe that her death was random. The style of the death—the Disty vengeance killing, whether real or not—ruled out randomness. If Costard were just a victim of an unknown killer, the killer wouldn’t have chosen this method of murder.

  But the Disty wouldn’t either. Costard’s warrant said quite clearly that she was contaminated. The Disty wanted nothing to do with her. She hadn’t been near any Disty since she had looked at Jørgen’s skeleton.

  No Disty would go near Costard, not even a member of the Death Squad, not even to exact vengeance.

  The last few restaurants on the row gave off a honey-and-burnt sugar odor. The dessert restaurants, open from lunch until midnight, used to be his favorites. He felt a strange craving for a sugared coffee, but he let it go. He’d had enough coffee for one day, and it had been bad coffee at the University’s law cafeteria. He didn’t want to put something else on top of that.

  Flint stepped down the curb and crossed the street, heading out of the row. He hoped that he had pushed Nyquist hard enough in the right direction. If Flint was right, someone else had killed Costard, probably someone human.

  And he wasn’t willing to guess who that human could be, except to acknowledge that the human had known about Costard’s run-ins with the Disty.

  The next block was filled with tiny shops, many of them so exclusive that they were open by appointment only. Flint didn’t even bother to look at the windows displaying their wares. And he was glad that he had shut down most of his links. The irritating part about this neighborhood was that the shops could afford intrusion advertising—instant access to the links of anyone walking by, with a quickly chosen and usually appropriate appeal to the potential shopper’s personal tastes.

  Flint hurried past all of this.

  This case wasn’t over just because Costard died. He was being paid by the human government of Sahara Dome, not Costard. And there were people he needed to contact there.

  He would probably be the person who let them know about Costard’s death.

  Flint sighed and stopped walking for a moment, leaning against one of those exclusive closed shops. He wasn’t going to make that sensitive a contact on the streets of Armstrong.

  It was time to get back to his office and focus on the work at hand.

  If Costard were dead, then it stood to reason that the Disty might kill the other contaminated humans.

  And Flint might have some of the keys to preventing even more deaths.

  Thirty-three

  Someone had purged the records from her files. They weren’t in the official history either.

  It had taken Ki Bowles weeks to find the dirt she needed on Noelle DeRicci. The dirt came courtesy of one of DeRicci’s partners, a broken man named Jack Levenbrook.

  At first, Bowles thought Levenbrook was dead. No one had seen him in years. But she had finally tracked down his last-known address, talked to his estranged daughter, and found him in Tycho Crater, living as far from Armstrong as he possibly could.

  Then it took him a week to grant an interview.

  Tycho Crater was one of the Moon’s smaller colonies. Difficult to get to from any major port, it had little to recommend it, outside of some excellent agribusinesses that took advantage of the areas around the crater itself.

  Bowles hadn’t been to Tycho Crater before. She’d taken a bullet train there the night before the interview, and had been startled at how long the ride took.

  Once she had arrived in the Domed crater itself, though, she had been charmed. Unlike most Moon cities, Tycho Crater had used a lot of the natural landscape in its urban design. Actual rocks poked up through the permaplastic or were used as decorative items in lawns. Some of the Crater’s dips became parks, without the addition of non-native plants.

  The entire effect was eclectic and rustic, almost like a moonscape with buildings and oxygen. She was finally beginning to understand why so many Armstrong residents retired here.

  Levenbrook had. He had taken his pension at the earliest retirement date and fled Arm
strong. Only his wife had come with him. His children had said good riddance and were happy to keep him away from his grandchildren.

  His wife had died a few years ago, and the daughter who had told Bowles about Levenbrook had said the funeral had been the first time any of the rest of the family had gone to Tycho Crater.

  The first and last time.

  Levenbrook lived on a quiet street at the end of a Moon adobe development. His home was small, but had beautiful paintings in a pale red and brown along its sides. Several rocks graced his yard, and other items, all of them decorative, made the entire place look welcoming.

  Bowles hadn’t expected that.

