The judge’s mouth was set in a thin line. He apparently didn’t like to be contradicted.
Flint sat in his chair, the only one in the room.
“Maybe we should discuss this.” Dr. Lahiri leaned toward her husband. She spoke so softly that Flint suspected her words were for Judge Lahiri alone. “I had no idea this could be so dangerous to Carolyn.”
“It’s not.” Judge Lahiri spoke in a normal tone of voice. He didn’t even look at his wife, clearly dismissing her comments. He looked at Flint. “My daughter’s case doesn’t deal with aliens. She got involved in a war—a human conflict—and the war’s over. The exiles have been pardoned. Everything’s done.”
Flint shook his head slightly. “Wars are rarely over, particularly human ones. They often continue for centuries, with lulls. You haven’t convinced me that your desire to find your daughter will protect her safety.”
“She may not know that she’s been pardoned,” the judge said, ignoring Flint’s last point.
“If she was part of a war, and things have changed, she knows,” Flint said. “She might be enjoying her new life. She might not want to come home. Have you thought of that?”
Dr. Lahiri squared her shoulders as if she were steeling herself to talk with Flint. Then she turned around.
“She doesn’t know she’s welcome here,” Dr. Lahiri said. “That’s the problem. She doesn’t know we want her back.”
Her gray-green eyes had tears in them. Flint clenched his own fists, careful to keep them below the desk. He didn’t want this couple to know he had emotions, let alone understand that his emotions could be tapped.
“When she left for Etae, she was a teenager. A dumb, idealistic teenager who thought she could save people who didn’t even know how to save themselves.” Dr. Lahiri paused for breath, but neither Flint nor Judge Lahiri interrupted her. “She probably got that from us. Caleb and I, we believe in doing good works. We believe that one person can make a difference, and we’ve both acted on it. Carolyn saw that and she applied it incorrectly. She thought fighting on the side of the rebels in Etae was the right thing.”
Flint frowned. He knew very little about Etae. The conflict on that faraway world had seemed unimportant to him, and difficult to follow as well, since the fighting had gone on for decades. All he remembered about the Etaen wars was that they had been bloody and expensive.
He thought it curious that an Armstrong native would fight in a conflict that seemed to have nothing to do with the Moon or the Earth Alliance.
“She was young,” Judge Lahiri was saying, “and although youth is not a defensive in a court of law, it is a factor we sometimes consider in making judgements. She has had decades to reflect on her actions. She might regret them. She might want to start again.”
“Or she might still believe everything she did when she was a young girl,” Flint said. “It sounds like you didn’t part on the best of terms. Why are you searching for her now?”
The judge and the doctor looked at each other, a perfect moment of silent communication that Flint remembered enjoying with his ex-wife before his daughter’s death. He made himself take a deep breath, trying to keep his own memories out of this. The longing for intimacy that he usually kept suppressed couldn’t come to the fore, not right now. Otherwise, he would envy the Lahiris relationship and might fail to see the flaws in it or in their arguments.
“Our son died,” Judge Lahiri said softly. “Last year. Killed himself. We’d been estranged from him too. We weren’t the best parents.”
Flint’s eyes narrowed. His fists remained hidden and clenched. The thought that he was being manipulated rose again. Dead children—of any age—were one of the few emotional hooks that people could grab him with.
“We were terrible parents.” The tears had worked their way into Dr. Lahiri’s voice. “Judgmental and harsh and demanding. And selfish. We never gave up our careers, worked too hard, and rarely saw the children. And when we did, we were trying to make them into people they weren’t. They tried so hard to impress us. I think that’s why Carolyn went to Etae. I’m convinced—”
Her voice broke. She swallowed hard. Judge Lahiri put a hand on her shoulder and she moved away from him.
Flint found himself wondering if they both had been harsh and judgmental or if only one of them had. And if the apparent intimacy between them came from closeness or years of being together or was simply a façade.
