Recovery Man

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  She sat on the couch, her chin resting on her knees, her fingers toying with the heels of her shoes.

  She’d hired that lawyer lady, and she wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Celestine Gonzalez. She wasn’t as exotic as Talia had expected. Talia had thought that a woman named for the heavens would be prettier or unusual-looking. But she wasn’t. She had black eyes and black hair and dark skin, and the only things that distinguished her from every woman in Valhalla Basin with black eyes and black hair and dark skin were her clothes.

  They were gorgeous. The fabric soft and silky, the colors richer than anything Talia had ever seen. She wanted to touch the blouse, but she didn’t. She had to pretend like she didn’t care.

  She didn’t want anyone to know how she really felt. How scared she really was.

  The lady lawyer already patronized her enough. Talia saw the look in her eye when Zagrando had brought Talia into the room. This Gonzalez woman had been expecting a child, someone she could manipulate.

  She’d been surprised to see Talia.

  The woman kept making mistakes, and that really worried Talia. She was afraid the woman would make mistakes on her case, all that confident talk of finding her mother, all those quotes about Alliance law and Armstrong law, and all that dodging of the real question: what was Talia’s status now that it was clear she wasn’t her mother’s real daughter.

  She was created, not born. Something that came from a real child, not the real child itself.

  Lawyer Gonzalez hadn’t answered those questions. She barely acted like she’d heard them.

  Talia tugged at a loose bit of plastic on the side of her right shoe. The plastic came off, creating a hole. She stuck her right forefinger into it, touching the side of her foot.

  Her mother would have yelled at her for ruining the shoe. But her mother wasn’t here.

  Celestine Gonzalez thought they’d get her mother back.

  Talia wasn’t so sure.

  Besides, that wasn’t why she officially hired Gonzalez. Talia had hired her for a couple of reasons.

  First, Talia couldn’t get past the promise that she’d be able to go home. Even if she had to live with that lawyer lady for a few days, she could put up with that. She would be back in her room, near her stuff, and if her mom tried to contact her, she’d do it there.

  Second, this Gonzalez knew things. Some she wasn’t telling yet. But if she did anything in the house, even worked on her own network, Talia would be able to hack in. She could find things out without Gonzalez ever knowing.

  Third, Talia would see Gonzalez, anyway. If the woman was handling her mother’s kidnapping—trying to force the police to work harder, trying to keep Aleyd out of stuff—then it made sense to hire her. That way two lawyers wouldn’t be hassling the police. Only one would. And Talia would know what was going on. With two, the other lawyer might be the one that made all the gains, and Talia wouldn’t know about it.

  And finally, Talia didn’t want to hire an attorney who lived here. Most of the attorneys in Valhalla Basin either worked for Aleyd now or had worked for them in the past or, according to one site she’d looked up, weren’t good enough to be hired by the Dome’s best employer.

  An Armstrong attorney, no matter how bad she was, would have to be better than some Aleyd-tainted attorney or some attorney who wasn’t even good enough to get tainted.

  Talia hoped.

  She dug her middle finger into the shoe, making the hole bigger. She wanted to call Detective Zagrando and ask how he was doing, but she didn’t.

  He would know she was only contacting him because she was lonely.

  And scared.

  Really, really scared.

  “Come home, Mom,” Talia whispered, as if her mom had control over what happened. As if her mom could hear her.

  As if her mom were still alive.

  Talia turned her head so that her cheek rested on her knees. She’d was pressing so hard that the bones dug into her skin. She’d probably bruise, but she didn’t care.

  The real reason she hired an Armstrong attorney, one she didn’t even want to admit to herself, was that she believed she’d have to leave Valhalla Basin.

  They’d never find her mom, and Aleyd would take her. Or if Oberholst, Martinez, and Mlsnavek prevented it, they’d kick her out of the house. If she left the house, she’d have to go to that orphans’ place Detective Zagrando had told her about—or she’d have to leave.

  She was too young to leave Valhalla Basin on her own. She’d need some guardian’s permission.

  Celestine Gonzalez was going to try to become her guardian.

  Celestine Gonzalez, who only had a week’s permit to stay in Valhalla Basin.

  Celestine Gonzalez, who lived in the same city her mother had come from.

  Who lived near the only other person who would know Talia’s history.

  Her father—or the man who had fathered her original.

  Miles Flint.

  Forty-one

  She was too smart. Yu leaned against the console, still feeling woozy from his own blood loss. Her arguments had nearly convinced him to take her back.

  Usually the items he dealt in had no brains. Or if they did, their intelligence was minor, artificial, or both. He didn’t listen to their arguments.

  He found it hard to ignore hers.

  Behind him, the medical avatar bent over the travel chamber. The avatar, in the form of a middle-aged man in a white lab coat, had already complained that she was bound up in the chamber. It wanted her freed.

  Finally, Yu put a bubble around them, so that he didn’t have to listen. Every now and then, he turned, saw the avatar doing things to Rhonda Shindo’s face, and then looked away.

  The woman wouldn’t be in the best shape, no matter where he took her. Maybe he should just offer her to the highest bidder. He did that sometimes when things got too complicated.

