Vigilantes

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Do you share that worry?” Huỳnh asked.

  “I have no idea what we’re dealing with here,” Goudkins said. “So I think caution is wise. Ostaka thinks I shouldn’t work with her at all. Since I’m here at your direction, I figured I would ask you.”

  “You don’t think the Moon’s government was behind any of these attacks, do you?”

  “The United Domes of the Moon barely exists right now,” Goudkins said. “I doubt they would have set up something that so completely destroyed their growing structure. Do I think another Moon government might be involved? I would if the domes hadn’t been so hard hit in the first attack. I can follow every lead I have, but I’d rather work smart than repeatedly go over the work that everyone else has done. And I think part of working smart is working with some very good investigators here.”

  “I have teams in every dome,” Huỳnh said. “They’ve found nothing to suggest a Moon-based attack. I’m sending in Peyti and some other non-human investigators as well. I think we’re covered if there is some kind of Moon-based attack.”

  Goudkins hadn’t expected any of that. She frowned, trying to parse Huỳnh’s comment. Then realized that she didn’t understand most of it.

  “So, you’re saying you’re okay with me working closely with Noelle DeRicci?”

  “As long as you report regularly to me, I’m fine with it,” Huỳnh said. “The moment you believe working with them compromises your investigation rather than strengthens it, pull out.”

  “I will,” Goudkins said. “Should I tell Ostaka?”

  Huỳnh sighed. “No. I’ll deal with him. It wouldn’t hurt to have an old-fashioned anti-government investigation as well.”

  Was that what Huỳnh thought Ostaka did well? Because Goudkins had seen no evidence of it. But that didn’t mean anything. Ostaka might be good at a certain type of investigation and bad at others. If he stayed with his strength, and Goudkins worked from hers, they might discover something.

  And Moon might miraculously rebuild everything next week.

  She tamped down the internal sarcasm.

  “DeRicci had a question,” Goudkins asked, “and since I’m talking with you, I thought I’d ask it. If you don’t know, I’ll see what I can find.”

  “What’s that?” Huỳnh asked.

  Goudkins swiveled her chair slightly so she wasn’t twisted oddly as she faced Huỳnh.

  “In the middle of the Peyti Crisis, as they’re calling that day here, DeRicci’s office discovered that the Peyti clones were all of Uzvekmt.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Huỳnh said in a tone that urged Goudkins to get to the point.

  “There was, and continues to be, a lot of evidence that the Uzvekmt clones developed off-Moon, and DeRicci was concerned that they might attack places other than the Moon. She sent all of that information to the Alliance, and I’m not sure if that information ever got to you.”

  “It got to me,” Huỳnh said. “Late, but it got to me.”

  Late. That wasn’t good.

  “Were there other attacks?” Goudkins asked.

  “Not that we’ve found,” Huỳnh said.

  “Were there more clones of Uzvekmt?”

  Huỳnh shifted again. Then she inclined her head sideways. “We found hundreds of them.”

  Something in her tone was off. Goudkins wished she had increased the hologram’s size after all so that she could see Huỳnh’s face more clearly.

  “And what did you do?” Goudkins asked.

  “We didn’t have to do anything,” Huỳnh said. “They did it all.”

  Goudkins frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Huỳnh shook her head, then looked down. She took such a deep breath that even through the small hologram, Goudkins could see Huỳnh’s shoulders rise and fall.

  “They died, Wilma,” Huỳnh said. “All of them. The same day as your Peyti Crisis.”

  “Died?” Goudkins asked. “They just…died?”

  Huỳnh shook her head again. “I said that wrong. At the exact same hour that your attacks began, every clone of Uzvekmt that we found, every single one, killed himself.”

  Goudkins put a hand to her mouth. She didn’t mean to show shock; she had done it before she even registered her own action.

  “How?” she asked.

  “Different methods,” Huỳnh said. “Not what you’d expect.”

