“You made things easier for me,” Gonzalez said. “You helped Talia.”
He hadn’t helped Talia at all. That poor girl was the one who had lost everything here: her mother, her home, even her sense of self.
“I wanted to tell you,” he said, “that I just spoke to Moira Aptheker.”
“Now what does Aleyd want?” Gonzalez asked, sinking into the chair across from his desk. She looked uncomfortable in it. She was in an obvious hurry.
“Nothing,” he said. “They’re no longer interested in Talia.”
“Because Rhonda is dead?” Gonzalez frowned. “I thought they wanted custody.”
“Only so long as there was a threat of a lawsuit. They thought the clone fulfilled the warrant, and that the Gyonnese screwed up in not taking her once they found her.”
“The Multicultural Tribunal wouldn’t accept that argument,” Gonzalez said. “The warrant is based on Gyonnese law.”
“As applied to humans.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “She tried to explain it to me, and it made no sense. We were two nonlawyers trying to figure out legalese. All she said is that Talia is free to go.”
“Go where?” Gonzalez asked.
“Anywhere she wants, if she gets off Valhalla. If she stays here, I guess the Child Watch Unit gets her.”
Gonzalez sighed. “This is a mess.”
“I know,” Zagrando said, “and it’s not mine once I get her out of protected housing.”
“You need to do that immediately, don’t you?”
Zagrando gave her a small smile. “Let’s say shortly. I planned to brief Mr. Flint first.”
“He doesn’t know?”
“About Rhonda’s death? No. But I think he suspected the moment he realized that the Recovery Man was alone.”
“So what do you want from me?” Gonzalez asked.
“I want you to tell Talia.”
“Great.” Gonzalez shook her head. “You want me to be the bad guy so you can stay the hero.”
Zagrando folded his hands over the screen built into his desk. “I want you to tell her so that her father doesn’t have to.”
“Legally, he’s not her father. He’s just a secondary donor of genetic material.”
“I know that, too,” Zagrando said.
“But you’re going to make him think otherwise.”
“I don’t think anyone tells Miles Flint what to think.” Zagrando sighed. “I’m actually worried about Talia. If he tells her, he’s forever the guy who’s associated with her mother’s death.”
“But if I tell her, he’s off the hook?”
“We at least leave one option open for her,” Zagrando said.
“You think he’ll take her?”
“He’s a loner. He’s a Retrieval Artist. I think the chances are slim.”
Gonzalez sighed and shook her head.
Zagrando wanted her gone so that he could talk to Flint and end this part of the case. He wanted the interpersonal stuff to be over.
“She’s your client, counselor,” Zagrando said. “You have to figure out what’s best for her, and I can tell you, staying on Callisto isn’t it. I’ve bought you about six hours. That’s all you get before Talia has to become someone’s responsibility.”
Gonzalez stood, anger flushing her cheeks. “They never prepared me for this kind of crap in law school.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Never learned it in the police academy either.”
She stared at him. “You can be cold, you know that?”
“Not cold enough,” he said, thinking of Talia. “Not cold enough.”
Fifty-six
Flint stood in the hallway outside the protective custody apartment the police had set aside for Talia. Armstrong had such apartments, too, but they weren’t this nice. They also weren’t in their own building. Instead, they were in the basement of several buildings, and they had caretakers.
Talia had been staying here alone since the police found her. He tried to remember being thirteen, and found it was simply a jumble of school and sports, tests and hormones. He had no idea how he would have reacted to losing his parents, and then being all alone.
Gonzalez was beside him, looking exhausted and overwhelmed. Thanks to Zagrando, Gonzalez had had the difficult duty of telling Talia that her mother was dead.
“I’d like to see her alone,” Flint said. He wasn’t sure what he would say or how he would feel. Or what, even, he should do. Zagrando made it sound simple: Flint was her only living relative.
Technically that wasn’t true. There were at least five others, not to mention various aunts and uncles and cousins on Rhonda’s side, people she apparently hadn’t included in any of her personal information, people Flint didn’t recall seeing after the wedding.
At least the girl was no longer under threat from Aleyd, but that, oddly enough, made his choices harder. After Paloma’s murder, he had decided that, for once, Paloma had given him good advice. She had told him that Retrieval Artists should remain uninvolved with others; it protected both the Retrieval Artist and the people he loved.
She hadn’t lived that advice, but she hadn’t lived most of the good advice she had given him. Still, after her betrayal, Flint understood how important it was to keep to himself.
Now, without the threat of Aleyd taking the child and possibly killing her, he would have to make a real choice. He would have to decide if he wanted to change who he was to take care of a child that, under the law, wasn’t his own.
“I’m going to introduce you,” Gonzalez said wearily. “If she wants me to stay, I will.”
Flint gave her a surprised, sideways look. Zagrando had said Gonzalez didn’t want the responsibility of dealing with Talia. Yet Gonzalez seemed to be doing better than Flint expected.
