The Possession of Paavo Deshin

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  The system ran silently, searching through millions of faces and forms. While she waited, she watched the security recording again, this time slowly.

  The couple had somehow avoided most of the cameras until they reached the playground. They waited through two different recesses, immobile, watching, and then straightened when Paavo’s class came outside.

  The law enforcement database pinged her. She swung her chair to one side to find four three-dimensional images standing on her desk. They were holograms that looked like they had been taken decades apart.

  The system had separated the images out by gender. The two women stood side by side, and the two men stood side by side. Even to her untrained eye, the people looked like the same, except older in the security recording.

  A unisex voice asked her if she wanted to hear the history of these people. She didn’t want anything on audio. She set everything to silence, and instead, read what was on a screen floating in front of her.

  Ishani and Károly Grazian, convicted over six years before of crimes against the Savang. The Grazians Disappeared to avoid prosecution.

  Disappeareds.

  Rutledge felt her confusion deepen. Disappeareds did not come to Armstrong. It was one of the centers of the Earth Alliance. Every alien group that belonged to the Alliance went through here. The Port of Armstrong had some of the best security in the entire Alliance, and the recognition program she had been using was the same version the Port used.

  If the Grazians had come through the Port, then they should have been arrested and taken to the Savang.

  That was the basis of the agreements throughout the Earth Alliance. The treaties that had created the Alliance—the treaties that allowed the enriching trade that had made the Alliance the power that it was within the known universe—had come with terrible strings.

  In one of the earliest treaties ever signed, humans had agreed to abide by the laws of whatever culture they worked within. So if the humans were working on a planet dominated by the Disty, then humans were subject to Disty law.

  Which sounded good in theory, but had turned out to be terrible in practice. Aliens were called alien for a reason—some of their laws were completely incomprehensible to humans.

  Corporations, which operated on various planets and with hundreds of different cultures, soon learned the drawbacks to the Earth Alliance agreements. Administrators and management staff refused to work in the most extreme alien cultures. So the corporations guaranteed their people an escape should they accidentally run afoul of alien laws—particularly alien laws that humans found inane or nonsensical.

  And so the Disappearance system was born.

  The problem with it was that everyone who Disappeared was guilty of some crime. Some of the crimes were minimal by human standards, but that didn’t matter. They were severe by the standards of other Earth Alliance members.

  In Rutledge’s eyes, as well as in Earth Alliance law, the Disappeareds were double criminals. They committed the original crime and then they compounded it by running away and assuming new identities.

  She thought for a moment. The presence of the Grazians raised more questions than it answered, questions her security team wouldn’t be able to handle.

  She could hire a detective, but that was always iffy work. Besides, there were two kinds of people on Armstrong who specialized in the Disappeareds: Trackers, who didn’t care how they found the Disappeareds, bringing them back to the authorities who had initially charged them, and forcing the Disappeareds to serve their sentences; and Retrieval Artists, who were a lot more subtle.

  Retrieval Artists could find Disappeareds, but didn’t return them for prosecution unless the person who hired the Retrieval Artist wanted that.

  The Grazians had already risked arrest by returning to Armstrong. They were clearly cunning and able to break security protocols.

  What Rutledge needed was a Retrieval Artist.

  And she knew just the one.

  ***

  Paavo couldn’t stop crying, and he needed to. He had to stop being a baby so he could help his mom.

  She wanted him to tell her about the Ghosts.

  He stood in the hallway of the school, his mom crouched in front of him. She had that worried look on her face, the one that meant she was only a half-step away from panicking and calling his dad.

  His dad never understood him. His dad would peer at him with that little frown, and then he would consult with Paavo’s mom, and they would come up with something weird.

  “Paavo,” she said, “I really do need to know about the Ghosts.”

  “They touched me,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “You told me.”

  And he’d told her that they smelled. He didn’t tell her that their clothes had texture, like real clothes, and he heard the woman’s shoes squeak as she crouched.

  “They’re real,” he said.

  “I know that too.” His mom used her I believe you voice, not her maybe you believe that but it’s not true voice. Her I believe you voice calmed him like nothing else had.

  “You know?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Everyone else saw them too.”

  His eyes filled with tears again, but he couldn’t cry. Babies cried. He wasn’t a baby, no matter what the other kids called him.

  She must have been worried that he was going to cry again, because she said, “These Ghosts, did they look different from the Ghosts you usually see?”

  “Their clothes are different,” he said. “Their hair is different. They’re old. They smell.”

  “So they are different,” his mom said. “But it’s a man and a woman, right? Just like the first Ghosts?”

  “They are the Ghosts,” he said. He hated it when no one understood him. She asked if they looked different. They did. But she hadn’t asked if they were different people.

  “I know,” she said. “But what makes them Ghosts instead of strangers who somehow got into the playground?”