  He sat in his command chair, a bit stunned by the idea. Could he live far enough away from the Gyonnese—if they didn’t win the bidding? He’d already tied himself too closely to them. He’d let them “improve” his ship, and much as he liked some of the improvements, they made him nervous.

  The Gyonnese’s engineering expertise was far above his own. Several human settlements used the Gyonnese engineering products, but those places were outside of the Alliance. The Alliance hadn’t approved Gyonnese technology for Alliance-built ships.

  Alliance engineers couldn’t quite understand how the Gyonnese did what they did, either.

  Which had bothered him a little when they upgraded his ship. It bothered him a lot more now, now that he was thinking of crossing them.

  He had no idea what kind of technologies—spying technologies—they had placed inside the equipment they added.

  He wasn’t even sure if they could take over his ship without being on it, given enough proximity. He might lose everything, just because he’d bothered to listen to this woman.

  He turned. The avatar was still doing something to her face. Her eyes were closed. Yu could probably take her out of the chamber when she was inside that bubble, but he wasn’t going to. She hadn’t been injured below her face—at least not badly enough for tending here.

  If she needed something, the Gyonnese could provide it. He’d have enough additional expenses. He’d have to have his side checked by some real doctors and get his hand replaced. The damn thing was useless now.

  He’d never thought of using a laser scalpel for a weapon.

  Just like he’d never thought of selling her to the highest bidder.

  He rubbed his face with his good hand. It was tempting. If he got enough money, he’d be able to get far away from the Gyonnese. It wasn’t like he’d broken any laws.

  And it wasn’t like they’d paid him up front. He had none of their money. He’d worked for them enough, recovering various collectibles and rarities that he knew they would pay him the moment he delivered.

  Technically, under Alliance law, he was clear.

 
; Except for kidnapping an Alliance citizen, and offering her for money, as if she were some kind of slave.

  His face flushed.

  At the moment, he could argue that he hadn’t kidnapped her, but had simply transported her to the Gyonnese because he thought she was a fugitive, and he had hoped to branch into the world of Tracking.

  That had always been his excuse should the Valhalla Basin authorities somehow stop him, or some Alliance cop—in the wrong place at the wrong time—find him.

  But if he actually offered her for sale, those excuses wouldn’t fly, not even with the most lenient court. He would become a fugitive himself.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The avatar was washing off Rhonda Shindo’s face. That meant the avatar was nearly done.

  Yu would have to release the bubble soon.

  He sighed. He’d gained some respect for her. She had killed his partner—not that he minded, and not that Nafti was a real partner. He might have killed Nafti himself, if not on this trip than on some other. Nafti was becoming a liability.

  Then she had attacked Yu. If she had been just a bit stronger, or a little bit more experienced as a fighter, she might have actually taken over the ship.

  She might have killed him.

  Which he could respect. When he’d first heard of her from the Gyonnese, he imagined her as one of those soulless people who didn’t mind killing from afar.

  But her daughter hadn’t known—her cloned daughter, who thought she was the number one child. People who were soulless didn’t take on clones and treat them like real children. Those people treated the clones like second helpings, like knockoffs of rare antiques. It didn’t matter if they got a scratch because they had no real value in the first place.

  But Talia Shindo thought she was loved, and then when her mother arrived home and actually realized what was going on, her first thought was for her cloned daughter.

  Whom she treated like a real daughter.

  Maybe even loved like one.

  And then there was the pain in Rhonda Shindo’s eyes when he mentioned the Gyonnese. Not the pain of someone who had been defeated by a group that she loathed, but the pain of someone who regretted a choice.

  According to court records, she hadn’t fought the conviction. Her attorneys had tried to explain the cultural differences—that Rhonda Shindo alone shouldn’t be responsible for the tragedy, that this responsibility should be shared with Aleyd and the other scientists who worked on the project.

  But the judge had ruled strictly based on Alliance law—that the offended party’s laws held, particularly since the crime occurred in the offended party’s territory.

  Had the Gyonnese larvae died in a lab on Valhalla Basin, Shindo’s attorney’s argument would have held. But they had died on Gyonne, and that had caused all the troubles for Rhonda Shindo.

  She had done what any good mother would have done. She moved quickly to protect her own child.

  She set up blinds and double-blinds. And then, because of love?, because of greed?, because of loneliness? (he couldn’t tell which, if any), she had chosen to keep one of the clones herself.

  The fact that the husband didn’t have any was proof positive, in Yu’s mind, that the man hadn’t a clue what his wife had done.

  Rhonda Shindo was devious and brilliant and courageous, which was why Yu had a growing admiration for her.

  But she was trouble to him.

  And the Gyonnese had no reason to kill her.

  All they wanted was what their warrant asked for: the real Shindo/Flint child. If they got that, then all of this would end.

  Yu stood. She wouldn’t give them the child. And that meant that she would become bait—the beginnings of a large legal action, started by the Gyonnese, but to be joined (once it began) by several other alien governments that would claim that the Disappearance Services were illegal violations of the Alliance treaties. Any corporation or any country that supported those services, even tacitly, would either lose their membership in the Alliance or would become liable for every single Disappeared. The Disappearance Services would themselves disappear, and an entire subindustry that existed throughout the Alliance would end.

