She smiled at him, a reaction he hadn’t expected.
“Miles Flint,” she said.
He hadn’t been at this kind of disadvantage since he’d become a Retrieval Artist. It felt odd not to know whom he was talking to. “Have we met?”
She shook her head, brushed her hands on her tan pants, and stood. “I’m Ki Bowles. I work for InterDome Media.”
InterDome Media, the biggest media conglomerate on the Moon. InterDome specialized in information programming for every form of media in Dome use, from vids to net-text to links.
“Doing what?” Flint asked.
Her eyebrows rose, then she smiled. The smile was warm and genuine—something that seemed to surprise her more than it surprised him. “You honestly don’t know? I thought you knew everything.”
“I can open my link and pretend I know everything,” he said, “or we can have a conversation, like people used to do before everything was downloaded for them.”
“Mmm.” Her eyes twinkled. Definitely attractive. “You have an edge.”
More of an edge than she realized, especially with someone who played games.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
“One which no one has asked me in nearly ten years, and it’s refreshing to hear it.” She took off her hat and shook down her hair. It was silver, black, and purple, with curls that seemed too perfect to be real.
The hair clinched it. She looked familiar because he’d seen her on the vids. But he wasn’t going to let her see that he’d finally recognized her.
Her smile slowly faded. “I work for InterDome as an investigative reporter. I do have my own show, but it’s weekly. However, I do stories daily, and I do the work myself.”
As if that were unusual. But maybe it was for investigative reporters. It certainly wasn’t for Retrieval Artists.
“And you thought I had enough time to watch the vids.”
She shrugged. “I had heard that Retrieval Artists—the good ones—didn’t work much.”
True enough, but he wasn’t going to comment. For all he knew, he was being filmed, which was something he didn’t want.
“You’re blocking the door to my office,” he said.
“Oh.” She moved aside. “I didn’t mean to.”
He mounted the half-sidewalk that someone had installed decades ago, then opened the office door. As Bowles started to follow him, he pulled the door closed.
He had been right: the warning lights were whirling all through the interior. All of the screens on his desk were up, and as he went around, he saw that images had piled on top of images.
She had been waiting for a while.
He pulled out his keyboard, tapped the code, and the warning lights went off. Then he saved the material on the screens, and let them slide back into the desk. Only one remained up, and on it, he watched Ki Bowles in real time, as she stared at the closed door.
She seemed perplexed, as if she had never had a door slammed in her face.
Her head moved as she searched the sides of the door for some kind of ringer or intercom. She wouldn’t find one. After a moment, she knocked.
“It’s open,” Flint said, enjoying this more than he probably should have.
She grabbed the knob and stepped inside, then stopped just like he expected. She was so hooked up that two more warning systems went off—one on the screen already up and another buzzing through his own link.
He tapped three more keys, setting the security system as high as it went, hoping it would shut off all her links.
The last one shut down and the warning systems vanished.
She touched her right ear, turning slightly. In the artificial light, chips winked all along the ear’s lobe and outside edge. Her visible links. She had to have dozens of others that weren’t visible.
“What did you do?” She sounded stunned.
“I disconnected you,” he said.
“You can’t do that.” She bit her lower lip, drawing blood.
“Seems I just did.”
She shook her head, touched her ear again, then slapped her hand against it. The sound of flesh against flesh was loud and startling.
“Christ,” she said. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“Because everything in here is confidential.”
“I would’ve signed a waiver,” she said.
“And then I would have had to trust you.” Flint pressed one more key and the final screen recessed. “This way, I don’t have to trust you at all.”
She looked at the door and swallowed hard. She was thinking of running. He wondered how long it had been since she’d been unlinked, and realized it had probably been decades.
“The links’ll reboot when you go outside.” He expected that to give her enough impetus to leave.
But she didn’t.
“I don’t do interviews, and I’m not real fond of the media.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head.
“I understand that Retrieval Artists really don’t want their pictures broadcast all over the known universe.”
He nodded, wondering if that was a segue into a threat.
“So I’m not going to do a story on you or any of your colleagues. I’m here because I’d heard that you were the best.”
Ah, the familiar flattery. He was getting tired of it. There was no such thing as the best Retrieval Artist. There were just degrees of ethics, degrees of competence, and degrees of desire. He was more ethical than most, more competent then most, and had less desire.
“Yet you recognized me,” Flint said.
“You have quite a history with the media,” she said. “You had a few high-profile cases for Space Traffic Control, and you gave some interviews. There was coverage of your promotion to detective, which was—is—considered unusual for a traffic cop, and then there were the stories that hit the links when you left the force to join the other side.”
“The other side?” he said, not altering his position. Yet his shoulders tensed. He could feel the muscles shift.
