Recovery Man

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Those conversations vanished during the year after Emmeline’s birth, but he attributed that to her new focus, which was the baby. Although he was the one with time for Emmeline. He was the one who fed her and got up with her and held her when she cried.

  Rhonda’s work had grown more intense that year, and instead of having more time for the baby, like she had promised, she had a lot less.

  Flint didn’t care. Much of his work happened at home, so he could spend his days with Emmeline. But on the days he couldn’t, he often had to take her to day care—which was why he had researched day care facilities so intensely; he was the one who finally decided to put Emmeline there for part days—or occasionally left her with a kindly neighbor.

  In the months before Emmeline died, Rhonda rarely saw their daughter. Work demanded so much of Rhonda that she barely slept when she was home, and Flint hadn’t made things easier. He demanded that she cut back or get another job.

  She had simply told him that it wasn’t possible. No other place could offer the kind of future that Aleyd offered her.

  He picked apart the cornbread and ate it slowly. It stayed down and did soothe his stomach even more. The chili’s odor, usually something he liked, seemed less offensive.

  He made himself stop working and eat.

  But he couldn’t make himself stop thinking.

  Maybe Rhonda had been right. Maybe the future that Aleyd offered was one of protection, or one in which they paid for her part of the lawsuit, whatever it was.

  Confidential court documents sometimes meant that the cases themselves were sealed and couldn’t be discussed. Aleyd would want that so that its shareholders’ profits would be protected from bad press; Flint had no idea why the Gyonnese would agree to it.

  Then Emmeline died and Rhonda filed for divorce. Flint had always blamed himself, but perhaps Rhonda had just had enough. Reminders that she hadn’t mothered her only child, deeply involved in a lawsuit over something he didn’t understand, and only a corporation standing between her and some kind of criminal conviction. Maybe she had been preparing to disappear.

  Maybe she had a part in one of those cases that was still unresolved. Maybe she had been part of the cases that got thrown out or overturned.

  Or maybe he was making all of this up.

  He had very little evidence here. Only speculation. And speculation would get him nowhere.

  Neither would a continued search of this database. Too many of these cases were confidential. He doubted any of this made it into the press, although he’d search that from another dataport.

  He needed someone to talk with him. Aleyd wouldn’t. Nor would the Gyonnese. And if Rhonda was going to, she would have talked to him before she left.

  But sometimes people on the outside of an event were more likely to discuss it. Sometimes they answered questions obliquely, and with that, he would get just enough information to satisfy his curiosity.

  He’d noted last year that the lawyer who handled Rhonda’s side of the divorce, Martin Oberholst, had retired. Oberholst had explained a few things about the divorce that Rhonda had refused to discuss.

  The man had been an excellent attorney, but he’d kept some compassion, which Flint had always found a bit odd, especially when he’d reflected on the divorce years later.

  When he’d learned that Oberholst didn’t normally do divorces. Oberholst was the founding partner of Oberholst, Martinez, and Mlsnavek, and usually took high-profile or difficult cases in the Earth Alliance. Flint had visited him on another case after Flint made detective, and mentioned the divorce.

  Old family connections, Oberholst had said, and he had left it at that. Flint just assumed that Oberholst had been the family attorney and had handled the case as a courtesy.

  But what if the connections weren’t family at all? What if they’d been through Aleyd?

  Flint ate the last piece of cornbread, then tapped the screen, looking up the names of Aleyd’s attorneys on the Gyonnese cases.

  Most of the names belonged to corporate attorneys who worked directly for Aleyd. But on several cases, particularly those involving the scientists, the attorneys involved were all connected with Oberholst, Martinez, and Mlsnavek. And one of those attorneys had been Martin Oberholst.

  Flint wished now he’d kept in touch with the old man. He wasn’t even sure if Oberholst was still alive.

  But there was one way to find out.

