by Jack Dann
She waved a hand, as if the very idea were a silly one. And it probably was. A clone had to come from somewhere. So either she was the copy of a real child or a copy of the woman she wanted me to find. Perhaps the will was unchanged because the original person was still out there.
"My mother vanished with the real heir," she said.
I waited.
"My father always expected to find them. My sister is the one who inherits."
I hated clone terminology. "Sister" was such an inaccurate term, even though clones saw themselves as twins. They weren't. They weren't raised that way or thought of that way. The Original stood to inherit. The clone before me did not.
"So you, out of the goodness of your heart, are searching for your missing family." I laid the sarcasm on thick. I've handled similar cases before. Where money was involved, people were rarely altruistic.
"No," she said, and her bluntness surprised me. "My father owns 51 percent of the Third Dynasty. When he dies, it goes into the corporation itself, and can be bought by other shareholders. I am not a shareholder, but I have been raised from birth to run the Dynasty. The idea was that I would share my knowledge with my sister, and that we would run the business together."
This made more sense.
"So I need to find her, Mr. Flint, before the shares go back into the corporation. I need to find her so that I can live the kind of life I was raised to live."
I hated cases like this. She was right. I did judge my clients. And if I found them the least bit suspicious, I didn't take on the case. If I believed that what they would do would jeopardize the Disappeared, I wouldn't take the case either. But if the reason for the disappearance was gone, or if the reason for finding the missing person benefited or did not harm the Disappeared, then I would take the case.
I saw benefit here, in the inheritance, and in the fact that the reason for the disappearance was dying.
"Your father willed his entire fortune to his missing child?"
She nodded.
"Then why isn't he searching for her?"
"He figured she would come back when she heard of his death."
Possible, depending on where she had disappeared to, but not entirely probable. The girl might not even know who she was.
"If I find your mother," I said, "then will your father try to harm her?"
"No," she said. "He couldn't if he wanted to. He's too sick. I can forward the medical records to you."
One more thing to check. And check I would. I guess I was taking this case, no matter how messily she started it. I was intrigued, just enough.
"Your father doesn't have to be healthy enough to act on his own," I said. "With his money, he could hire someone."
"I suppose," she said. "But I control almost all of his business dealings right now. The request would have to go through me."
I still didn't like it, but superficially, it sounded fine. I would, of course, check it out. "Where's your clone mark?"
She frowned at me. It was a rude question, but one I needed the answer to before I started.
She pulled her hair back, revealing a small number eight at the spot where her skull met her neck. The fine hairs had grown away from it, and the damage to the skin had been done at the cellular level. If she tried to have the eight removed, it would grow back.
"What happened to the other seven?" I asked.
She let her hair fall. "Failed."
Failed clones were unusual. Anything unusual in a case like this was suspect.
"My mother," she said, as if she could hear my thoughts, "was pregnant when she disappeared. I was cloned from sloughed cells found in the amnio."
"Hers or the baby's?"
"The baby's. They tested. But they used a lot of cells to find one that worked. It took a while before they got me."
Sounded plausible, but I was no expert. More information to check.
"Your father must have wanted you badly."
She nodded.
"Seems strange that he didn't alter his will for you."
Her shoulders slumped. "He was afraid any changes he made wouldn't have been lawyer-proof. He was convinced I'd lose everything because of lawsuits if he did that."
"So he arranged for you to lose everything on his own?"
She shook her head. "He wanted the family together. He wanted me to work with my sister to—"
"So he said."
"So he says." She ran a hand through her hair. "I think he hopes that my sister will cede the company to me. For a percentage, of course."
There it was. The only loophole in the law. A clone could receive an inheritance if it came directly from the person whose genetic material the clone shared, provided that the Original didn't die under suspicious circumstances. Of course, a living person could, in Anetka's words, "cede" that ownership as well, although it was a bit more difficult.
"You're looking for her for money," I said in my last-ditch effort to get out of the case.
"You won't believe love," she said.
She was right. I wouldn't have.
"Besides," she said. "I have my own money. More than enough to keep me comfortable for the rest of my life. Whatever else you may think of my father, he provided that. I'm searching for her for the corporation. I want to keep it in the family. I want to work it like I was trained. And this seems to be the only way."
It wasn't a very pretty reason, and I'd learned over the years, it was usually the ugly reasons that were the truth. Not, of course, that I could go by gut, I wouldn't.
"My retainer is two million credits," I said. "If you're lucky, that's all this investigation will cost you. I have a contract that I'll send to you or your personal representative, but let me give you the short version verbally."
She nodded.
I continued, reciting, as I always did, the essential terms so that no client could ever say I'd lied to her. "I have the right to terminate at any time for any reason. You may not terminate until the Disappeared is found, or I have concluded that the Disappeared is gone for good. You are legally liable for any lawsuits that arise from any crimes committed by third parties as a result of this investigation. I am not. You will pay me my rate plus expenses whenever I bill you. If your money stops, the investigation stops, but if I find you've been withholding funds to prevent me from digging farther, I am entitled to a minimum of ten million credits. I will begin my investigation by investigating you. Should I decide you are unworthy as a client before I begin searching for the Disappeared, I will refund half of your initial retainer. There's more but those are the salient points. Is all of that clear?"