“You want her back for you.” Flint made his voice deliberately harsh. “You want a second—no, a third—chance. You want to get rid of the guilt you feel over her disappearance and the guilt you feel over your son’s death. You’re being selfish again, risking her life to make yourselves feel better.”
The judge’s eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms. But Dr. Lahiri nodded.
“We just want to see her one last time, to let her know that we love her.” Dr. Lahiri’s voice grew stronger. “And if we can’t see her, if she won’t come back, then we’d like you to tell her that. And it is for us, but maybe it’s for her too. Maybe she’d want this. She’s older now. She might have changed.”
“And become someone you’d like,” Flint said.
“That’s enough,” the judge said.
“No,” Flint snapped. “It’s not enough. I don’t take work like this. This is precisely the kind of thing that costs innocent lives. Go home. Get counseling, talk to your religious leader, express your guilt to your friends. Leave your daughter alone. She’s obviously made her choice.”
The judge raised his head slightly, a movement designed to intimidate. It made him look down his nose at Flint. But Flint didn’t flinch. Instead he waited.
Finally, the judge tapped his wife’s arm—an imperial command—and left.
But Dr. Lahiri didn’t move. She stared at Flint as if she couldn’t believe he had spoken like that, a single tear running down her cheek.
“I believe you,” she whispered. “I don’t want to harm my daughter.”
Then leave, Flint thought, but this he didn’t speak out loud. He liked the doctor more than he had liked her husband, and he was beginning to suspect that she had less to do with her children’s difficult lives than the judge had.
Flint resisted the urge to press the screens up so that he could see what the judge was doing. Instead, Flint waited Dr. Lahiri out.
“If I give you a message to take to my daughter, just a note, an apology, really, would you do it?”
“Dr. Lahiri—”
“After you do all the research, of course, and decide whether or not to take the case. I wouldn’t want you to put her in danger just because we’re…”
She waved her hands as if words failed her. Then she shook her head.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Flint said gently. “The initial research alone could put her in danger.”
Dr. Lahiri bit her lower lip. Then she glanced at the door. It didn’t open. She took a step closer to Flint’s desk.
“That’s why you upset my husband so,” she said. “You see, he thought because of his legal experience, he knew how to find a Disappeared.”
Flint felt a shiver run down his back. “He’s already started the research?”
She nodded. “If you turn my links on, I can download it to you—”
“I don’t let any outside systems touch mine,” Flint said. His suspicions remained, but if Dr. Lahiri spoke the truth, then she and her husband had just made matters worse for the daughter they claimed to care about. He could reverse some of that; he could plant false information, set up incorrect trails. If nothing else, he could protect the girl from the arrogance of her family.
Dr. Lahiri rubbed her links again. “I suppose I could get you hard copies—”
“No,” Flint said. “You can download everything to a blind box.”
He grabbed a small plastic card from his desktop. He had dozens of these cards, some with monetary links embedded in them, others with chips that opened an information node.
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He handed her one that opened an information node.
“I’m not agreeing to anything,” he said as she took the card from him.
But he was one step closer. Still, if Dr. Lahiri was telling the truth, then it didn’t matter whether he did the preliminary research. The dangers had already started. He might be able to reverse the problem without even leaving Armstrong.
“What else do we have to do?” Dr. Lahiri asked, clinging to the card as if it were a lifeline.
Flint handed her a second card. “I need a retainer of two million credits. Deposit it into this account. I won’t begin the research until I get confirmation that the money has arrived.”
She nodded.
“If I decide not to take the case, the retainer is all that this will cost you. If I decide to take it, you will pay my expenses at the end of each week, and you’ll also pay me an additional fee each week. This investigation will cost you a lot of money. Once we agree to work together, I can terminate at any time. You cannot terminate at all. If you cut off the funds, I stop working—even if I leave a wide-open trail to your daughter. Is that clear?”
