Recovery Man

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  All the criminal attorneys used this path to talk with their clients instead of the interview room, because they knew that the prison’s staff had no qualms about listening in.

  It was just harder here—with the fence’s own frequency scrambling communications, with the scrambler just outside the fence so that no one could communicate with anyone inside, and with the restricted link access.

  Gonzalez had changed her clothes. The blue suit she wore looked new and conservative. It fit her perfectly, accenting a shapely body he hadn’t noticed on her first visit.

  She was an attractive woman. Too bad she was a lawyer.

  “I’m not kidding,” she said. “I want you to take temporary custody of Talia.”

  “There’s got to be someone else,” he said.

  “There is,” she said. “We can bring in someone from Armstrong, but that’ll take time. I want Talia back in that house.”

  “As bait?” he asked.

  She looked at him as if he were crazy. “She’s gifted with computers. She knows that system like she invented it. She might find things you haven’t.”

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  “Besides, if her mother gets free, she’ll contact the house.”

  “You’re sure about that?” He kept his voice flat. He put his hands in his pockets and scuffled forward. The fence beside them hummed—or maybe that was just how his body sounded without the white noise constantly filtering in from his links.

  Gonzalez put a hand on his arm, stopping him. “What do you know?”

  He looked down at her long, manicured fingers. Even her hands were pretty.

  “I know that if we don’t keep moving, someone will overhear this conversation.”

  She gave him a disbelieving look, then walked a little ahead of him, kicking up that fine dust. No one cleaned the yard. No one did much to maintain the prison. It was the most neglected space in Valhalla Basin.

  It helped that the prison was underused. Crime here was minimal, which did irritate him. If he let his cover vanish, then he would finish the case and leave this overly regulated community. He could go someplace where people had varied jobs and opinions of their own. Someplace without a dress code and neighborhoods segregated by pay grade.

  Someplace real.

  “Come on,” Gonzalez said. “You can’t throw out a bone like that about Rhonda Shindo and not expect me to pick it up.”

  Actually he had expected that to slip by her. Which showed him that he’d been here too long. None of the attorneys who practiced in Valhalla Basin could have caught that.

  “Okay,” he said, knowing that by telling her what he’d been doing, he was tacitly agreeing to her plan. She just didn’t know it yet. “Here’s what I’m guessing about Rhonda Shindo. I’ve been researching her, and while I can’t prove anything, the gaps in the record are pretty telling for someone who knows how to look.”

  Gonzalez slowed. She turned a little sideways so that she could watch his face. Maybe she had figured out that he was going to agree. Maybe he should stop underestimating her.

  “We know she cloned her daughter. We also know that Talia is number six, and she’s two and a half years younger than the original child. Which caught my attention right away.”

  Gonzalez’s face remained impassive. She was listening, but in lawyer mode. He couldn’t tell her reaction.

  He hated lawyer mode.

  “In most of the Earth Alliance, only the surviving clones receive numbers. Most are injected or enhanced after it becomes clear that the child will survive.”

  “I know this,” Gonzalez said impatiently.

  “Well, what you probably don’t know is that early clones have an internal number instead of an external one. Talia’s is only internal.”

  “What do you mean, early?”

  “I mean the fetus gets the number, not the baby. Somewhere in the growth cycle, before the clone is considered viable, it gets its internal number.”

  “And the external one?”

  “When someone decides—and this is why cloning gets legally difficult—when someone decides that the cloned child will indeed survive.”

  Gonzalez stopped again. “They can kill clones? Legally? Human clones?”

  “In some places,” he said.

  “On Valhalla Basin?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But only if the clone’s owner signs off.”

  “Or guardian,” she said.

  He held up a hand. He knew where she was going, and he didn’t want her there, not yet. “Right now, we’re not talking about the current case. We’re talking about our missing person.”

  Gonzalez squared her shoulders. “Go on.”

  “Let’s walk.” He realized he was going to have to remind her on occasion. She wasn’t used to walking in circles and carrying on a serious conversation. She wanted to watch him talk, and he wasn’t going to let her. He doubted anyone would try to hear this conversation, but he wasn’t going to take that risk.

  A bell sounded inside the prison. A silver screen fell on the other side of the walkway. Gonzalez jumped.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Yard time,” he said. “They’re not supposed to see who’s walking here. They could use it in court, if some defendant is seen talking to the wrong person.”

  She looked at the screen as if it were spying on them. “All right,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced. “Tell me about Rhonda.”

  “I’m telling you about the clones. What if Talia isn’t the last? What if there were others?”

  “There are at least five others,” Gonzalez said.

  “And maybe there were some in between.”

  “Some that didn’t survive?”

  “One in particular,” he said.

  She blinked and then she got it. “You mean the baby in the vid? The one from the day care center?”

  He nodded.

  “But the father would have to know, right? And if you’ve seen that footage—maybe you can’t find it anywhere but in Armstrong, but by all that’s unknown, it’s poignant. I doubt anyone is that good an actor.”

  He’d known a lot of people who were good actors, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he said, “The father wouldn’t have to know.”