  Oberholst, Martinez, and Mlsnavek wasn’t too far from the Brownie Bar. He’d stop before returning to his yacht and digging into Rhonda’s files.

  And maybe, just maybe, he would get some answers.

  Thirty-seven

  For all the negotiation Celestine Gonzalez did for the Shindo case files, she found them disappointing. Gonzalez sat in the middle of the interview room—which seemed amazingly larger without Zagrando inside—and studied everything, from the call Talia had made for help, to the vids of the house itself, to the audio of the kidnapping.

  The audio was the only really interesting part. The Recovery Man seemed to know a lot about the confidential case—a lot more than Gonzalez had known when she got on the firm’s space yacht.

  She made notes, surreptitiously copied the audio file (knowing the quality would be bad on the chip she used) and requested permission to have a duplicate made of the holo left behind by the Recovery Man.

  She was nearly done when the door opened.

  Zagrando stood outside it, his hand on a girl’s shoulder. The girl was tall and slim, with coppery skin, pale eyes, and hair so blond and curly it shone in the light. That had to be Talia Shindo. She was much older than Gonzalez had expected.

  Even though the file said she was thirteen, Shindo looked sixteen. She was one of those girls who was one growth spurt away from adulthood, even though she really had just started into her teens.

  Gonzalez stood and extended her hand. “I’m Celestine Gonzalez.”

  Talia didn’t move. The expression on her face was one of complete disdain. Gonzalez remembered that expression from her own years at school. Some kids mastered it. At times the expression meant real disinterest, but at other times it masked strong emotions, like fear.

  “I owe you an apology,” Gonzalez said. “I hadn’t heard of you or your mother when you contacted me. I had no idea how serious this was, and I mishandled it.”

  Zagrando bent his head to the girl, and said softly, “You probably should have this conversation inside the room.”

  “I’m not staying.” She raised her chin slightly. Yes, a master of defiance. It was clearly her emotional art form.

  “Give her a chance. She came from Armstrong for you.”

  “So she won’t lose her job.”

  A cynic too, and an accurate one. A good observer, or maybe just a brilliant one. Gonzalez wouldn’t have known how to make a household computer defy its programming, and yet this girl had.

  “Yes,” Gonzalez said, “my job is on the line. But not just because of my conversation with you. We also represent your mother. We have to find her.”

  Talia glanced at Zagrando, then came in the room. He stayed outside it.

  “A meeting with your attorney should be confidential,” he said. “If I stay, it won’t be.”

  She reached for him. He smiled, took her hand, and squeezed it.

  “One of the uniformed officers’ll take you back. If you need me, just contact me. You should be fine here.”

  Her entire body had grown stiff. She looked terrified. Gonzalez didn’t say a word, and wouldn’t take advantage of that terror unless she had to.

  “I want you to stay,” Talia whispered, but the sound carried.

  “I know,” he said. “But it’s better if I go. I need to be searching for your mother. I need to see what Detective Bozeman has found.”

  “He found something?”

  Zagrando shrugged. “I won’t know until I talk to him.”

  Smooth. Not convincing to Gonzalez, but Talia suddenly seemed hopeful. She let go
of Zagrando’s hand, then took one step backward into the room before turning around.

  That defiant expression was back on her face.

  Zagrando carefully closed the door. The click as it latched was nearly silent.

  “Why would I want to talk to an attorney so incompetent she doesn’t know who her clients are?”

  Gonzalez was ready for that question. “You wouldn’t be talking with only me. Martin Oberholst came with me to Callisto.”

  That chin raise again. “Then I want to see him.”

  “He wants me to do the preliminary interview, and if you’re satisfied, then he’ll come in.”

  “You mean I have to hire you?” She sounded confused.

  “Your mother is a separate client,” Gonzalez said. “We will handle that case. We will push the police and do our best to find her. But you have some problems that are unique to you, and you’ll need to hire us for those.”

  “Unique to me?” Talia seemed interested now. She took another step closer to Gonzalez.