Dr. Lahiri’s breath caught. A lot of customers left right there, as they should. The investigation was outrageously expensive—or at least, Flint used to think so until Paloma reminded him that they were gambling with the life of a Disappeared and maybe even with the lives of the Disappeared’s new family and friends. Looked at in that way, sometimes Flint felt like the sums he quoted weren’t enough.
After a moment, Dr. Lahiri sighed. “It’s clear.”
She tapped both cards against her hand, then glanced at the door again. Flint wondered if she would tell her husband that she had hired Flint or if she was supposed to stay, to use her motherly wiles to convince him to take the case.
He would investigate the Lahiris first, before he ever looked into the daughter. If they weren’t on the up-and-up, he would repair whatever damage the father had done, and quit, keeping the retainer.
“What do I do,” Dr. Lahiri said softly, as if she thought someone could overhear them, “if my husband’s efforts get Carolyn to contact us?”
“First, you make sure your husband stops whatever he’s doing,” Flint said. “He may have a superficial knowledge of my job, and that’s just enough to get everyone in trouble.”
Dr. Lahiri nodded.
“Second, you don’t contact me. I’ll contact you, in everything. But if it’s an emergency, and you need me, you deposit two hundred and seventy-one credits into the account I just gave you. That number is a code, and it’ll flag me. I’ll know to get in touch with you.”
She bit her lower lip, then nodded once.
“I thought,” she said, “you know, once the war was over, once she was pardoned, this would be easy. I never expected all this.”
“Your husband should have,” Flint said. “He deals with large conflicts all the time. He knows how dangerous this universe has become.”
“Knowing and understanding aren’t the same thing,” Dr Lahiri said, and let herself out of the office.
Flint brought up a screen and watched her walk away.
Judge Lahiri was already gone.
Four
Flint spent months researching, confirming that Carolyn Lahiri had indeed been pardoned. He also researched Carolyn’s parents, still not quite willing to trust the judge.
Flint found nothing to convince him to stay away from the case. In the end, he decided that Carolyn could—and should—make the decision about her future.
When he found Carolyn and gave her the Lahiris’ message, she had surprised him by asking if he could escort her back to Armstrong. Apparently she had done her research, had known that her little band of warriors had been pardoned, and she had a secret desire to return to her first home.
She had grown tired of Earth, she said, but he thought it was more than that. She had married and divorced since Disappearing, and in the divorce, she had lost custody of her son. Her parenting skills had been abominable—her word—and yet she sounded surprised by it.
Flint hadn’t been. With parents like hers, years on the run, and years working as a guerrilla fighter, he would have been surprised if her parenting skills had risen to the level of bad. Part of him couldn’t believe a woman like Carolyn had decided to have a child at all, but he had understood it.
After all, Disappearance services promised their clients normal lives. What could be more normal than a marriage and a family, a life lived in happy obscurity?
And of course, that life hadn’t worked out. At her request, he brought her home, but he still wasn’t willing to take her directly to her parents’ apartment.
Instead, he brought her to the Spacer’s Pub, where he could protect her if he had to.
Flint stood in the upper room, near the window, hands clasped behind his back. He watched the monitors, and occasionally glanced outside.
Carolyn sat across the room, her feet still flat on the floor, her hands clasped on her lap. If he didn’t know her history, he would have thought her a demure woman.
The Lahiris entered the building. Flint did not warn Carolyn.
Instead, he watched them, saw the judge put his hand against his wife’s back just like Flint had done to Carolyn. Saw Dr. Lahiri look around the pub as if it had a bad odor. Saw the judge steer her away from the bar.
The Lahiris walked to the door leading to the steps as if the couple knew where they were going. They followed Flint’s instructions to the letter.
He said, “They’re coming.”
Carolyn raised her head slightly, a movement Flint had seen her father make. Until that moment, Flint had thought she had nothing in common with her father. She had gotten her looks from her mother, and her build seemed to have little to do with either of them.
She clasped her hands even tighter, took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders—that move from her mother.