  “But to supervise clones before the child dies, that takes some effort. Someone has to raise them. And even my cursory knowledge of Rhonda Shindo tells me she didn’t have the money to pay for someone else to raise clones.”

  “Aleyd did.”

  Gonzalez frowned. She extended a hand toward the silver screen, but she didn’t touch it. Through it, Zagrando could see shadows—probably prisoners trying to see in, or trying to listen in.

  They couldn’t, but the new ones tried, anyway.

  “However,” Zagrando said, “the early clones might not have been cared for.”

  Gonzalez shook her head. “What do you mean? They’re human children. They need care.”

  “Have you ever heard of speed growing?”

  “It’s banned. Anyone caught practicing speed growing with any biologicals, from plants to sentients, gets a hefty prison sentence anywhere in the Alliance. Some even get murder convictions, if they can prove that they knew that the speed-grown sentient would live a shortened life.”

  “Exactly,” he said softly.

  She blinked again, then brushed at the side of her face as if a strand of hair had gotten in her eye. “No one would do that.”

  “Do what?” he asked, not because he didn’t know what she was thinking, but because he wanted to double-check that she understood him.

  “No one would speed grow a clone, then kill it, then replace it for the original child.” She shuddered.

  “You don’t practice criminal law, do you?” he asked softly.

  Her breath caught. “You actually think Rhonda Shindo would do that?”

  “With help, sure. She’s a scientist. She’s used to growing cultures in her lab. What’s the difference?”

  “It�
��s a child.”

  “Not under the law,” he said.

  “In some places it is. Talia certainly is.”

  “Under Valhalla Basin law, Talia is a clone. She has the rights of sentients, but no human rights, which are different here from other species’ rights. She’s not considered human, Celestine.”

  That was the first time he’d used her name. She started at it, but didn’t correct him. That was a beginning.

  “And in Armstrong, she’s a clone, too, little more than an experiment gone awry, unless the owner legally declares the clone human and forfeits all ownership rights.”

  “Which leads you to wonder,” Zagrando said. “Why would a Recovery Man, who is used to dealing in things, take the legal human and leave the legal item—the thing, the clone—behind? If he wanted a slave, he could have had one, with very little finagling. But he didn’t. He took the woman.”

  “I’m still stuck on speed growing,” Gonzalez said. “I still don’t understand how someone could murder a toddler.”

  “When we leave here,” he said, “look up speed growing. One of the ways that a speed-grown human clone dies is to strangle. One part of the body doesn’t grow as fast as others. Sometimes lungs are the farthest behind. Sometimes the skin of the throat overtakes the passages, shutting them off. There are other horrible ways that speed-grown children die, but that’s one of the obvious ones.”

  “Still,” Gonzalez said slowly, “she’d have to know that the child was going to die, so that she could protect Emmeline.”

  “Speed-grown clones are illegal,” he said. “A lot of them don’t have the external number.”

  “You think she was going to exchange the clone for the real child.”

  He nodded.

  “And the clone died, so she had to act quickly, and in a way that no one would suspect.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But a man went to prison for murder.”

  “Did he?” Zagrando said. “I can find a lot of legal maneuvering to get his sentence overturned, but I can’t find him.”

  Gonzalez stopped again. “He Disappeared?”

  “Maybe,” Zagrando said. “Or maybe he never gave his real name. Or maybe he was part of a Disappearance Service. I don’t work in Armstrong, so I don’t have a lot of access to your records. But as I said, I’m finding the holes and trying to fill them in. I could be very wrong.”

  “What made you think of speed growing?” Gonzalez asked. She still hadn’t moved.

  “Talia’s internal mark,” he said. “She doesn’t have an external one.”

  “And you think that a company that specializes in illegal techniques made her.”

  “Or someone who thought she knew how to speed grow a clone. It takes special skills to clone, but not, as you said, to raise one. A normal one is like any child. But speed-growing is different. Genes have been manipulated. The clone isn’t quite human, even though its DNA is.”

  Gonzalez cursed, then started to walk on her own. “You make Rhonda Shindo sound like one nasty woman.”

  “What did you think she was? Didn’t you read the case? She murdered an entire generation of Gyonnese.”

  “She didn’t mean to,” Gonzalez said.

  He laughed. “You believe that? You really don’t practice criminal law.”

  Gonzalez frowned. “You think she’s a murderer?”

  “I think the synthetic water incident was probably a careless accident, with emphasis on careless. The information on how the Gyonnese raise their children was available at the time. They’d been part of the Earth Alliance for several human generations. Aleyd should know.”

  Gonzalez shook her head. “I don’t understand. I thought the water blew onto the wrong field.”

  “It did. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when you test something airborne, aren’t you supposed to study the wind direction and what’s nearby that could get hurt? Who in the hell approved an experiment like that so close to the larvae fields?”

  “Aleyd,” Gonzalez said.

  “Yet Shindo got charged and convicted in the case.”

  “But Aleyd kept her on staff.”

  He nodded.

  Gonzalez’s frown grew deeper. “To keep her quiet?”

