The Disappeared

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Flint nodded.

  “I’m not making this up, am I?” DeRicci asked Flint.

  “What?” Murray frowned.

  “This looks like something we got yesterday,” Flint said.

  “Tell me what and I’ll call it up,” Murray said.

  “The Disty vengeance killing.”

  Murray grimaced. He studied the screen before him for a moment, then another ship appeared on the desk top. “Hold on. I’ll make it the same size.”

  It disappeared, then reappeared next to that day’s ship. Flint would have thought they were the same ship except the Disty vengeance killing yacht had recent weapons burns, obvious ones.

  Murray whistled. He got up from the desk and walked around the holos of both ships.

  “This isn’t some kind of system echo is it?” DeRicci asked.

  Murray didn’t seem offended. Instead he shook his head somewhat absently.

  “Looks like the same make, model, and year to me,” Flint said.

  “Me, too.” Murray rubbed his chin with his right hand. “If I had some time, I might be able to find the specs for you.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Flint said.

  “Let me try something.” Murray went back to the desk. The Disty yacht rose, then floated toward the new yacht. Slowly the yachts merged until the only way it became obvious that there were two ships were the different scars on the hulls and the different positions of the docks.

  “Wow,” DeRicci said, crouching in front of them. “What’re the odds of two space yachts of the same make and model arriving on Armstrong with no identification and possible criminal involvement?”

  “Impossible to one,” Murray said, and Flint agreed. He wasn’t sure what that meant yet, but it had to mean something. And he was determined to find out what that something was.

  Twelve

  The decontamination unit in interstellar holding was off a mazelike hallway that went through some of the older sections of the Port. This was the original Port. The rest had been built around it, some to modern specifications. But in this older section, pieces had been cobbled together as the need arouse and remodeled dozens, maybe hundreds, of times over the years.

  It had been years since Flint had been back here. He’d come as a rookie on Traffic, escorting a Rev who’d been caught smuggling weapons to a humans-only group on Earth. Flint hadn’t even tried to explain the irony to the Rev, who didn’t seem too clear on the idea that these humans believed aliens to be inferior, and hadn’t realized that the weapons he sold to the group would probably be used against his own people.

  The decontamination unit was quite large. Everyone who entered had to check-in. That occurred in a boxy room, made to accommodate big groups from the large luxury liners. A woman worked behind the desk, but she was mostly there to provide a friendly face and pretend to answer questions. In reality, most of check-in was done with computers set in isolation booths in case the need for decontamination was real.

  It usually wasn’t, but the folks working the Port had learned to be careful. Illness could spread quickly in a dome. Viruses alien to the human population were probably the thing a domed community feared the most, and struggled the hardest to prevent.

  As Flint and DeRicci walked toward the main desk, Flint could hear banging to his left. DeRicci flashed her badge. The woman behind the desk looked attentive.

  “Is that our guest?” DeRicci asked.

  “The woman claiming the Rev are after her?” the woman behind the desk asked. It seemed no one really believed the story. Flint found that interesting.

  “Yes,” Flint said.

  The woman nodded. “She claims she hasn’t eaten for at least two days. We have food and she’s cleared. You want to bring her something?”

  “Good cop, bad cop?” DeRicci asked.

  Flint nodded. “Which do you want?”

  “I’ve been dealing with the Wygnin. Give me bad cop.”

  Flint grinned. “What kind of food do we have?” he asked the woman.

  “Sandwiches and some juice. She wants better than that, she has to buy it herself.”

  “That’ll do.” He went to the small kitchen off one of the isolation booths and opened the refrigerator. Most places in the Port used the microization units, but a standard refrigerator worked fine here. No one knew how many mouths this place would feed day to day. Get too much food and it would spoil. Too little, and the person at the desk simply ordered something delivered from one of the many restaurants in the Port.

  He took out a ham sandwich and something marked vegetables, which looked like fake tomatoes, asparagus, and some sort of lettuce on bread made from Moon flour. Unappetizing to him, but to someone who hadn’t eaten for two days, it might look appealing.

