The Recovery Man's Bargain

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

As he went inside, he felt like he was going into some kind of cocoon.

  The privacy booth didn’t seem that sterile. The opaque interior light made him nervous and exposed. All he could see through the walls were moving shadows.

  He cradled his right arm to his chest, wishing he already had the new hand.

  Once he settled inside, he ran his own diagnostic, checking for tracers that attached themselves to messages and stole the information.

  Just as he finished, he’d gotten an urgent notice on his own links. The notice had come from the message center, saying he had a communication waiting.

  He used his personal code to call up the message.

  One of the Gyonnese filled the screen in front of him. Its whiskers moved, then an automated voice with a flat tone said, “You have cheated us. We tried to stop the original payment and could not. You will not get your second payment.”

  “What?” Yu said, but Gyonnese did not respond. The message was as automated as the translator’s voice.

  “The woman is dead.”

  Dead? Yu blinked in astonishment. There was no way she could be dead. She wasn’t that badly injured.

  He wondered if the Gyonnese were trying to cheat him. But cheating wasn’t something they usually did.

  Had she played a trick on them?

  The message continued. “The medical program you sent confirms it,” the Gyonnese said. “You told us she lived and took our money. You will get no more from us. You will never work for the Gyonnese again. Do not appeal this decision. The woman’s employer has placed notification all over the Alliance that she has been kidnapped. If you appeal, we will prove that you acted alone. Do not contact us again.”

  And with that, the image winked out.

  Yu ran his remaining hand over his face. Maybe the Gyonnese had killed her. Or maybe she had died from the contamination.

  The contamination. Something niggled at his brain.

  He ran the message again. The automatic voice was flat, but the Gyonnese was angry. Its eyes widened and its whiskers moved rapidly as it spoke.

  They hadn’t killed her—or if they had, they had done so accidentally.

  He hadn’t realized she was so sick. If he’d known, he would have sent the good medical program, not the cheap one.

  And he had given her the pills.

  The pills.

  Cydoleen.

  He closed his eyes, trying to remember how many were in that bottle. He remembered the weight of it, the way it felt solid in his hand.

  There had been more than enough cydoleen to kill her if she took it all at once.

  She must have poisoned herself.

  He wondered: was that an admission of guilt on her part? Or was it fear of facing the courts alone, without corporate support?

  Yu sighed and shook his head. He would never know.

  But he would always wonder. Why would a woman who claimed to love a child—even if it was a Sixth—kill herself? Was what she was facing from the Gyonnese that bad?

  Yu made himself stop thinking about her. He had to focus on himself now.

  The fact that the Gyonnese wouldn’t pay any more didn’t bother him. He had enough for the new hand, some ship upgrades, and a year without working—and that was just from this job. The remaining money in his various accounts would last him a decade or more even if he didn’t work again.

  He might be able to make that stretch.

  Yu played the message one more time, recorded it onto his links, and shook his head.

  The Gyonnese had never understood how the Alliance legal system worked. Just because they said they knew nothing about the kidnapping didn’t mean that there wasn’t proof of their involvement.

  Yu had worried about this case, so he had kept everything—and not just on his own system. He had it on his ship, in one of his accounts, and on a back-up network that he occasionally used.

  If the Gyonnese turned him in, they’d suffer the consequences. He’d make sure of it.

  He double-checked to make sure he had a copy of the Gyonnese message, then he deleted the message from the private server.

  Then he stared at his damaged arm. Maybe he’d get some kind of sterile sling or something to put over the wrist. He needed a drink—and not the crappy stuff they had in the medical wing.

  He needed a drink and maybe some companionship and some kind of entertainment.

  He needed to explore the rest of the facility so that he wouldn’t have to think of the woman he’d given them, and wonder how she’d died.

  With his good hand, he pulled the door open, and froze. People surrounded his booth. They all wore silver uniforms with gray logos and badge numbers along the sleeve.

  Earth Alliance Police.

  He willed himself to be calm. He’d run into them before, and survived. If he kept his wits, he’d survive this one.

  The woman nearest him had ginger hair and skin so dark it made the hair glow. Her eyes were a silver that matched her uniform.

  “Hadad Yu?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, since there was no point in denying it.

  “You’re under arrest.”

  For any one of a thousand crimes. He wasn’t going to guess. “I don’t have to go with you unless you tell me what the charges are.”

  “Kidnapping,” she said. “Transporting a human through the Alliance with the intention of selling her. Related theft and assault charges. And attempted murder.”

  “Murder?” he blurted. They couldn’t have found Nafti’s body. It floated in the vastness of space between here and Io. There wasn’t even proof that Nafti had been on his ship; Yu had cleared all that off.

  Nor was there obvious proof he’d held Rhonda Shindo either.

