Part 2 (2/2)

Nyquist studied him. Jaeger did seem nervous. Nyquist actually believed him.

”You can arrange it so that my links work here, can't you?” Nyquist asked.

Jaeger nodded.

”Do that, at least.”

Jaeger bit his lower lip, then turned to the woman who stood near the back of the room. He waved a hand. She disappeared through the doors.

There was momentary static and then Nyquist heard the familiar (and much missed) white noise that indicated his links were up and running. He sent an urgent message through them to Andrea Gumiela.

The Hunting Club won't shut down its security system. The system is destroying evidence and hampering our investigation. I need high-level help here to get these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to cooperate. Gumiela sent a message back immediately, the fastest Nyquist had ever heard from her on anything. Gumiela sent a message back immediately, the fastest Nyquist had ever heard from her on anything.

I'm already working on it, but I'm having trouble as well. You might want to go to your girlfriend for help. The only person who can override elaborate private security systems is the Moon's Chief of Security.

Nyquist sighed. He didn't want to go to DeRicci for help. But he also didn't want to fail at this investigation because the Hunting Club was run by a bunch of a.n.a.l a.s.sholes who believed their security was more important than anything else in the city.

Will do. Nyquist sent. Then he turned to Jaeger. ”Is there a private room I can use to send a visual message?”

”My office,” Jaeger said. ”Follow me.”

He led Nyquist through the double doors into an even darker room, filled with hardbound books and another fire-place. Yet another dog rested in front of this one as well. It raised its head as Nyquist entered the room.

”Take your time,” Jaeger said.

That was the thing: They didn't have time. Nyquist was about to tell the man but Jaeger had already left the room. Nyquist stared at the only blank wall.

”On-screen,” he said, hoping that would bring up a visual link. It did.

He gave it DeRicci's private address, unable to shake the feeling that he was asking her for help on his first investigation back because he was no longer competent enough to handle his problems on his own.

4.

Flint's office was in the oldest section of Armstrong. The dome here had been replaced half a dozen times, but it still didn't function properly. Its surface was scratched and dark, although right now it was supposed to show Dome Daylight.

In this section of Armstrong, Dome Daylight was more like Dome Opaque Light-the cloudiness from the ancient materials made the fake sunlight seem like something far away instead of built into the dome itself.

The filtration systems didn't work well, either, so the entire neighborhood always had a thin layer of Moon dust. Sometimes the dust was worse than others, and fortunately this was not one of those times.

Flint and the rent-a-lawyer who shared the building with him had contacted the city a few months ago, requesting filtration repairs, and had actually gotten them. Now, instead of slogging through a few inches of dust, his feet slid against a barely noticeable coating.

His office building was one of the original buildings from Armstrong's first settlement. The building was made of permaplastic-probably the most indestructible material ever invented. But it had seen better days, and repairs took approval from City of Armstrong Historical Oversight Committee.

He didn't want any of those people near his office, so he never requested any repairs. He let the exterior lapse into a dust-covered shambles. But the interior was state of the art. He had violated he didn't know how many codes when he covered the walls with a Moon-made material that didn't allow dust-or information-through its thin membrane surface.

He'd attached modern lighting, an up-to-date environmental system, and the latest netfiber equipment throughout.

And he had done all of that in the last few months, since it became clear that Talia would be in this place at least a couple of times per week. He didn't want to expose her to old decaying permaplastic chemicals or to Moon dust seeping through the filtration system or to any one of a dozen environmental hazards that he suspected the old place had.

Not to mention the fact that he had to upgrade everything when he realized his daughter was as gifted with computer systems as he was. He needed up-to-date firewalls and equipment that was beyond her level of expertise.

He never let her work on this system. In fact, he had actively worked to lock her out of it. He had programmed the system to shut down if she touched it-it recognized her DNA, and the moment she made contact with any part of the machine, it would turn off. No warnings, no nothing.

Flint knew she would work with gloves and with other devices, so he set the system so that it would go on alert every time she entered the building. If she spoke directly to the computer, she would initiate a longer series of shutdown procedures.

He found he needed that longer series because sometimes she was there with him, and he hated it when the system shut down while he was working on it.

Like it could now, if he wasn't careful.

Talia stood in the middle of the room, like she always did when he brought her here. He had warned her from the beginning that this was where he worked, that everything here was confidential, and that she was in the office only as a courtesy.

If he ever found her tampering with the systems, he would make sure she couldn't enter the building again.

He might have stated things too harshly. She always stood with her arms clasped around her waist, looking awkward and a bit frightened.

He moved a second chair near his desk. ”Go ahead and sit down.”

She did, keeping her back rigid. The chair wasn't that comfortable-it was made of a hard plastic-but it couldn't hurt her. Sometimes she acted like it could.

He went around the desk to the upholstered chair that he had splurged on. As he did, he touched a corner of the desk, ordering it to keep its fake wood look and to mask its pop-up screens. He didn't want Talia to see any of the information he planned to look up.

For the moment, though, he didn't look up anything. He sat down and leaned back. The chair squeaked beneath his weight. ”Okay,” he said. ”First you need to tell me how you found the others.” He couldn't call the five clones sisters, as she had. He wasn't sure how to think about them. He wasn't sure whether he was ready to think about them at all. ”I didn't find all of them.” Talia still had her arms wrapped around her stomach. She looked scared.

She'd had some time to think about what he said, and she seemed even more uncomfortable than she had before.

”Maybe you could tell me what's wrong with looking for them,” she said. ”I mean, Mom's dead. That court ruling was against her, right?”

Talia was referring to a court ruling that Flint had found out about only recently. His wife, Rhonda, had invented a nutrient-rich water that, when tested on another planet, had accidentally destroyed a colony of young Gyonnese.

The Gyonnese were part of the Earth Alliance, and they brought the case before a Multicultural Tribunal. Under Earth Alliance law, anyone who broke a law on a particular place was subject to the laws of that place.

Under Gyonnese law, Rhonda s.h.i.+ndo was guilty of ma.s.s murder.

The punishment was also Gyonnese-and considered the worst it could give out. She had to forfeit any and all children to the Gyonnese for the rest of her life.

But the Gyonnese had distinctions between real children and false children. Real children were children like Emmeline-what the Gyonnese called the Originals. Talia was a false child, a clone, a duplicate, and therefore beneath the Gyonnese's notice.

”I mean,” Talia was saying, ”the Gyonnese got to take her real children as a punishment to Mom Mom, right? And if she's gone, they can't punish her anymore.”

”I'm not sure,” Flint said. ”I'm not an expert in Gyonnese law, which is what prevails here.” ”But they don't consider me a real child,” Talia said, her voice trembling. ”They would never take me. Why would my searching for my sisters put them in danger? They're not 'real,' either.” Flint rubbed his chin, then tapped his thumbnail against his teeth. He wasn't quite sure how to explain any of this. But he was going to have to try.

”I've worked around Earth Alliance laws for more than a decade now,” he said, ”and they're difficult and nuanced at best. The thing to remember-and it's the hardest thing to keep in mind; it's the thing that makes this so complicated-is that the only reason the Earth Alliance works is that each member agrees to live by another member's laws whenever the first member is in the other member's territory. Humans are the worst at doing this. We don't like laws we don't understand.”

Talia had slid her arms away from her abdomen. She had crossed them over her chest instead. ”I studied this stuff in school.”

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