“Gone,” I said. “I was never here.”
She leaned into me and hugged me. “Thank you so much.” She squeezed me tightly. “So very very much. I wish I could pay you.”
I stood still until she released me. “You’re welcome,” I said, “and no need.” I moved to the front of the transport and motioned at the children. “Now, you have to take them out before they can remember anything about this vehicle or me.” I told the transport to open the rear door, and then I ducked behind the divider that separated the cargo area from the normal passenger seats.
“Mom?”
I pulled back the divider enough to see that Tasson had propped himself on one elbow.
Chang dropped to her knees and pulled him to her. “Oh, yes, baby. I’m here. I’m so glad you’re safe.” She stroked his head a few times. “We have to go now, Tasson. I’ll help you walk. Come on now.”
He stood and leaned on her.
“The rest of you children, you come with me, too.” She led out the four who could walk. They all focused on her.
“How much will they remember?” I whispered into the comm.
“Virtually nothing of the first few minutes they’re awake,” Lobo said. “Standard human behavior for the type of sedative/wake-up combination we used.”
Chang returned and led out two more who were now able to stand.
The final four were stirring when she entered the transport again. She hustled them through the door. She stopped right outside the transport and turned toward me.
“If I can ever do anything for you,” she said, “you call.”
I mouthed, “Thank you.”
“Let’s all wait by this tree,” she said to the children.
I told the transport to close its rear door and drive back to the restaurant via a route Lobo had given me. We took off slowly but picked up speed as we left the residential area.
“Anything so far?” I said.
“No,” Lobo said, “but I wouldn’t expect any action quite yet. There are no nearby landing zones, so everyone’s restricted to ground travel. You should be safely well away before anyone arrives.”
“Good. Now, we have to hope these people behave as they should.”
“And we have to get away,” Lobo said. “Once everyone gets over all the excitement, they’ll start examining Chang’s story. Even if it holds up—and I doubt it will—they’ll want to find the rescuers and interview them, maybe arrest them.”
“So let’s hope we’re long gone before that happens,” I said.
CHAPTER 12
Jon Moore
I rode in silence until the transport was almost at the restaurant.
“Do you think I should have killed those men?” I said to Lobo.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“What about the law? It exists to provide justice. That’s not mine to decide or to deliver.”
Lobo laughed. “I love that you can still make me laugh. Human legal systems exist for many reasons, justice being only one of them. It’s almost certainly true that the men at that auction were wealthy and, at least some of them, maybe most of them, were also powerful. Find anywhere, anytime in human history in which justice for the rich and powerful was the same as justice for the average person, and I’ll change my position. These men were going to buy and abuse those children. Unless someone stops them, they will do the same thing again.”
“So some combination of the Studio legal system and the planetary coalitions will try them and put them on a prison planet somewhere.”
“Maybe some of them,” Lobo said, “for some period of time, but I’d bet not all of them, maybe even not most of them. In no time, they’ll be free, and they’ll be doing the same thing again. They deserve to die.”
I shook my head, more in frustration than in disagreement. “I hope you’re not right, but even if you are, who am I to decide that? If everyone killed everyone they felt was evil, we’d have chaos on every world.”
“That’s a fair point,” Lobo said, “but in this case, with the data we have, my judgment is that you should have killed them.”
“Well, it’s over,” I said, “and I believe I made the right choice.”
“Whatever you believe,” Lobo said, “I am confident this is not over. But, we can discuss that later, because you’re there, and we need to rendezvous.”
The transport stopped behind the restaurant where I’d borrowed it.
I told it to open the rear door, and I stepped out.
The man came out of the kitchen. He smiled and nodded his head but said nothing.
I handed him the transport’s controls and left my arm extended. “Thank you,” I said. “You helped me a lot.”
He shook my hand. “It’s always good to help an honorable man,” he said, “even when he’s not an entirely honest one.” He stared at me for a few seconds. “We both know you weren’t running some errand for some rich boss. I trusted my instincts with you, so now I have to ask: Is any of this going to come back on me?”
“It shouldn’t,” I said, “but if it does, tell the truth, and you’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” he said. He pulled out a control, and one of the carts resting against the rear wall of the restaurant headed toward the transport.
I jogged away, toward the landing area. “Incoming,” I said over the comm.
“I’ll be a few minutes behind you,” Lobo said.
As I was about to round the corner of the alley, I glanced back. The carts were heading into the transport, the man’s attention focused on them, just another guy doing his job. I checked the street and slowed to a walk now that people might notice and remember me. I hunched forward and stared at the ground as I walked, making myself shorter and also exposing as little of my face as I could manage.
I passed a street vendor selling balls of something fried and fishy. My mouth watered at the smells. I stopped, thumbed my wallet to an ID I hadn’t used, and bought four of them in a paper bag along with the juice of some local fruit. He poured the juice from a jug.
“Squeezed it this morning,” he said. “Best on the streets. Best fish fritters, too.”
