Jarvis cursed again. “Can I get your help—”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want anyone at the police department involved with your little operation. And if you go to the chief, I’ll tell her that you have thwarted my attempts to arrest a man who threatens the entire dome. Because, honestly, Ike baby, this is a courtesy contact. I don’t have to do you any favors at all, especially considering what kind of person, if I can use that word, you installed in my city. Have you got that?”
“Yes, Andrea, I do,” he said, looking serious.
Andrea. So he had heard her all those times. And he had ignored her, the bastard. She made note of that too.
“One hour,” she said, and signed off.
Then she wiped her hands on her skirt. They were shaking just a little. Screw him, the weaselly little bastard. She’d send someone to that office now, to escort Jarvis’s horrid operative out of Armstrong.
She wanted to make sure that asshole left quickly, and didn’t double back.
She wanted this problem out of her city, off her Moon, and as far from her notice as possible. And that, she knew, was the best she could do without upsetting the department’s special relationship with the Alliance.
She hoped her best would be good enough.
Up the back stairs, into the narrow hallway that smelled faintly of dry plastic, Koos led the raid, his best team members behind him. They fanned out in the narrow hallway, the two women first, signaling that the hallway was clear. Koos and Hala, the only other man on this part of the team skirted past them, and through the open door of Faulke’s office.
It was much smaller than Koos expected. Faulke was only three meters from him. Faulke was scrawny, narrow-shouldered, the kind of man easily ignored on the street.
He reached behind his back—probably for a weapon—as Koos and Hala held their laser rifles on him.
“Don’t even try,” Koos said. “I have no compunction shooting you.”
Faulke’s eyes glazed for a half second—probably letting his android guard know he was in trouble—then an expression of panic flitted across his face before he managed to control it.
The other members of Koos’s team had already disabled the guard.
“Who are you?” Faulke asked.
Koos ignored him, and spoke to his team. “I want him bound. And make sure you disable his links.”
One of the women slipped in around Koos, and put light cuffs around Faulke’s wrists and pasted a small rectangle of Silent-Seal over his mouth.
You can’t get away with this , Faulke sent on public links. You have no idea who I am—
And then his links shut off.
Koos grinned. “You’re Cade Faulke. You work for Earth Alliance Intelligence. You’ve been running clones that you embed into businesses. Am I missing anything?”
Faulke’s eyes didn’t change, but he swallowed hard.
“Let’s get him out of here,” Koos said.
They encircled him, in case the other tenants on the floor decided to see what all the fuss was about. But no one opened any doors. The neighborhood was too dicey for that. If anyone had an ounce of civic feeling, they would have gone out front to stop the fight that Koos had staged below.
And no one had.
He took Faulke’s arm, surprised at how flabby it was. Hardly any muscles at all.
No wonder the asshole had used poison. He wasn’t strong enough to subdue any living creature on his own.
“You’re going to love what we have planned for you,” Koos said as he dragged Faulke down the stairs. “By the end of it all, you and I will be old friends.”
This time Faulke gave him a startled look.
Koos grinned at him, and led him to the waiting car that would take them to the Port. It would be a long time before anyone heard from Cade Faulke again.
If they ever did.
DeRicci hated days like today. She had lost a case because of stupid laws that had no bearing on what really happened. A woman had been murdered, and DeRicci couldn’t solve the case. It would go to Property, where it would get stuck in a pile of cases that no one cared about, because no one would be able to put a value on this particular clone. No owner would come forward. No one would care.
And if DeRicci hadn’t seen this sort of thing a dozen times, she would have tried to solve it herself in her off time. She might still hound Property, just to make sure the case didn’t get buried. Maybe she’d even use Broduer’s lies. She might tell Property that whoever planted the clone had tried to poison the city. That might get some dumb Property detective off his butt.
She, on the other hand, was already working on the one good thing to come out of this long day. She was compiling all the documents on every single thing that Rayvon Lake had screwed up in their short tenure as partners.