“Well, being a Retrieval Artist isn’t exactly on the up and up, now is it? If you wanted to find people who’ve skipped out on their legal obligations and do it for the right reasons, you’d be a Tracker.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Flint said. “And, by the way, if you’re thinking of writing any of this down when you leave, I consider this entire conversation off the record and confidential. I’ll sue InterDome Media, and I have enough money to hire lawyers comparable to InterDome’s. I’d win.”
“No doubt,” she said. “I’m not here to interview you or get information from you. I might be here to hire you.”
“Ki Bowles, Investigative Reporter, needs a Retrieval Artist?” Flint rocked his chair down, and leaned forward, elbows on his desk. Now he was intrigued. “I’m not searching out a Disappeared for some story or to help you make a career.”
“I’m not sure if this is a career maker,” Bowles said. “It’s just something that intrigues me, and I have enough knowledge to realize that going after any kind of Disappeared is a dangerous proposition.”
“Too dangerous for an intrepid reporter?”
She shoved her hands in pockets. “You know, you’re not treating me very fairly. I don’t want to get someone killed—or a bunch of someones killed—just because of my curiosity.”
That was, he knew, the exact right thing to tell him. Appeal to his integrity, let him know that she shared the same values.
“Yet you were willing to come in here, links on full-tilt, to have this discussion.”
She straightened, raising her chin slightly, as if his words stung. “I meant what I said. I don’t use material that can harm someone.”
“But you let it float around the corporate links so that another person might find it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t trust people, do you, Mr. Flint?”
“Should I?”
“You did once,” she said. “I saw the footage after y
our daughter died. Quite the eloquent speaker, getting the day-care center closed down, getting the proprietors arrested, making sure it didn’t happen again to any other parent.”
His entire body froze. He hoped his expression remained neutral. No one had the right to discuss Emmeline. No one.
But he wasn’t going to let Bowles know she had gotten to him.
“Well, then, if you really studied the footage, you’d know that I had already failed. It took a second death for me to understand the pattern. And there was one before Emmeline. A very small, very mundane story when you come down to it.”
But painful. So painful that it took work for him to sound calm and dismissive as he spoke to her. He kept his gaze on hers as well, hoping that the pain didn’t appear in his eyes—or, if it did, that she wasn’t intuitive enough to see it.
“Ah, but fascinating.” She took a step toward him, apparently feeling that she had the upper hand now. “It would make a great human-interest piece. The grieving father, driven from his corporate job into the dangerous world of police work, rising through the ranks through passion and desire rather than with a formal police education, and finally achieving the brass ring—a detective’s position where he might actually save other lives just as bright, just as shiny as his daughter’s.”
Not as bright, not as shiny. Not even close.
But he said nothing.
“And then he lets it all go for reasons no one understands, just walks away, buys a business with money no one knew he had, and starts yet another career, this one to find Disappeareds. Why? What changed, Mr. Flint?”
“I thought this wasn’t an interview,” he said.
“But you can see my interest.” She smiled, and this time the smile was fake. It didn’t reach her eyes.
“I can see the amount of work you put into research—or that your assistant put into it.”
Her smile faded. “You’re not an easy man, Mr. Flint.”
“And you’re not telling me what you want, Ms. Bowles.”
“As I said, I’m thinking about hiring you.”
“Not interested. But thanks.”
“Hear me out at least.”
That he would do, just to satisfy his curiosity.
She bit her lower lip again, a nervous habit that seemed to almost be a tic. He wondered if she had some kind of neurolink that subverted the tic, something he’d shut off.
“I know that Retrieval Artists find Disappeareds,” she said, “but I have something a bit more complicated.”
“I doubt that’s possible,” he said.
She walked over to his desk and perched on the edge. He’d had a few potential clients do that before, but never with such ease.
“If I know someone who was raised by a loving family, who grew up believing that she came from one place and had a long history, but through a series of circumstances discovered that all of that history was a lie, could she hire you?”
“Theoretically, I’m sure she could,” Flint said. “But there’d be no point. You could handle this, Ms. Investigative Reporter, or some private detective somewhere or an off-duty detective who needs a few extra credits. She certainly wouldn’t need me. I’m about as expensive as an investigator gets, and I doubt she’d get the proper return for her money.”
“Even if she believes that she might be a Disappeared?”
This time, he let the surprise show on his face. “She doesn’t know?”
“She has no memory of her life before she came to her family.”
“And now she has this fantasy that she was put into hiding for a reason. Rather like those secret princess stories that children like.”
“You’re being snide, Mr. Flint.”
He nodded. “I don’t believe fairy tales. I don’t like them, and here’s why. Let’s say she’s right. Let’s say she is Disappeared. Then her parents probably crossed a rather vicious alien race like the Wygnin, who take the firstborn as punishment for a crime against them. The Wygnin have warrants that allow them to take that child until the child’s death—and sometimes those warrants extend through generations. If you had me investigate to satisfy this girl’s curiosity, then I’d be putting not just her life, but her sanity in jeopardy.”