  Levenbrook waited for her in a chair carved into one of the rocks. He was a tall man with a shock of pure white hair. His face was unlined, his eyes sharp. He’d obviously had physical enhancements to keep his bones strong, his spine straight, and the effects of aging at bay.

  When he saw Bowles, he stood and put out his hand.

  She hadn’t expected the courtesy either.

  “You’re prettier in person,” he said with a smile.

  She smiled back. He had obviously planned to charm her.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” she said.

  “I’d say it was my pleasure, but you’d know I’m lying.” He swept a hand toward the front door. “After you.”

  She walked up a stone path that curved toward the door. The door was made of wood, which surprised her. Wood was an expensive and rare commodity anywhere on the Moon. In a place as remote as Tycho Crater, it had to be even rarer.

  She pushed the door open and stepped inside. The air was cooler here, and smelled faintly of mint. The foyer was small, with rounded shelves built into openings in the wall.

  “To your left,” Levenbrook said from behind her.

  To her left was a large room that was almost round. It had an arched ceiling and more openings carved into the walls. Many of the openings had a faint light that poured down from above, illuminating the sculptures on the shelves.

  The sculptures showed humans in a variety of poses. There wasn’t a single alien artifact in the room. In fact, Bowles had a hunch if she looked up the interior décor in the databases, she’d find that it came from some Old Earth culture, one that had never heard of life outside the home planet.

  Levenbrook pulled two wooden chairs close together. Both chairs had hand-woven cushions in the same browns and reds that had marked the house’s outside.

  “Not what you expected, is it?” he asked with a grin. “You talked to my daughter, thought I’d be this cranky old coot who didn’t know anything about anything.”

  “Yes,” Bowles said. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Kids don’t always get it.”

  But neither did Bowles. And she would have to if she wanted to understand anything he told her. But she would save the personal questions until his guard was down, until he no longer tried to charm her.

  “I’d offer you something,” he said, “but then you’d have to stay and finish it. I’d like this over as quickly as possible.”

  “You know I’ll have to make a recording of this interview,” she said. “There is a possibility that you’ll be quoted in my story on Noelle DeRicci.”

  “If I was doing deep background, you wouldn’t be in my house,” he said. “You got my permission. If you need me to sign something, just hand it over.”

  She did. The small pad she carried had a lot of permissions contracts in its memory. She pulled up the least liberal one—the one that allowed her a thousand uses of the interview—and he didn’t even protest. She wasn’t even sure he read it.

  Then he leaned back in his chair. “Ask away.”

  “First,” Bowles said, “I’ve heard from my colleagues that you’ve refused to discuss Security Chief DeRicci in the past. Is there a reason you’re speaking up now?”

  “You just named it,” Levenbrook said. “Security Chief over the entire Moon. Even if I believed we should have a Moon-based government with security powers, I wouldn’t want Noelle to head up any part of it.”

  “Because?”

  “Because she’s got serious problems. It’s not a surprise that the first scandal she’s getting herself involved in is with the Disty.”

  The twenty-four-hour feeds had been filled with talk about the Disty vengeance killing in Armstrong. DeRicci was coming under heavy criticism for letting a criminal wanted by the Disty into the Dome.

  Bowles had been following the story for her own piece on DeRicci. Personally, Bowles thought the entire thing silly. After all, DeRicci had no real powers yet, and wouldn’t have been able to stop the Costard woman from coming into Armstrong in the first place.

  But the hostility coming at a woman whom the entire government had assumed would be a popular appointment had taken everyone by surprise. Even Bowles wasn’t sure what caused it. DeRicci’s personality? Or the new position? Or a combination of both?

  “Why aren’t you surprised about the Disty?” Bowles asked.

  “Because,” Levenbrook said, “it’s because of them that Noelle got her first demotion and damn near got me fired.”

  “I haven’t heard of any case with the Disty that caused a demotion,” Bowles said.

  “And you won’t. It got hushed. Embarrassments to the department usually do.”