  “From what I can gather, you have only two days before you need someone appointed as guardian. Detective Zagrando has bought you a lot of time, but it may not be enough. Valhalla Basin seems to have very strict laws about children whose parents are not available”—she phrased that last carefully; Talia still winced—”and eventually, you will either become a ward of the city or vulnerable to other machinations.”

  “Like Aleyd.” So she knew.

  Gonzalez nodded. “Like Aleyd.”

  Talia came all the way in and sat in the chair farthest from Gonzalez.

  “They think they own me,” Talia said. “Is that because I’m a clone?”

  She spoke the last word with such venom that Gonzalez leaned back. So that was why the girl hadn’t mentioned her father.

  “You just found that out, didn’t you?” Gonzalez asked.

  Talia stretched her right hand on the table. “Did Aleyd pay for me?”

  Gonzalez wasn’t sure what she could tell Talia. So Gonzalez quickly checked Armstrong privilege regulations, then did a cursory search of Alliance laws pertaining to the same thing. Nothing seemed definite. Even though she had learned a lot about Talia’s history from Rhonda’s files, Rhonda had told Talia to contact Gonzalez.

  That was tacit permission to share.

  Or at least, that was how Gonzalez would argue it, should anyone ever complain.

  “No, not directly,” Gonzalez said. “Your mother ordered the cloning.”

  It was, of course, the best lawyer answer she could give. The money Rhonda used had come from Aleyd, but they had paid Rhonda. They hadn’t paid any cloning company directly.

  “Why?” Talia asked.

  “Why did she order the cloning?” Gonzalez had learned to make questions specific. Not only did it give the client (potential client in this case) a chance to disagree, it also gave her a chance to consider her answer. And in this case, the answer was privileged—for Rhonda—no matter how the various client pairings shook out. “You’ll have to ask her that.”

  “I can’t.” Talia stood. “I knew this was a waste of time.”

  Gonzalez felt a moment of panic, but she couldn’t let it show, any more than she could let this girl walk out on her.

  “I’m hoping you’ll get a chance to ask her,” Gonzalez said.

  Talia flattened her other hand on the table. “You think she’s still alive.”

  Gonzalez nodded. “They sent a Recovery Man after her. Recovery Men normally handle collectibles, antiques, and rare items. Those items have to arrive intact.”

  “My mother isn’t an item.” Talia sounded prim.

  “I know. But she’s better off with someone who is probably afraid of hurting her—damaging her—than a Tracker would be.”

  “Is my mom a Disappeared?” Talia’s voice was soft. She didn’t look up.

  “No. She is who she says she is.”

  “Then they wouldn’t send a Tracker, anyway. Why didn’t they just come for her?”

  Why indeed? Gonzalez had some guesses, but she didn’t know if they were right. “How many aliens are in Valhalla Basin?”

  Talia raised her head slowly. “You mean nonhuman species?”

  The politically correct term used by isolated humans who really had no idea what it was like to live around other species. Just from that answer, Gonzalez knew how many alien species resided in Valhalla Basin, but she nodded anyway.

  “Just a few. And they’re mostly, y’know, specialists who come and go really fast.”

  “Then that’s why the Gyonnese sent the Recovery Man. They didn’t want to be conspicuous.”

  “No one noticed, anyway.”

  “But would they have noticed if some nonhuman-looking creatures lurked by your house?” Gonzalez closed one of the nearby screens. She had just realized it was looping the images of the house.

  Talia thought about the question. Then she picked at the tabletop. “I would’ve noticed.”

  “That’s all they needed. If you had had warning, you might have thwarted them.”

  “I wish I had.” Talia’s voice was soft.

  “I just saw the police record of what happened at your house,” Gonzalez said. “You were amazing. Without any help from any adult, including me.”

  No wonder Talia had bonded to Detective Zagrando. He seemed like the only person who had reached out to her.

  “I don’t know what to do now,” Talia said. “I just want to go home.”

