"Rusch,_Kristine_Kathryn_-_The_Retrieval_Artist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

======================
The Retrieval Artist
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
======================

Copyright (c)2000 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Analog Magazine, June 2000

Fictionwise
www.fictionwise.com

Science Fiction
2001 Hugo Award Nominee

---------------------------------
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.
---------------------------------


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.
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.