The Recovery Man's Bargain

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “No,” Shindo said. “I didn’t hide my daughter. Talia’s been with me the whole time.”

  Nafti took that moment to show up. He approached silently, stopping half a meter behind her.

  “Talia’s not the child the Gyonnese want and you know it. Talia is too young.” Yu took one step toward her.

  Shindo took a step back and ran into Nafti. He didn’t touch her—apparently remembering Yu’s instructions this time.

  She glanced over her shoulder and had to look up at Nafti’s tattooed face. She looked from Nafti to Yu, and then toward the front again. She was trying to figure out a way out of this.

  “Talia is the only child I have,” she said.

  Her answers weren’t helping. She actually sounded panicked for the girl.

  “Technically, she is the only child you have,” Yu said, “but she’s also what the Gyonnese call a false child. Very clever of you to have the number placed inside the skin, behind an ear. The tag itself intrigued me. The number we found was six. There are five others out there.”

  She looked trapped for the first time. Trapped and terrified.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Tell me where the real child is.” If she did that, he could leave without her or the girl. The Gyonnese wouldn’t complain so long as they got the original child.

  “Talia is my real child,” Shindo said, and it sounded like she believed it.

  Which disappointed Yu. Maybe she had killed the others, so that the remaining clone would be the only child. Or maybe she had just killed the original. Sometimes it took several attempts to get a viable clone. Five attempts wasn’t unheard of.

  “Technically,” Yu said, “Talia’s yours. But the Gyonnese want the original. The true child. Remember? I’m sure you do. It’s the heart of the case against you.”

  “Please,” she said. “Leave us alone.”

  She glanced toward the street.

  “You know I can’t do that,” Yu said.

  “I don’t know that.” Now she did sound panicked. “I’ve already told you where my child is.”

  “Give us the true child,” Yu said, “or we take you.”

  Her mouth opened, and the panic became even more visible. She clearly hadn’t thought anyone would take her. The courts only ruled on the children, as a punishment to her.

  “You can’t take me.” Her voice shook. “I’m not on the warrant.”

  “We are under orders to take you.” Yu was staring at her in contempt. She hadn’t created those clones to have a child. She had created them as a buffer, to keep herself away from the Gyonnese.

  Children, be they human or Gyonnese, didn’t matter to her.

  She raised that damn chin even higher. “Show me the legal document giving you that right, and I’ll come freely, so long as you let me contact my attorney.”

  Nafti was watching all of this in confusion. He held his arms out slightly so he could grab her if he needed to.

  “We don’t need a legal document.” Yu was going to take her. He knew that now. And he didn’t care what the Gyonnese did to her.

  At least the child would be all right. In fact, the child would be better off without her.

  Shindo’s chin came down. Her eyes were wild. She had finally realized that Yu meant to take her, no matter what.

  “You need a warrant,” she said. “The Gyonnese are part of the Alliance. They have to go by Alliance law, just like the rest of us.”

  Stupid, arrogant woman. As if she cared about the law.

  “If you went by Alliance law,” Yu said, “you would have given up the true child fourteen years ago. Humans flaunt this law all the time, with their Disappearance Companies that aren’t prosecuted for secreting criminals away and giving them new identities. The Gyonnese decided if you people can do that, they can hire a Recovery Man.”

  Shindo lunged toward the front of the house. Nafti didn’t even have to run after her. Instead, he just wrapped his arms around her, imprisoning her against him.

  His grip was so tight that tears came to her eyes.

  “You’re coming with us,” Yu said.

  “Let me contact my lawyer.” She didn’t struggle like her daughter. She must have realized how futile struggling would be.

  “If you had one, you’d’ve sent a message through your links by now.” Although Yu knew better. He’d blocked link access this close to the house. “And he can’t help you anyway.”

  “Kidnapping is a capital offense in human societies.”

  Yu shrugged. “We’re just taking you for questioning.”

  “Against my will.” Her voice rose in panic.

  Nafti inclined his head toward the back, silently asking if Yu wanted him to drag the woman away.

  “What did you do to Talia?” Shindo finally asked. It had taken her long enough.

  “Nothing,” Yu said.

  “But you said—”

  “I said we found the tag.”

  “How?” Shindo’s voice broke. Now she was going to pretend that the daughter mattered to her. Although it was much too late to convince Yu.

  “Just a little touch behind her head,” Yu said. “She’ll wake up soon enough. Then she’ll miss you and go to the authorities and someone will find our message attached to your door, and they’ll know that you’re a mass murderer, who has so far managed to escape justice.”

  Her face was flushed. “Gyonnese law supercedes here. That’s Alliance precedent, and under Gyonnese law—”

  “The Gyonnese have true laws and false laws,” Yu said. It was one of the many quirks of their civilization. He’d had trouble with that from the moment he started working with them. “They seem to thrive on more than one system. And while they prefer the known universe to see their true laws, sometimes they have to rely on the false laws.”

  “Like now,” Nafti said into her hair.

  “But Talia,” Shindo said.

  “You don’t need to worry about her anymore,” Yu said, as if she had ever truly worried about the girl. “Now it’s time to start worrying about yourself.”