I saved the food until I was inside the landing zone and standing next to another shuttle that sat alone, no crew in sight. I ate as I stood there, to any observer simply another guy on a break. Grease from the first bite of fritter ran down my chin. It was delicious, hot and flavorful and a reminder that even on a planet like Studio you could find fish worth eating. The juice was tart but also sweet, a lovely combination. I ate quickly, hungrier than I had realized. When I was done, I wiped my chin and hands first with the bag and then on my overalls.
Lobo landed as I was putting my trash in a recycling container. He opened a hatch as soon as he was fully down.
I walked inside.
We took off.
“That zone’s logs are going to show—” I said.
Lobo cut me off. “Absolutely no trace of us. I’ve been busy, too,” he said, “and their security system was weak. We might as well never have been here.”
“Excellent,” I said.
“And now we should leave,” Lobo said.
“Not until we know Chang and the kids are safe. Take us out, but no farther than orbit, and give me all the feeds you can find that mention them.”
“It’s not like we can do anything else at this point,” Lobo said.
I flashed on Chang standing among the still awakening children, all those kids spread around her. I hated abandoning them before I was certain they were safe and would get back to their homes.
“We can be sure!” I said. “We can verify that these kids are going home, that we saved them, that...” I forced myself to stop screaming. “We’ll go back if we have to, but we won’t let them down. We won’t.”
Lobo said nothing. Displays filled his front wall. Holos danced around the room. Two newstainment types were standing near Chang, stepping around and in front of her as they fought for the best position. An overhead shot showe
d at least another dozen converging on her. The kids stood and sat near her. The cops’ own feeds looked good, the primary one the product of in-vehicle cameras focused on two attractive officers, a man and a woman, their faces set in resolute expressions as they instructed the crowd to let them in. Their voices boomed across multiple feeds.
“Do you know the names of these other children?” one woman asked Chang.
“No,” Chang said, “but I’m hoping that all of you here will help the police identify them and return them to their homes. I know their parents would be as grateful to you as I am to have my son back.”
Though probably not necessary, it was a smart move; she’d made sure they realized the potential interviews awaiting them if they could be there for the reunions of these children with their parents.
The newstainment teams reacted quickly. Close-up images of each of the kids played across all the feeds as sympathetic voice-overs recounted the horrors they’d endured. Announcer voices, their volume noticeably higher than the others, cut in and dangled the hopes—though not the specifics—of rewards for those who could step forward and help identify the kids.
The cops arrived. The team we’d seen earlier led their charge. Other cops on their flanks made sure we saw the calm, knowing faces of those two as they took charge. Police departments can never afford the best media people for their street action crews, but they frequently attract young talent on the way up.
“We couldn’t ask for more,” Lobo said. “Can we go now? I’d like to get out of this system before anyone starts inspecting exiting craft. Right now, I’ve filed a flight plan as a tourist shuttle heading to Mare, but the backstory I built won’t hold up well if anyone decides to dig into it.”
I scanned the displays once more. Chang held Tasson tightly while a police officer interviewed her. The other children, probably still disoriented, stayed near her. Their faces played at different moments and in different sequences on other feeds.
“Yes,” I said, “this should do it. Let’s jump out of here.”
“Good choice,” Lobo said. “I’ve already reconfigured as the shuttle, and we’re heading for the gate.”
The combination of post-mission weariness and fatigue from the short and poor sleep last night made me feel tired even though darkness had yet to fall. “I’m going to nap,” I said. “Wake me when it’s our turn to jump.” Even after all the thousands of times I’ve gone through jump gate apertures, I still love watching the miracle of the process.
“Don’t rest yet,” Lobo said.
“Why?”
“We have two new problems,” he said, “and we need to decide before the jump what to do about them.”
CHAPTER 13
Jon Moore
I very much wanted to sleep. “These can’t wait?” I said.
“Imagine a world in which I disturb you without significant cause,” Lobo said. “We call that ‘fantasy.’ To put it differently, sure, it can wait, as long as you are willing to let me decide your future for you. That has not, however, been your past preference.”
Something I’d done had annoyed him, but I didn’t have the energy right then to pursue it. “Okay, what are the problems?”
“As I said, we have two. What I didn’t mention yet is that they are related.”
“So maybe one solution will fix both,” I said. “That’s a good thing.”
“I would agree with you,” Lobo said, “except that you aren’t going to make the choice that would do that. You’re going to make a bad choice.”
I yawned. “How about we stop discussing what these might be and how I might behave, and instead tell me what they are.”
“Fine,” Lobo said.
Yeah, he was annoyed, but I refused to rise to the bait.
“The first problem concerns the host of the auction.”
I already didn’t like this.
“As you may recall from the feeds I showed you initially, they have already identified him. In case you missed his name, he is Luis Kang.” Lobo paused.
“I didn’t remember that,” I said, “but so what? I heard that he’s important and on some Central Coalition council, but he’s also clearly guilty of kidnapping and trying to sell children.”
“Luis Kang,” Lobo said, “is the chairman of the Central Coalition council that oversees activities on Haven.”