"Perfectly."
"I'll begin as soon as I get the retainer."
"Give me your numbers and I'll have the money placed in your account immediately."
I handed her my single printed card with my escrow account embedded into it. The account was a front for several other accounts, but she didn't need to know that. Even my money went through channels. Someone who is good at finding the Disappeared is also good at making other things disappear.
"Should you need to reach me in an emergency," I said, "place 673 credits into this account."
"Strange number," she said.
I nodded. The number varied from client to client, a random pattern. Sometimes, past clients sent me their old amounts as a way to contact me about something new. I kept the system clear.
"I'll respond to the depositing computer from wherever I am, as soon as I can. This is not something you should do frivolously nor is it something to be done to check up on me. It's only for an emergency. If you want to track the progress of the investigation, you can wait for my weekly updates."
"And if I have questions?"
"Save them for later."
"What if I think I can help?"
"Leave me mail." I stood. She was watching me, that hard edge in her eyes again. "I've got work to do now. I'll contact you when I'm ready to begin my search."
"How long will this investigation of me take?"
"I have no idea," I said. "It depends on how much you're hiding."
IV
Clients never tell the truth. No matter how much I instruct them to, they never do. It seems to be human nature to lie about something, even when it's something small. I had a hunch, given Anetka Sobol's background, she had lied about a lot. The catch was to find out how much of what she had lied about was relevant to the job she had hired me for. Finding out required research.
I do a lot of my research through public accounts, using fake ID. It is precautionary, particularly in the beginning, because so many case don't pan out. If a Disappeared still has a Tracker after her, repeated searches from me will be flagged. Searches from public accounts—especially different public accounts—will not. Often the Disappeared are already famous or become famous when they vanish, and are often the subject of anything from vidspec to school reports.
My favorite search site is a bar not too far from my office. I love the place because it serves some of the best food in Armstrong, in some of the largest quantities. The large quantities are required, given the place's name. The Brownie Bar serves the only marijuana in the area, baked into specially marked goods, particularly the aforementioned brownies. Imbibers get the munchies, and proceed to spend hundreds of credits on food. The place turns quite a profit, and it's also comfortable; marijuana users seem to like their creature comforts more than most other recreational drug types.
Recreational drugs are legal on the Moon, as are most things. The first settlers came in search of something they called "freedom from oppression," which usually meant freedom to pursue an alternative lifestyle. Some of those lifestyles have since become illegal or simply died out, but others remain. The only illegal drugs these days, at least in Armstrong, are those that interfere with the free flow of air. Everything from nicotine to opium is legal—as long as its user doesn't smoke it.
The Brownie Bar caters to the casual user as well as the hard-core and, unlike some drug bars, doesn't mind the non-user customer. The interior is large with several sections. One section, the party wing, favors the bigger groups, the ones who usually arrive in numbers larger than ten, spend hours eating and giggling, and often get quite obnoxiously wacky. In the main section, soft booths with tables shield clients from each other. Usually the people sitting there are couples or groups of four. If one group gets particularly loud, a curtain drops over the open section of the booth, and their riotous laughter fades to nearly nothing.
My section caters to the hard core, who sometimes stop for a quick fix in the middle of the business day, or who like a brownie before dinner to calm the stress of a hectic afternoon. Many of these people have only one, and continue work while they're sitting at their solitary tables. It's quiet as a church in this section, and many of the patrons are plugged into the client ports that allow them access to the Net.
The access ports are free, but the information is not. Particular servers charge by the hour in the public areas, but have the benefit of allowing me to troll using the server or the bar's identicodes, I like that; it usually makes my preliminary searchers impossible to trace.
That afternoon, I took my usual table in the very back. It's small, made of high-grade plastic designed to look like wood—and it fools most people. It never fooled me, partly because I knew the Brownie Bar couldn't afford to import, and partly because I knew they'd never risk something that valuable on a restaurant designed for stoners. I sat cross-legged on the thick pillow on the floor, ordered some turkey stew—made here with real meat—and plugged in.
The screen was tabletop and had a keyboard so that the user could have complete privacy. I'd heard other patrons complain that using the Brownie Bar's system required them to read, but it was one of the features I liked.
I started with Anetka and decided to work my way backwards through the Sobol family. I found her quickly enough; her life was well covered by the tabs, which made no mention of her clone status. She was twenty-seven, ten to twelve years older than she looked. She'd apparently had those youthful looks placed in stasis surgically. She'd look girlish until she died.
Another good fact to know. If there was an Original, she might not look like Anetka. Not anymore.
