Recovery Man

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

“Only in regards to patient needs,” the computer said.

  “I understand.” Rhonda paused as she considered her options. Often parts of fused systems did not communicate with other parts, preventing outside systems from taking over a ship’s computer or stealing proprietary information from it.

  If this fused system worked that way, she would be able to ask for things that the rest of the system wouldn’t know she had. And the part of the system she was currently communicating with wouldn’t know what she had asked for earlier.

  She took a deep breath. “Computer, I need a diagnosis table, access to your medical programs, and some specialized medical supplies.”

  A table slid out of a nearby wall. The table was an older model, which required someone to lie on it rather than just touch it to get a scan. Lighting rose around the table, and so did a wall shelf with some handheld diagnostic equipment and, surprisingly, a mirror.

  She almost didn’t recognize herself. Her face was a grayish white, either from strain or the poisoning or both. She had deep shadows under her eyes, and she looked frailer than she did in the mirrors at home.

  “What sort of supplies?” the computer asked.

  “I don’t know for certain,” she said. “I may ask for more as I discover other problems. At the moment, I will need your most powerful sleeping medication in a hypodermic form, a laser scalpel, and twenty-five cydoleen capsules.”

  “Cydoleen capsules are an unusual treatment.”

  “I have an unusual condition,” she said. “I will also need these antitoxins.”

  As she named the drugs that would help with some—although not all—of the contamination poisoning, drawers opened around her. In one, she found hypodermics filled with a sleeping drug, and labeled by amount. In another, a bottle of cydoleen capsules, just as she requested. And in the third, several different laser scalpels.

  She took them all and placed them on the shelf.

  Then she stared at them. A dozen weapons.

  Now all she needed was a plan.

  Twenty-one

  The building Detective Zagrando took Talia to was right next to the police station and right behind the prison. She recognized the prison building. All kids entering seventh year got a tour of it, especially the really bad parts, like the showers and the dirty cells. The school said the tour was designed to discourage a life of crime. In reality, it was supposed to remind kids to behave. Kids going into their teen years were more likely to get into trouble, and the school wanted to prevent it.

  Talia hadn’t been scared of the prison, but she hadn’t liked the police station. It was loud and filled with too many lights and unruly people. She was glad Zagrando hadn’t taken her there.

  Even this other building, called City Housing Short Term according to the sign on its door, had an official side she didn’t like. The lights were too bright in the wide entry, the floor made of some kind of tile that looked dirty even when it was clean.

  Zagrando showed her the check-in procedures—she actually had to put her hand in a fake hand near the elevators, and if she was approved a light would appear above the elevator leading to the correct floor.

  School was this regimented, and she hated it there. Her mom’s work was this regimented too, and she always wondered why her mom stayed there.

  Right now, though, Talia had no choice. She had to stay somewhere, and she couldn’t go home.

  Detective Zagrando pressed a knuckle against a panel near the elevators.

  “I’m sending your information, and I lied a little,” he said. “I said it would take two weeks to resolve your case in the courts and there was no hotel budget.”

  “Two weeks?” she repeated. “You think this’ll take two weeks?”

  “I’m buying you time. That assessment will run through the system, and protect your house longer. It’ll also give you time to hire a real attorney if you need to.”

  He added the phrase if you need to like he had to. She got the other message, though. He thought she should hire someone and do it soon.

  She ran a hand through her hair. If she hired an attorney, she was acting like Mom wasn’t coming back.

  Except that Mom wanted Talia protected. The whole attorney thing was really Mom’s idea.

  “Okay,” Talia said. “Do I have to go to school?”

  “Not right away,” Zagrando said. “Your mother was kidnapped and you were attacked. We need to acknowledge that there is a threat to your family, and that threat might approach you at school. I’ll let you know when I think it’s safe for you to return. In the meantime, I’ll have them send your work to my links and I’ll bring that to you.”

  “Take your time,” Talia said.

  Zagrando smiled. “Schoolwork might give you something to do.”

  “You got entertainment links here?” she asked.

  He nodded. “You have a public links network without any outgoing capability. Your own links will be shut off for the duration, and if you need to contact anyone, you can do so through me or Detective Bozeman.”

  “What about searchable databases? If I have to do schoolwork, I need access.”

  “You’ll have enough to get your schoolwork done. You just can’t do net work and send it to your classroom via your links.”

  She nodded. So she was going to have access to a subpar database. That would be annoying, but she might be able to boost it once she was inside.

  Zagrando frowned at her. “You’re scheming.”

  “You sound like my mother,” Talia said.

  “I recognize the look.” He moved his hand away from the panel. “Now try the hand.”

  Talia put her hand on the fake hand. The thing was actually warm and rubbery feeling. “Ick,” she said, pulling away.

  A green light went on over the elevator doors with a giant three on them. A small sign beside the elevator said it would take her to the fifteenth through nineteenth floors.

  She’d never been that high in any building in Valhalla Basin. “Will I at least have a window?”

