Recovery Man

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  How long had those two creeps been in the house? How long had they been waiting for her and her mom?

  Talia took big gulps of air. The air out here was no fresher than it had been in the closet, but it felt cooler. And that was enough to send relief through her.

  Deep down, she’d been afraid she’d be stuck in that closet forever.

  She went into her bathroom, splashed water on her face, and then leaned against the mirror. Her skin was blotchy, her eyes bigger than she’d ever seen them. It didn’t look like her face any more: the blue eyes, the lighter-than-normal skin, the blonde curls all seemed like they belonged to someone else.

  Slowly she reached behind her ear, and tugged the hair back. Then she turned her head, trying to see the tag in the mirror. The Recovery Man had said it was under her skin, but whoever put it there had to hide it behind the ear for a reason. Maybe it was visible anyway.

  Maybe.

  But she couldn’t see that part of her own head. Not without a second mirror. And for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel like bothering House with something that trivial.

  Not when the creeps still had her mom.

  Talia splashed more water on her face, ice-cold this time. Then she patted her skin dry with a new towel and made herself breathe.

  Mom said to call the lawyer if she got taken away. Mom said, Don’t let Aleyd know I’m gone. Make something up, if you have to. I don’t want to lose the house.

  Aleyd sometimes put people in temporary housing near the main plant if the company thought something bad had happened. The house got reassigned to some other employee, and then you’d have to go on a waiting list just to get it back.

  There was no guarantee you’d get the same house, or even the same level of house. And Talia’s mom had had this place since she came to Valhalla Basin, right after Talia was born.

  Talia frowned, wondering how much of what she knew was true and how much of it was false. There was no way to find out, not until she found her mom.

  But she wasn’t sure what to do. This was a real, true kidnapping, and no Moon-based lawyer could help with that.

  Mom would forgive her if she contacted the police.

  House was rebuilding the exterior links. Right now, the entire building was still shut off from the outside. If Talia wanted to get ahold of the police, she had to do it from the porch or the backyard or the front sidewalk.

  She stood up. She’d be happy to get out of this place.

  Still, she didn’t go out the front because she wasn’t sure if someone else was waiting outside. She’d go out the back and then hurry into the yard. No one could see her in the yard. It was designed for complete privacy.

  She ran into the kitchen and stopped when she saw the side door. A mural played along it, showing a wind-swept field under a blue sky. Light seemed thin, washing out the tall grass and the mountains beyond.

  A running clock in both alien characters and regular numbers showed time lapsing. A vehicle—it looked like a flying car, only without passengers—hovered low over the grass, dropping water or liquid or something.

  Then the flying car disappeared and the grass died. The ground was brownish red, but parts of it turned black. Creatures came—long, thin things that seemed like ropes with heads and hands (the fingers were long and thin too, like tiny models of the same body)—and then they bent in half and dug at the dirt.

  Black things, like turds, came out of the dirt, and the creatures folded themselves in half again, hands raised to the sky.

  Eventually the image faded and large Spanish words and regular numbers covered the screen: Ten thousand died in the first wave. Twenty thousand families lost generations of genetic heritage. This act was repeated twice more. Sixty thousand Gyonnese have paid with their futures.

  How has Rhonda Flint paid?

  Rhonda Flint was Mother’s married name.

  A tiny image appeared in the lower corner of the door, along with the words, For more information, touch here.

  Talia started to reach for that spot, then stopped. Could she trust the Recovery Man? What did he know, anyway? He knew what the people who hired him, the so-called Gyonnese, had told him.

  They had also told him how to rig this image corder up, as well as how to shut off House’s systems. Only he had made mistakes when he shut off House.

  Had he made mistakes when he set up that screen?

  Or was it an intentional trap?

  No wonder the door was hot when Mom had tried to open it. No wonder she had noticed it.

  Talia backed away from the images, then headed out of the kitchen. The living room seemed so normal. The couch still had the dent from her body, where she’d been sitting, watching a vid along her links, when the Recovery Man and his creepy partner had burst into the house.

  She put her hands on the sides of her face and pressed, trying to keep herself calm. If she went to the police, they’d think Mom was a mass murderer.

  If she didn’t go to the police, then the Recovery Man might get away with Mom.

  Talia felt every one of her thirteen years, and they weren’t enough. She was too little for this.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  So she did what her mom had told her to do: she snuck out a window in the back and sent a message to her mom’s lawyer.

  Nine

  With a trembling hand, Flint opened the file. It branched into several subfiles. There was a general file, one marked with his name, one with Rhonda’s, and one with Emmeline’s. Then there was a file for Paloma’s notes and thoughts, and another for news accounts.

  He leaned back in his chair, forcing himself to breathe. The ship was unusually quiet. He didn’t even have music playing, and the aural monitors that he’d left on to alert him if there was a problem had been silent for some time.

  He could get up and check them. He could leave the cockpit and make himself dinner. He could go to his suite, the captain’s suite, and try to calm down.

  But none of that would change this moment. If he opened these files, he would have to face Emmeline’s death all over again.