  “No bomb, then,” Goudkins said. “Did they take anyone else out with them?”

  “Most of them, no. A few managed to. Those were the ones who did use bombs. And they were in Earth environments. They had the same masks. But they were isolated, usually on a space station or a space yacht or, in one case, in a remote resort. Not something other governments would have even noticed if Chief DeRicci hadn’t alerted us to the clones’ existence.”

  Goudkins’ heart was pounding. “Don’t you find that odd?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you think that they would all use the masks the way the clones here did, as well?”

  “I find this whole thing odd,” Huỳnh said. “We’re investigating on the Peyti side. We have some leads. I’ll keep you apprised.”

  And then she winked out.

  Goudkins wanted to slam a hand on the console. She wasn’t done talking with Huỳnh. But Huỳnh was done.

  Still, Goudkins had gotten through the important part of the discussion. She had tentative approval to work with DeRicci and, Goudkins hadn’t had to admit what DeRicci wanted her to investigate.

  Then she stood up, unsettled by what Huỳnh had told her.

  Only the clones on the Moon had deliberately gone to a place filled with people and tried to blow it up at the appointed hour. A few others had, but not enough to notice.

  Everyone else died here.

  DeRicci was right: the attacks definitely targeted the Moon.

  That piece of information was a lot more important than Huỳnh seemed to think it was.

  Goudkins relaxed a little.

  They were on the right track. She was on the right track.

  Solve the problem on the Moon, and maybe, just maybe, they would solve the problem everywhere.

  She nodded to herself, feeling better about helping DeRicci, feeling better about the investigation, and finally, finally, feeling like she could do something to avenge her sister’s death.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  AND SO THE investigative frustration began. What seemed like a straightforward case of retaliatory murder now looked a bit more complicated.

  Nyquist left the crime scene feeling more unsettled than he had when he arrived. He had interviewed more than a dozen attorneys. None of them had known Torkild Zhu longer than a few days. Some had spent less than an hour with the man.

  They were all shocked—shocked!—that he was dead, but they weren’t heartbroken and they were a bit too calm about it. Not that they could have killed him. Or at least, they couldn’t have for reasons that were obvious.

  None of them felt anything about him, except maybe a bit of irritation that he had died before completing their work documentation.

  Most of the lawyers were from Earth, and had answered some kind of S3 help-wanted ad. None of them seemed to know anything about Armstrong, and very few of them had been to the Moon before.

  Maybe Nyquist’s imagination was lacking, but he couldn’t figure out why any of these people would want Zhu dead. He was their boss and their contact to S3. A few of these young lawyers speculated that the jobs might be gone entirely now, and one young man (very young) had almost burst into tears.

  That was the only threat of tears that Nyquist had seen all afternoon. And those tears had nothing to do with Zhu.

  The dozen S3 staffers didn’t even know if Zhu was married or had children or had been in Armstrong long. They didn’t know when someone would replace Zhu from S3’s hierarchy, although Seng noted that one of the partners was on his way from Athena Base.

  That kind of trip could take a week or more, so Nyquist wasn’t sure what would happen to th
e Peyti clones case in the meantime.

  He knew he wasn’t supposed to worry about that, but he felt like it was a small clue. Because someone might have known that Zhu had no backup here. Even a short delay in dealing with the Peyti clones would keep the door open for investigations like the one Nyquist was running with Uzvaan.

  Then he mentally corrected himself. Had been running with Uzvaan. Because right now, he was enmeshed in this case.

  The only bit of personal information he could get from the S3 staff about Zhu was small, and it had come from his very first interview.

  Melcia Seng mentioned that she was pretty sure Zhu was an alcoholic.

  Nyquist asked her how she knew that.

  “Broken capillaries in his face,” she had said. “And a general disheveled air. I’ve worked with alcoholics. They’re often really good attorneys because they see the dark side of everything, but they usually cope with it by mixing hard booze with clearers, and it does something to their skin.”

