Consequences

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Flint moved to the center of the room and checked the laser pistol he wore on his hip, making certain that the charge was high. He also checked the smaller pistol he had given Carolyn.

  She smiled at him as she watched him run the diagnostic.

  “I already did that,” she said.

  He had suspected as much, but he wasn’t going to rely on her. Yes, she had managed thirty years as a Disappeared, and another six years before that as a guerrilla fighter. But he had learned in his years as a police officer, first with Space Traffic Control and then as a detective, that people didn’t always do things that were in their own best interest.

  Flint handed her the small pistol, and watched her stick it in her purse. Then he paced the room again.

  He hadn’t told her a number of things about this meeting. He hadn’t told her that he would smuggle her out of the building if need be, and take her to a new Disappearance service if he thought anything was going wrong. He also hadn’t told her about the crystal knife he had tucked in his ankle boot, or about the tracking device he had placed on her back as he helped her up the stairs—just in case Carolyn Lahiri proved as untrustworthy as the propagandists said she was.

  So far, in all of Flint’s dealings with her, she had seemed like the woman she had masqueraded as. She had enjoyed life as a small-time jazz musician in New Orleans, under the name Claire Taylor. Her income came not from the music, but from the jazz bar she had owned in that city’s renowned French Quarter.

  Flint had even asked Carolyn how she had enjoyed the quiet of her new life as compared with the violence of her old one, and she had given him a slow smile.

  Anyone who thinks N’awlins is quiet, she had said to him, obviously hasn’t spent much time here.

  And he hadn’t. He had spent more time in Florida and Mississippi than he had in New Orleans, following strange trails that had led him in circles before he realized he was following plants that someone had left decades before. Part of his confusion came from the fact that he had never investigated on Earth before, and he had found it a startling place, much more diverse than anything had prepared him for.

  It took him nearly two weeks to get over his culture shock before he was able to do effective work. None of the other places he had visited in the course of his investigations had disconcerted him as much as his bright blue and green ancestral homeland, a place he had once thought he would visit only in his dreams.

  His wristwatch pinged. Five minutes until Carolyn’s parents arrived. Flint positioned himself at the windows, then activated his own spyware—equipment that he had installed earlier that afternoon. He would be able to monitor the streets around the pub, the pub itself, and the stairs.

  He set a small disk on the windowsill, then pressed the disk’s center. His collapsible screen rose, showing all the angles of his various surveillance cameras in tiny squares on the screen itself.

  Carolyn folded her hands in her lap, but she kept her feet firmly on the floor. Most people would have tucked them behind the chair or crossed their legs, but Carolyn clearly knew that she might have to move quickly and that each precious second counted.

  She shifted slightly in her chair. “I’m beginning to wonder what I’m doing here.”

  Flint was wondering if she felt that way. She hadn’t seen her parents in more than thirty-five years. That fact had operated both as a red flag and as encouragement for him. The red flag seemed logical: who would risk everything for a reunion after all this time? Yet the encouragement came from another place.

  He would give anything to see his daughter again—even for five minutes—and she hadn’t been an adult when she died. She hadn’t even spoken one clear sentence yet when the day worker had shaken her to death. And yet, he would give up everything he had to hold her in his arms one last time.

  “You knew the situation when you agreed to come with me,” Flint said.

  Carolyn nodded. “I know. It’s just—seconds away from seeing them—I feel eighteen again.”

  “As idealistic?” Flint asked.

  She smiled at him. Her smile was soft and added faint lines to her face. “No, not as idealistic. I no longer think that’s possible.”

  “You don’t have to go with them, you know.” Flint had told her that before. She knew her options. She could have chosen to remain in New Orleans, although he hadn’t recommended it. As careful as he was, he had left a trail, and someone else might find her. She also could have come in now that her record was clear, and started a new life anywhere else.

  He got a sense she hadn’t been happy in New Orleans. Her marriage to a man named Alan Taylor had ended badly, and she no longer got to see her son. She wanted to escape more than she wanted to come here.

  Flint crossed his arms and studied the screens, focusing on the aircars that passed on the streets below. The pub was nearly empty.

  He took a deep breath—and suddenly realized he was as nervous as Carolyn.

  Maybe more so, because he knew all the things that could go wrong.

  Three

  Six months earlier, Flint lay beneath the desk on the uneven permaplastic floor of his office. He studied the circuitry built into the desk’s back panels. He hadn’t seen anything like it before, and he had worked in computer systems before he became a cop. Over the years he had studied hard to keep his knowledge current, and still he was stunned.

  Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to set up redundancies upon redundancies in his networks.

  The office was hot, and his shirt stuck to his chest. He didn’t want to command the environmental controls to boost the temperatures because he had the system partly disassembled.

  He had bought the office, complete with all of its extremely sophisticated systems, from a Retrieval Artist named Paloma. In exchange for a large sum of money, Paloma had trained Flint in the esoteric art of Retrieving, as well as in all of the pitfalls that could trap someone who was operating just barely outside the law.

  He had made a number of mistakes in his first years in business. The worst had been keeping Paloma’s computer systems intact. He had trusted her not to have back doors and bugs throughout the network, and hadn’t done more than a cursory check in all of the systems she had left him.

