The Possession of Paavo Deshin

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Luc let Gerda lead him out of the kitchen back to the living room. She pulled the door between them closed, and then, before he said anything, activated the sound-proofing.

  “I don’t think that’s wise,” he said. “I want to be able to hear if something happens to Paavo.”

  “I have set the security system so that it’ll break through the soundproofing if there’s even the slightest problem,” she said.

  “I’ll monitor Paavo through my link to the house,” Luc said.

  She grabbed his wrist. “No, you won’t.”

  He looked at her hand, small against his massive arm. That look would have intimated most people. It didn’t seem to bother her at all.

  “Károly Grazian installed links in Paavo,” she said.

  “We knew that.” The links were tiny chips, put in much too early, so early that the bones had developed over them. The doctors claimed they could be removed, but it would be painful and possibly damaging to Paavo. “The doctors said they were inactive.”

  “They were wrong.” She hadn’t let go of Luc’s wrist.

  He wasn’t even sure she knew she held onto him so tightly.

  She leaned into him. “The Ghosts came through the links. They were programmed in. The Ghosts are the Grazians, Luc. They set up a program so that they could talk to Paavo. They’ve run programs ever since they left him.”

  He felt cold. “What kind of programs?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I’m just getting him to talk about them. But he remembers when we took him to the doctors. He remembers all that talk about the line between genius and insanity being thin. He’s scared to tell us, afraid we’ll think he’s lost his mind.”

  Luc put his other hand over Gerda’s and freed himself from her grip. Then he walked to his favorite chair. He couldn’t quite bring himself to sit down—he was too nervous to sit—but he didn’t like pacing either.

  So he just grabbed the chair’s back and looked out the window at the quiet street, the street he had thought perfect for raising children.

  That had been his intent: raising children here, not just one child. But he had also wanted the smartest children he could get, and he knew that wouldn’t happen biologically. He had some brains, and Gerda was smart, but together, they wouldn’t produce brilliant children.

  He knew it, and he knew it would be his fault. He investigated enhancements, but found out that they went wrong more times than they helped. The child—while brilliant early on—was prone to organic brain disorders which could be treated, but never cured.

  He considered himself a risk-taker, but not that kind of risk-taker. He knew, because of his work, that there were a lot of children who ended up unwanted or abandoned. A few of them were babies, and he hired someone to test those babies. He wanted first choice of the brilliant ones.

  Which wasn’t quite how he found Paavo. His employee had heard about a couple about to Disappear. They needed someone to care for their son, who wasn’t being pursued by the aliens.

  The couple’s delusional or very naïve, his employee said. They believe they’ll be back within the year. I know of no Disappeared who ever returns.

  Luc gambled on that, and took Paavo, who was stunningly brilliant—so brilliant that Luc abandoned the thought of raising other children. He and Gerda could barely keep up with Paavo. The boy needed their full attention from the moment he entered their lives.

  “All the problems we’ve had with Paavo,” Luc said softly, not looking at Gerda, “it’s because of the Grazians?”

  “We haven’t had problems.” She was always stubborn about defending that boy. Even though he was difficult, she saw him as perfect, the difficulties coming from his vast intelligence and nothing else.

  “The emotional instability,” Luc said. “His night terrors.”

  “Oh.” Her voice was small, like it always was when he got her to admit there was something abnormal about Paavo. “Yes, I think those come from these links.”

  Luc nodded. “They did what, these two people? They tried to scare him?”

  “I think they tried to keep themselves in his mind as his parents. But they have no idea how smart he is. He knows we’re his parents. So the images confused him and scared him. And he knew very early they weren’t real. So he thought he was making them up.”

  Luc’s hand tightened on the chair top. His fingernails dug into the upholstery. The Grazians had terrorized his son for his entire life. And now, they were doing it in person.

  “You could have told me this via our links,” he said. He still wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t want her to see the expression on his face. His employees told him that when he got this way—cold and angry, calculating and vengeful—his face became something terrible to behold.

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t.”

  Something in her voice made him turn. Her expression was so flat that he had a hunch it mirrored his own. She was furious, just like he was.

  Only furious was too mild a word. The coldness he felt—the coldness evident on her face—was something he would call a killing rage in his own private moments.

  He had never seen his wife like this.

  “I don’t trust the links any more,” she said. “Because this afternoon, Ishani Grazian showed up in Paavo’s bedroom.”

  “What?” Luc said. “You should have—”

  Gerda held up her hand, silencing him. “She showed up through what Paavo called her Ghost image—the old image—but talking to him in real time. His links are active somehow. Even though every test we ran says they weren’t.”

  Luc frowned for a moment, about to ask why that mattered with his links, and then he remembered: Károly Grazian had designed links. Obviously, he had made the links specially for Paavo and knew how to activate them.

  Who knew what else Károly Grazian could do with links. No wonder Gerda was being cautious.

