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

"My mother," she said. "She's--"
"That's enough." I kept my tone harsh, and I didn't stand. I didn't want this girl/woman to be too comfortable. It was
always best to keep potential clients off balance.
Children, young adults, and the elderly were the obvious choices of someone trying to use my system for the
wrong purposes, and yet they were the ones most likely to contact me. They never seemed to understand the hostility
I had to show clients, the insistence I put on identity checks, and they always balked at the cost. It feels as if I'm on
trial, Mr. Flint, they would say, and I wouldn't respond. They were. They had to be. I always had to be sure they were
only acting on their own interests. It was too easy for a Tracker to hire someone to play off a Retrieval Artist's
sympathies, and initiate a search that would get the Disappeared killed -- or worse.
The girl turned. Her body was so rigid that it looked as if I could break her in half.
"I don't find people," I said. "I uncover them. There's a vast difference. If you don't understand that, then you don't
belong here."
That line usually caused half my potential clients to exit. The next line usually made most of the remaining fifty
percent excuse themselves, never to darken my door again.
"I charge a minimum of two million credits, Moon issue, not Earth issue--" which meant that they were worth triple
what she was used to paying "--and I can charge as much as ten million or more. There is no upper limit on my costs
nor is there one on my charges. I charge by the day, with expenses added in. Some investigations take a week, some
take five years. You would be my exclusive employer for the period of time it takes to find your -- mother -- or
whomever I'd be looking for. I have a contract. Several of my former clients have tried to have the courts nullify it. It
holds up beautifully. I do not take charity cases, no matter what your sob story is, and I do not allow anyone to defer
payment. The minute the money stops, so do I."
She threaded her fingers together. Her personal items bag bumped against her hip as she did so. "I'd heard about
your financial requirements." Which meant that one of my former clients had recommended me to her. Dammit. "I have
limited funds, but I can afford a minor investigation."
I stood. "We're done talking. Sorry I can't help you." I walked past her and pulled open the door. Security didn't
mind if I did that. It would have minded if she had.
"Can't you do a limited search, Mr. Flint?" Her eyes were wide and brown. If she was twenty, she was older than I
thought. I checked for tears. There were none. She could be legit, and for that I was sorry.
 I closed the door so hard the plastic office shook. "Here's what you're asking me," I said. "If the money runs out, I
quit searching, which is no skin off my nose. But I'll have dug a trail up to that particular point, and your mother -- or
whomever I'm looking for--"
She flinched again as I said that. A tender one. Or a good actress.
"--would be at more of a risk than she is now. Right now, she's simply disappeared. And since you've come to me,
you've done enough research to know that one of six government programs -- or one of fifteen private corporations --
have gone to considerable expense to give her a new life somewhere else. If the cover on that existence gets blown,
your mother dies. It's that simple. And maybe, just maybe, the people who helped her will die too, or the people who
are now important to her, or the people who were hidden with her, for whatever reason. Half an investigation is a death
sentence. Hell, sometimes a full investigation is a death sentence. So I don't do this work on whim, and I certainly don't
do it in a limited fashion. Are we clear?"
She nodded, just once, a rabbit-like movement that let me know I'd connected.
"Good," I said and pulled the door back open. "Now get out."
She scurried past me as if she thought I might physically assault her, and then she hurried down the street. The
moon dust rose around her, clinging to her legs and her impractical dress, leaving a trail behind her that was so visible,
it looked as if someone were marking her as a future target.
I closed the door, had the security system take her prints and DNA sample off the jamb just in case I needed to
identify her someday, and then tried not to think of her again.
It wouldn't be easy. Clients were rare, and if they were legit, they always had an agenda. By the time they found me,
they were desperate, and there was still a part of me that was human enough to feel sympathy for that.
Sympathy is rare among Retrieval Artists. Most Retrieval Artists got into this line of work because they owed a
favor to the Disty, a group of aliens who'd more or less taken over Mars. Others got into it because they had