Flint monitored the street. Nothing. He then examined the bar. No one followed the Lahiris to the stairs. No one even seemed to notice them.
He pressed a button so that the screen opaqued. The system was set up to scan faces for possible trouble—he had put most of Carolyn’s old enemies into his system (the ones he could find)—and he also had the system scan for known criminals. He also set up the warning buzzers to alert him should anyone start up the stairs once the Lahiris had entered the room.
Dr. Lahiri came in first. She was thinner than she had been, her face lined. She wore a gold blazer and a matching skirt, which made her seem older than she was. Her gaze caught Flint’s and he saw fear in her eyes—the same fear that he had seen in Carolyn’s.
He nodded toward Carolyn, and Dr. Lahiri nodded back, not looking in her daughter’s direction. It was almost as if she were afraid of what she might see.
The judge followed his wife through the trapdoor. He scanned the room, his gaze passing over Flint as if Flint were little more than a servant.
When Judge Lahiri saw his daughter, he froze, swallowed hard, and seemed to shrink.
Finally, Dr. Lahiri looked in the same direction as her husband. She balanced precariously at the top of the stairs. Flint moved closer—whether to catch her if she fell or to prevent some kind of problem within the family, he wasn’t certain.
“C-Carolyn?” Dr. Lahiri asked.
Carolyn Lahiri rose halfway off her chair, apparently uncertain as to whether she should sit or stand.
“Mommy?” Her voice sounded impossibly young.
Dr. Lahiri made a small noise in her throat, then nodded. She pushed past her husband, who remained frozen beside the trapdoor, and ran to her daughter.
Carolyn got off the chair, but didn’t walk forward. Her mother reached her, wrapped her arms around her, and made a sound halfway between a sigh and a moan.
Flint moved back to the window, trying to blend into the wall. He didn’t want to be here any longer, but he didn’t know how to prevent it. He hated this part of Retrieving, the witness to th
e family reunion. At best, he didn’t belong. At worst, he was needed.
“Caleb,” Dr. Lahiri said, turning partway toward her husband.
Judge Lahiri nodded, but still didn’t move. It almost seemed like he had been the one who had Disappeared; he was the one who had vanished somehow.
“Caleb!”
He glanced at Flint, and Flint thought he saw a plea for help. Then Judge Lahiri seemed to steel himself, and he walked, slowly, reluctantly, toward what remained of his family.
Dr. Lahiri stepped back, her hand clutching her daughter’s, and grinned at her husband. “It’s Carolyn. Look. She’s just the same.”
“Older and wiser, I would hope,” Judge Lahiri said, and Flint winced. His assumptions from that very first meeting had been right. He had heard confirmation over the course of his investigation, but part of Flint had hoped that was all a myth, that beneath Judge Lahiri’s gruff exterior hid a man who loved his family more than he could admit.
“Older at least,” Carolyn said, her voice colder than Flint had ever heard it. “I thought from your note that you might be happy to see me, Daddy.”
Daddy. Another of those words that sounded odd from Carolyn’s lips.
Judge Lahiri dipped his head, the frailty back. “I am,” he said softly. “I missed you, child.”
Color rose in Carolyn’s face, and Flint turned away so that the family could have some privacy. Still, he didn’t entirely trust them, and so he watched the reunion on the opaque screen, trying to look at the body language and not any other details of the gathering.
“We’re so glad you decided to come home,” Dr. Lahiri said. “We have a room set up for you, and we really want to catch up. Carolyn, there’s so much that’s happened, so much we’ve missed—”
“I haven’t lived the kind of life you reminisce about, Mom.” Even though her mother clutched her hand, Carolyn’s fingers hadn’t closed.
Flint leaned against the window, facing the family again. He wanted these things to go smoothly and they never, ever did.
“I know this isn’t going to be happy or entirely pleasant.” Dr. Lahiri hadn’t let go of her daughter. “But we have a chance here to make amends to each other.”
Consequences Page 3