  She hadn’t set up any bugs or traces that he could locate, but she had made several mistakes in her own systems, mistakes that he would have avoided had he set up his own. She had also taken all of her records—claiming confidentiality—and, during a case six months before, he had found ghosts of those records remaining in the system.

  He had had two cases in these last six months, and they had prevented him from finishing the overhaul. But now he had no cases—not an uncommon occurrence for a Retrieval Artist—so he figured he would have time to finish the last of the changes.

  The computer system beeped and Flint cursed. Someone had set off his perimeter alarm. The alarm was probably nothing—it went off whenever anyone got within a half a block of his office. But he had to check. He didn’t want to be surprised by a client with most of his systems down.

  He pushed himself out from under the desk. Then he climbed to his knees, put a hand on the desktop, and stared at the screen that had risen when the alarm went off.

  An older couple stood near a row of shops on the far side of his block. They wore clothing at least twenty years out of date. They stood side by side, staring at their surroundings as if stunned.

  Flint’s office was in Old Armstrong, the original settlement of the colony of Armstrong, and even though most of the buildings had been designated historic sites, few outsiders wandered in this direction.

  This section of the dome was ancient, and the filters didn’t work properly. The original permaplastic used to create the roads had long since broken down, and the main feature of this section of town was dust. Add to that the dilapidated buildings—most of which housed shady businesses like pawn shops and low-rent lawyers—and that led to little traffic, at least from people who had no reason to com
e to the area.

  A seemingly defenseless couple had no reason to come to this part of Armstrong. Flint hoped they had come to see one of the other businesses. Still, Flint slicked back his hair, hoping he didn’t look too disreputable. He hadn’t had his hair cut in some time, and the curls, which always bothered him, now haloed his too-thin face. His clothes were covered with dust from the floor.

  He brushed himself off and sat down at his desk.

  “Computer,” he said, “system override. Reestablish command structure alpha. And reset the environmental controls. It’s getting damn hot in here.”

  The computer beeped a response, and Flint sighed. The beeps would have to go as well. He would have to save his work, then reset everything just because Flint thought there was a thirty percent chance the older couple would come to his door.

  He pulled out the new keyboard that he had just finished installing two days ago. He used to prefer voice commands and touch screens. But Paloma had taught him caution: voice commands could be overheard and compromised, and touch screens gave a hacker who ventured into the office a virtual map of the ways to break into the system.

  He tapped a special key three times, and got a 360-degree view of the neighborhood. Except for the older couple, no one was on the street.

  He sighed. They were clearly making their way to his office.

  In one corner of the screen, he froze the frame on the couple’s faces, then had the system search for identification. Paloma had left Flint with a system that recognized most of the registered faces in Armstrong, and he had recently hacked into the police database to get the classified faces as well.

  It took only a moment for the system to identify these two: Mimi and Caleb Lahiri, two of Armstrong’s most upstanding citizens. Mimi Lahiri was a well-known surgeon at Armstrong Unity Hospital. She often traveled all over the Moon, doing work on difficult patients and teaching at the various medical schools scattered throughout the domed communities.

  Her husband, Caleb Lahiri, had spent the last two decades of his career working as a traveling judge in the Multicultural Tribunal system. Most of the judges in the Multicultural Tribunals were assigned a particular circuit, but forty judges from different alien races acted as traveling judges, moving from circuit to circuit, theoretically bringing new insights into the various areas.

  Lahiri had retired nearly a year before, but he kept his hand in, writing articles and speaking about Multicultural Law.

  The Lahiris stopped outside his door. Judge Lahiri peered at the tiny sign that announced Flint’s job, but not his name. Lahiri’s face had a cragginess that didn’t look natural, possibly the result of enhancements.

  His wife’s face was unenhanced, even though, as a surgeon, she could have undergone the procedures for free. Her features were delicate, her skin webbed with tiny lines. But her eyes were sharp; Flint had a hunch they missed little.

  She glanced at her husband and he nodded. Then she reached for the doorknob.

  Flint touched a second key, unlatching the door. Then he pressed a button, sending his screens down into the desk, so that the Lahiris didn’t know he had been watching them.

  He grabbed another shirt from his desk drawer, and was in the process of changing when the door opened. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the Lahiris enter. They both seemed startled as their links shut off—Flint’s system automatically severed any contacts to the outside—but Judge Lahiri recovered quicker than his wife did.

  Of course he did. The Tribunals themselves required the participants to be unlinked during the proceedings. He was used to the internal silence.

  Flint slipped on the new shirt, leaving it untucked. Then he turned toward the couple. Dr. Lahiri was tapping the tiny chips on the back of her right hand, trying to regain the signal. Finally, her husband put his hand over hers.

  No one said hello. The three of them studied each other. Flint had an entire spiel he usually ran through with new clients, but Judge Lahiri would have had experience with Retrieval Artists through his job. The usual methods of talking to new clients wouldn’t work with him.

  “The sign out front says Retrieval Artist, Judge, not Tracker.” Flint kept his tone dry, but polite. He wanted Judge Lahiri to know what he was up against.

