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Fictionwise
www.Fictionwise.com
Copyright ©1992 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1992
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I
The corridor smelled stale. John huddled against the display panel, replacing microchips with the latest models—more memory, more function. The near-robotic feel of the work was all that mattered: pull, grab, replace; pull, grab, replace. They should have had a ‘droid doing this, but they had given the work to John, sure sign that his contract was nearly up.
He didn't mind. He had been on the trader ship for nearly a month, and it was making him nervous. Too many people, too close. They watched him as if they expected him to go suddenly berserk and murder them all in their sleep. He wouldn't have minded if their wariness had been based on his work as a bounty hunter. But it wasn't. It was based on the events on Bountiful, things he had done—and paid for—when he was little more than a child.
Footsteps along the plastic floor. He didn't move, figuring whoever it was would have nothing to say to him. A faint whiff of cologne and expensive illegal tobacco. The captain.
“John, someone to see you.”
John looked up. The captain stood on the other side of the corridor, the lights from the display giving his skin a greenish cast. Once, John had fancied this man his friend, but John hadn't had any real friends. Not since he was fifteen years old. The day Harper betrayed him. The day they took Beth away.
“I will not see anyone,” John said. Sometimes he played the role, the Dancer child everyone thought he was. The one who never spoke in past tense, only present and future, using the subjunctive whenever possible. The one who couched his thoughts in emotion because he had nothing else, no memory, no ethics, no soul.
The captain didn't even blink. “She flew in special from Rotan Base.”
John stood and closed the display. A client, then. The time on the trader ship would end sooner than he had expected.
He followed the captain through the winding corridors. The ventilation system was out. The entire ship smelled of wet socks and too many people. Down one of the corridors, the techs were discussing whether they wanted to fix the system or whether they wanted to wait until next planetfall. John would have argued for fixing it.
The captain stopped at his personal suite and keyed in the access code. John had never seen this room; it was off-limits to all but the captain himself. John stepped in, but the captain remained outside. The door snicked shut.
Computer-generated music—technically proficient and lifeless—played in the background. The room itself was decorated in whites, but the lighting gave everything a reddish cast. The couch was thick and plush. Through open doors, he could see the bed, suspended in the air, cushions piled on top of it. A room built for comfort, and for seduction.
A woman stood at the back of the room, gazing out the portals at the stars. Her long black hair trailed down her back, her body wrapped in expensive silks. She looked the part of the seductee, although she was the one who wanted to hire him.
John never hired out for anything but bounty work. He would tell her that if he had to.
“I would like you to work for me, John.” She didn't even turn around to acknowledge him. He felt his hackles rise. She was establishing herself as the adult, him the child in this relationship. He hated being treated like a child. The claustrophobia inched back on him, tighter than it had been in months.
He leaned against the door, feigning a casualness he didn't feel. He wanted her to turn around, to look at him. “Why should I work for you?”
“Forgive me.” This time she moved, smoothing her hair as she did. Her face was stunning: full lips, long nose, wide eyes. And familiar. “I'm Anita Miles. I run an art gallery on Rotan Base. We specialize in unusual objects d'art....”
He stopped listening, not needing the explanation. He recognized her face from a hundred vids. She was perhaps one of the most powerful people in this sector—controlling trade and commodities. Her gallery sold anything that could be considered art. Once, she sold a baby Minaran, claiming that since the species was nearly extinct, the Minarans could be appreciated only in an aesthetic way. He couldn't remember if she had won or lost the ensuing lawsuit.
Baby trader. The entire galaxy as an art object. If she had been in business when he was a boy, what would she have done with the Dancers?
“Why should I work for you?” he repeated.
She closed her mouth and gave him a once-over. He recognized the look. How much does he understand? I thought I was explaining in clear terms. This is going to be more difficult than I thought. “You're the best,” she said, apparently deciding on simplicity. “And I need the best.”
He often wondered how these people thought he could bounty hunt with no memory. He shook off the thought. He needed the money. “What will you pay me?”
“Expenses, of course, a ship at your command because you may have to travel a bit, and three times your daily rate—which is, I believe, the equivalent of four hundred Rotan zepeatas.”
“Eight hundred.”
Her expression froze for just a moment, and then she had the grace to flush. John crossed his arms. Too many clients tried to cheat him. He took them on anyway. If he tried to avoid those who treated him like a Dancer, he would have no business.
“I'm not a Dancer.” He kept his tone soft, but made sure the sarcasm was there. “I wasn't even raised by them. Just influenced. The trial is over, and I've served my time. When they released me, they declared me sane, and sane for a human being means an understanding of time and an ability to remember. After that little stunt, I won't work with you for anything less than five times my rate, one month payable in advance.”
The flush grew, making those spectacular eyes shine brighter. Not embarrassment after all. Anger. “You tricked me.”