  “Let’s go look.” Zagrando swept his hand forward, as if he was asking her to dance. She walked past him and looked for some button that would open the elevator door.

  Instead, as she got close to it, the door opened for her. She stepped inside. Zagrando followed. The walls were brown but they were made of a material that doubled as a sensor. Even if Talia wanted to do something wrong in here, she couldn’t. Every breath was being monitored.

  “Can I leave when I want?”

  “Only if you get permission from me or Detective Bozeman.”

  “What if you guys are off duty?”

  “We’ll always take a call from you,” Zagrando said.

  “A call?” she asked.

  “There’s a contact button in the apartment. If you’re allowed outside the apartment, you can use your links.”

  She shuddered. “I didn’t know I was going to be a prisoner.”

  “You’re not,” he said.

  The elevator lurched; then she felt it zoom upward. “Prisoners can’t come and go when they want.”

  “You’re not in trouble for anything,” he said. “This is, officially, protective custody. You need to be watched in case the wrong person comes for you.”

  “I told you he won’t.”

  “I know,” Zagrando said. “and if I believed that, I’d take you to some hotel.”

  He was looking at the wall as he talked, not at her, and she realized he was saying some of this for the monitors.

  “I’ve never been alone before,” she whispered.

  His gaze met hers. He studied her for a moment, as if he were seeing if she was telling the truth.

  She was. She’d initially said that for the monitors, too, but as she did, she realized she’d meant it. Even when she wanted to be alone, she couldn’t be. Not for more than a few hours. Mom kept a real close eye on her.

  And she was only thirteen.

  “I’m sending a comforter,” he said.

  “
I don’t want a stranger.” Talia’s voice broke a little. She hadn’t planned that, either.

  “You didn’t know me three hours ago.”

  “You’re a policeman. That automatically means you’re safe.”

  “I told you, anything you say—”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I have nothing to hide.”

  The elevator doors opened onto a narrow room. Off the room half a dozen corridors branched, and from each corridor, she could see more branches. The place looked like some kind of Disty warren, not a human building.

  Except that the ceilings were too high for the Disty.

  “You asked for a window,” Zagrando said. “I found you one on the way up.”

  He put a hand against her back, a casual reassuring touch just like her mom would do, and led her down one of the dark corridors. Lights turned on behind the door numbers as she approached. Once she looked behind her and saw that the numbers had gone dark.

  Her stomach twisted. This was unlike any place she had ever been.

  He stopped in front of the door at the very end of the corridor. The door was number 433.

  “Touch it,” he said.

  She put her hand on the lit number. The door clicked open. Natural light made her wince. An entire wall of windows faced her. She went to them before looking at the room.

  She could see Valhalla Basin all the way to the curved end of the Dome, kilometers away. Buildings scattered across the view, some so short she could see every detail of their roofs, and others taller than this one. Aircars looked like toys below her. A few banked near the window; they all had police logos on the side.

  “It’s small,” Zagrando was saying, “but it’s comfortable. Your meals will be provided. There’s a cafeteria near the elevator if you get lonely. Someone’s there all day.”

  She turned. The light covered everything—the brown couch, the matching brown chair, and the scarred tables. Through a narrow archway, she saw a kitchen table and four chairs.

  “Is there a bedroom?” she asked.

  “Past the kitchen,” he said.

  She nodded. Her stomach hurt. She wanted to go home.

  She wanted her mom.

  “Would you like someone to stay with you?”

  “Can you?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t. We have to have a gender-appropriate companion.”

  A woman, then. A stranger. Like the comforter.

  Talia crossed her arms and looked out the miraculous window. “I’ll be fine.”

  She had her voice under control. Her face felt funny, though, as funny as her stomach.

  “I’m going to send someone up every few hours, just to check,” he said.

  “What if I go to sleep?”

  “Let the internal system know. No one will disturb you for ten hours.”

  She swallowed. She didn’t want someone to check. She didn’t want to be undisturbed for ten hours. She didn’t want stupid prison food or to go to some dumb cafeteria.

  “Where’s the network panel?” she asked.

  “There should be a portable one on the bed,” he said. “Otherwise there’s one near each doorway in every room.”

  He was reflected in the window. She could see his hand gesturing toward the arch. Since she wasn’t looking at him directly, he apparently saw no need to mask his expression.

  He looked worried.

  “I’ll check too, before I go off shift,” he said.

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  He stood there silently for the longest time. Then he said, “Talia?”

  She still didn’t turn around.

  “You’ll be all right.”

  “Of course I will,” she said in her best voice. It almost sounded like Mom’s voice, all liquid and warm, even though she felt chilled and more frightened than she had ever been in her life.

  “I wish today had gone differently,” he said. He waited a moment for her to respond. When she didn’t, he muttered a soft good-bye and let himself out the door.

  She leaned her head against the window. It was plastic and warm, which she had not expected.