Even she hadn’t realized how much it was.
She would have a long list for Gumiela by the end of the day, and this time, Gumiela would pay attention.
Or DeRicci would threaten to take the clone case to the media. DeRicci had been appalled that human waste could get into the recycling system; she would wager that the population of Armstrong would too.
One threat like that, and Gumiela would have to fire Lake.
It wasn’t justice. It wasn’t anything resembling justice.
But after a few years in this job, DeRicci had learned only one thing:
Justice didn’t exist in the Earth Alliance.
Not for humans, not for clones, not for anyone.
And somehow, she had to live with it.
She just hadn’t quite figured out how.
Deshin arrived home, exhausted and more than a little unsettled. The house smelled of baby powder and coffee. He hadn’t really checked to see how the rest of Gerda’s day alone with Paavo had gone. He felt guilty about that.
He went through the modest living room to the baby’s room. He and Gerda didn’t flash their wealth around Armstrong, preferring to live quietly. But he had so much security in the home that he was still startled the clone had broken through it.
Gerda was sitting in a rocking chair near the window, Paavo in her arms. She put a finger to her lips, but it did no good.
His five-month-old son twisted, and looked at Deshin with such aware eyes that it humbled him. Deshin knew that this baby was twenty times smarter than he would ever be. It worried him, and it pleased him as well.
Paavo smiled and extended his pudgy arms. Deshin picked him up. The boy was heavier than he had been just a week before. He also needed a diaper change.
Deshin took him to the changing table, and started, knowing just from the look on her face that Gerda was exhausted too.
“Long day?” he asked.
“Good day,” she said. “We made the right decision.”
“Yes,” he said. “We did.”
He had decided on the way home not to tell her everything. He would wait until the interrogation of Cade Faulke and the five clones was over. Koos had taken all six of them out of Armstrong in the same ship.
And the interrogations would even start until Koos got them out of Earth Alliance territory, days from now.
Deshin had no idea what would happen to Faulke or the clones after that. Deshin was leaving that up to Koos. Koos no longer headed security for Deshin Enterprises in Armstrong, but he had served Deshin well today. He would handle some of the company’s work outside the Alliance.
Not a perfect day’s work, not even the day’s work Deshin had expected, but a good one nonetheless. He probably had other leaks to plug in his organization, but at least he knew what they were now.
His baby raised a chubby fist at Deshin as if agreeing that action needed to be taken. Deshin bent over and blew bubbles on Paavo’s tummy, something that always made Paavo giggle.
He giggled now, a sound so infectious that Deshin wondered how he had lived without it all his life.
He would do everything he could to protect this baby, everything he could to take care of his fami
ly.
“He trusts you,” Gerda said with a tiny bit of amazement in her voice.
Most people never trusted Deshin. Gerda did, but Gerda was special.
Deshin blew bubbles on Paavo’s tummy again, and Paavo laughed.
His boy did trust him.
He picked up his newly diapered son, and cradled him in his arms. Then he kissed Gerda.
The three of them, forever.
That was what he needed, and that was what he ensured today.
The detective could poke around his business all she wanted, but she would never know the one thing that calmed Deshin down.
Justice had been done.
His family was safe.
And that was all that mattered.
* * *
Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Mar 2015.
* * *
Casting at Pegasus
Mary Rosenblum | 10836 words
It was a good night for flying. Windy enough to make her car buck. Stars and no moon, the riverbed a gouge of deeper darkness on her right. Therese braked, the highway empty behind her, nosed the little city-car into a tangle of fall-yellowed blackberries. Thorns scraped paint as she killed her headlights, and she didn’t care.
It struck her suddenly how much she didn’t care. Because Selva had originally paid for half of the car? She had never changed the registration. It was still in both their names. Therese squinted at darkness and rutted mud, angry at herself. For not thinking about the registration.