  “I can read,” Judge Lahiri said.

  “I don’t need the test,” Flint said. “I’ve already dealt with two undercover representatives of the Earth Alliance, and I’ll tell you what I told them. I used to be a police officer. I understand the law. I don’t always agree with it, but I still see my job as working for the good of society. So I’ll do my best to act within the law, even when the law is unjust.”

  Judge Lahiri clapped his hands together slowly. “Bravo. That statement wouldn’t hold up in court, but I can see how it got the intergalactics off your back.”

  “Then you can also see that you’re not needed here. I’m being monitored. I do the best I can. I don’t need any more evaluations.”

  “We’re not here to evaluate you,” Dr. Lahiri said. “We’ve come about our daughter.”

  “Mimi.” Judge Lahiri’s voice held a note of caution. Flint could almost imagine the conversation they had before they got to his office: Mimi, I’ve worked with these types before. Let me do the talking.

  “Find someone else,” Flint said. “I don’t work with officers of the court.”

  “You won’t be breaking the law if you find Carolyn,” Dr. Lahiri said. “She’s been pardoned.”

  That caught Flint’s attention, even though he didn’t want it to. He glanced at Judge Lahiri. The judge’s expression was a mixture of annoyance and relief—annoyance at his wife for not following some protocol that he wanted followed, and relief that the situation was in front of Flint.

  The judge might have been a good actor. It would be a good scam—bringing a judge into Flint’s office to have him do some illegal tracing on a “pardoned” Disappeared, only to learn that the Disappeared hadn’t been pardoned at all.

  “You realize,” Flint said, “that I don’t accept cases on the basis of one meeting. I’ll check, double-check, and triple-check everything you tell me. Then I’ll dig into your backgrounds and I’ll find all the dirt that exists. You’ll pay me for that work, by the way, and it won’t be cheap. If I decide you’re being honest with me, then I’ll take your case. Or not. It might not be something I believe that I’ll be able to help you with. In that case, I’ll keep the research fee and send you on your way.”

  “I know how Retrieval Artists work,” Judge Lahiri said.

  “From your legal experience,” Flint said. “But if you’re as pure as your title says you are, you’ve never worked with Retrieval Artists, only Trackers. And we’re different from them. Trackers will use any means possible to bring a Disappeared back to face their legal charges or to serve their sentences. I might find your daughter, decide that her circumstances are too precarious to entrust to you, and never reveal her whereabouts to anyone—including the people I occasionally work for.”

  “You mean you might be successful, and she still won’t come home?” Dr. Lahiri asked.

  “That’s right,” Flint said. “I don’t guarantee anything except my fees. You should know that hiring me automatically puts a Disappeared in danger. Many of the Disappeared have successfully escaped their former lives. Except in the most egregious cases, the governments can’t afford Trackers to look for each Disappeared. So most get away with starting over.”

  Judge Lahiri was nodding. Dr. Lahiri watched Flint closely, as if she could verify his truthfulness just by the look in his eyes. He took his dirty shirt off the desk and stuck it in the now-empty desk drawer.

  “The minute I start searching for a Disappeared,” Flint said, “I expose that person to networks all over the known universe. My interest might arouse someone else’s interest. A Tracker could piggyback on my work, find the Disappeared, and gain a finders fee for the effort—automatically bringing a once-safe Disappeared back to face their past.”


  “I thought Retrieval Artists were too cautious to let a Tracker piggyback on them,” Dr. Lahiri said.

  “We are cautious,” Flint said. “I would do my best to protect your—daughter, is it?—but that doesn’t guarantee my success. Most courts have blanket orders that allow the tracing of any query about a Disappeared. My innocent queries might restart an investigation that’s long dead.”

  “It shouldn’t matter,” Dr. Lahiri said. “Our Carolyn’s been pardoned.”

  She spoke with such conviction that Flint felt his interest rise. He made a point of keeping eye contact with her, avoiding contact with the judge.

  “Do all the parties involved know of the pardon?” Flint asked.

  “What does that mean?” Dr. Lahiri again looked at her husband. As well known as she was for surgery, she clearly felt out of her depth in the legal realm.

  “He wants to know if all the notifications have been sent to the various agencies, revoking our daughter’s criminal status,” Judge Lahiri said.

  “More or less.” Flint let his voice grow harsher. The nice thing about his job—the thing most people did not understand—was that he didn’t need the work. A past case had left him independently wealthy, and he didn’t ever have to work again.

  Although he wasn’t the kind of man who could spend the rest of his life pursuing pleasure. He would work, but only on cases that intrigued him.

  “There’s nothing more,” the judge said.

  “Actually, there is,” Flint said. “Depending on your daughter’s crime—”

  That word made Dr. Lahiri wince.

  “—she could be on the watch lists of Trackers, assassins, various alien groups, many of whom do not believe in pardons, even if the pardons are issued by a Multicultural Tribunal. There are aliens who believe that vengeance is the highest form of justice, and they will ignore pardons, even though their government recognizes them. So, Judge and Dr. Lahiri, even though the law may say your daughter is free to come home, it still might not be prudent for her to do so.”