  He also took one of the recyclable juice cartons, and set everything on a tray.

  DeRicci waited in the main area for him, her hands clasped behind her back. “Took you long enough.”

  He smiled. “If that’s bad cop, you’ll have to work harder.”

  Her eyes twinkled but she didn’t smile. The pounding continued.

  “For a woman who doesn’t want to call attention to herself, she’s pretty noisy,” DeRicci said to the woman behind the counter.

  “And fidgety. She was really nervous, but she knew how the decon units worked. Most nervous people are just afraid of what’s going to happen in the unit. But she’s got something else on her mind.”

  DeRicci glanced at Flint. He shrugged. He liked to make up his own mind about people. DeRicci pulled open the door leading to the first suite of decontamination units. There were a series of doors in the wide hallway. Usually the suite functioned as a series of smaller rooms. But, if the authorities desired, the doors could be opened, and the entire area would become one decontamination unit.

  The pounding continued, erratically, as if the woman were getting tired.

  Two guards stood off to the side at the end of the corridor. They weren’t visible from the door they appeared to be guarding, so the woman would have no idea that she was being watched.

  “You think the guards are necessary?” DeRicci asked.

  “Yeah,” Flint said. “I do.”

  “She could be the victim here.”

  “Traffic doesn’t think so.”

  “Traffic aren’t trained investigators.”

  He stopped. “What do you think is going on?”

  “I don’t know,” DeRicci said. “Something that doesn’t seem immediately obvious.”

  “You’re warning me, aren’t you?”

  “You’re going in thinking she’s done something wrong. We have to play all angles here. As Gumiela said, there’s the possibility she’s telling the truth.”

  “You want to switch roles?” Flint asked.

  DeRicci shook her head. “You’ll do fine. You’ve come to your own in this Port. In fact, you’re coming along faster and better than I expected.”

  She had never complimented him before. Flint wasn’t sure how to react. “Thanks.”

  “You don’t need to sound so surprised. I can’t scare you off, so I may as well train you.”

  Flint switched the tray of sandwiches and juice to the other hand. They had reached the door.

  “You’re sure she’s through decon?” he asked one of the guards.

  “She didn’t seem worried,” he said, shaking his head. “It was like she knew something we didn’t.”

  “HazMat had given her an on-site check,” the other guard said. “They should have stayed with her.”

  “Traffic called us,” DeRicci said. “Stay back when we open the door. I don’t want her to know you’re here.”

  “Gotcha,” the guard said and touched a point on the wall.

  Flint heard the door’s locking mechanism beep twice, then click. The pounding stopped.

  DeRicci nodded at Flint, giving him the silent instruction to go first.

  He pulled the door open. “I hear you wanted food,” he said in his most cheerful voice. He held th
e tray out as he stepped inside, uncertain how the woman would react.

  She was standing to the side of the door, clutching her purse. He had the sense that she had been about to do something, and changed her mind.

  “Thank you.” Her voice had a trace of an American accent.

  DeRicci came in behind him pushing the door closed. The lights came up, and Flint felt his heart lurch.

  The woman was one of the most beautiful he’d ever seen. She had delicate features, long blond hair pulled back into a loose bun, and intelligent blue eyes. She wore no make-up and she didn’t seem to have enhancements. The high cheekbones, small nose, and dark lips that offset her light brown skin seemed to be all natural.

  He made himself hand her the tray.

  “When can I leave?” she asked.

  “Soon,” he said.

  “If you tell us what all that noise was about,” DeRicci’s voice had grown gruff, almost belligerent. She was starting the routine already.

  “I was hungry,” the woman said. “I haven’t eaten in nearly two days. I had no idea how long I was supposed to be in here, and I was getting woozy. You don’t mind if I eat?”

  “No, go ahead,” Flint said. “That’s why we brought it.”

  “You don’t look like people who usually serve food,” the woman said.