  “I didn’t try to murder anyone,” he said.

  “A young woman named Talia Shindo disagrees,” the officer said. “Now, would you like to stand or do we get to drag you out of there?”

  He held out his damaged arm. “I’m here for medical treatment.”

  “And you’ll get it, in the prison wing. We’ll leave as soon as they’ve grafted something on there.”

  “I ordered a hand. I paid for it.”

  “Fine,” she said. “You’re still under arrest.”

  “What am I supposed to have kidnapped?” he asked.

  “A woman named Rhonda Shindo on Callisto.”

  The Gyonnese had turned him in anyway, the bastards. They were vicious when they were denied their revenge.

  “If I tell you a few things, will you let me go?” he asked.

  “Not with charges like this,” she said. “But you can see what an attorney will do for you. Do you have something to bargain with?”

  “I always have something to bargain with,” he said as he stood and let them lead him away.

  ***

  The attorney Yu hired was brilliant. Not only did he get Yu cleared of all charges, he got rid of the evidence too.

  And did all of it using Yu’s one and only bargaining chip:

  The Black Fleet.

  The Fleet owed Yu a favor. He concocted one and requested a meet.

  Then he set up his ship so that a shadow version of himself sat at the helm. He removed the ship’s computer and replaced it with another, so the authorities couldn’t track all of his movements.

  And then he gave the authorities the ship, contaminants and all.

  Yu wasn’t the one who was going to meet the Black Fleet.

  The Earth Alliance Police were, armed with the device the Fleet had given Yu, confessing to stealing the flowering fidelia. He had a hunch the Alliance would find a lot more on them.

  He was sure the Alliance had a lot more on them.

  Not that it mattered to him.

  All that mattered to him was learning how to use his new arm, buying a new ship, and figuring out his future.

  His future was the hardest part.

  He was tired of working hard and gaining nothing. He had put three years into the flowering fidelia, and all
it had gotten him was the enmity of Athenia, a near loss of his life savings, and a willingness to break all his rules.

  Not to mention the worst part: two deaths that he felt responsible for—Nafti’s and Shindo’s.

  And then there was the daughter. The Sixth, as the Gyonnese would call her. The one who had pressed the charges against Yu.

  Because Yu had spent three years tracking down the flowering fidelia, because he had lost it to the Fleet, because he had decided to take a job he didn’t believe in, Talia Shindo’s life was ruined.

  She no longer had a mother. She didn’t really have an identity either.

  Sometimes, at night when he couldn’t sleep from the pain of the procedures, he kept hearing her plaintive voice. That tiny “What?” after he had cruelly told her she was hatched.

  He wondered if she thought of that. He wondered how she had dealt with it.

  He wondered where she was now.

  He would never know.

  He didn’t dare know. He couldn’t track her down. That would violate his agreement with the Earth Alliance Police.

  They made him promise not to break Earth Alliance laws again.

  It was a condition of his release.

  In the past, he would have laughed at that condition. But he was no longer the same man.

  For the first time in years, the universe was open to him.

  But he was no longer thinking of it as a place full of things. It was a place full of creatures—sentient beings with lives of their own, problems of their own, loves of their own. Creatures he had never gotten to know.

  He had been afraid to get involved with others, afraid they would hurt him.

  And one of them had. He had a new hand to show for it.

  But he had hurt her worse.

  And her daughter—her innocent cloned daughter—was paying for all of it.

  Yu couldn’t make up for what he had done to Talia Shindo. But he could make sure he didn’t do anything like that again.

  And the first way he could do that was to stay out of the Recovery business. To live an honest life, whatever that meant.

  He wasn’t sure how to do it, but he could learn anything. If he could remove a flowering fidelia from its colesis tree without killing the tree, the vine, or the flower, he could do anything.

  He just had to concentrate on it.

  And he had to think through the consequences, something he had never done before.

  Everything he did affected someone else.

  Strange that he had to live half of his life before realizing it.

  But he knew it now.

  He’d learned that lesson.

  And it changed everything.

  “The Recovery Man’s Bargain” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch first published in Analog SF, January/February, 2009.

  About the Author

  International bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has won two Hugo awards, a World Fantasy Award, and three Asimov’s Readers Choice Awards. Io9 called her bestselling, award-winning Retrieval Artist novels, inspired by this novella, one of the top ten science fiction detective series ever. For more information about her work, please go to kristinekathrynrusch.com.

  If you liked “The Recovery Man’s Bargain,” you might try these other short stories and novels by Kristine Kathryn Rusch:

  The Recovery Man

  The Possession of Paavo Deshin

  Duplicate Effort

  The Retrieval Artist

  The Impossibles

  Diving into the Wreck