  She wished the day had gone differently, too. She wished her mom had come home and screamed at her for skipping school. She wished she had broken into House’s systems and readjusted the security, like she wanted to weeks ago, but didn’t because she thought Mom wouldn’t approve.

  She wished she’d gotten out of the closet sooner, so she could have stopped those men from taking her mom.

  She wished she was older, so that she’d know exactly what to do.

  Twenty-two

  Detective Iniko Zagrando closed the door to Talia Shindo’s temporary apartment. He rubbed his eyes, astonished at how tired he was. Then he realized he wasn’t tired at all. He was overwhelmed.

  The girl had gotten to him. He liked her.

  That was always a mistake. He would get too involved in the case, lose too many nights’ sleep over it, and it would end badly.

  They always ended badly.

  He gave the scarred door one last look. She seemed so lost and so brave, standing in front of that window, pretending the view was enough to make her day better.

  If she were his daughter, he’d be real proud of her. She’d done a tremendous job all day. When he and Bozeman asked her about what happened, she gave them accurate information—repeatedly. Most adults couldn’t do that.

  Her house’s computer system backed up everything she said, everything it had managed to save even though the Recovery Man had tried to destroy its security systems.

  Zagrando wondered what else he would find as he dug into the special security sections of the place. He suspected he would find more.

  But not as much as most houses would have. That girl was too smart. The panel she had built in the closet was beyond his skills. He had no idea how to do that, or that it was even possible.

  She had saved her own life by being clever. No one would have found her. No one would have realized her mother was gone, maybe not for days. By then, the average person would have made too many attempts to get out of that closet. The house system might have seen the victim as something destructive inside its little nest.

  He’d seen that more than once.

  He gave the door one last rueful glance, then headed down the hall. He hated this place. He’d brought so many people here—so many children here—that he always associated it with loss.

  Aleyd didn’t care how many of its employees and their families got destroyed in its pursuit for money, fame, more land—whatever it was that the corporation wanted. He’d come to think of Aleyd as something alien, just like the Disty and the Wygnin he’d met.

  In fact, Aleyd was more alien to him. The Disty had beliefs and dreams and goals just like he did. They had customs and families and laws, all things he could understand.

  Aleyd seemed to have none of those things. It made promises to families, then forgot them. It opened new territories, then abandoned them. It created new products, and didn’t seem to care if the products hurt indigenous life forms.

  Hell, it didn’t care if the products hurt human life forms, so long as the company made a profit.

  And Zagrando was one of the people on the frontlines, watching the corporation destroy people in its continual move forward. He’d had a number of partners resign from this job—being a public servant in a company town was one of the most thankless positions he could think of—but he would never step down. He wanted to die in the line of duty.

  Very few people in Valhalla Basin saw the things he saw, and when they did, they quit or ran away or became politicians in a sad attempt to change Earth Alliance laws.

  He just did his job and tried, in his own small way, to make sure almost no one got caught in the impersonal system. He’d bend rules, he’d change facts, he’d alter reports if he had to, just so the people who came his way made it out—not just alive, but as healthy and happy as he could guarantee.

  But he kn
ew, once he brought them here, his chance of keeping them healthy and happy was slim. His chance of keeping them alive was a little better, but not much.

  He reached the elevator bank, thankful that no one had come out of the other apartments. He didn’t want to see who needed saving on this floor, particularly when they weren’t his cases.

  He ran his hand along the front of the elevator. It processed his badge number and identification, contained in his palm, then opened for him.

  He stepped inside.

  At least Talia Shindo was a clone. Her mother was brilliant on that. The Gyonnese wanted what they called “original” children, the source of the DNA match. Clones were copies without value.

  Which meant that somewhere there was an original child, or Rhonda Shindo wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. She had had six clones made, just to protect the original who, Zagrando was sure, had an identity somewhere else, and was as convinced of it as Talia Shindo had been of hers.

  Until this afternoon.

  He rubbed a hand over his face, hating how the elevator lurched as it started its rapid descent.

  The kid had gotten to him. She was alone, she had just learned how screwed up her life really was, and she had experienced the greatest trauma of her thirteen years.

  Her mother had been kidnapped by a Recovery Man, which did not bode well. Zagrando had told Bozeman that a Recovery Man on the case meant that Retrieval Artists and Trackers had turned the case down because it was too hot for them, but that might not be true.

  In fact, he worried that it wasn’t true.

  The fact that the Gyonnese hired a Recovery Man could also mean that they saw Rhonda Shindo/Flint as a thing, not as a person—something to be stolen (or “recovered” in the parlance) without any regard to the consequences, legal or otherwise.

  The woman was probably already dead. If she did do those crimes—and he had no doubt she was a part of them—then she was, by Earth Alliance standards, a mass murderer and deserved whatever punishment she got, legal or otherwise.

  The elevator doors opened. Another detective stood there, with a boy no older than two in her arms. Zagrando nodded at her, then passed her, wishing he hadn’t seen her.