  “Because we aren’t,” DeRicci said. “We’re Armstrong Dome detectives. Traffic thinks you have something to hide.”

  “What?” The woman had been about to take a bite from her sandwich. She lowered it and stared at DeRicci in disbelief. “I barely escaped with my life. Didn’t they tell you what happened?”

  “Yeah, they told us,” DeRicci said. “Seems odd. The Rev usually don’t let—”

  Flint held up a hand. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on. I used to work for Traffic. Sometimes they get it wrong.”

  “I don’t think so,” DeRicci said.

  Flint pushed his hand out farther, as if she hadn’t noticed it. “Let her eat, Noelle. We can talk while she gets comfortable. She already said she was woozy.”

  Besides, he wanted to see if she were really hungry or if that had been a ruse. The woman smiled gratefully at him, and then picked up her sandwich again. She ate it in three bites, then wiped her mouth with her fingers.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

  Flint nodded. “Mind if I sit?”

  “Sure,” she said and moved the tray so that he could sit on the bench next to her. Interesting thing to do. He would have expected her to nod toward the bench across the room.

  This was a woman who knew how to use her looks to get what she wanted. He would let her think she was succeeding.

  DeRicci continued to stand before the door, her arms crossed. The woman glanced once in DeRicci’s direction, but whether she was looking at the door or at DeRicci, Flint couldn’t tell.

  “You didn’t tell us your name,” Flint said.

  “You didn’t get that from—Traffic, was it?” She picked up the other sandwich, picked off the top piece of bread and inspected it. After a moment, she removed some real olives—waste of good food, Flint thought, proving she didn’t come from a colony or an outpost—and then put the top piece of bread back on. “I’m Greta Palmer.”

  “A textile worker from Mars,” DeRicci said.

  “See?” Palmer said around her first bite. “They did tell you.”

  “I want to hear it from you,” Flint said.

  “Yeah,” DeRicci said. “Tell us what a woman with an American accent and enough education to fly a yacht is doing in a textile recycling plant on Mars.”

  Palmer swallowed the bread hard. Every movement she made was delicate.

  “I’m rebuilding my life,” she said, and Flint heard truth in that statement.

  “Away from Mars?”

  “On Mars.” Palmer ate the second sandwich slower, but she still went through it pretty fast. Then she put a hand over her stomach, as if the food bothered her.

  Flint slid the juice at her. “This should help. Sometimes the stomach rebels when it gets food it’s not used to.”

  “It all looked pretty normal to me,” Palmer said.

  Except that it wasn’t. Bread made from Moon flour didn’t always sit well with folks who were used to the real thing. And she probably hadn’t had reconstituted vegetables before. Flint could feel DeRicci’s gaze on him, but he refused to meet it. If they were playing good cop/bad cop, they couldn’t seem like a team.

  “Tell us what happened,” Flint said after Palmer finished her juice.

  She didn’t meet his gaze at first, which he didn’t like. “We were on our way to the Moon—”

  “From?” DeRicci asked.

  “Earth.” This time Palmer did look up.

  “And what was a textile worker doing on Earth?”

  “Taking a vacation,” Palmer said, with a bit of an edge in her voice.

  “Spendy vacation,” DeRicci said. “I can’t afford a vacation like that on my salary.”

  “Noelle,” Flint said, playing his part.

  DeRicci grunted and shook her head.

  Palmer sipped at the juice carton even though she knew it was empty. Then she set it down. “We were headed here when the Rev intercepted us. They took the crew.”

  “You were the only passenger?” DeRicci asked.

  Palmer paused. It seemed to Flint that she hadn’t expected the question and was thinking about it. “No,” she said after a moment.

  “Where are the others?”

  “Some of them got in the way,” she said. “Others took an escape pod.”

  Well, that explained that, although Flint didn’t like it. He made sure he sounded as sympathetic as possible when he asked, “Why didn’t you take an escape pod?”