  And if he didn’t open them, he would wonder what was in them.

  He’d never be able to leave them alone. He’d open them eventually. He might as well do so now.

  Flint took another deep breath and leaned forward. First he opened the news file.

  The file contained some news feeds. From the date stamp, he knew what they were: images of him holding Emmeline, in front of that day care center, her little face, almost unrecognizably black and suffused with blood, turned against his chest, her tiny hands clenched in useless fists. He had vowed that no one else’s daughter would die like that, even though he still didn’t remember saying it. He only remembered Emmeline, how wrong she felt, how motionless, how empty.

  But he knew what he had said—he’d seen the footage countless times. For a while, one of the local reporters, Ki Bowles, had dredged it up every single time he figured in a story she was working on.

  He hated her for that. He hated her for many things, but wasn’t above using her. She was working on some stories for him right now, destroying the last of Paloma’s legacy even as he dug through the secret files Paloma had left him.

  As well as the files she’d meant to delete.

  He closed the news folder. Then he stared at two unlabeled audio files. For a while, Paloma kept her notes in audio format, until she discovered that the sleazy attorney next door could hear everything she said. She had soundproofed the office then, and made sure the sleazy attorney never used his knowledge.

  Flint passed over those files, too. He’d listen in a little while.

  First, he had to examine the file marked Emmeline.

  A series of holographic slides rose in front of him. Emmeline on her first (her only) birthday, laughing as she dug her pudgy fingers into the cake, morphed into a toddler Emmeline, and then into a child with a gap-toothed grin caused by the loss of baby teeth, then into a girl who had Rhonda’s slend
er build, Flint’s blond curls, and his bright blue eyes.

  The images faded as quickly as they appeared.

  He was slightly dizzy, and he realized he hadn’t breathed. He made himself inhale and then stand.

  He paced the small cockpit, unable to shake the images.

  Emmeline, growing up.

  Impossible, of course. He had held her. He had held her body, lifeless and broken. He had stood beside Rhonda as the mortician took Emmeline from him one last time and tucked her little body into his recycling device, making her into water and nutrients and fertilizers for the plants that grew in the pits outside the Dome.

  Flint had insisted she go to flowers only —he hated the thought of her fertilizing food—and he had signed all the proper documents, paid the increased fees. And sometimes he took comfort in the fact that for a time, she had given someone a bit of beauty, a bit of pleasure.

  Now, though. Now he was shaking.

  He tried to dredge up Paloma’s words again—Emmeline is dead—but he shook off the remembered voice. Paloma had lied to him. Paloma had betrayed him many times over.

  He had been dealing with her lies and betrayals ever since her death. Now he had another to add to it all.

  This file on Emmeline.

  Which might be nothing. Or maybe it was some kind of blackmail file to keep him under control. Paloma could have created this easily. Cloning companies often made this sort of kaleidoscope of possible futures for potential clients, people who thought that maybe they’d want to recreate the child they’d lost.

  He and Rhonda had decided against that. Emmeline had been an individual. Even if her cells were revived and another child was born with her face, that child wouldn’t be her. There’d be subtle differences, like there were with identical twins, or there’d be major ones, caused by a different upbringing.

  And, he had argued, it wouldn’t be fair to the child, created as a replacement for the one lost, the one who might have been perfect because her loss made her part fantasy.

  Rhonda had agreed. Their divorce had come for other reasons, although the precipitating event had been Emmeline’s death.

  He stared at that final image of the Emmeline who had never been. It was hard to think of her grown. She’d be almost sixteen now, more woman than child, and if things had gone the way he and Rhonda had planned, Emmeline would have had a sibling or two to keep her company.

  To annoy her and hug her and make her feel like the important older sister.

  He sat down. Just because he and Rhonda had decided against creating a second Emmeline didn’t mean that Rhonda hadn’t gone to one of those reconstruction companies, the ones who created an imagined life for someone who had died. Not a clone. Just an imaginary life.

  Supposedly these companies eased a person’s grief. Supposedly the fiction replaced the reality, the emptiness of the future.

  Flint’s future hadn’t been empty. His life had probably been more interesting due to Emmeline’s death. No one could have predicted he would have ended up here.

  But his life was lonely. He hadn’t remarried, hadn’t even fallen in love. He rarely dated, and after a while, he’d stopped that, too.

  He had few friends, and even fewer of them were close. Now that Paloma was dead—and she hadn’t been a friend, not really—he only had Noelle DeRicci, chief of Moon security and his former partner.

  In the last few months, he’d even stepped back from that friendship, choosing to believe Paloma’s admonition that a Retrieval Artist could have no close relationships, that those close relationships could be used against him.

  Was that what this file was? Something to use against him?

  Its very existence certainly upset him.

  Paloma would have known that. By the time she trained him, she would have known how much he still grieved for the life he’d lost, the family he’d lost, the child he’d lost.

  But that didn’t change the fact that she had deleted this file when he bought the business.

  Because she felt she hadn’t needed it anymore?