Anetka had been working in her father's corporation since she was twelve. Her IQ was off the charts—surgically enhanced as well, at least according to most of the vidspec programs—and she breezed through Harvard and then Cambridge. She did postdoc work at the Interstellar Business School in Islamabad, and was out of school by the time she was twenty-five. For the last two years, she'd been on the corporate fast track, starting in lower management and working her way to the top of the corporate ladder.
She was, according to the latest feeds, her father's main assistant.
So I had already found Possible Lie Number One: She wasn't here for herself. She was, as I had suspected, a front for her father. Not to find the wife, but to find the real heir.
I wasn't sure how I'd feel if that were true. I needed to find out if, indeed, the Original was the one who'd inherit. If she wasn't, I wouldn't take the case. There'd be no point.
But I wasn't ready to make judgments yet. I had a long way to go. I looked up Anetka's father and discovered that Carson Sobol had never remarried, although he'd been seen with a bevy of beautiful women over the years. All were close to his age. He never dated women younger than he was. Most had their own fortunes, and many their own companies. He spent several years as the companion to an acclaimed Broadway actress, even funding some of her more famous plays. That relationship, like the others, had ended amicably.
Which led to Possible Lie Number Two: a man who terrorized his wife so badly that she had to run away from him also terrorized his later girlfriends. And while a man could keep something like that quiet for a few years, eventually the pattern would become evident. Eventually one of the women would talk.
There was no evidence of terrorizing in the stuff I found. Perhaps the incidents weren't reported. Or perhaps there was nothing to report. I would vote for the latter. It seemed, from the vidspec I'd read, everyone knew that the wife had left him because of his cruelty. My experience with vidspec reporters made me confident that they'd be on the lookout for more proof of Carson Sobol's nasty character. And if they found it, they'd report it.
No one had.
I didn't know if that meant Sobol had learned his lesson when the wife ran off, or perhaps Sobol had learned that mistreatment of women was bad for business. I couldn't believe that a man could terrify everyone into silence. If that were his methodology, there would be a few leaks that were quickly hushed up, and one or two dead bodies floating around—bodies belonging to folks who hadn't listened. Also, there would be rumors, and there were none.
Granted, I was making assumptions on a very small amount of information. Most of the reports I found about Sobol weren't about his family or his love life, but about the Third Dynasty as it expanded in that period to new worlds, places that human businesses had never been before.
The Third Dynasty had been the first to do business with the Fuetrer, the HDs, and the chichers. It opened plants on Korsve, then closed them when it realized that the Wygnin, the dominant life-form on Korsve, did not—and apparently could not—understand the way that humans did business.
I shuddered at the mention of Korsve. If a client approached me because a family member had been taken by the Wygnin, I refused the case. The Wygnin took individuals to pay off debt, and then those individuals became part of a particular Wygnin family. For particularly heinous crimes, the Wygnin took firstborns, but usually, the Wygnin just took babies—from any place in the family structure—at the time of birth, and then raised them. Occasionally they'd take an older child or an adult. Sometimes they'd take an entire group of adults from offending businesses. The adults were subject to mind control and personality destruction as the Wygnin tried to remake them to fit into Wygnin life.
All of that left me with no good options. Children raised by
the Wygnin considered themselves Wygnin and couldn't adapt to human cultures. Adults who were taken by the Wygnin were so broken that they were almost unrecognizable. Humans raised by the Wygnin did not want to return. Adults who were broken always wanted to return, and when they did, they signed a death warrant for their entire family—or worse, doomed an entire new generation to kidnap by the Wygnin.
But Wygnin custom didn't seem relevant here. Despite the plant closings, the Third Dynasty had managed to avoid paying a traditional Wygnin price. Or perhaps someone had paid down the line, and that information was classified.
There were other possibles in the files. The Third Dynasty seemed to have touched every difficult alien race in the galaxy. The corporation had an entire division set aside for dealing with new cultures. Not that the division was infallible. Sometimes there were unavoidable errors.
Sylvy Sobol's disappearance had been one of those. It had caused all sorts of problems for both Sobol and the Third Dynasty. The vidspecs, tabs, and other media had had a field day when she had disappeared. The news led to problems with some of the alien races, particularly the Altaden. The Altaden valued non-violence above all else, and the accusations of domestic violence at the top levels of the Third Dynasty nearly cost the corporation its Altaden holdings.
The thing was, no one expected the disappearance—or the marriage, for that matter. Sylvy Sobol had been a European socialite, better known for her charitable works and her incredible beauty than her interest in business. She belonged to an old family with ties to several still-existing monarchies. It was thought that her marriage would be to someone else from the accepted circle.
It had caused quite a scandal when she had chosen Carson Sobol, not only because of his mixed background and uncertain lineage, but also because some of his business practices had taken large fortunes from the countries she was tied to and spent them in space instead.
He was controversial; the marriage was controversial; and it looked, from the vids I watched, like the two of them had been deeply in love.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. A waitress stood behind me, holding a large ceramic bowl filled with turkey stew. She smiled at me.