  “It all happened so fast. I was asleep in one of the suites. I came out in time to see the crew get dragged off and the other passengers crowding into the pod—”

  “How many others?” DeRicci asked.

  “Three,” she said.

  Interesting. Flint didn’t know how to signal DeRicci on this one. Those pods in that ship were built comfortably for one, could accommodate two, and were a tight squeeze on three.

  “Why didn’t they take separate pods?” DeRicci asked.

  “I don’t know.” Palmer’s voice rose, suggesting panic, although her eyes didn’t show it. Flint got the sense that there was panic beneath her words, but not the kind she was playing at.

  “You walked out and then what happened?”

  “No one saw me. The Rev were getting the crew off the ship, and the others were going away. I didn’t know where the other escape pod was. I went into the cockpit to find it, and the computer asked me if I wanted to close the outside exit door because I was alone on the ship. That’s when I decided to take my chance.”

  “And run from the Rev?” DeRicci asked, making it sound like a stupid choice.

  “I figured it was the same either way, and I’d get out of there faster in the yacht than I would in the escape pods.”

  Again, it sounded logical even though it rang false. Flint suddenly wished he was playing bad cop. There were a whole lot of technical questions he wanted to ask her.

  “Where did you learn how to pilot yachts?” DeRicci asked.

  “I didn’t,” Palmer said. “I flew orbitals when I was a kid.”

  “Your record didn’t show that you have a pilot’s license,” DeRicci said.

  “Does your record show everything about your life?” Palmer snapped.

  Flint raised his eyebrows, surprised she had sounded so cross. He wouldn’t. Not when he was facing two detectives, one of whom didn’t seem to trust him.

  “Yes, actually,” DeRicci said. “That’s exactly the sort of thing that shows up no matter what.”

  “Perhaps when you live an isolated little life on the Moon,” Palmer said.

  “Seems to me your life on Mars should be isolated. Yours isn’t the kind of job that allows y
ou to judge other people.” DeRicci had her arms crossed.

  Palmer’s face paled. Flint had seen interview subjects flush or turn a rather sickly yellowish, but he’d never seen them grow pale.

  All of these reactions of hers didn’t add up. He said, “Did the Rev chase you?”

  She looked at him, startled, as if she had forgotten he was there. Or perhaps the question surprised her. “I don’t know. I flew manually—as fast as I could make that thing go. It was scary. I was out of control most of the time.”

  That jibed with the report Gumiela had given them. Palmer’s landing hadn’t exactly been controlled.

  “The Rev don’t come after someone without a warrant. They’re not like the Disty,” DeRicci said. “They don’t kill everyone around the person they’re after.”

  Palmer raised her head. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that the Rev should have checked with their new prisoners about your identity. If they come here, they think you’ve done something.”

  Palmer’s body froze. Her face lost expression.

  “You know that’s not true,” Flint said to DeRicci, hoping that his position as good cop might draw Palmer out. “The Rev take prisoners that they don’t want.”

  “And set them free if the identities don’t match any in their database.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Palmer’s voice was soft. Flint had the feeling that she had taken the few moments of that interchange to come up with her story. “I thought they’d take me like they took everyone else.”

  “Except the passengers who climbed into the pods,” DeRicci said.

  “I don’t know what happened to them after I left.” Palmer’s voice shook. It sounded like a controlled response. She picked up the juice carton from the tray and started to play with the straw. Flint watched her left hand. The skin on the third finger had a thin indentation. She had worn a ring there, and recently.

  “You didn’t think to go back for them?” DeRicci asked. She sounded offended. Maybe she was.

  “I was running for my life,” Palmer said.

  “The Rev don’t kill their prisoners,” DeRicci said.

  “I didn’t know that,” Palmer said.

  DeRicci’s eyebrows went up, her look of triumph. “Yet you accuse me of being unsophisticated. Which is it, Ms. Palmer? Are you sophisticated or not? You piloted orbitals. You handled a yacht. You mean to tell me you’ve never encountered aliens before?”