“She is my client,” Gonzalez said into Flint’s silence. “I am responsible for her well-being.”
Flint nodded. He had forgotten that. If he didn’t step up, then Gonzalez would find a solution. And that would be better for his career—for his life—than taking on a child.
He pulled open the door and stopped when he saw the girl on the couch. She wasn’t a child. She was nearly a woman—her legs long and lanky, her body a bit too thin. Her face was blotchy and red; she’d clearly been crying.
But her hair—her hair took his breath away.
It was his hair, Emmeline’s hair. Blond and curly and out of control. He hadn’t really thought of Talia as anything except Rhonda’s child, and while she had Rhonda’s dusky skin, she had inherited the rest of her looks from Flint’s gene pool.
Blond hair. Blue eyes that faded to nearly nothing against that copper skin. A round face—one that Ki Bowles had called cherubic when she described Emmeline’s baby portrait—and high cheekbones.
He had thought his daughter was dead, and she was—the toddler he had cradled, the broken body housing the person he had once loved beyond all else—but this, this was his daughter reborn. She looked just like the composites the holoimage company had drawn up. Just like Emmeline was predicted to have looked, all those years before.
“So now you show up,” she said, her voice just like Rhonda’s, rich with bitterness.
“You know who I am?” Flint asked, feeling off balance. Gonzalez wasn’t supposed to tell Talia he was here.
“Mom keeps images. She doesn’t think I know about them, but I know everything about that house. Knew.” Talia’s voice broke, and she waved her hand as she looked away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it. He had felt a deeper sadness than he expected when he learned of Rhonda’s death—he had loved her once, maybe more than he realized—but he hadn’t thought of the loss this girl was experiencing.
“Okay, you’ve seen me,” Talia said. “You don’t owe me anything. I’m a clone. I don’t have legal rights. I’m not a real child. I know that. So you’re off the hook.”
He sank into the chair across from her, and noticed the window for the first time. It had a view of Valhalla Basin, which
looked like a cleaner, smaller version of Armstrong with all of the rooftops reaching toward the Dome.
Talia was right. He didn’t owe her anything. But to leave her now would make him as bad as the Gyonnese, who somehow felt that because their later children came from binary fission, they weren’t as important—as Gyonnesian, as real—as the firstborn child.
The original, the Gyonnese called the firstborn.
“Look,” Talia said again, “I know they probably contacted you and you felt an obligation, but you don’t need to be here. I absolve you. You can leave.”
He wasn’t sure what stunned him the most: the bitterness in her tone, the vulnerability in her hunched body, or the word absolve which implied a lot more education at her age than he expected.
“They didn’t contact me,” he said. “I found out about you when I got here. I came looking for Rhonda.”
“Because she was kidnapped?”
He swallowed. “Because I hadn’t known about the Gyonnese legal case until a friend died. Then I went to your mom’s lawyer on Armstrong and found out he had come here, and so I came to talk to her.”
“Mom’s lawyer is a girl,” Talia said.
“My boss is here, too,” Gonzalez said.
“The idiot who wouldn’t talk to me?” Talia’s eyes were red-rimmed. Her hands were shaking. She was doing everything she could not to fall apart.
Flint felt the effort she was making just to remain coherent.
“That idiot,” Gonzalez said with a smile.
“Do you believe him?” Talia asked Gonzalez, obviously talking about Flint now.
“Yes,” Gonzalez said.
“How long has he been here?”
“Long enough to help Zagrando find the man who kidnapped your mother.”
“Killed my mother,” Talia said. “He killed her. You people can’t forget that.”
“We won’t,” Flint said.
“I hate him!” Talia balled her hands into fists and pressed them against her jaw. “He ruined our lives. He ruined everything.”
And he had. With one greedy impulse, the Recovery Man had destroyed Talia’s entire world.
“I know.” Flint didn’t offer sympathy. There was none to be had.
Talia pressed her fists to her mouth. She was staring at her feet. Gonzalez gave Flint a helpless look.
It was all up to him now.
“I live alone,” Flint said.
Talia looked up.
“I have since your mother left, since Emmeline…died.”
He watched Talia. He wasn’t sure if she had known about Emmeline, although she had to know that there was a child who was the source of her DNA. A child she was an exact replica of.
“I don’t know anything about raising children.”
“As I said,” Talia’s voice was muffled by her fists, “you’re off the hook.”
“But it’s clear to me,” Flint said, “that you are my daughter. And I would like to take you with me, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t get to choose,” Talia said. “I’m a minor. That’s what Miss Gonzalez says.”
Gonzalez bowed her head.
“You get to choose,” Flint said. “Detective Zagrando has this place reserved for you for another four hours. You can think about it. I’m sure Celestine has told you what other choices you have.”
Gonzalez started to say something, probably to deny that word choice, but Flint held up his hand.
“I’m not saying it would be easy to come with me. You’d have to move to Armstrong, and get used to a new place and new people. And to being without your mom. I’d have to learn how to be a father.”