“Not at all.” John didn't move. He felt more comfortable now with this little hint of emotion. He could ride on emotion, play it. That he had learned from the Dancers. “You had expectations. You shouldn't believe everything you hear.”
For a moment, she drew herself up, as if she were going to renounce him and leave. But she didn't. She reached into her pocket and removed a credit flask. She must have needed him badly.
She handed him two chips, which he immediately put into his account. One hundred and twenty thousand zepeatas. Perfect. He smiled for the first time. “What do you want from me?” he asked.
She glanced at the portals, as if the stars would give her strength. The story was an embarrassment, then. An illegality perhaps or some mistake she had made. “Several weeks ago,” she said, “I acquired a Bodean wind sculpture.”
Awe rippled through him. He had seen Bodean wind sculptures once, on their home planet. The deserts were full of them, swirling beautifully across the sands. No one knew how to tame them; they remained an isolated art form, on a lone planet. Someone must have figured out a way to capture them, wind currents and all.
“That's not the best part,” she said. Her tone had changed. She still wasn't treating him like an equal, but she was closer. “The best part is the mystery inside the sculpture. My equipment indicates a life-form trapped in there.”
No, no. Not allowed to leave the room, the wing.—If we grow up, we'll be a
ble to leave, never see Bountiful again. If we grow up....
He shook the memory voices away, made himself concentrate on her words. Something inside the sculpture. A bodeangenie? But they were the stuff of legends. Traders to Bodean claimed that the sculptures originated to capture little magical beings to prevent them from causing harm to the desert. When the Extra-Species Alliance went to study the sculptures, however, they found no evidence of life in or around them.
His hands were shaking. She trapped things and called them art. “You don't need me,” he said. “You need a specialist.”
“I need you.” She turned, her hair spiraling out around her. Beautiful, dramatic. “The wind sculpture's been stolen.”
II
Sleep. Narrow trader bunk, not built for his long frame. Dream voices, half-remembered:
...we'll be able to leave...
...the Dancers do it...
...It'll hurt, but that won't matter. You'll grow up...
...Stop, please...
...Just another minute...
...Stop!!!...
...the other hand...
...ssstttooooppp....
He forced himself awake, heart pounding, mouth dry. The trapped feeling still filled him. He rolled off the bunk, stood, listened to the even breathing of the other sleepers. He hadn't had the dream since when? The penal colony? The last trading ship? He couldn't remember. He had tried to put it out of his mind. Obviously that hadn't worked.
Trapped. He had started the spiral when she said the word trapped. He leaned against the door, felt the cool plastic against his forehead. The memory voices still rang in his head. If someone had listened, then maybe...
But no. The past was past. He would work for her, but he would follow his own reasons.
III
Her gallery was less than he had expected. Shoved into a small corner of the merchant's wing of Rotan Base, the gallery had a storefront of only a few meters. Inside hung the standard work by standard artists: an Ashley rendition of the galaxy, done in blacks and pinks; a D.B. portrait of the sphynix, a red-haired catlike creature from Yater; a Dugas statue of a young girl dancing. Nothing new, nothing unique, not even in the manner of display. All the pieces were self-illuminated against dark walls and stands, a small red light beside each indicating the place for credit purchases.
The gallery was even more of a surprise after she had told him her tale of woe: she claimed to have the best guards on Rotan, an elaborate security system, and special checking. He saw no evidence of them. Her storefront was the same as the others, complete with mesh framing that cascaded at closing each evening.
The gallery smelled dry, dustless. He wanted to sneeze, just to see particles in the air. The air's cleanliness, at least, was unusual. He would have to check the filtration system. The sculpture probably hadn't disappeared at all. Some overeager viewer probably opened the container, the wind escaped, and the sculpture returned to the grains of sand it was. No great mystery, certainly not worth 120,000 zepeatas. But he wouldn't tell her that.
Anita threaded her way through the displays to the back. He felt himself relax. There he would find the artwork he sought—the priceless, the illegal, the works that had made her famous. But when the door slid open, his mood vanished.
Crates, cartons, holoshippers, transmission machines, more credit slots. The faint odor of food. A desk covered with hard-copy invoices and credit records. A small cache of wine behind the overstuffed chair, and a microprocessor for late-night meals. A work space, nothing more.
She let the door close behind them, her gaze measuring him. He was missing something. He would lose the entire commission if he didn't find it.
He closed his eyes and saw in his imagination what his actual vision had missed. The dimensions of the rooms were off. The front was twice the size of the back. Base regulations required square sales—each purchased compartment had to form a box equal on all sides. She had divided her box into three sections—showroom, back workroom, and special gallery. But where?
Where something didn't fit. The wine. She sold wine as art—nectar of the gods, never drinking it, always collecting it. Wine didn't belong with the boxes and invoices.