  Nyquist had nodded. He had seen that as well.

  As soon as he left her, and while he was waiting for one of the other lawyers to visit him in the front of the building, he asked Brodeur to check the state of Zhu’s liver.

  If you’re asking whether or not he was an alcoholic, Brodeur had sent, it was impossible to tell. There were signs that he’d been drinking a lot, but it looked like recent behavior. And he hadn’t done anything in about a week.

  Nyquist sighed. He was afraid nothing about this case would be easy.

  Although he was leaving the crime scene with bags of evidence, several dozen hours of footage from various points of view of the crime and its aftermath, and two hours of (mostly) worthless interviews.

  He was already tired and he’d only started on this case.

  He was nearly to his car when he passed the two delis. One, Sevryn’s, turned the closed sign on as he approached.

  The other had the door open as a young man inside cleaned the floor himself. Apparently both delis closed after the lunch crowd left.

  “Excuse me,” Nyquist said, leaning in and holding up his palm with the badge on it. “I’m Detective Bartholomew Nyquist. Do you have a moment?”

  “Sure,” the young guy said. He ran a hand over his face. He looked exhausted.

  “Did you know there was a murder near here this morning?” Nyquist asked.

  “No.” The young man seemed surprised.

  “The man who died was carrying a to-go cup from your deli. Do you recognize him?”

  Nyquist opened a small hologram between him and the young man. The hologram was from the police station when Zhu had entered to serve those injunctions.

  The young man blinked, then looked at Nyquist, clearly shocked.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know him. Is he the victim or did he hurt someone?”

  “Do you think he could have hurt someone?” Nyquist asked.

  “Hell, no,” the young man said. “He was one of those wimpy guys, you know? He came in here yesterday after they poured soup all over him at Sevryn’s, and he pretended like nothing had happened. He promised me a lot of business. He’s dead?”

  “Yeah,” Nyquist said. He hadn’t heard about the soup, and he’d follow up on that in a moment. “When did you last see him?”

  “This morning,” the young man said. “He bought coffee, and said he would contact me with a lunch order. He didn’t though, and I thought maybe—well, the thoughts weren’t charitable.”

  “Why not?” Nyquist asked. “Wouldn’t it have been normal to assume he had forgotten?”

  “They poured soup over him,” the young man said as if Nyquist hadn’t heard him. “You gotta think a guy like that isn’t real likeable.”

  Nyquist almost smiled. “Yes, you do. I see. Did you find him likeable?”

  “I didn’t know him. But he seemed friendly enough.” The young guy leaned on his broom.

  Nyquist looked at it, saw that it had an automated switch so that it could have done the cleaning itself. He wondered why anyone would chose to sweep when the tools did the work for them.

  “Do you know what caused the soup incident?” Nyquist asked.

  “No,” the young guy said. “I don’t get involved in my customers’ lives. Safer that way.”

  Nyquist nodded, feeling some disappointment. “Do you have security footage?”

  “From this morning?” the young guy asked.

  “Yeah,” Nyquist said. “And from the soup incident.”

  “I might,” the young guy said. “I definitely have this morning. I’m not real good about keeping daily logs. You want me to get them for you?”

  “Please,” Nyquist said. “While I’m waiting, I’m going to go next door and see if they’ll tell me anything.”

  “Good luck,” the young guy said. “Old Man Sevryn, he’s a real son of a bitch.”

  Nyquist smiled. He liked this guy. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, and let himself out the door.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  HER DAD TRUSTED Detective Nyquist.

  Talia stood in the kitchen at the United Domes Security Office, hands on the carton of food that she hadn’t opened yet. She was staring after Detective Nyquist, who seemed unusually cheerful.

  She hadn’t expected it of him. His mood seemed so discordant with everyone else’s moods these days that she’d been staring after him for some time. He’d left a while ago, looking a bit distracted, but optimistic too.

  She should have asked him why he was.

  He said something about progress.