  ***

  “I’m not going to be able to listen to this anymore,” Nafti said. “I have a headache.”

  He’d been saying that since they got back to the ship. They had imprisoned Shindo in a cargo bay and she’d been pounding on the door ever since. Even though the ship was large, the sound echoed throughout, thrumming into the bridge like the baseline of a particularly bad song.

  “I mean it,” Nafti said. He rubbed his bald head for emphasis. He had cleaned the tattoos off his face and removed the whitener from his eyes. Now his skin was dark and pristine and his eyes a deep, royal blue. “I’m getting sick here.”

  So was Yu. His head ached as well, but he wasn’t sure if it was from the woman pounding below or Nafti’s reaction to it.

  “All right,” Yu said. “Go down there and make her shut up.”

  “Do I hurt her?” Nafti had been frustrated ever since they got back from Shindo’s house. Every time he’d come close to hurting her, Yu had stopped him.

  “No,” Yu said. “Just bargain with her. Or tie her up. Or something.”

  He didn’t care as long as it got done. He had more important things to think about.

  Like getting off this rock. It hadn’t been hard to get Shindo to the ship. In fact, it had been surprisingly easy. No one questioned the way they hauled her to the vehicle, hauled her out of the vehicle, and dragged her through the port.

  He supposed they figured if she really needed help, she’d send a message through her links. But he was using a small handheld that blocked any link communications. The device had limited range—it literally had to be on the person it was blocking—so no one else’s links were affected.

  To passersby, she looked drunk or crazy or both.

  Valhalla Basin’s port had its own departure customs, and they were almost as annoying as Bosak City’s. Yu monitored the equipment, and finally the promised holoimage appeared in the c
enter of the bridge floor.

  The image showed his cargo ship in yellow, the ship ahead of his in green, and all the ships behind in red.

  Yu had to acknowledge the notification. He brushed his hand across the top of the board, then got a timeline in response.

  Not long until liftoff.

  Then, in the little holoimage, the top of the port swiveled, and an opening appeared above his ship. His board confirmed: the first stage to liftoff had occurred.

  His stomach turned. The moment he left Valhalla Basin with Shindo, he would have committed a major crime within the Alliance.

  He had his defense ready—he had holoimages of the Gyonnese confirming the work as well as their promise that they were acting under the advice of their own legal counsel.

  He was going to argue—if he had to—that what he had done was no different than a Tracker recovering a Disappeared.

  Even though he had a hunch the Earth Alliance would see this differently. It certainly felt different. He kept thinking about that poor girl, stuffed in the closet, and wishing he had set the controls to free her sooner than twenty-four hours from the moment he left.

  “Hey, Hadad?”

  Yu jumped. He’d never heard any voice on the ship’s speakers before except the voice of the ship herself. But this voice belonged to Nafti, and he sounded hesitant.

  “What?” Yu made sure he sounded as annoyed as he felt.

  “Um, this woman down here, she says the cargo hold is poisoned.”

  Yu punched a button to the left of the no-touch board. Nafti’s ugly bald head appeared next to the image of the ships awaiting liftoff.

  “I’m busy here,” Yu snapped. “Why are you bothering me?”

  “Because she listed at least five of the cargos that we carried in the last six months.” Nafti looked scared.

  “So? She found a manifest.”

  “You said we don’t keep a manifest.”

  They didn’t. Yu frowned. “How would she know?”

  “She says that there’s contaminants in the hold.”

  “Nonsense,” Yu said. “We have a service that cleans everything.”

  It wasn’t really a service. It was a bunch of cleaner bots he’d liberated from a previous owner. They were supposed to glow red when they reached their limit of hazardous materials.

  “Well, the service ain’t working,” Nafti said.

  The timer was blinking. His ship on the holoimage in front of him had turned a pale lime as the yellow blended into the green.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Yu said and deleted Nafti’s image.

  Then Yu ran his hand above the board, feeling how easily the ship rose upwards. Silent, maneuverable—empty.

  His sensors told him that the port had indeed opened its roof for him, there were no shields, and he was clear to take off.

  Which he did.

  Then he flicked an edge of the board.

  “Your wish?” The ship asked in its sexy voice.

  His cheeks flushed. He needed to change the voice to something more appropriate. “Scan cargo hold five for contaminants harmful to humans. And I don’t want the chemical names. I want the street names.”

  “Such a scan would be harmful to the life form inside the cargo hold.”

  “Then do a scan that won’t hurt her,” Yu snapped.

  “I have a list of the contaminants,” the ship said. “Some do not have street names. I am confused as to how you would like this information. Would you care for the chemical names in the absence of street names? Or would you like symptoms and cause of death?”

  “Just scroll through it,” he said.

  The ship created its own holoscreen, and presented a list that scrolled so fast Yu had trouble reading it.

  But what he did see chilled him.

  He cursed. “Ship, how good are our medical facilities?”

  “Adequate to most needs.”

  “How about someone exposed to all that crap you’re scrolling at me?”