The car had been as easily cast off as Therese herself. How could she have forgotten to change the registration? Lips tight, Therese pulled clear up to the rusty chain-link fence, and turned off the engine. Opening the door let in the cold, and she shivered as she dragged her carryall from the cargo space. The wind combed invisible fingers, rich with fall scents of rotting leaves and cold moist earth, through her short hair. Yeah. Good night for flying.
She had told Selva about the airport, about sneaking out of her room at night when she was a kid, dressed in her “airport clothes.” She used to cross the highway, cut through a field to the parking lot. Inside, she hung around in the waiting areas, drinking too-sweet hot chocolate from the snack bar, talking to other passengers, telling them how she was on her way to live with her father in Paris, or Amsterdam, or New York. “You did your single-parent angst more creatively than most,” Selva had said. And she had laughed and rumpled Therese’s hair. “That’s why you’re such a wonderful artist.”
She didn’t think so anymore. Therese hooked her fingers through the scabby fabric of the decrepit chain-link fence. The mesh shivered with a soft metallic clash as she climbed. Like a sigh, Therese thought. She threw one leg over the top, where she’d cut the barbed wire. A sigh of rust and aging and abandonment. Could a fence feel abandoned?
She swung her other leg over, leaped down to land with a splat in hummocky dew-wet grass. Another world, in here. She looked skyward, remembering airplanes taking off like constellations of colored stars rising from the tangled strings of blue lights that edged the runways. Hi. Where are you going? I’m on my way to Paris. My dad’s there and he wants me to come live with him. He’s a correspondent for the New York Times. . . . Therese hefted her carryall higher on her shoulder, began to jog toward the asphalt runway. The broken stems of old landing-lights stuck up like mileposts along the runway. Who had broken them off, and why? Now, people came and went at the big shuttle terminal, arcing up to the Platforms and down again. Or they did the Net. God bless the Net. Which brought her back to Selva, and Selva didn’t belong here.
Therese slowed to a walk, forcing herself to listen. The empty airport had its own population—the boarders who skimmed the runways, the taggers, and the night watchman, who took his break now, between midnight and one. No sound of board wheels. The taggers kept to the blank canvases of the buildings. On a whim, she decided to set up out beyond the old hangar, out past the gate area. It might take the watchman half the night to notice her lights if she were lucky.
That was part of it—how long the flight lasted before the night watchman cut it down.
With a roar of sound, a pod of boarders zoomed up out of the darkness; three of them, dressed in black, slaloming back and forth across the cracked asphalt. Their boards’ jet engines screamed, unmuffled and mocking. Therese dodged into the tall grass along the runway and dropped flat. Frost-killed stems brushed her cheeks, wet her face with dew like cold tears as they zoomed past. The night watchman would chase them. He always did. Thanks, guys, she mouthed silently, bounced to her feet, and broke into a run across the gate area. Big halides mounted on the terminal buildings splashed light across the asphalt, glinting on faded traffic markings. She avoided the light, cut across the grass again, shoes and socks soaked through now. Her feet slapped the concrete apron of the old hangar.
Quick. She unzipped her carryall, grabbed the tether-stakes she’d made from plastic pipe. Pounded the first one into the soggy ground beyond the apron. Wind from the east. She tested it with a hand, guessed twenty-five with gusts to thirty-five. Exactly the conditions she’d plugged into her virtual simulation, so the lights should go up slick and fast. She pounded in the second and third stakes and fumbled in her bag. Working in the dark because light brought the night watchman that much sooner, she snagged the first string. High-tensile line, black. The fiberlight beading felt like thin plastic twine beneath her fingers, flexible, cool, invisible in the darkness. She wound the end of the string around the first stake, laid it out. Laid out the second string and straightened the crossties by touch. So far, so good. If she tangled it now, she could kiss this night’s flight good-bye.
Sound in the darkness, over by the unlighted hangar. Therese straightened, adrenaline spiking through her. The night watchman carried a taser, and the boarders carried blades. She slipped a hand into her pocket, closed her fingers around her small cannister of mace, listening until her ears buzzed, turning the rush of wind into sneaking footsteps, the snap of an opening blade.