  Even that made him uncomfortable. It got very close to his own business. If the Alliance started looking closely at the Disappearance Services, then it might start looking at the other services which grew up around it, from Trackers to Retrieval Artists—and even to Recovery Men.

  He couldn’t count how many times he’d been hired to recover an item, only to learn it had disappeared along with its original owner. He never recovered the Disappeared—Rhonda Shindo was the first living sentient being he’d ever taken—but he had recovered a lot of Disappeareds’ possessions.

  And if that meant a few folks got Tracked, and returned to the governments who’d taken out the warrants on them, so be it.

  That wasn’t his concern.

  But he was concerned about losing his own business. It was nicely unregulated. As long as he kept a log of where he went and who he worked for, he never got into trouble with the Alliance. And as far as he knew, no one ever double-checked his log or his work record. He’d lied about the folks who’d contracted with him numerous times and had never ever been caught.

  A whooing noise caught his attention. The avatar was pushing on the bubble, and the thing made a sound like the last rings of a tuning fork.

  He shut off the bubble and simultaneously gave the computer a silent instruction to shut down the avatar.

  The bubble and the avatar disappeared, leaving Yu face to face with Rhonda Shindo.

  Her skin still looked bruised, but it wasn’t swollen, and the nose was nearly back to normal. If the avatar did its job properly, even the bruising would fade.

  She opened her mouth to say something, when he swung his chair back to the console.

  “Computer,” he said, running his hands over the controls, “tell the Gyonnese that we have the package. And tell them to expect delivery at the scheduled rendezvous time.”

  The computer chirruped its affirmative, and he watched as the message went out.

  “I can outpay them,” she said, and this time, her voice sounded normal, not like it had come from deep underwater like it had earlier.

  “I know,” he said without looking at her. “It was a mistake for me to take this job.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Let’s fix it.”

  She sounded pleased.

  “You misunderstand,” he said. “I want the job ended as quickly as possible. The best way to do that is to give you to the Gyonnese.”

  “We’re not anywhere near their home planet.”

  “I know,” he said. “But they’re not taking you to Gyonne. They’re taking you to the nearest Multicultural Tribunal. Now that they know I have you, they’re going to start preparing their case.”

  “There is no case,” she said. “They won the first time. I keep telling you that.”

  “They’re filing a new case, charging you with breaking Alliance law. They want your daughter. All you have to do is give her up, and you’ll be free.”

  Rhonda Shindo didn’t answer that. His board pinged as the Gyonnese responded to his message. They were pleased. They were going to give him a bonus.

  “If you care about money,” she said softly, “you’ll take my offer.”

  “I considered it.” He bowed his head. He couldn’t look at her. “But I realized I care about freedom more.”

  “Then let me go.”

  “My freedom,” he said. “If I bring you back, I’ll be done in this business. Aleyd might even put me in jail.”

  “I can promise they won’t.”

  “And what about Valhalla Basin? What about the Alliance? Can you promise for them, too?”

  “I won’t press any charges.” She didn’t sound desperate. There was a calmness in her voice he’d never heard before. “I’ll say I went with you voluntarily.”

  “Your cloned daughter will contradict that.”
/>
  “She’s thirteen. She doesn’t always understand the truth.”

  It was a way out. But he wanted something sure.

  He wanted something he could control.

  And he had learned in the past few hours that he couldn’t control this woman.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  And oddly enough, he was.

  Forty-two

  Flint had never gotten to the Emmeline so fast in his life. He’d sprinted to his car, then drove the thing himself as if he were still a police officer. He was lucky no one had stopped him for reckless driving.

  Oberholst had just left for Callisto. Oberholst only dealt with old clients. Oberholst only had one old client on Callisto.

  Rhonda.

  Rhonda, whose name kept coming up over and over again, as if she’d done something wrong.

  Emmeline’s body hadn’t had a DNA test.

  The notes in Paloma’s files guessed that Emmeline might be alive and living on Callisto.

  Where Oberholst just went.

  Flint couldn’t ignore that. He’d go there, see Oberholst, see Rhonda.

  See Emmeline?

  He shook off the thought as the car landed in the lot reserved for yacht owners who bought space in Terminal 25. He got out, barely remembered to set the locks, and ran for the Port.

  It was busy that afternoon. It was always busy, but it seemed even busier than usual. He had to push his way through the side door, then he had to go through security—a new twist that he’d forgotten about, one that his old partner Noelle DeRicci had demanded shortly after the Disty crisis, the first crisis she dealt with as the Moon’s security chief.

  The Ports frightened her. The unprotected travel between the domes.

  It seemed everything frightened her since she’d gotten the new job.

  Or maybe she was just being cautious.

  Like he was.

  He was pushing against humans, although they wore brightly colored fabrics in a style he didn’t recognize. An entire group of them coming from somewhere. A rich group, to be allowed to use this entrance.