  “They told us that they were leaving his life for good,” Gerda was saying, her voice tight and controlled. But Luc could hear the fury in it. “They told us that they wanted him raised by loving parents, that they didn’t want him to live a life on the run. They told us that it was better this way.”

  She paused for breath, her cheeks red.

  Then she said, “They lied.”

  He nodded. Lying wasn’t as great a sin to him. People lied. But the Grazians had messed with his child’s mind. With Paavo’s brilliant mind.

  And that was unforgivable.

  “We’ll be careful on the links,” he said. “You start the research. We’ll find the best doctors to remove those from Paavo. In the meantime, we’ll find an expert to deactivate them.”

  “But right now, they can get to him,” Gerda said.

  “You keep him at your side,” Luc said. “If he sees his Ghosts, have him tell you.”

  “What are you going to do?” Gerda asked.

  He made himself let go of the chair back. “I’m going to make sure these people never interfere with our son again.”

  ***

  Hours of tracking the Grazians through the public cameras placed all over Armstrong. Flint had created a gigantic screen over the blank spot in his office floor. He had let the police program—one of many he had designed—search for the Grazians’ features, tracing them as they moved from the port into the city, but he also insisted on watching the images, to make sure that the program hadn’t given him false positives.

  So far, he hadn’t located where they were staying, but he knew he was close. He hadn’t expected them to use their real names; that identity had been compromised seven years ago. He figured they were using their Disappeareds identities. It wasn’t quite fair to call those identities new—they had had them for almost seven years now—but that wasn’t how the two of them were known in Armstrong.

  Finding out those identities would be impossible, at least through the usual channels. He never tracked Disappeareds through the new identity. If he stumbled on it, then he considered himself lucky. But so far, he
hadn’t stumbled on anything.

  All he could say for certain was that they came through the port, traveled west once they left it, and a few days later, ended up at the Aristotle Academy.

  A ping startled him. A new screen floated above his desk. Someone was outside his office—the second time in two days. And it wasn’t just any someone.

  It was Maxine Van Alen.

  Flint frowned. He couldn’t remember Van Alen ever coming to his office before. They had worked together on a number of projects—including one to bring down the largest law firm on Armstrong.

  In all the years they’d worked together, Van Alen had never before come to Flint’s office. She had always demanded he come to hers.

  Her visit was so unusual that he had his system double-check her identity before he unlocked the door so that she could come inside. As she pulled the door open, Flint saved the programs he was working on, and compressed the screens.

  Van Alen always looked stunning. On this day, she wore a black and white dress—the bodice white and the skirt black. Only the divider wasn’t horizontal along her hips, it was a diagonal slash that ran from one shoulder to the top of the other thigh. She had colored her hair black to match the skirt, with a white streak that ran in the opposite diagonal from the skirt. She had also coordinated her eyes—her pupils were black with a single white slash going through them—as well as her fingernails. The entire effect made her seem exotic—or it would have, if it weren’t for the Moon dust coating her black and white shoes, and her legs up to mid-calf.

  Flint suppressed a smile. She hadn’t noticed the Moon dust. She would be annoyed when she did.

  “Maxine,” he said as the door closed behind her. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  “I need your services immediately,” she said. “You’re the only person I can trust with this.”

  He hated sentences about trust. They always made him feel obligated—and Maxine Van Alen was smart enough to understand that.

  “What happened?”

  “I have, of all things, a domestic,” she said. “And it’s happening fast. The other side has a judge in their pocket. We’re due in court by eight tonight, and I can’t seem to get a stay.”

  Flint shrugged. “I can’t help you with court.”

  “I know that,” Van Alen said. “But you might be able to help me find my clients.”

  Now he was intrigued. “Hold on,” he said. He went to the back and got the chair for the second time in two days. He was beginning to think he should just leave it in the front room. He seemed to bend about providing it to clients anyway.

  “I take it your clients are Disappeareds,” he said as he returned.

  “And someone wants to adopt their only child,” she said.

  He set the chair down, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise. She couldn’t be working on the same case, could she?

  “I’m pretty sure it’s legal to adopt the child of a Disappeared,” she said as she sat down. “Technically, if they leave a child behind, they have abandoned it. Especially since they’ve changed their identities, and fled punishment for a crime.”

  She noticed the moon dust on her skin and brushed at it. It clung to her hand.

  “But,” she said, “I have always put in the foster care agreement that if the foster parents want to adopt the Disappeareds’ child, I receive notification of the intent to adopt. The theory is that the notification would allow me to contact my clients, the Disappeareds, and I would act on their behalf.”

  “You would search out a Disappeared because the people who raised their child wanted to adopt?” Flint asked.

  “When I set this up,” Van Alen said, “I thought I would make a valid attempt. Honestly, I did it to salve my conscience. These children already have a difficult life. I thought this might make things easier—particularly for the older children—if they knew exactly what their biological parents’ wishes were.”

  “I can’t believe a parent would leave a child behind,” Flint said.