  “That we might be able to do,” Gonzalez said.

  Talia looked up. For the first time, there was hope on her face. Her features rearranged themselves into something close to a smile, which made her seem less gangly and a lot more attractive.

  “Really?” she asked. “How?”

  “First we need to settle the custody issue,” Gonzalez said.

  Talia’s hopeful expression fled as quickly as it arrived. “That’ll take years.”

  “It’ll take days,” Gonzalez said. “At most.”

  She wanted that hopeful expression to return. But it didn’t. Still, Talia was watching her, listening to her. That was a start.

  “You’re from the Moon,” Talia said. “You don’t know anything about Valhalla Basin.”

  “I know Alliance law,” Gonzalez said. “I’d appeal under that. The agreement your mother supposedly made with Aleyd was in Armstrong. Which, if nothing else, makes Armstrong law the governing body. So I have a lot of ways to pursue this.”

  “Which’ll just tie it up.”

  “And you’ll need a home during the tie-up,” Gonzalez said. “The court will have to release the house.”

  “We don’t own it,” Talia said. “The corporation does.”

  Gonzalez had figured out that much. “And in Alliance custody cases, the status quo remains unless there’s a risk of danger to the child. In other words, they can’t take the house from you unless they know what happened to your mother or what your future will bring.”

  “Really?” That hopeful expression had returned.

  “Really,” Gonzalez said.

  “You can get me home?”

  “With a guardian,” Gonzalez said.

  Talia’s shoulders slumped. “There’s no one.”

  “Oh, but there is.”

  “Who?” Talia asked.

  Gonzalez smiled. “There’s me.”

  Thirty-eight

  Rhonda woke up slowly. Her eyes were gummed shut, and a horrible taste—some combination of metal and rot—had dried out her mouth.

  She tried to open her mouth, to moisten it, to get the saliva to clear the taste, but her lips were stuck shut. Something coated her face.

  She reached up to wipe that something off her skin, and that was when she realized she couldn’t move from the neck down.

  Her eyes fluttered open in panic. The gummy stuff still coated her eyelids, and some of it fell on her cheeks.

  She dry-swallowed. The pain of that made her resolve not to dry-swallow again.
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  It took a moment to register that she was still on the bridge. She looked down, saw a silver coating that bound her to the neck.

  Travel chambers. She’d read about them. They were designed for short violent bursts in fast ships at zero-g. Usually the person inside the travel chamber had taken something to make her sleep.

  Or maybe the chamber provided it automatically.

  She shuddered.

  Maybe she’d been out because the chair itself ministered a sleeping drug.

  Like the one she’d used to kill the bald man? Nafti, the Recovery Man had called him. Nafti. She’d killed a man named Nafti.

  And failed to kill the Recovery Man.

  It was coming back to her now—the pain and the loss of control as he grabbed her hair. The way he held her skull just before pushing it forward. The console as it came closer and closer to her face.

  She tried to turn, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t wrench out of his grip, and suddenly the console slammed into her nose. The pain was startling, but not overwhelming. She reached for him—tried to get him (she couldn’t remember if she succeeded or not)—and then he slammed her forward again.

  This time, the pain was so intense she didn’t breathe. She heard her nose shatter, felt the blood spatter all over her skin. She went limp so that he wouldn’t hurt her again, but he did. She felt her head go back and in her mind, she begged him not to do it, but she wouldn’t let the words out of her mouth. She wanted to put her hands up, to stop her face from hitting the console, but she couldn’t move fast enough.

  The console sped into view, and then pain—pain so awful that she blacked out.

  And came to only now. With blood still spattered on her face, her body imprisoned, and her head aching.

  He was standing across from her, his hands floating above a console. He wore different clothing—more revealing clothing—open on the leg and stomach. Then she saw the patch of skin on his right thigh—the patch was lighter than the rest of his skin, a flesh-bandage—and another on his left side.