Nothing. Hands wanting to shake, she unfolded the kite, bent the slender wands into the pockets she’d bonded into the corners. The wind caught at the transparent plastic so that it billowed out and came alive in her hands, straining like a dog tugging at a leash, full of promise, full of potential.
Potential. She hated the word. Selva had used it a lot at the end—“Your stuff has so much potential.” Then came the “buts . . . ” But the art market is such a closed place. But it’s so tough to make your living doing art. But, but, but . . .
But get real and get a job, honey.
With an angry shake of her head and a leap, Therese tossed the kite into the air. The wind caught it, snatched it skyward, burning the line through her fingers. She paid it out carefully, steadily, squinting as her light-lines rose, intertangled like an invisible net spread to catch the stars. It looked okay, just like her sim. She anchored the kite-line to the third stake, and pulled the remote from her other pocket, heart beating fast now, because she didn’t know, couldn’t know how it would really look, until . . . now. Her forefinger touched the button.
And her light-net came to life, spilling meshes of liquid fire across the night. The hair-fine fiberlight threads, bought from a tattoo artist wholesale, glowed in jewel-bright color against the sky. Ruby. Neon blue. Sun-gold. Tonight, she had captured the great square of Pegasus, twined him in shimmering helices of light as the invisible kite danced with the wind, and the tangled threads glowed. Winged steed, lifting to a world behind those stars. Tonight she had harnessed him. She felt him tugging, the energy of those huge shoulders thrumming down the lines. Therese closed her eyes, let the energy hum through her flesh. In a moment, he would lift her from the ground, that harnessed creature, and carry her . . .
“Hey.”
Soft voice, a breath almost, surely too low to be heard over the wind. Therese spun around, poised to run. Light by the hangar, a flash’s glow that illuminated a tawny, androgynous kid’s face. Spiky brown
hair. Tilted, dark eyes.
“Beat it.” Same soft, urgent carrying tone. “The cop’s comin’.” The light winked out.
She heard him now—heavy footsteps thudding on the grass. She snatched up her carryall and ran. Behind her, a shout. Light. She glanced over her shoulder, caught a glimpse of a tall man-shape, bulky in a uniform coverall, flash beam swinging like a sword to chop her. The night watchman; Frankenstein of this dark abandoned place, the Boogeyman. What was the range of his taser-dart? The light stabbed at her and she ran faster. The fence loomed out of the night.
Therese leaped, fingers hooking in the mesh, climbing, hiking her crotch over the rusty barbs of the top strands, deft, graceful, made so by fight-flight chemistry. She splashed down in cold, puddled water. She ran a few steps. Stopped and turned. He stood on the far side of the fence, a shadow, saying nothing.
He never chased her beyond the fence. He never called the cops. Therese watched him turn and vanish back into the darkness. In the distance, her jewel-fire net danced against the sky, tethering Pegasus. Therese watched it, counting the minutes in her head, a clench of yearning in her chest. Because when those strings were cut, Pegasus would fly free. Without her. The distant strands of color sagged suddenly. Crumpled, twisted and crashed in glittering ruin to the ground. Therese touched the remote, warm in her pocket.
The lights vanished.
Behind her, a sigh.
The kid? “Thank you.” Therese peered into the darkness, couldn’t see a thing. “He might have caught me, tonight.” No answer, but she could feel a presence, like an eddy in the perfect, windy darkness, a spiral knot of energy. “Good night,” Therese said, and trudged up the embankment to the main road.
Her feet were cold now, the chill penetrating to the bone. The elation was gone, leaving her with a hangover of emptiness, and she wondered who the kid was as she trudged along the pavement. A boarder? She hadn’t seen a board. A tagger, scrawling his rude splash of identity across the hangar wall? And what are you doing, if not just that?
Forever Magazine - December 2016 Page 8