  They were strangers who got into the playground. But they were Ghosts too. If he said that, though, his mom would get really frustrated with them.

  “They are the Ghosts,” he said. “The same people who are always there. They’re just dressed different and they got old.”

  The warm look faded from his mom’s face. For a second, he saw real fear. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen fear on his mom’s face before, but he must have because he recognized it and how would he have recognized it if he hadn’t seen it before?

  “They’re the same people?” she repeated. “Only older?”

  He nodded.

  “And they’re real.” She glanced around like she expected someone to be standing near them.

  Only no one was. It was just him and his mom in this hallway. No one else.

  “Did they talk to you?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Did they call you anything?”

  “What they always call me,” he said.

  That fear on her face, it had gotten worse, like she didn’t want to hear what he had to say only she knew she had to.

  “What do they always call you?” she asked.

  “Enrique,” he said.

  She closed her eyes. Just for a moment, but that was long enough. For that moment, his mom was so scared she was afraid to look at him.

  He knew what she was going to say before she opened her eyes and said it. She was going to say, We have to talk to your dad.

  She opened her eyes.

  Paavo braced himself.

  She said, “Let’s get you home,” and her voice wobbled.

  It was the wobble that scared him. The wobble and the fact she didn’t want to go to his dad. She wasn’t doing the normal thing.

  And that scared Paavo most of all.

  ***

  The ping startled Miles Flint. He was standing in the back room of his office, resetting the environmental system for the fifteenth time in twenty days. He would have to pay for an upgrade which he didn’t
want to do. He was trying not to work right now, so the expenditure irritated him.

  When his fourteen-year-old daughter Talia heard that, she had called him cheap. You can afford the upgrade, Dad. You can afford anything.

  He couldn’t afford anything, but he certainly never had to work again if he didn’t want to. He had structured his entire business so that he didn’t have to work. He had learned early that Retrieval Artists shouldn’t be beholden to anyone. They should be able to walk away whenever the job endangered the Retrieval Artist or, more importantly, the Disappeared.

  So far, he had managed to live up to that. He had also managed to only take jobs that interested him.

  The ping sounded again.

  He shook his head in irritation. A client outside the door caused the ping, and right now, he didn’t want clients. The last case he had taken had put Talia in danger, and he had vowed not to take cases until she was no longer living at home.

  But his curiosity got the better of him.

  He walked into the main part of his office. It was a small room, unprepossessing by design, with a desk and a single chair. The walls looked like they were made of ancient permaplastic, even though he’d replaced the interior years ago.

  He wanted clients to feel uncomfortable in here. The more uncomfortable they were, the less likely they were to hire him. He wanted to weed out clients anyway he could.

  The security system had come on. A two-dimensional image of a woman standing outside his door over his desk. She wore some kind of cape, her hair mussed, her face turned away from his external cameras.

  Still, she looked familiar.

  Behind her, he could see bits of the neighborhood filtering in through the camera. His office was in the oldest part of Armstrong—the part that had first been settled—and his building was on Armstrong’s Register of Historic Places.

  The woman turned her head back toward the camera, and Flint blinked. He did recognize her. It was Selah Rutledge, from his daughter Talia’s school.

  Now his curiosity was aroused, which bothered him. He should have left the ping unanswered, but he wasn’t going to.

  Instead, he pressed the small corner of the see-through screen that unlocked the door.

  “Come on in, Selah,” he said as the door clicked open.

  She looked startled. She stepped inside, trailing Moon dust with her. The ancient dome in this part of Armstrong never worked properly. Parts leaked, and one of the worst leaks was the never-ending dust that was part of the Moon’s exterior.

  “Miles,” Selah said as she closed the door. “Normally, I wouldn’t come without an appointment, but I have an emergency.”

  She looked flustered—and as long as he had known her, Selah Rutledge had never looked flustered.

  “I’m not the person to come to for an emergency,” he said. “The police handle those better than I do.”

  “Mine involves a Disappeared.” She looked around for a client chair, failed to find one, and crossed her arms. Usually that movement pleased Flint but this time, it didn’t.

  He liked Selah. She was harsh, but she was a good administrator, and the Aristotle Academy had managed to take his too-smart, headstrong daughter, and make her into a successful—and more importantly—engaged student.

  “An emergency involving a Disappeared?” he asked, all business now. “Someone you need to find?”

  She bit her lower lip, then shook her head as if she were having a debate with herself. “I shouldn’t tell you this. Your daughter is one of our students. But I couldn’t think of anyone else to go to.”

  “Something went wrong,” he said.

  Selah nodded.

  He didn’t like the idea of something going wrong at the Aristotle Academy. To hide his unease, he said, “Let me get you a chair,” and walked into the back. He grabbed the only other chair in the place and carried it back to the main room.

  Selah was pacing. She stopped when she saw him.

  “So what happened?” he asked. “Why do you need to find this Disappeared?”