He opened his eyes, crouched down, scanned the wine rack. Most bottles came from Earth. They were made with the heavy, too-thick glass that suggested work centuries old. Only one didn't belong: a thin bottle of the base-made synth stuff. He pulled it, felt something small fall into his hand. He clenched his hand to hold it as the wall slid back.
Inside was the gallery he had been expecting.
Holos of previous artifacts danced across the back wall. In those holos the baby Minaran swam. He wondered where it was now; if it could feel happiness, exploitation. He made himself look away.
A tiny helldog from Frizos clawed at a glass cage. A mobile ice sculpture from Ngela rotated under cool lights. Four canisters in a bowl indicated a Colleician scent painting. He had seen only one before; all he had to do was touch it, and he would be bathed in alien memories.
More valuables drifted off in the distance. Some hung on walls, some rested on pedestals, and some floated around him. None had the standard red credit slot beside them. They were all set up for negotiation, bargaining, and extortion.
“Impressed?” She sounded sarcastic, as if a man with his background could not help but be impressed.
He was, but not for the reasons she thought. He knew how much skill it took to capture each item, to bring it onto a base with strict limitations for importing. “You have your own hunters. Why hire me?”
She tapped on the helldog's cage. John winced. The dog didn't move. “I would have had to hire a hunter no matter what,” she said. “If I removed one of my own people from a normal routine, I would have to hire a replacement. I choose not to do that. My people have their own lives, their own beats, and their own predilections. This incident calls for someone a bit more adaptable, a free-lancer. A person like you.”
He nodded, deciding that was the best answer he would get from her. Perhaps she had chosen him, and not one of his colleagues, on a whim. Or perhaps she thought she could control him, with his Dancer mind. It didn't matter. She was paying him. And he had a being to free.
IV
Working late into the night so that the dreams would stay away, he did the standard checks: exploring the gallery for bits of the sculpture, contacting the base engineers to see if sand had lodged in the filters, examining particulate material for foreign readings. Nothing. The sculpture appeared to have vanished.
Except for the small item he had found near the wine cache. He set it in the light, examined it, and froze. A sticker. Lina Base used them as temporary I.D.s. Stickers weren't the proper term. Actually, they were little light tabs that allowed the bearer to enter secured areas for brief periods of time, and were called stickers because most spacers stuck them to the tops of their boots.
He hadn't touched one since he had left Lina Base nearly two decades before. The memories tickled around his head: Beth, her eyes wide, hands grasping, as Harper's people carried her away; sitting on his own bed, arms wrapped around his head, eyes burning but tearless, staring at his own sticker-covered boots—signifying temporary, even though he had been there for nearly two years.
Dancer mind. He snorted. If only he could forget. He was cursed with too much remembrance.
He set the sticker down, made himself move. He had to check arrival records, see who had come from Lina Base, who frequented it. Then he would know who had taken the sculpture.
V
The next morning he walked into the gallery. The showroom was filled with Elegian tourists, fondling the merchandise. The security system had to be elaborate to allow such touching without any obvious watchful presence. The room smelled of animal sweat and damp fur. No wonder her filtration system was good. He pushed his way through and let himself into the back.
Anita was cataloging chip-sized gems that had arrived the day before. She wore a jeweler's eye and didn't lo
ok up when he entered.
“I need that ship,” he said.
“You found something?”
He nodded. “A lead. Some traders.”
This time she did look up. The jeweler's eye gave her face a foreign feel. “Who?”
A small ship out of Lina Base named Runner. Owned by a man named Minx. He worked with four others on odd jobs no one else wanted—domestic cats from Earth to a colony of miners on Cadmium; a cargo of worthless Moon rocks to scientists on Mina Base. No records older than twenty years. No recording of illegal trading of any kind. But he didn't tell her that. He still wasn't sure if he was going to tell her anything.
“No one you'd know,” he said. “If it turns out to be them, I'll introduce you.”
She removed the jeweler's eye. Her own looked less threatening. “You're working for me, which gives me the right to know what you've found.”
“You contracted with me,” he corrected. “And I have the right to walk away anytime I choose—keeping the retainer. Now. Do I get that ship?”
She stared at him for a minute, then put the eye back in. “I'll call down,” she said.
VI
The ship was nearly a decade old, and designed to carry fewer than five people in comfort. He had computer access, games and holos, as much food and drink as he wanted. Only rules were not to disturb the pilot—for any reason. He guessed she had found out about his past, and wanted nothing to do with him.
He slept most of the time. His way of escape on ships. When he was awake, they reminded him of the penal ship, of the hands grabbing, voices prodding, violence, stink, and finally isolation, ostensibly for his own good. When he was asleep, they were the only places that allowed him rest without dreams.
His alarm went off an hour before landing, and he paced. He hadn't been to Lina Base for twenty years. He had left as a boy, alone, without Beth, without even Harper, the man who had once been his savior and became his betrayer. Harper, who had healed his mind, and broken his heart.
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