Consequences

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  He’d had to completely revamp his security system and his computer system. Everything had been ruined—fortunately ruined enough so that no one could steal his records. And even more fortunate for him, he had those records backed up on the Emmeline.

  Of course, it had taken Flint a long time to need those records. For the first month after the attack, he hadn’t done much more than heal and argue with Ian Taylor.

  Taylor had paid for Flint’s hospitalization and reconstruction. No matter how much Flint had protested, Taylor wouldn’t change his mind.

  He figured that Flint had probably saved his life. Eventually, Taylor would have had to leave his fortresslike ranch, and Mosby would have killed him. Taylor admitted to Flint more than once that he had no contingency plan for surviving away from the ranch; he had just figured that Mosby—or any Etaen assassin—wouldn’t try killing him in public because it was too risky.

  Taylor hadn’t counted on an attack in the parking area in front of the ranch.

  Neither had Flint.

  He had gone over that scenario a million times in his mind, and slowly realized that nothing could have prevented Mosby’s attack.

  Flint could have done his reconstruction treatments on Earth, but he had wanted to come home, and he was happy he had. He got to see his office and his old friends.

  In between treatments, he had contacted DeRicci. They had been in touch briefly—Flint had heard from all of his friends when communications to Armstrong got reestablished—but he hadn’t told her what he was doing on Earth.

  When he got back, he thought he could tell her and help her close the Lahiri case. After all, there really was no more confidentiality to protect—all the Disappeareds were pardoned and most of them were dead.

  But DeRicci hadn’t wanted to hear about it. She had already found the security vid and had planned to follow up on it when the bombing occurred. At that point, she got assigned to run the investigation team, and Gumiela closed all of DeRicci’s other pending investigations.

  DeRicci promised to hear Flint’s story when the bombing investigation was done which, she figured, would be sometime in the next three thousand years. To say the investigation was going slowly was an understatement: although the team had reconstructed some events, they couldn’t be certain of much from inside the blast area.

  They had found DNA from the restaurant’s owner near the bomb site, and speculated that she had triggered the explosion when she had come into work that morning. They had also traced the bomber’s message to a public link in the restaurant, but that link had been so thoroughly destroyed that they couldn’t tell when the message was coded, let alone who had done so.

  The current theory was that some of the Etaen terrorists who had gotten into the dome the day before had built a makeshift bomb in the restaurant. No one had seen them arrive, but many people remembered Nitara Nicolae, the restaurant’s owner, coming in late, looking terrified—maybe she had run into the bombers at the riot, and they had followed her back.

  But even that theory was on shaky ground. Only two of the terrorists had survived the riots—the rest had been killed by rioters or Armstrong police—and no evidence of those two had shown up anywhere else.

  Etae was calling for an intergalactic investigation, claiming that its people, who had arrived on Armstrong in good faith, were being blamed without cause, but no one took that denial seriously.

  The entire mess just continued, and Flint doubted that parts of it would ever end.

  He had been thinking about that as his new security system kicked into life. Clear screens—making the images see-through—rose as new visitors walked toward his office.

  He felt a flash of irritation when he recognized one of the visitors as the reporter Ki Bowles.

  She hadn’t bothered him about her friend since he’d come back from Earth. From all the news vids, he guessed she had been tied up with the bombing investigation, the rebuilding of that section of the dome, the reports of the dome engineers on all the electrical malfunctions, and all the other scandals that had come from that day.

  Flint had thought he wouldn’t see her again.

  He was disappointed to see that he was wrong.

  At her side walked a woman with a vaguely familiar face. She was short and heavyset, unusual for this part of Armstrong, where people paid greatly for enhancements to keep themselves thin.

  Flint unlatched the door before Bowles even knocked, and had his system look for the other woman’s ID. Remembering Bowles’ earlier visit, he also had the system compare the woman’s face to those of known Disappeareds.

  The system was working as Bowles stepped inside. She seemed thinner and tired, her delicately tattooed face not hidden this time by a hat.

  “That was easy,” she said as she ushered the other woman in. “I thought you’d be as much of a pain as you were the last time.”

  Bowles didn’t seem as startled this time when her links cut out. The other woman looked surprised, though, and Bowles said to her softly, “I warned you about that, remember?”

  The woman nodded, and Bowles pushed the door shut.

  “Remember,” Bowles said, “you said I should bring her here? You said I’d be a real friend if I brought her with me. It’s taken a while, but she’s finally agreed to come.”

  Flint could lie and say he didn’t remember, but he did. This was the woman who Bowles thought might be a Disappeared. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, her head bowed. Her hair shone darkly in the artificial light, and her clothing, while tasteful, was cheap.

  This woman didn’t have enough money to investigate her past, even if Flint wanted to.

  “You believe you might be a Disappeared?” Flint asked. He hadn’t moved from his desk, partly to intimidate his potential new clients, and partly because he hadn’t fully healed yet. All of his ribs had been broken, and his lungs punctured. It would take time, the doctors assured him, for his reconstructions to integrate into his body and gain their own strength.

  “I’m having strange memories,” the woman said, her voice soft. “And I don’t remember my childhood before the age of ten. I’m pretty sure I can recover it, and that there’s something back there, something awful.”

  “People don’t Disappear children for no reason,” Flint said. “If something is back there and it’s serious enough for someone to want you to forget your past, then I suggest you do just that.”

  “But the memories are coming on their own—worse in the last year. The bombing…” her voice broke. “The bombing made things even worse.”

  “I’m sure,” Flint said. “It brought up buried memories for a lot of people.”

  “I think you should investigate,” Bowles said. “As I told you before, I’m willing to pay for it.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Flint said. “Besides, you’d want to report whatever we find, and I can’t agree to that.”