  “I know you can’t, Miles,” Van Alen said, “but that’s just because you can’t see past your own circumstance. And if you had to Disappear because of some case, and for some reason, you couldn’t take Talia, I’m sure you would provide for her. You might even find the right people to raise her or someone to adopt her.”

  He couldn’t imagine the circumstance. But he hoped he would be that farsighted.

  “Sometimes people leave overnight. They don’t have time to take care of everything,” Van Alen was saying.

  “Finding a decent home for your child is not something you leave to the last minute,” Flint said.

  She shrugged. “Not everyone is like you. Besides, this clause wasn’t important. It had never been activated, not in all of my years working with the foster agency or the Disappeared.”

  “Until now,” Flint said.

  “Until now.” She folded her hands on her lap.

  “You actually want to search out a Disappeared because someone cares for a child enough to make the relationship with that child permanent?” Flint asked.

  Van Alen sighed. “I have an obligation to search them out.”

  Flint frowned, thinking of the images he had seen of Paavo Deshin, screaming as his biological parents touched him. “And if the child doesn’t remember the Disappeared?”

  “Oh, it’s a mess, I know that,” Van Alen said. “The entire Disappearance system is a mess. And that’s what has me thinking.”

  Flint leaned back in his chair. Sometimes Van Alen overstepped. “Thinking what?” he asked.

  “Normally, in cases like this,” she said, “I would advise the Disappeareds to let the child go. There are a variety of reasons. Some are simple. The Disappeareds usually can’t return for their day in court. They ran away to save their own lives. I would make a good faith effort to find them—maybe just a short search, confirming that they did indeed Disappear—and then I’d let the adoption proceed.”

  “But you’re not going to do that in this case,” Flint said.

  “In this case,” Van Alen said, “the Disappeareds have been cleared. They can come home. They can actually go to court and fight for their child.”

  Flint felt cold. This had to be the Grazian/Deshin case. Did she know he was already working on it? If so, how?

  “The problem is,” Van Alen said, “I have to find them immediately. I need them by tonight. If I know exactly where they are, and they can’t get here by this evening, I have my grounds for a stay.”

  “You want me to find them,” Flint said.

  She nodded.

  “Yet,” Flint said, “you would normally advise them to stay put. You would tell them the child was already lost to them. What’s different? They still chose to leave the child behind.”

  Van Alen gave him an odd look. “You don’t approve of this, Miles?” she asked. “Why not?”

  He waved a hand at her, forestalling this part of the conversation. “Finish telling me what you’re thinking. This isn’t about the Disappeared couple or their child, is it?”

  Her eyes lit up. “There are several factors here. First, the family had to split up because the parents Disappeared. They didn’t want to drag the child into a life on the run.”

  “So they thought it better to have the child raised by people they didn’t know?”

  “They had no idea how long they would be gone. They were in a class action suit against the alien government—”

  “This is Ishani and Károly Grazian,” Flint said.

  Van Alen’s mouth opened a little, and then closed. Flint had never seen her flummoxed before, but that was what he had done. He had flummoxed her.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “The details are familiar,” he said. “I’ll tell you why in a minute. Finish telling me why this is so important to you.”

  “Okay.” She had to take a deep breath to gather herself again. “They didn’t think they would be gone very long. They were set up. This crime
—”

  “I’m familiar with it,” Flint said.

  “Then you understand. Their Disappearance is even more sympathetic than most. And now that they won their suit, they can return home.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you’re so pleased to have this case,” Flint said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “There are several factors. First, the adoption is coming now. Why did the foster parents wait? Secondly, one of the foster parents is well known in criminal circles.”

  “There’s no proof that Luc Deshin is a criminal. Just that he has had interactions with criminals,” Flint said, a little more primly than he intended. “I’ve had interactions with criminals. So have you.”

  “But we’re not considered a conduit to Armstrong’s underworld,” Van Alen said. “Deshin is.”

  Flint sighed. “That’s still not enough. What is it about this case that has you so motivated?’

  “We will probably lose,” she said. “But that’s what I want. I want to appeal this all the way to the Multicultural Tribunals. This is the kind of case I’ve been waiting for. This case calls into question the entire system of treaties on which the Earth Alliance is based.”

  She would lose. No one had challenged the treaty system and won. At least, not yet.

  But he couldn’t make that argument. She would say that it only took one case to break down the barriers. So he tried a different tack.

  “You’re proposing something that will take years,” Flint said.

  Van Alen nodded.

  “What about the child?” Flint asked. “He’ll be in constant limbo. You’ll ruin his life.”

  “What kind of life can he have as Luc Deshin’s child?” Van Alen asked.

  Flint frowned. He hesitated for just a moment, then he punched up the gigantic screen he had had up before. Only instead of the images of the Grazians he was culling from various cameras all over Armstrong, he called up the security footage from Aristotle Academy.

  He focused it on the playground and kept the image of young Paavo Deshin in the center of the frame.