  “Why? The information was out. It was a synthetic study, right?” He was going to let her come to it. The holes. He had to teach her how to study holes. Or maybe lawyers didn’t do that. Maybe lawyers took facts and twisted them, but never looked at the empty spaces.

  “You think someone deliberately planned to destroy Gyonnese larvae?” She lowered her voice as she asked that question and she walked a little faster, as if the very idea scared her.

  “It seems logical,” he said.

  “That’s preposterous,” she said. “They’re part of the Earth Alliance.”

  “But they’re a curious part. They have great engineering gifts. They won’t let any corporations hire them away—not a true Gyonnese—but the secondary Gyonnese, the so-called false children, they can be hired by anyone. They’re not raised by the Gyonnese with full knowledge of Gyonnese customs and traditions. Just with Gyonnese abilities, since, like human clones, they’re biologically the same creatures.”

  “You think Aleyd is trying to kill the Gyonnese?” Her voice rose slightly.

  He made a shushing motion with his hand. He’d heard a lot of sideways things about Aleyd. It wasn’t just the Gyonnese, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.

  “That one experiment killed, in the words of that hologram left in the Shindo house, an entire generation. The Gyonnese usually have only one original child, with several false children who come from the original. They rarely have two originals. Yet now an entire older generation is going to have to try again to have original children.”

  “And because they’re older, they won’t have as many,” Gonzalez said, a bit breathlessly, as if the very idea stunned her.

  He nodded. “Now imagine if another accident happens. Not the same kind, mind you, but a similar one. The original Gyonnese population declines farther. Soon the false children outnumber the originals.”

  “It sounds like they already do,” Gonzalez said.

  “But there are enough originals to keep the order intact. Imagine if there weren’t.”

  She shook her head. “Your holes are all fantasy.”

  He paused, then sighed. She didn’t have the knowledge of Aleyd’s side projects that he had. She didn’t know about the various weapons that Aleyd produced—not for the Earth Alliance market, but for the Outsiders, and the non-joiners. The very reason he was on Valhalla Basin was to see if he could find proof, actual documentable proof, that Aleyd was illegally selling weapons outside of the Alliance system to both enemies of the Alliance and to the nonaligned.

  “You’re right,” he said. “There’s a lot of speculation here.”

  Gonzalez nodded and kept walking. He had to hurry to keep up with her.

  “But ask yourself one question. What if Emmeline Flint, Shindo’s original child, didn’t die?”

  “There’s no proof of that,” Gonzalez said.

  “But what if?” he said.

  “It would show up in the autopsy. Even a speed clone would show up. Aren’t the telomeres different on clones? And a speed clone would have some genetic marker, right?”

  “What if?” he pressed.

  “I don’t know,” she snapped. “Then she’s out there somewhere and Rhonda Shindo is protecting her.”

  “And who died in Emmeline’s place?” he asked.

  Gonzalez glared at him.

  “Who killed that child? How come the father didn’t know it wasn’t his? Ask yourself if Rhonda Shindo is really a scientist who got in too deep or a woman who knew what she was doing all along.”

  Gonzalez’s lips thinned. She looked away.

  “And ask yourself this,” he said. “If your child lost her life around the same time you’re in a major lawsuit because of something the company you worked for made you do, woul
d you still work for that company?”

  “If you’re going to speculate,” she snapped, “let’s go all the way. Maybe the job was all she had.”

  That sounded personal—maybe the job was all Gonzalez had; it was certainly all Zagrando had—but he was going to ignore that for the moment.

  “Really?” he said. “Shindo had a happy marriage, by all accounts. Most happily married humans who lose a child have another. They mourn the first, of course, but they have a second and often a third. They don’t clone their firstborns, and they don’t run away.”

  “Maybe the marriage wasn’t happy.”

  “So why not remarry? Why not give birth to another child?”

  Gonzalez waved a hand. “It’s all guesses, not facts. You can’t make charges like this without facts.”

  “Welcome to my world,” he said softly. “I know a lot of things, things that aren’t speculation, but things I can’t prove.”

  “About Rhonda Shindo?”

  “About Aleyd.”

  Gonzalez sighed and stopped. “You’re going to turn me down, aren’t you?”

  He touched her arm, got her walking again. “You want me to give up years of work to protect a child.”

  Gonzalez walked ahead of him, clearly thinking. She had seen his protectiveness toward Talia and had thought that because he didn’t really work for Aleyd, he would be happy to protect the girl.

  Gonzalez obviously hadn’t expected him to value his job more. But he did. She hadn’t thought it through. To her, he was just a law enforcement official—granted, one with the Earth Alliance—not a man. A man who had never married because of his job. A man who hadn’t had children. A man who had severed ties to go undercover in a world he hated to catch a corporation that might be killing thousands, maybe millions, around the known universe.

  A man who was willing to gamble that his undercover work might never, ever pay off.

  “All right,” Gonzalez said softly. “It strikes me that for all your fantasy, you’re the one who hasn’t thought this through.”

  He stiffened, anticipating the argument. A life—even a cloned life—was at stake. It wouldn’t take much out of his career, they could find him another job. And on and on and on.

  He anticipated so much,that he almost didn’t hear what she really did say.