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

I can afford to give her the best, and I don't need any more work, although, as I said, I sometimes take it. The cases
that catch me are usually the ones that catch me in my Sir Galahad fantasy -- the one where I see myself as a rescuer of
all things worthy of rescue -- although I've been known to take cases for other reasons.
But, as I'd said, I'd just come off a difficult case, and the last thing I needed was another client. Especially one as
young and innocent as this one appeared to be.
She showed up at my door wearing a dress, which no one wears in this part of Armstrong anymore, and regular
shoes, which had to have been painful to walk in. She also had a personal items bag around her wrist, which, in this
part of town, was like wearing a giant Mug Me! sign. The bags were issued on shuttles and only to passengers who
had no idea about the luggage limitations.
She was tall and raw-boned, but slender, as if diet and exercise had reduced her natural tendency toward lushness.
Her dress, an open and inexpensive weave, accented her figure in an almost unconscious way. Her features were
strong and bold, her eyes dark, and her hair even darker.
My alarm system warned me she was outside, staring at the door or the plaque or both. A small screen popped up
on my desk revealing her and the street beyond. I shut off the door alarm and waited until she knocked. Her clutched
fist, adorned with computer and security enhancements that winked like diamonds in the dome's fake daylight, rapped
softly on the permaplastic. The daintiness of the movement startled me. I wouldn't have thought her a dainty woman.
I had been cleaning up the final reports, notations, and billings from the last case. I closed the file and the keyboard
(I never use voice commands for work in my office -- too easily overheard) folded itself into the desk. Then I leaned
back in the chair, and waited.
She knocked three times before she tried the door. It opened, just like it had been programmed to do in instances
like this.
"Mr. Flint?" Her voice was soft, her English tinted with a faintly Northern European accent.
I still didn't say anything. She had the right building and the right name. I would wait to see if she was the right kind
of client.
She squinted at me. I was never what clients expected. They expected a man as seedy as the office, maybe one or
two unrepaired scars, a face toughened by a hard life and space travel. Even though I was thirty-five, I still had a look
some cultures called angelic: blond curls, blue eyes, a round and cherubic face. A client once told me I looked like the
pre-Raphaelite paintings of Cupid. I had smiled at him and said, Only when I want to.
"Are you Mr. Flint?" The girl stepped inside, then slapped her left hand over the enhancements on her right. She
looked faintly startled, as if someone had shouted in her ear.
Actually, my security system had cut in. Those enhancements linked her to someone or something outside herself,
and my system automatically severed such links, even if they had been billed as unseverable.
"You want to stay in here," I said, "you stay in here alone. No recording, no viewing, and no off-site monitoring."
She swallowed, and took another step inside. She was playing at being timid. The real timid ones, severed from their
security blankets, bolt.
"What do you want?" I asked.
She flinched, and took another step forward. "I understand that you ... find ... people."
"Where did you hear that?"
"I was told in New York." One more step and she was standing in front of my desk. She smelled faintly of lavender
soap mixed with nervous sweat. She must have come here directly from the shuttle. A woman with a mission, then.
"New York?" I asked as if I'd never heard of it.
"New York City."
I had several contacts in New York, and a handful of former clients. Anyone could have told her, although none
were supposed to. They always did though; they always saw their own desperation in another's eyes, figured it was
time to help, time to give back whatever it was they felt they had gained.
I sighed. "Close the door."
She licked her lips -- the dye on them was either waterproof or permanent -- and then walked back to the door. She
looked into the street as if she would find help there, then gently pushed the door closed.
I felt a faint hum through my wrist as my computer notified me that it had turned the door security back on.
"What do you want?" I asked before she turned around.