“Sanity?” Bowles asked.
“The Wygnin aren’t taking the children out of malice,” Flint said. “It’s their way of handling problems. In the Wygnin system, someone who is criminal enough to warrant this punishment isn’t good enough to raise a child. From what I understand of their system, they often take all the children out of the household.”
“I understand the Wygnin system,” Bowles said.
“Not if you’re asking me about the possibility of this hurting your prospective client’s sanity. The Wygnin will take the firstborn, whatever age that child has become, and try to make that person into a Wygnin. Apparently it works with infants, but fully formed humans get broken. No adult has ever come back whole.”
Bowles visibly shuddered. “You can’t know that she’s wanted by the Wygnin.”
“I can’t think of many reasons to Disappear a child,” Flint said.
Bowles sighed. “But how could looking hurt?”
“Looking could alert the Wygnin to her presence. Trackers do piggyback on Retrieval Artists, you know. A number of Trackers just follow Retrieval Artists’ signatures through the nets, see which case they’re hunting out, gather the information at the same time, and sell it back to the authorities.”
Bowles raised those magnificent eyebrows again. “And you don’t approve of that.”
“Of course I don’t.”
“Because they steal your work?”
“Because they often destroy people who are guilty of nothing more than crushing a flower petal.”
“That’s a myth,” Bowles said. “The aliens we do business with don’t kill us because we stepped on a flower.”
“The Stlaety do and have,” Flint said. “Check the records.”
She smiled at him, that phony, glitzy smile she had learned for her job. “I think we’re off topic. You were explaining to me why seeing if my friend is a Disappeared is a bad thing.”
Flint sighed. He doubted he would convince this woman of anything, but he had to try.
He stood, something he usually didn’t do when he was talking to a client.
“Let’s assume that your friend is a Disappeared, one who was sent away as a child,” he said, wondering if friend was truly the right term for the person this reporter knew. “That means that her parents feared for her safety—for her very life—and were willing to give her up rather than lose her to some alien group who threatened her.”
“You’re sure it was aliens?”
“That’s what the Disappearance services are for, people who’ve crossed strange alien laws and don’t want to be punished for a minor infraction like—as you said—stepping on a flower.”
Bowles frowned. She clearly didn’t believe him.
“Other people use the services,” Flint said. “Some of them criminals that have committed crimes we consider heinous, but for the most part, the services only deal with helping humans survive an alien punishment.”
“For a price,” Bowles said, as if that were a bad thing.
“For a price,” Flint said. “And, if this woman is a Disappeared, I can tell you a few things about her parents’ crime. First, they committed the crime against one of the nastier alien groups—the Wygnin, the Kafor—the ones that target the children of the so-called criminal instead of the criminal himself.”
“What if the parents were dead?”
It was Flint’s turn to shrug. “Same thing. Only certain alien groups target the entire family—especially when the offending members are dead. This isn’t a small crime, and it’s not a small punishment. If your friend was Disappeared, then any contact with her past could get her killed.”
Bowles stood too. “This all seems so melodramatic.”
Flint glared at her. “It’s not. I’ve seen the eff
ects of these laws. If anything, I’m underestimating the problems here.”
“I guess it would be redundant to ask you to take this case. You’re going to say no.”
“Any reputable Retrieval Artist would,” Flint said.
Bowles shook her head. “It seems odd to turn down money like this.”
“If you want the information, hire a Tracker,” Flint said. “Your friend will die or go to prison, but you’ll all know what happened to her and why she’s in Armstrong.”
“So tough.” Bowles grinned at him. “That edge just peeks out from every sentence.”
Flint walked around the desk and leaned on the other side of it, just like Bowles had. “This isn’t something to play with lightly, Ms. Bowles. Researching a Disappearance like this one—if, indeed, that’s what this is—could cost not just your friend’s life, but several other lives as well. And for what? To satisfy curiosity? That doesn’t sound very reporterlike.”
“It is very reporterlike,” Bowles said. “That’s what we do. We ask questions because we’re curious. Then we search for answers.”
As if it were that noble. Maybe she thought it was. Maybe that was how she went home night after night and slept, thinking her conscience was clean.
“What’s your interest in this case?” He used that edge again, finally getting to the question he wanted answered.
“Friendship.” Bowles finally had an edge too, one that made it clear she was willing to take on a verbal battle if she had to.
“If it were friendship,” Flint said, “you would have accompanied the mystery woman here, let her ask her questions while you waited outside, and then you would have hugged her as she left. Instead, you’re inquiring without her, and you want too many details.”
Bowles tilted her head, as if he were a curiosity. The movement made her seem both fascinated and condescending.
“Don’t worry,” Flint said into her silence. “I’m not going to steal your story. I don’t have those kinds of connections.”
“Then what do you want?” Her voice was cold.
“I want to know why you’re following this story. It could be important.”
“Of course it could be important,” she snapped.
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