  Someday, Bowles would follow up on that entire phrase. But for the moment, she was only interested in Noelle DeRicci.

  “So tell me about the case,” Bowles said.

  Levenbrook leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. His smile, though small, was malicious.

  “Make sure your devices are on,” he said quietly. “I’m only telling this thing once.”

  * * *

  The story went like this:

  DeRicci had already gotten in trouble with her bosses. Early in her career, she’d been promoted to detective. She had a brain and she could solve cases, maybe better than anyone Levenbrook had ever worked with. A natural, able to see things most never saw.

  But she also had a temper, and she wasn’t afraid to show it to her superiors. Her favorite words were idiot and stupid fool, and she used them on anyone whom she felt deserved them.

  Even her bosses. Even her bosses’ bosses.

  Levenbrook was more politic. He’d already had twenty-five years of service behind him without a blemish. Ten years on the street, fifteen as a detective. When his partner retired, Levenbrook inherited DeRicci, to teach her manners.

  That’d failed within their first year together. And to make matters worse, the brass thought she’d corrupted Levenbrook. Her constant anger at anyone who didn’t understand—or didn’t act like they understood— the difficulties of her job put her on a watch list, and made certain she and Levenbrook got the crappiest of crap jobs.

  One of those came the January of their second year. The Armstrong P.D. got an arrest-and-deport order from the Alliance for a kid named Dalton Malone. Malone had grown up on Mars. There he’d somehow managed to teach a hatchling to speak English.

  * * *

  “A hatchling?” Bowles asked. She didn’t know a lot about alien cultures, preferring to focus on human frailties. She only learned what she needed to understand her news stories.

  Levenbrook nodded. “We didn’t know about them either. Or maybe I didn’t. Noelle, she knows a lot, but she doesn’t always understand. Hatchlings are Disty offspring. They are the great secret of the Disty, and their great shame.”

  That seemed dramatic to Bowles, but she said nothing, preferring to hear his version of this.

  “The Disty have three kinds of children—male, female, and hatchling. They’re like gender-neutral, only how can you tell with the Disty? But the Disty can tell, and I guess it’s a shameful thing to birth one. The hatchlings are kept inside the family home. They grow up to be glorified servants, never interacting outside the family, especially not with aliens.”

  Interesting that he chose the word alien to descri
be humans in this context. That showed a bias of his as well.

  “So they never learned English?” Bowles asked.

  “I got the sense they barely knew Disty. But I learned all of this at the same time as the case. Never could tell about Noelle. She might’ve known before.”

  “If the hatchlings aren’t supposed to interact outside the family, how did this Malone teach one English?”

  Levenbrook smiled. “Now you’re getting it. Apparently, the kid grew up next to this family of Disty, and got to know the Disty children his age. He befriended the hatchling and taught the creature English, but nobody found out until years later, after the kid and his family had moved to Armstrong. The hatchling thing screwed up somehow and talked to somebody in English, understood some English program, read some English text. I can’t remember the details. The important thing was that the hatchling, before it died—”

  “Died?” Bowles asked.

  “The Disty don’t take kindly on anything that breaks their laws. I saw pictures of the thing. It was a vengeance killing at some gathering place. The parents got to see it, then take the image home to those trapped hatchlings, supposedly as a deterrent. It’d deter me, I tell you.”

  Levenbrook shuddered. Then he looked at her. Bowles hadn’t moved. She hadn’t seen a vengeance killing and could only imagine one. Apparently, her imagination wasn’t as powerful as the real thing.

  “Now, you gonna stop asking questions or am I gonna shut up?” Levenbrook asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Bowles said, working to keep the sarcasm from her voice. “I’ll be quiet.”

  “Good,” he said, and continued.

  * * *

  Before the thing died, it ratted out Malone, saying the kid—who wasn’t even ten yet—had taught it how to speak and maybe even read the forbidden language. Levenbrook never understood the finer points of Disty law, and it wasn’t his job to. He just had to execute the warrant, arrest the kid, and give him to the Disty representatives for deportation.