The task felt daunting, but he didn’t let her see that.
Talia was staring at him. Her eyes were still bloodshot, but not tear filled.
“What I guess I’m saying is that I’d like you to come with me.”
“You don’t know me,” Talia said.
“No, I don’t,” Flint said. “And I’d like to, no matter what you decide.”
“It’s the Child Watch Unit or some legally appointed guardian,” Gonzalez said. “Or Mr. Flint here. It doesn’t seem like much of a choice to me.”
Flint glared at her, but Talia studied him. She seemed to be weighing him.
“Miss Gonzalez says you have a space yacht and it’s called the Emmeline. How come? How come you named a ship after a dead baby?”
He winced. She was nothing if not blunt.
“I didn’t know how to preserve her memory. The ship—its name—was some kind of honor. I thought.” He didn’t know how to explain himself, so he shrugged. “I wanted other people to know about her. I wanted them to ask. I didn’t want her to be forgotten.”
“She’s not me,” Talia said.
“I know,” Flint said.
“I’m a person no matter what the law says,” Talia said.
“I know that, too,” Flint said. “We’d make sure when we got to Armstrong that you’re entitled to every right Emmeline would have been entitled to. I’ll check with my lawyer. We’ll do this right.”
Talia bit her lower lip.
“You have a few hours,” Flint said as he stood. “I’ll come back and you can tell me—”
“No,” she said.
He felt his heart sink. The emotion surprised him. He would have thought that he didn’t want her, deep down, that he would want to continue his life as it was. But he had sincerely hoped she would come with him. He had the money. He had the time. He wanted to learn how to be a father to this child.
“I’ll tell you now,” she said.
His breath caught.
“I want to stay here, but I can’t,” Talia said. “Mom didn’t own the house, and I don’t want to live anywhere else. I’m not going with the Child Watch Unit, and one guardian is the same as the next. You promised me I’ll have the same rights as nonclones. Can you prove it?”
“We can draw up the legal documents here,” Gonzalez said to him. She sounded just a little too eager. She didn’t want Talia to be her responsibility for long. Gonzalez looked at Flint. “Your lawyer can go over them if you don’t trust me.”
“I trust you,” Flint said.
“Then I’m coming with you,” Talia said to Flint. “I’m not going to be a model child, and I’m going to talk about my mother and how much I miss it here and how much I hate this Armstrong place.”
“You’re planning on it?” Flint asked.
“I’m going to hate any place that’s not here,” she said. “And I may not even be nice. Mom says I’m difficult.”
Flint almost smiled at that, but didn’t, not wanting to ruin the moment.
“So expect that,” Talia said. “If you don’t like it, say so now and I’ll choose something else.”
Flint didn’t have an answer for that. He wasn’t going to tell her that it was all right to misbehave. Instead, he turned to Gonzalez.
“Do I need documentation to show that she’s my daughter?”
“If you want the Alliance to recognize her with all the rights and privileges natural born human children receive, yes.”
“Then draw up those documents, too.” He looked at Talia. “You sure you don’t want more time?”
“I’m smart enough to figure out what’s in my best interest,” Talia said.
“All right, then.” Flint was still standing. He wasn’t sure how to proceed. “What do we do next?”
He asked that of Gonzalez, but Talia answered.
“We get my stuff.”
She sounded so vulnerable, but she didn’t look vulnerable as she stood up. She was nearly as tall as he was. The height made her seem younger somehow.
He wondered what he had just agreed to. He let out a small breath, and reminded himself: He had just renewed an old covenant. Nearly sixteen years ago, he decided to become part of a family. Then that family had shattered. Now a part had come back to him.
It was up to him to learn how to do this. Up to him to make the best life
possible for Talia.
Up to him. All of it, up to him.
“Okay,” he said to her. “Let me see this house of yours, so I’ll always know where your heart is.”
She looked at him in surprise. He gave her an uncertain smile.
Shortly he’d learn where her heart was. He was just discovering where his had always been.
Emmeline was dead.
This child—this girl-woman—had Emmeline’s DNA, but not the life she would have had if Rhonda hadn’t worked for Aleyd. Talia was as different a child as if she were a sibling, born a few years later.
But she was his child.
And that was all that mattered.
About the Author
International bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has won or been nominated for every major award in the science fiction field. She has won Hugos for editing The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and for her short fiction. She has also won the Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Readers Choice Award six times, as well as the Anlab Award from Analog Magazine, Science Fiction Age Readers Choice Award, the Locus Award, and the John W. Campbell Award. Her standalone sf novel, Alien Influences, was a finalist for the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award. I09 said her Retrieval Artist series featured one of the top ten science fiction detectives ever written. She writes a second sf series, the Diving Universe series, as well as a fantasy series called The Fey. She also writes mystery, romance, and fantasy novels, occasionally using the pen names Kris DeLake, Kristine Grayson and Kris Nelscott. For more information, go to www.KristineKathrynRusch.com.
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