Part 3 (1/2)

”I know,” he said, ”but I've lived it. This aspect of the Earth Alliance is why I became a Retrieval Artist.” She frowned at him. ”What do you mean?”

He wasn't sure he could describe those last few weeks he had spent as a detective, when he was going to have to give up children for the crimes their parents had committed. He couldn't give those children to alien governments, knowing the children's humanity would be broken, and they would become crazed things without much of a life.

”You know the stories,” Flint said. ”You've heard them all your life. Disappearance companies were invented so that children wouldn't have to pay for their parents' crimes, especially when the crimes were minor or nonexistent by human standards, such as stepping on a flower or walking next to a prohibited riverbank.”

”I don't know your story,” she said.

And she didn't. So he told her, in a truncated way, about those last few weeks, about the baby that would have gone to the Wygnin, the children that he had found in a transport, sobbing for their parents, and the woman who had given herself up for them, so that they wouldn't suffer for something she had done.

When he was done, Talia stared at him.

”You became a Retrieval Artist because you didn't want to be a detective anymore?” she asked.

He sighed. It wasn't quite that simple. ”When I was a detective, I was sworn to uphold the laws of Armstrong. Those laws function within the laws of the Earth Alliance. If a court decides-as it did with your mother-that her children would be sacrificed because she had broken another species' law, then I would have to sacrifice those children, if I found them. Do you understand?”

”No,” Talia said. ”So why find the people who Disappeared? It seems to me that they had escaped, and you shouldn't want to get them back.”

”Most of the time, I don't,” he said. ”Most of the time I turn down clients.”

”So when do you take them?”

”When the laws they've supposedly broken no longer apply. When the charges are withdrawn. When they've come into an inheritance or when there's a true family emergency, something they need to know about. Even then, I don't always bring them back to the society they disappeared from. Sometimes I just notify them, and let them decide what to do. Often they've built a new life that they don't want to lose.”

”Like Mom,” Talia said.

”Your mother didn't Disappear,” Flint said. ”She was protected by a strangeness in Gyonnese law.” ”The real child thing,” Talia said.

Flint nodded. ”The real versus false child att.i.tudes that the Gyonnese have.”

”Humans have that att.i.tude, too,” Talia said.

”Not like the Gyonnese.” He folded his hands over his stomach, pretending a relaxation he didn't really feel. ”Do you understand what happened with your mother? Why she did what she did?”

Talia shrugged. That had been the answer she had given him from the beginning. Maybe she didn't understand, not on a deep level. If she understood, she wouldn't have searched for the other clones. ”All right,” he said. ”Let me tell you this as I understand it. And remember, I learned about it at the same time I learned about you. I never got a chance to ask your mother about it before she died. I'll never know the whole story.”

”Me, either,” Talia muttered. But she watched him warily, clearly waiting for him to continue. ”Your mother,” he said, ”started working for Aleyd Corporation when we were married and living here in Armstrong.”

”You weren't a police officer then,” Talia said. ”No, I worked in computers,” Flint said. She started. Apparently he hadn't told her that.

”Your mother was a brilliant researcher who specialized in biology and chemistry. She was the up-and-coming genius in the family, not me.”

He smiled at that memory.

”We didn't realize the toll it would take on us. When she got pregnant with Emmeline, we figured we had good jobs and we'd be able to raise a nice-sized family. We-or maybe it was just me-weren't much more ambitious than that. Kids, a nice house, good jobs, a good life.”

He shook his head. He had come a long way from that man. He could barely remember what it was like to be him.

”Your mom got so busy at work that by the time Emmeline was only a few weeks old, I became her primary care-giver. I did almost everything for the household. It got so that Emmeline wouldn't even go to your mom when she came home from work.”

Talia hadn't moved. She was rigid, but attentive, as if this part of the story was the most important part.

”I didn't know that your mom was working on this top-secret project for Aleyd. It was a nutrient-rich water that was like a high-end fertilizer, only supposedly better, something that could be brought to arid, water-poor places like this Moon, and make the growing cycles more productive.”

”That's the c.r.a.p they tested on Gyonne,” Talia said. ”Yeah,” Flint said softly, deciding not to reprimand her for her language. ”That's the stuff.” ”The stuff in the holo,” she said.

He nodded. When Rhonda had been kidnapped, her kidnappers had left a holo in the house. Talia had seen the holo. It had been devastating, detailing Rhonda's crimes in a horrifying manner. ”I know all of that,” Talia said. ”About her convictions and how the Gyonnese don't consider me a real child. That's how she could raise me.”

”That's right,” Flint said. But he didn't think that Rhonda had created Talia just for the sake of raising a child.

He had a hunch-one that he couldn't prove-that Rhonda had created the clones to subst.i.tute for Emmeline when the Gyonnese came to collect on their debt.

Only Emmeline died, and the Gyonnese were never able to collect. Because they believed her to be the real child.

The others didn't count.

”Okay,” Talia said, ”here's what I don't get. You said I was incautious, that I might hurt the others by looking for them. But I don't see how that's possible. I mean, the judgment was against Mom, and it didn't apply to me or the other five because the Gyonnese don't consider us real children. Emmeline is dead. So I don't know how I could be endangering anyone.”

Flint took a deep breath. This was where it got tricky. ”We're in the realm of supposition now,” he said. ”And in my job, I have to suppose. I have to look at worst-case scenarios because if I don't, people will die.”

”So you're going to make stuff up?”

He shook his head. ”You're looking at the upside, the logical upside, of the case against your mother. You're a.s.suming that the Gyonnese react the way humans do and will now realize that they'll never get their vengeance and no one will be punished for those crimes.”

”You think they were crimes,” Talia said softly. He had never discussed it with her, not like this. He'd made sure she understood the holo, that she knew about the court case, that she knew who had ordered her mother taken and why.

But he had never discussed the case, not like this.

”Yeah,” he said, ”I think they're crimes.”

”But Celestine Gonzalez, she said that the Gyonnese should understand that humans don't consider this a crime at all.”

He frowned at the mention of one of the lawyers who had worked for Rhonda. And for him, after Rhonda died. Gonzalez, who had taken a liking to Talia, had helped Flint adopt her before he brought her back to the Moon.

”Why did she say that?” Flint asked.

”Because the larva weren't grown yet. They were just, you know, things. And there was no difference between them and the ones that split off. So why not just call the Seconds an Original, and not worry about it?”

Flint stared at his daughter. He couldn't believe that Gonzalez had said that to her, to a cloned child. He suspected that Gonzalez hadn't been that explicit-or if she had, she had been discussing a point of law. The woman had been very careful to guard Talia's feelings the rest of the time.

This was where the path he was on-the new parent path-seemed even more treacherous. What would be best for Talia? Telling her the truth? Telling it harshly? Or glossing over this part of the conversation and letting her come to the realization on her own?

”Tal,” he said gently, ”think about what you just said.”

”It's not like cloning,” she said. ”It would be like the destruction of the fertilized eggs. They hadn't developed into a person yet. No one knew them. They didn't have experiences, so they weren't different from each other. They were just biological matter.”

”So we believe,” Flint said. ”And not all of us believe that, either. But the Gyonnese are different from us. And who's to know if the Originals aren't somehow different from creation from the Seconds and Thirds?”

Talia bit her lower lip. ”So you think Mom really killed entire families?”

Flint nodded. ”But not deliberately, and not alone. That's where the Gyonnese make their mistake. The corporation is liable and so is everyone along the decision-making chain. I'm sure your mother wouldn't have wanted that water tested on a windy day. I'm sure that she would have been cautious, if she had been on-site, to make certain nothing went wrong.”