  It wasn’t, as he quickly learned, this Disappeared. It was a pair of Disappeareds, a married couple named Grazian. They had fled Armstrong six and a half years ago, and now they were back and, oddly, they had somehow breached Aristotle Academy’s security system.

  Selah paced as she talked. She was as upset as he felt. He had taken Talia to Aristotle not just for their excellent academics but also for their security. He knew that he had enemies, and he didn’t want any of them to get to his daughter.

  But he also knew that the best security systems in the known universe could be breached.

  He knew that because he had breached more than a few of them himself.

  “Do you know what they wanted?” he asked.

  “One of our students,” she said.

  A chill ran down his spine. But he made sure that he didn’t let his unease show on his face.

  “Any particular student?” he asked.

  “Paavo Deshin,” she said.

  “Is that Luc Deshin’s son?” Flint asked.

  She nodded, looking somewhat sick.

  He would have looked sick as well. Luc Deshin was the closest thing to a high-end criminal that existed in Armstrong. Many corporate CEOs skirted the law here, but Deshin actively flaunted it. He had a bevy of lawyers and a lot of money, and so far, no one could track anything to him.

  No wonder his son was going to Aristotle.

  “Do you know why these people Disappeared?” Flint asked, thinking maybe they were part of that very small group of real criminals who had violated laws that offended humans.

  “Something to do with the Savang,” she said. “I didn’t look up anything else. When I saw that they were Disappeareds, I knew they would be hard to find, so I came to you.”

  He narrowed his eyes so that she could see his skepticism. “You came to me because you don’t want to risk police involvement. You don’t want anyone to know that the Aristotle Academy is vulnerable.”

  “That’s true,” she said.

  “What do I do if and when I find these Disappeared?” Flint asked.

  “Tell me,” Selah said. “We’ll take it from there.”

  He sighed. He hated cases like that. “No. I need to know what will happen to these people if I bring them to you.”

  “Are you asking me if we’ll give them to the Savang?” she asked.

  “Among other things,” he said.

  “I don’t know what we’ll do. Mostly I want them watched. I need to know why they’re after Paavo Deshin and what exactly is going on.”

  “So ask Luc Deshin,” Flint said.

  “His wife has already threatened me,” Selah said. “She wants to know who these people are.”

  “I’m sure her husband can find out.”

  “I’m sure he can too.” Selah sighed. “I want someone I can trust, whom I know will do the very best job, not just for me but for the Academy.”

  “You’ll make sure that Paavo Deshin is protected?” Flint asked.

  “His family is already doing that,” she said. “They won’t let him back in school until this matter is settled.”

  Flint nodded. He would be the same way. “What about your other students? Are they protected?”

  She gave him a sharp look. She knew he was asking about Talia.

  “My security team is looking for the loopholes in the system. They promise me they’ll be closed tonight.” She sounded distracted as if that were the least of her concerns.

  They were the greatest of his. “Let me look as well.”

  Her lips thinned. “That’s irregular, Miles.”

  “This entire case is irregular, Selah,” he said. “Besides, I have more experience with exotic security than anyone you could have hired.”

  She sighed again, then reached into the pocket of her cape. She removed several small chips. “This is the security footage from every angle. I even brought the audio from the moment that we learned of the breach.”

>   He felt muscles in his shoulder relax. She was going to let him examine at least part of the system. If he could, he would convince her to let him examine all of it.

  “What about your computerized systems?” he asked.

  “What about them?” she asked.

  “Most breaches aren’t physical. They’re cyber. Something gets shut down off-site and then your perpetrators get in. Often they’re set up to be recognized as normal employees of the academy.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I don’t know anything about this.”

  “Give me access to your computer systems,” he said. “I can figure out what happened.”

  She studied him for a long moment. “You seem to have a lot of skills, Miles.”

  Most people didn’t know his rather checkered history—and he usually didn’t have to explain it. But he did here.

  “I used to design security systems before I became a police officer. Then, before I became a detective, I designed the Armstrong Police Department’s security.”

  “And you quit all of that to become a Retrieval Artist,” she said with the first hint of amusement.

  “I quit all of that to become my own boss,” he said. “Normally, I wouldn’t take this case. I’m trying not to work until Talia’s grown.”

  Selah nodded as if she understood. “You’re taking this because of her.”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I need to be reassured that your system is safe.”

  Selah sighed. “That I do understand. And you understand why I don’t want this out.”

  “I’m not going to broadcast to anyone that the Aristotle Academy has a vulnerable security system,” he said. “You and I can agree on that.”

  “Are there other things we need to agree about?” she asked.

  “Price,” he said, “my rules for taking cases, and what you want from me.”

  “It sounds like a lot,” she said.

  “That’s why I brought you the chair.” He swept his hand toward it, indicating that she should sit down. “We have some talking to do.”