  Because it was her just-in-case file, as in just in case she needed to bribe a police officer?

  Or because she had developed all of this for a case?

  A case involving Rhonda? Or Flint himself?

  Or Emmeline?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Ten

  The stupid woman wouldn’t stop banging. Now the incessant noise was giving Yu a headache.

  For a while, she had stopped, and he thought she’d given up. Then she started again, and now the sound got worse, like she’d taken something hard and was slamming it against the door.

  “All right,” he said to his partner, Janus Nafti. “Go down there and make her shut up.”

  “Do I hurt her?” Nafti sounded a little too enthusiastic about that.

  “No,” Yu said. “Just bargain with her. Or tie her up. Or something.”

  Nafti left the bridge, and Yu let out a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure if his budding headache was coming from the pounding or from Nafti’s reaction to it. Nafti had been complaining nonstop since the pounding started again.

  A holoimage appeared in the center of the bridge. It showed his cargo ship in yellow, the ship ahead of his in green, and all the ships behind in red. They were scattered throughout Valhalla Basin’s Port, but the way the tiny holoimage was designed, it seemed like they were the only ships in the Port.

  They weren’t, of course. Corporate cities like Valhalla Basin kept the location of the more important ships secret.

  Yu had to acknowledge the notification. He brushed his hand across the top of the board, then got a time line in response. The time clicked off on the holoimage, using only familiar numerals.

  Most Ports that used a time-line system had at least ten different symbols for the countdown.

  In the little holoimage, the top of the Port swiveled, and an opening appeared above his ship. His board confirmed: the first stage to liftoff had occurred.

  His stomach was queasy. He’d left a lot of Ports with a lot of stolen goods—or recovered goods, or goods of questionable ownership—but he’d never left with a person before.

  He hoped nothing would prevent this liftoff.

  “Hey, Hadad?”

  Yu jumped. He’d never heard any voice on the ship’s speakers before except the voice of the ship herself. But this voice belonged to Nafti, and he sounded hesitant.

  “What?” Yu made sure he sounded as annoyed as he felt.

  “Um, this woman down here, she says the cargo hold is poisoned.”

  Yu punched a button to the left of the miraculous no-touch board. Nafti’s ugly bald head appeared next to the image of the ships awaiting liftoff.

  “What?” Yu snapped.

  “She says—”

  “I know what she says. I’m busy here. Why are you bothering me with this junk?”

  “Because she listed at least five of the cargos that we carried in the last six months.” Nafti looked scared. He swallowed so hard that his Adam’s apple moved up and down.

  “So? She found a manifest.”

  “You said we don’t keep a manifest.”

  They didn’t. Yu frowned. “How would she know?”

  “She says that there’s contaminants in the hold.”

  “Nonsense,” Yu said. “We have a service that cleans everything.”

  It wasn’t really a service. It was a bunch of cleaner ʼbots he’d liberated from a previous owner. They were supposed to glow red when they reached their limit of hazardous materials.

  “Well, the service ain’t working,” Nafti said.

  The timer was blinking. His ship on the holoimage in front of him had turned a pale lime as the yellow blended into the green.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Yu said, and deleted Nafti’s image.

  “You need to make time. She’s got a point.” Nafti’s voice echoed through the too-large bridge. “She’s scaring me.”

  “And you�
��re annoying me,” Yu said, punching off the external audio. He frowned at the images in front of him, wishing that modern Ports would let pilots fly the old-fashioned way, with equipment instead of weird colors and little holoimagery.

  Still, he ran his hand above the board, feeling how easily the ship rose upwards. Silent, maneuverable—empty.

  That was a sign she wasn’t carrying any weight at all.

  He still ran his sensors, and they told him that the Port had indeed opened its roof for him, there were no shields, and he was clear to take off.

  Which he did.

  He shut off all sound to the bridge as he headed out of Callisto’s space. He’d learned on the way in how annoying this place was. It was filled with ads. If he had the sound system off, he figured he wouldn’t have to listen to any of it.

  And he wouldn’t have to stare at the little images that appeared on his floor—as inexplicable as they were. Right now, a yellow fruit (a banana? He wasn’t versed in Earth fruits) was circling a plate of meat. Near it, a bed floated on a blue sea and a heterosexual human couple seemed to enjoy the motion.

  He looked away from the imagery and flicked an edge of the board.

  “Your wish?” The ship asked in its sexy voice.

  His cheeks flushed. He’d programmed that voice for solo trips. The ship had probably thought he was alone, since he was the only one on the bridge during liftoff.

  “Scan cargo hold five,” he said.

  “I am showing one life-form. Human. Female,” the ship said.

  “I know that,” Yu said. “I meant for contaminants.”

  “Specify,” the ship said.

  “Contaminants harmful to humans. And I don’t want the chemical names. I want the street names.”

  “Such a scan would be harmful to the life-form inside.”

  “Then do a scan that won’t hurt her,” Yu snapped. How hard was it to take one life-form, human, female, to Io for a simple trade-off? She had to arrive healthy and she had to be alive.