  Progress. She wasn’t sure what that meant. She took all of the boxes of food that were scattered around the kitchen and put them in the recycler. Then she paused to look at her work.

  The place seemed cleaner. It certainly felt better. The clutter actually bothered her.

  Everything bothered her. Only the degree of bother differed.

  And that damn therapist bothered her the most.

  She grabbed some dishes and put them in the cleaner. Then she added more until the thing was full. She turned it on.

  Suddenly, the kitchen looked like it used to.

  She opened the door to the refrigerator, saw the cartons of old food, and turned them on with a single touch. They told her, one at a time, if the food was still edible.

  Most of the cartons had been in there so long that the food was actually gone, recycled by the nanobots. The cartons themselves needed to be tossed away, and she did that too.

  Her own food was probably cold, but she didn’t care.

  She really wasn’t hungry.

  That meeting with the therapist disturbed her on such a deep level that she wasn’t sure she wanted to eat at all.

  She washed her hands, then sat in one of the chairs, suddenly tired.

  He hated her without even knowing what she was. She was going to have to tell her dad that she couldn’t go back. She was so glad she hadn’t trusted the therapist with any more details of her life.

  She hoped he wouldn’t investigate her relationship with her mother. She hoped it wasn’t in Valhalla Basin’s records that she was a clone. And it could be in their records. Valhalla Basin was run by Aleyd Corporation, and Aleyd had found out she was a clone.

  They wanted to own her—would have claimed her as their own if her father hadn’t shown up.

  “You okay?” Popova brought her carton back into the kitchen and then stopped. “What hell happened here?”

  Talia shrugged one shoulder, unable to tell if Popova was pleased or not.

  “You did this?” Popova asked.

  “It was bothering me,” Talia said.

  Popova grinned at her. “The therapy’s working, then. See? I told you they were good.”

  Talia bit her lower lip. She wanted to tell Popova that the therapy hadn’t worked at all, that the man who ran everything, Mr. Stupid Llewynn, was a bigot and an idiot, but he had helped Popova and Talia didn’t want to disappoint her. Popova thought they could be of assistance to Talia and she tri
ed, she really did.

  There was just no way she could stay at a place whose managing partner or whatever Mr. Stupid Llewynn called himself was so incredibly and harmfully ignorant.

  Talia had been going over every single bit of conversation they’d had, making sure she hadn’t let anything slip. She was proud of herself: she hadn’t screamed at him or told him she was a clone or did anything to reveal herself—that she could tell.

  She had just left, and she wasn’t going back.

  “I’m so glad they helped you,” Popova said. “You keep going, and you’ll feel a lot better. I guarantee it.”

  Talia smiled at her. She wished it could be that simple.

  But this was the first time in more than a week that she hadn’t felt like crying. So something had changed.

  “If you need to talk,” Popova said, “I’m right here.”

  “Thank you,” Talia said. But after that interaction with Mr. Stupid Llewynn, she wasn’t going to trust anyone with her secrets. No one except her dad.

  He wouldn’t like what had happened either.

  Popova looked at the carton of food still on the counter.

  “You haven’t eaten anything,” she said. “I’ll reheat this and you’re going to choke down a few bites, okay?”

  Talia’s stomach growled, surprising her. She hadn’t felt hungry—or so she thought—but apparently she just hadn’t been paying attention.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Popova hit the reheat button on the carton. It glowed red for a moment. Then she handed the carton and a fork to Talia.

  “Eat,” Popova said. “I’m not going to hover, but I am going to trust that you’ll take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” Talia said, and opened the carton. The stir-fry chicken and vegetables steamed. The jasmine rice actually looked appetizing.

  She took a bite and savored the delicate flavors in the sauce.

  Popova smiled at her again, and then left.

  Popova was right: something had changed in that meeting with the therapist, and it wasn’t just because Talia had stood up for herself.

  It was because of something Mr. Stupid Llewynn had said before he went all crazy on her.