  The woman frowned. Bowles was shaking her head. “You don’t understand. I—”

  Flint’s computer beeped. Bowles stopped speaking and looked at him.

  “Is that important?” she asked.

  Flint’s main screen had gone opaque, so the person behind it couldn’t see the same information he did.

  The computer had found a match to the woman before him. The match was, on flat vids, one-hundred-point, provided she had aged the way the computer believed she would. Flint would need old records to see if she had.

  But he hoped he wouldn’t have to ask for them. His stomach twisted, and he finally understood Ki Bowles’s interest. She had done the same scan he had long before she had contacted him, and she had seen the same shocking images.

  The woman’s hundred-point match was with vids of the Child Martyr.

  “How old are you?” Flint asked the woman.

  “Forty,” she said.

  Flint didn’t nod. He didn’t do anything at all. It felt, for one brief moment, as if his heart had stopped.

  Finally he made himself take
a deep breath. He looked at Ki Bowles, his expression as neutral as he could make it.

  “Ms. Bowles,” he said, “the only way I’ll take this case is if you have no involvement in it whatsoever. Remember? I told you that if you brought her back, you’d wait outside. Now I’m revising that. I want you gone.”

  “But my friend can’t pay for your services.” Ki Bowles flashed him her million-credit smile. “You’re pretty expensive, Mr. Flint.”

  “I’m expensive so that I can pick and chose my cases. I choose to work this one without you or not at all. What do you say, Ki?”

  It was the first time he’d used her first name. Her cheeks colored.

  “What do you say?” Bowles asked the woman.

  The woman was watching Flint. “Why would you want to help me?”

  “Because I have a hunch Ms. Bowles is manipulating you for her personal gain and I find that offensive. So I’m offering to make your life a little easier.”

  The woman swallowed. Then she looked at Bowles. “Do you mind if I just hear him out?”

  Anger flashed across Bowles’ face, but disappeared almost as quickly as it arose. She was probably figuring she could get the information out of the woman when she left the office.

  “No,” Bowles said after a moment. “I don’t mind at all. I’ll wait in the car.”

  “I’ll take her home,” Flint said.

  “It’s not necessary,” Bowles said.

  “Yes,” Flint said, leaning back and crossing his arms. The movement caused now-familiar pain to run from his elbow to his wrist. “It is necessary.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, then Bowles sighed. “All right. I’ll go. Call me.”

  That last she said to the woman. The woman nodded, miserably it seemed to Flint, and then Bowles let herself out of the office.

  Flint watched on his screen as Bowles hurried across the dust-covered street toward her aircar.

  Brilliant woman. She knew what a coup it would be if she had found the Child Martyr, and if she had gotten a Retrieval Artist to confirm the identity. The search that Bowles had done wouldn’t be enough for an entire universe, which had once believed in the current government of Etae, but with a Retrieval Artist’s backing and all the work he could do, the universe would have to believe.

  “Why don’t you trust Miss Bowles?” the woman asked.

  Flint glanced away from his screen.

  “It’s a long story,” he said, and he knew he would have to tell it. All of it, from the importance of the Child Martyr, to the fact that she didn’t really die, down to the changes it would cause across the known universe if there were proof she was alive.

  Provided she lived long enough for the proof to be obtained.

  Flint sighed. This would be a long day, without any real compensation.

  “You don’t have any money, do you?” he asked.

  “So that is important,” the woman said. “You just told Ki—

  “I know what I said, and I meant it,” Flint said. “But humor me. How much money do you have?”

  “Enough for this month’s rent,” the woman said.

  Flint nodded. He had expected as much. He punched a few keys on his computer, wondering how to approach this.

  He would have to be as manipulative as Bowles. It wasn’t every day a Retrieval Artist convinced a potential client that she needed to Disappear yet again.

  He doubted he would be able to convince her quickly. But he hoped he would be able to.

  She needed to in order to stay alive. Bowles wouldn’t keep this secret very long. If Flint didn’t take the case, then Bowles would go to someone else who could.

  And this dumpy, lonely nameless woman standing in front of him, a woman whose bad memories were driving her crazy, whose life was about to be turned upside down one more time because of something someone had done to her—because she was the key to a government she didn’t remember—would die for a cause she didn’t even understand.

  Fortunately, Bowles had come to Flint, and fortunately, he did have the ethics she had once credited him with.

  “Come here,” Flint said, getting out of his chair. He shoved it toward the woman. “Sit down. I’m going to show you a few images, tell you why Ki Bowles thinks you’re important, and then I’m going to help you.”

  Whether she wanted him to or not.

  It was the least he could do for Carolyn Lahiri. He might have failed her, but he wouldn’t fail in this.

  The woman sat down and then looked up at him, her round face innocent and childlike.

  “Images?” she asked.

  Flint nodded. He tapped his screen and slowly, carefully, started to introduce the Child Martyr to her past.

  About the Author

  International bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has won or been nominated for every major award in the science fiction field. She has won Hugos for editing The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and for her short fiction. She has also won the Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Readers Choice Award six times, as well as the Anlab Award from Analog Magazine, Science Fiction Age Readers Choice Award, the Locus Award, and the John W. Campbell Award. Her standalone sf novel, Alien Influences, was a finalist for the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award. I09 said her Retrieval Artist series featured one of the top ten science fiction detectives ever written. She writes a second sf series, the Diving Universe series, as well as a fantasy series called The Fey. She also writes mystery, romance, and fantasy novels, occasionally using the pen names Kris DeLake, Kristine Grayson and Kris Nelscott. For more information, go to www.KristineKathrynRusch.com.