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

I checked the other media reports and found the same story. It was time to go beneath those stories and see what else I could find. Then I would confront Anetka about the lies before I began the search for her mother.
V
I contacted her and we met, not at my office, but at her hotel. She was staying in Armstrong's newest district, an addition onto the dome that caused a terrible controversy before it was built. Folks in my section believe the reason for the thinner air is that the new addition has stretched resources. I know they aren't right -- with the addition came more air and all the other regulation equipment -- but it was one of those arguments that made an emotional kind of sense.
I thought of those arguments, though, as I walked among the new buildings, made from a beige material not even conceived of thirty years before, a material that's supposed to be attractive (it isn't) and more resistant to decay than permaplastic. This entire section of Armstrong smelt new, from the recycled air to the buildings rising around me. They were four stories high and had large windows on the dome side, obviously built with a view in mind.
This part of the dome is self-cleaning and see-through. Dust does not slowly creep up the sides as it does in the other parts of Armstrong. The view is barren and stark, just like the rest of the Moon, but there's a beauty in the starkness that I don't see anywhere else in the universe.
The hotel was another large four-story building. Most of its windows were glazed dark, so no one could see in, but the patrons could see out. It was part of a chain whose parent company was, I had learned the day before, the Third Dynasty. Anetka was doing very little to hide her search from her father.
Inside, the lobby was wide, and had an old-fashioned feel. The walls changed images slowly, showing the famous sites from various parts of the galaxy where the hotels were located. I had read before the hotel opened that the constantly changing scenery took eight weeks to repeat an image. I wondered what it was like working in a place where the view shifted constantly, and then decided I didn't want to know.
The lobby furniture was soft and a comforting shade of dove gray. Piano music, equally soft and equally comforting, was piped in from somewhere. Patrons sat in small groups as if they were posing for a brochure. I went up to the main desk and asked for Anetka. The concierge led me to a private conference room down the main hallway.
I expected the room to be monitored. That didn't bother me. At this point, I still had nothing to hide. Anetka did, but this was her company's hotel. She could get the records, shut off the monitors, or have them destroyed. It would all be her choice.
To my surprise, she was waiting for me. She was wearing another dress, a blue diaphanous thing that looked so fragile I wondered how she managed to move from place to place. Her hair was up and pinned, with diamonds glinting from the soft folds. She also had diamonds glued to the ridge beneath her eyebrows, and trailing down her cheeks. The net effect was to accent her strength. Her broad shoulders held the gown as if it were air, and the folds parted to reveal the muscles on her arms and legs. She was like the diamonds she wore; pretty and glittering, but able to cut through all the objects in the room.
"Have you found anything?" she asked without preamble.
I shut the door and helped myself to the carafe of water on the bar against the nearest wall. There was a table in the center of the room -- made, it seemed -- of real wood, with matching chairs on the side. There was also a workstation, and a one-way mirror with a view of the lobby.
I leaned against the bar, holding my water glass. It was thick and heavy, sturdy like most things on the Moon. "Your father's will has been posted among the Legal Notices on all the nets for the last three years."
She nodded. "It's common for CEOs to do that to allay stockholder fears."
"It's common for CEOs to authorize the release after they've died. Not before."
Her smile was small, almost patronizing. "Smaller corporations, yes. But it's becoming a requirement for major shareholders in megacorps to do this even if they are not dead. Investigate farther, Mr. Flint, and you'll see that all of the Third Dynasty's major shareholders have posted their wills."
I had already checked the other shareholders' wills, and found that Anetka was right. I also looked for evidence that Carson Sobol was dead, and found none.
She took my silence to be disbelief. "It's the same with the other megacorps. Personal dealings are no longer private in the galactic business world."
I had known that the changes were taking place. I had known, for example, that middle managers signed loyalty oaths to corporations, sometimes requiring them to forsake family if the corporation called for it. This, one pundit had said, was the hidden cost of doing business with alien races. You had to be willing to abandon all you knew in the event of a serious mistake. The upshot of the change was becoming obvious. People to whom family was important were staying away from positions of power in the megacorps.
I said, "You're not going to great lengths to hide this search from your father."
She placed a hand on the wooden chair. She was not wearing gloves, and mingled among the enhancements were more diamonds. "You seem obsessed with my father."
"Your mother disappeared because of him. I'm not going to find her only to have him kill her."
"He wouldn't."
"Says you."
"This is your hesitation?"
"Actually, no," I said. "My hesitation is that, according to all public records, you were born six months before your mother disappeared."
I didn't tell her that I knew all the databases had been tampered with, including the ones about her mother's disappearance. I couldn't tell if the information had been altered to show that the disappearance came later or that the child had been born earlier. The tampering was so old that the original material was lost forever.
"My father wanted me to look like a legitimate child."
"You are a clone. He knew cloning laws."
"But no one else had to know."
"Not even with his will posted?"
"Like you said, it's only been posted for the last three years."
"Is that why you're not mentioned?"
She raised her chin. "I received my inheritance before -- already," she said. I found the correction interesting. "The agreement between us about my sister is both confidential and binding."
"'All of my worldly possessions shall go to my eldest child,'" I quoted. "That child isn't even listed by name."
"No," she said.
"And he isn't going to change the will for you?"
"The Disty won't do business with clones."
"I didn't know you had business with the Disty," I said.
She shrugged. "The Disty, the Emin, the Revs. You name them, we have business with them. And we have to be careful of some customs."
"Won't the stockholders be suspicious when you don't inherit?"
Her mouth formed a thin line. "That's why I'm hiring you," she said. "You need to find my sister."
I nodded. Then, for the first time in the meeting, I sat down. The chair was softer than I had expected it would be. I put my feet on the nearest chair. She glanced at them as if they were a lower life-form.
"In order to search for people," I said, "I need to know who they're running from. If they're running from the Disty, for example, I'll avoid the Martian colonies, because they're overrun with Disty. No one would hide there. It would be impossible. If they were running from the Revs, I would start looking at plastic surgeons and doctors who specialize in genetic alteration because anyone who looks significantly different from the person the Revs have targeted is considered, by the Revs, to be a different being entirely."
She started to say something, but I held up my hand to silence her.
"Human spouses abuse each other," I said. "It seems to be part of the human experience. These days, the abused spouse moves out, and sometimes leaves the city, sometimes the planet, but more often than not stays in the same area. It's unusual to run, to go through a complete identity change, and to start a new life, especially in your parents' income bracket. So tell me, why did your mother really leave?"
Nothing changed in Anetka's expression. It remained so immobile that I knew she was struggling for control. The hardness that had been so prevalent the day before was gone, banished, it seemed, so that I wouldn't see anything amiss.
"My father has a lot of money," she said.
"So do other people. Their spouses don't disappear."
"He also controls a powerful megacorp with fingers all over the developing worlds. He has access to more information than anyone. He vowed to never let my mother out of his sight. My father believed that marriage vows were sacred, and no matter how much the parties wanted out, they were obligated by their promises to each other and to God to remain." Anetka's tone was flat too. "If she had just moved out, he would have forced her to move back in. If she had moved to the Moon, he would have come after her. If she had moved to some of the planets in the next solar system, he would have come for her. So she had no choice."