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

She shook her head once, then stood. "I'm not sure I know what we'd be talking about."
I reached out my hand. I had my palm scanner in it. Anyone who'd traveled a lot, anyone who had been on the run, would recognize it. "We can do this the old-fashioned way, Mrs. Sobol, or you can listen to me."
She sat down slowly. Her lower lip trembled. She didn't object to my use of her real name. "If you're what your identification says you are, you don't warn people. You take them in."
I let my hand drop. "I was hired by Anetka Sobol," I said. "She wanted me to find you. She claimed that she wanted to share her inheritance with her Original. She's a clone. The record supports this claim."
"So, you want to take us back." Her voice was calm, but her eyes weren't. I watched her hands. They remained on the desktop, flat, and she was without enhancement. So far, she hadn't signaled anyone for help.
"Normally, I would have taken you back. But when I discovered that Anetka's Original was male, I got confused."
Sylvy licked her lower lip, just like her cloned daughter did. An hereditary nervous trait.
I rested one leg on the corner of the desk. "Why would a man change the sex of a clone when the sex didn't matter? Especially if all he wanted was the child. A man with no violent tendencies, who stood accused of attacking his wife so savagely all she could do was leave him, all she could do was disappear. Why would he do that?"
She hadn't moved. She was watching me closely. Beads of perspiration had formed on her upper lip.
"So I went back through the records and found two curious things. You disappeared just after his business on Korsve failed. And once you moved to Gagarin, you and your son were often in other domed Moon colonies at the same time as your husband. Not a good way to hide from someone, now is it, Mrs. Sobol?"
She didn't respond.
I picked up a clay pot. It was small and very, very old. It was clearly an original, not a Moon-made copy. "And then there's the fact that your husband never bothered to change his will to favor the child he had raised. It wouldn't have mattered to most parents that the child was a clone, especially when the Original was long gone. He could have arranged a dispensation, and then made certain that the business remained in family hands." I set the pot down. "But he had already done that, hadn't he? He hoped that the Wygnin would forget."
She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, and backed away from me, clutching at her wrist. I reached across the desk and grabbed her left arm, keeping her hand away from her wrist-top. I wasn't ready for her to order someone to come in here. I still needed to talk to her alone.
"I'm not going to turn you in to the Wygnin," I said. "I'm not going to let anyone know where you are. But if you don't listen to me, someone else will find you, and soon."
She stared at me, the color high in her cheeks. Her arm was rigid beneath my hand.
"The will was your husband's only mistake," I said. "The Wygnin never forget. They targeted your firstborn, didn't they? The plants on Korsve didn't open and close without a fuss. Something else happened. The Wygnin only target firstborns for a crime that can't be undone."
She shook her arm free of me. She rubbed the spot where my hand had touched her flesh, then she sighed. She seemed to know I wouldn't go away. When she spoke, her voice was soft. "No Wygnin were on the site planning committee. We bought the land, and built the plants according to our customs. At that point, the Wygnin didn't understand the concept of land purchase."
I noted the use of the word "we." She had been involved with the Third Dynasty, more involved than the records said.
"We built on a haven for nestlings. You understand nestlings?"
"I thought they were a food source."
She shook her head. "They're more than that. They're part of Wygnin society in a way we didn't understand. They become food only after they die. It's the shells that are eaten, not the nestlings themselves. The nestlings themselves are considered sentient."
I felt myself grow cold. "How many were killed?"
She shrugged. "The entire patch. No one knows for sure. We were told, when the Wygnin came to us, that they were letting us off easily by taking our firstborn -- Carson's and mine. They could easily take all the children of anyone who was connected with the project, but they didn't."
They could have, too. It was the Third Dynasty that acted without regard to local custom, which made it liable to local laws. Over the years, no interstellar court had overturned a ruling in instances like that.
"Carson agreed to it," she said. "He agreed so no one else would suffer. Then we got me out."
"And no one came looking for you until I did."
"That's right," she said.
"I don't think Anetka's going to stop," I said. "I suspect she wants her father to change the will -- "
"What?" Sylvy clenched her collar with her right hand, revealing the wrist-top. It was one of the most sophisticated I'd seen.
"Anetka wants control of the Third Dynasty, and I was wondering why her father hadn't done a will favoring her. Now I know. She was probably hoping I couldn't find you so that her father would change the will in her favor."
"He can't," Sylvy said.
"I'm sure he might consider it, if your son's life is at stake," I said. "The Wygnin treat their captives like family -- indeed, make them into family, but the techniques they use on adults of other species are -- "
"No," she said. "It's too late for Carson to change his will."
She was frowning at me as if I didn't understand anything. And it took me a moment to realize how I'd been used.
Anetka Sobol had tricked me in more ways than I cared to think about. I wasn't half as good as I thought I was. I felt the beginnings of an anger I didn't need. I suppressed it. "He's dead, isn't he?"
Sylvy nodded. "He died three years ago. He installed a personal alarm that notified me the moment his heart stopped. My son has been voting his shares through a proxy program my husband set up during one of his trips here."
I glanced at the wrist-top. No wonder it was so sophisticated. Too sophisticated for a simple administrator. Carson Sobol had given it to her, and through it, had notified her of his death. Had it broken her heart? I couldn't tell, not from three years' distance.
She caught me staring at it, and brought her arm down. I turned away, taking a deep breath as the reality of my situation hit me. Anetka Sobol had out-maneuvered me. She had put me in precisely the kind of case I never wanted.
I was working for the Tracker. I was leading a Disappeared to her death and probably the death of her son. "I don't get it," I said. "If something happens to your son, Anetka still won't inherit."
Sylvy's smile was small. "She inherits by default. My son will disappear, and stop voting the proxy program. She'll set up a new proxy program and continue to vote the shares. I'm sure the Board thinks she's the person behind the votes anyway. No one knows about our son."
"Except for you, and me, and the Wygnin." I closed my eyes. "Anetka had no idea you'd had a son."
"No one did," Sylvy said. "Until now."
I rubbed my nose with my thumb and forefinger. Anetka was good. She had discovered that I was the best and the quickest Retrieval Artist in the business. She had studied me and had known how to reach me. She had also known how to play at being an innocent, how to use my past history to her advantage. She hired me to find her Original, and once I did, she planned to get rid of him. It would have been easy for her too; no hitman, no attempt at killing. She wouldn't have had to do anything except somehow -- surreptitiously -- let the Wygnin know how to find the Original. They would have taken him in payment for the Third Dynasty's crimes, he would have stopped voting his shares, and she would have controlled the corporation.
Stopping Anetka wasn't going to be easy. Even if I refused to report, even if Sylvy and her son returned to hiding, Anetka would continue looking for them.
I had doomed them. If I left this case now, I ensured that one of my colleagues would take it. They would find Sylvy and her son. My colleagues weren't as good as I was, but they were good. And they were smart enough to follow the bits of my trail that I couldn't erase.
The only solution was to get rid of Anetka. I couldn't kill her. But I could think of one other way to stop her.
I opened my eyes. "If I could get Anetka out of the business, and allow you and your son to return home, would you do so?"
Sylvy shook her head. "This is my home," she said. She glanced at the fake adobe walls, the southwestern decor. Her fingers touched a blanket hanging on the wall beside her. "But I can't answer for my son."
"If he doesn't do anything, he'll be running for the rest of his life."
She nodded. "I still can't answer for him. He's an adult now. He makes his own choices."