"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Retrieval Artist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

THE RETRIEVAL ARTIST
by KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH


First published in Analog Magazine, June 2000.



I

I had just come off a difficult case, and the last thing I wanted was another client. To be honest, not wanting
another client is a constant state for me. Miles Flint, the reluctant Retrieval Artist. I work harder than anyone else in
the business at discouraging my clients from seeking out the Disappeared. Sometimes the discouragement fails and I
get paid a lot of money for putting a lot of lives in danger, and maybe, just maybe, bringing someone home who wants
to come. Those are the moments I live for, the moments when it becomes clear to a Disappeared that home is a safe
place once more.
Usually, though, my clients and their lost ones are more trouble than they're worth. Usually, I won't take their cases
for any price, no matter how high.
I do everything I can to prevent client contact from the start. The clients who approach me are the courageous ones
or the really desperate ones or the ones who want to use me to further their own ends.
I try not to take my cases personally. My clients and their lost ones depend on my objectivity. But every once in a
while, a case slips under my defenses -- and never in the way I expect.
This was one of those cases. And it haunts me still.


II

My office is one of the ugliest dives on the Moon. I found an original building still made of colonial permaplastic in
the oldest section of Armstrong, the Moon's oldest colony. The dome here is also made of permaplastic, the clear kind,
although time and wear have turned it opaque. Dirt covers the dome near the street level. The filtration system tries to
clean as best it can, but ever since some well-meaning dome governor pulled the permaplastic flooring and forgot to
replace it, this part of Armstrong Dome has had a dust problem. The filtration systems have been upgraded twice in my
lifetime, and rebuilt at least three times since the original settlement, but they still function at one-tenth the level of the
state-of-the-art systems in colonies like Gagarin Dome and Glenn Station. Terrans newly off the shuttle rarely come to
this part of Armstrong; the high-speed trains don't run here, and the unpaved streets strike most Terrans as
unsanitary, which they probably are.
The building that houses my office had been the original retail center of Armstrong, or so says the bronze plaque
that someone had attached to the plastic between my door and the rent-a-lawyer's beside me. We are a historic
building, not that anyone seems to care, and rent-a-lawyer once talked to me about getting the designation changed so
that we could upgrade the facilities.
I didn't tell him that if the designation changed, I would move.
You see, I like the seedy look, the way my door hangs slightly crooked in its frame. It's deceptive. A careless
Tracker would think I'm broke, or equally careless. Most folks don't guess that the security in my little eight-by-eight
cube is state-of-the-art. They walk in, and they see permaplastic, and a desk that cants slightly to the right, and only
one chair behind it. They don't see the recessed doors that hide my storage in the wall between the rent-a-lawyer's
cube and my own, and they don't see the electronics because they aren't looking for them.
I like to keep the office empty. I own an apartment in one of Armstrong's better neighborhoods. There I keep all the
things I don't care about. Things I do care about stay in my ship, a customized space yacht named The Emmeline.
She's my only friend and I treat her like a lover. She's saved my life more times than I care to think about, and for that
(and a few other things), she deserves only the best.