Oh, crap.
“He is also the former planetary president of Haven, as well as, at a hundred and fifty-three years old, one of the oldest, richest, and most powerful men on that planet.”
Haven was the second world humanity colonized via jump gates. Pinkelponker, where I was born, was the first planet humans reached after Earth, but we got there via a generation ship. The first jump gate appeared in the original solar system very shortly after the gen ship crashed on Pinkelponker. It took us to Freedom, the oldest nonEarth human world. The second aperture to open in Freedom’s gate led to Haven.
“So we busted a very dangerous man,” I said. “That’s probably a good reason to avoid any of his friends, but given how old he is, he’s likely to die in jail.”
“The first problem is not the fact that Kang was the auction host. The problem is that he is already free.”
“What?”
“He’s back on Haven. As a Central Coalition council head, he enjoys the benefits of the reciprocal diplomatic immunity agreements that all three coalitions have in place. He’s in his estate on Haven, where the news from Studio barely made a blip, and no one is bothering him. The few times some newstainment hound has worked up the courage to ask, Kang has explained away the whole thing as a terrible misunderstanding of a charity auction in which the families of the children were participating—and would be well compensated.”
“So his status lets him walk, and his money will buy off the families?”
“It appears that will indeed be the outcome,” Lobo said, “or at least enough of the families that the news story is already vanishing quickly.”
Maybe Chang and Lobo were right. Maybe I should have killed Kang, killed all of them.
None of that mattered now, though; it was over. At least I’d saved the children.
“I hate that,” I said, “but it’s over.”
“Ah,” Lobo said, “is it? Kang threatened to hunt you down. He has the resources to do it, or at a minimum to make a very good try of it.”
“So we run to some faraway world many jumps from here, and we live quietly for a while. We’ve done that before.”
“Indeed we have, and that’s the very course of action I recommend. Living quietly has not, though, been what you’ve been doing of late.”
Anger coursed through me. “It’s not like I’ve been wasting time. I—we—have been saving children.”
“Yes, we have, but that’s not going to be possible if we confine ourselves to one world and a low-profile lifestyle for long enough to let Kang get over his anger—or to come to regret the expense of hunting us.”
I did not want to stop the work we’d been doing. I did not want to give up on all those children on all those worlds who were still being used as child soldiers, sold into slavery, abused. “I’ll have to think about it,” I said, “but in any case we could head away from here right now.”
“I would love that choice,” Lobo said, “but you’re not going to make it, as I mentioned, because of our second problem.”
“Which is?” I said.
“I found this audio-only recording waiting under your name in a variety of public mail systems here on Studio. As you’ll hear, if you want me to play it, the message isn’t only here.”
Crap. “Play it.”
“You could ignore it,” Lobo said. “We could jump far, far from Haven and hide out from Kang for a very long time.”
“Play it,” I said.
A voice filled the air.
“Jon,” a woman’s voice said, “it’s Omani, Omani Pimlani. I’m leaving this note for you on every single human world.”
“Pause,
” I said. “Seat, please.”
Lobo extended a pilot couch.
I sat in it and shook my head. I had not heard from Omani since I was 35 years old, over a hundred and twenty years ago. She was the first woman I loved, and the only one I had ever tried to build a relationship with. I’d left at a time when she’d needed me. I had good reasons, including the fact that she had noticed that I wasn’t aging, a trait I hadn’t realized until then that I had. Some combination of the way Jennie had healed me and the nanomachines in my cells from the scientists in Aggro had made me, at least so far, immune to aging. I couldn’t let her find out the truth, because eventually it would have led again to people experimenting on me. I would never let myself be a lab animal again. That wasn’t the only reason I’d left, but it was the main one, and it had caused me to desert her when she had most needed me. I’d chosen protecting myself over her, a choice that had bothered me for decades. It sometimes still did.
Omani was five years older than I was, which meant she had to be of the very oldest humans alive. Why was she contacting me now?
“Resume,” I said.
“I want to see you, Jon,” her voice said, “because I’m dying. I haven’t been able to keep up with you, because there’s not a lot of data out there about you, but from what I can tell, you are still alive. I’ve never forgotten you, Jon, and I’ve never understood why you left. Grant a dying old woman one of her last wishes: Come see me, and explain it all to me. I’m easy to find, because I never left Haven, not for any serious period of time. I’m still here in York.” A few seconds of quiet. “Please, Jon. You owe me this much.”
“That’s it,” Lobo said.
I said nothing. I’d never expected to hear from her again. I assumed she had moved on, led a normal life, and by now, died. Rich people with great medical facilities—she had the money, and Haven had the medtech—routinely lived into their early hundred and fifties, but very few lasted past that. I’d heard of small groups here and there in their hundred and sixties, most of them in terrible physical condition, and almost no one older.
I’d learned with Omani that I could never allow myself to build a real relationship with any woman. Though a few had tempted me, I knew it could never work. I’d always moved on. With her, though, against all the social obstacles Haven had put in our way, we’d given it a go for a couple of years.
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