  “Ah,” the ship said as if it were human. “We have adequate equipment, but no guiding medical persona. I can download something from the nearest human settlement, but I can’t guarantee its ability to solve any problems that might arise—”

  “How soon before someone trapped in that cargo hold starts showing symptoms?”

  “From which contaminant?” the ship asked.

  “Any of them,” Yu said, wishing the damn computer wasn’t so literal.

  “Well, the first compound—”

  “No,” he said. “When will the first symptom from anything in that hold show up?”

  “Mr. Yu,” the ship said in that rich voice, which at the moment seemed more sulky than sexy, “symptoms should have started appearing within the first hour of contamination.”

  “Scan the life form. Is it healthy?”

  “I do not have a baseline for my scan. I do not know what condition the life form was in before it got on the ship.”

  “Just scan her, would you?” He clenched a fist, then opened it slowly. He didn’t dare hit a ship that ran on touch.

  “The scans are inconclusive. If the life form was in perfect health, then it is showing symptoms,” the ship said.

  Yu cursed again. “How long do we have before the illnesses caused by this stuff become irreversible?”

  “Impossible to say without a baseline,” the ship said.

  “Assume she was healthy,” Yu snapped.

  “Then two to twenty-four Earth hours. I would suggest a treatment facility, since you do not want to download a medical persona. Would you like a list of the nearest venues?”

  Yu rolled his eyes. Any treatment facility in this sector of the solar system would be an Earth Alliance Base. He didn’t dare go near those places.

  “Download the best persona you can find,” he said. “Better yet, download two or three of them. Pay the fees if you have to. I want cutting edge stuff. Modern technology. Nothing older than last year.”

  “Yes, sir,” the ship said. “This will take fifteen Earth minutes for the various scans and downloads. May I suggest you remove the life form from the cargo hold and put it in quarantine?”

  “You may suggest any damn thing you want,” he muttered. But he opened his links, and sent a message to Nafti.

  Get her out of there, but don’t go near her. Put her in the quarantine area, the regulation one for humans, okay?

  How do I get her there without touching her? Nafti asked.

  I dunno, Yu sent. Tell her she’s going to die if she doesn’t do what she’s told.

  But you said we can’t kill her, Nafti sent.

  Not us, stupid, Yu sent. The hold itself’ll kill her. Tell her the quarantine room is our exam facility. She’ll run for it.

  Hope you’re right, Nafti sent, then signed off.

  Yu hoped he was right too. Because this job was a lot more trouble than he had bargained for.

  ***

  Yu monitored the decontamination from the bridge. He wanted to avoid the woman as much as possible—not because she was contaminated, but because he didn’t want her face burned into his memory any more than it already was. He wanted to be done with this job—and quickly.

  Unlike some of his equipment, the decontamination machine was state of the art. He needed the best for his own use. Often he went into areas that weren’t Alliance supervised or Alliance approved. He didn’t want to wear an environmental suit all the time, and he didn’t want to bring back any exotic diseases.

  Shindo’s decontamination went well. The machine caught and eliminated more than 95% of the contaminants. The remaining 5% would be tough to get, however, and that was why he needed the medical personas.

  He had them installed in the medical lab which he had never used. He kept the lab well stocked, however, since he traveled alone so often.

  Nafti had supervised Shindo’s trip from the cargo hold to the decontamination unit to the medical lab. Then Nafti had locked her in there, and had gone exploring the rest
of the ship himself.

  Yu didn’t know what Nafti was about, but he could guess. The man was a horrible hypochondriac, and he was probably trying to see if those contaminants had spread from the cargo holds to the rest of the ship.

  A bell sounded. It was an audio alert that he had set up so that he would notice any unusual behavior.

  “Yes?” he said to the ship.

  “The medical lab has sealed itself off,” the ship said.

  “What does that mean?” Yu asked.

  “I can no longer access information from the medical lab,” the ship said.

  “How is that possible?” Yu asked. But he knew. The ship had several systems grafted one on top of the other. If a knowledgeable person managed to tap one system, that person could lock out the remaining systems.

  Apparently Shindo was more knowledgeable about ship’s systems than he knew.

  Yu cursed and bent over the board, trying to override whatever the hell she had done. He had investigated her as best he could before taking this job. He had thought he knew the limits of her knowledge.

  She was a scientist, but one that specialized in chemical and biological systems. She had never flown a ship, never taken piloting classes, never so much as hired a private vehicle.

  She seemed to have no technical skills at all except for the ones needed for her job.

  Apparently she had more technical skills than he realized.

  The door to the bridge opened and Nafti came in, wearing a battered environmental suit.

  “You were wrong to trust those bots,” Nafti was saying. He tapped on his suit. “You should be wearing one of these. You should go through the decontamination just like that woman did.”

  Yu didn’t say anything. He had to concentrate on getting the medical lab back on line. Whatever the hell that woman was doing—good or bad—it worried him.

  He was hoping it was just the new medical personas causing a glitch in the system, but if that was the case, so far he couldn’t find it.

  “You’re not listening!” Nafti said.

  Yu sighed. He hadn’t been listening. But he lied. “I am listening. You don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand?”