Masterminds Read online

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  The Retrieval Artist Series

  Copyright Information

  Full Table of Contents

  For the fans

  Thanks for joining me on this journey

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe so many thanks on this project. People who kept me honest, people who helped me get to work, people who made sure my details were correct. (The mistakes are all mine.) I owe special thanks to Paul B. Higginbotham for help with the court system, Dean Wesley Smith for help with dome structure, Annie Reed for finding all the things I missed, Colleen Kuehne for catching the important details, and Allyson Longueira for getting every last bit of this project through production.

  Thanks also to Kevin J. Anderson, Stanley Schmidt of Analog, and Sheila Williams of Asimov’s for buying the short stories I wrote to explain details to myself. You kept me focused on the series quality, which I needed as I got deeper into the project.

  And finally, thanks to all you readers. Your enthusiasm has kept me chugging, even when the going got difficult.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Dear Readers,

  Here we are! The final book in the Anniversary Day saga. I’m relieved to be here, and a bit disappointed as well. Writing this has been an adventure for me. I’ve never done anything this large this quickly.

  Publishing used to demand that writers only publish one book per year. (Which is why I have so many pen names—leftover from those days. I write too fast to stick to one book per year.) Now, we can publish as many books as we want.

  Or as many as we can write in a short period of time. Telling this story properly tested my writing speed and my attention span. I’ve never spent years on one story before, and I had to do so here. Parts of this saga were written as long ago as 2007, and other parts just last week.

  I am relieved to turn to other projects, but, before you ask, I will return to the Retrieval Artist universe. I came up with too many new story ideas in that universe while writing this saga.

  For those of you who picked up this book first—I’m sorry. It is the eighth book in an eight-book saga. For those of you who expect all of the Retrieval Artist books to stand alone, these eight books don’t (although I suspect you can read A Murder of Clones all by itself with no ill effects). You need to start the saga with Anniversary Day and move onto the remaining seven books.

  If you haven’t read the Retrieval Artist series before, start either with Anniversary Day or any book between The Disappeared and Anniversary Day. The list of Retrieval Artist novels is in the front of this book (or the back of the ebook).

  Again, thank you for coming with me on this journey and for reading the saga! I appreciate it, and hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  —Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Lincoln City, Oregon

  September 27, 2014

  SEVENTY YEARS AGO

  ONE

  THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. Shuffle. Draaaaag.

  Jhena Andre huddled in her bed, covers nested around her, her favorite doll cradled against her chest. She woke up, heart pounding, afraid someone was in her room—and someone was—but then she heard him mutter, and she realized—Daddy!

  She wanted to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t. Daddy sometimes came to her room to make sure she was okay. Sometimes he just held her. Sometimes he stared at her from the door.

  Her room was the best room in the house. He painted the walls—Daddy wanted to be an artist Once Upon A Time, before It All Went Down, which Jhena knew meant the day that Mommy died and everything changed. Greens and golds and touches of sunlight, bits of color. The tall grasses waved and glistened. Sometimes the sky turned gray and rains fell, but not for long. Then the sun came out and the grasses gleamed. The air smelled fresh—Daddy said it smelled like fresh-cut grass—but Jhena thought it smelled like green.

  Daddy’s paints made everything come alive, except Mommy.

  Jhena’s brain skipped—that memory everybody wanted to know or not know, the memory everybody told her to forget or not forget, the memory of the day It All Went Down. All she had from that day was Daddy and her favorite doll. Her favorite doll didn’t have a name because Mommy said they’d name it together, and smiled, and never smiled again.

  Jhena pulled the doll close, and listened to the rustling. The air didn’t smell green. It smelled like sour hot chocolate and the sharp sweaty smell Daddy got when he got scared. He hadn’t taken her special cup from the room. He always did or the bots did or someone did, because in the morning her special cup always got clean, and ready for that night’s chocolate, which she drank while Daddy read stories and she looked at the swaying grasses on the wall.

  Thump. Draaaaag.

  Daddy was taking stuff out of her closet. Her stomach started to ache.

  Then Daddy swore, and Jhena sat up.

  He turned around so fast she thought he was going to fall down. One hand out, catching the wall, disappearing in the grasses kinda—shadows of them always crossed skin but not really shadows. Echoes, sorta. The grasses couldn’t be on skin unless they got painted there, and Daddy said that nothing should get painted on skin.

  “Jhen,” he said in a voice she’d never heard before. Like he wasn’t ready and he was scared but he wasn’t scared of her. “Baby.”

  Then he sighed, and she thought maybe she heard another bad word, but she wasn’t sure.

  He waved a hand, and dawn started in the grasses. The light in the wall was her nightlight. She thought maybe a minute ago there was a full moon—the night-time light—but Daddy changed it. That orange glow meant get up, even though her eyes felt sandy and the clock she hid under the edge of her night table had a 2 as the first number, not a 6. She knew the difference.

  She was a big girl now.

  “Oh, sweetie, I didn’t want it to go this way.” He looked scareder than he had before, like she was the daddy and he was the little girl and he’d been doing something wrong.

  Jhena pulled her doll close, clutching the blankets. The light was just enough to see his familiar face, all twisted in something like a frown, his black hair mussed, and his brown eyes wet like they’d been the day It All Went Down.

  “Daddy?” Her voice sounded tiny. She didn’t want it too, but she wasn’t sure she should be loud. The day It All Went Down, Daddy picked her up and held her and shushed her and she was afraid he’d shush her now.

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” Daddy said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. If I thought it could happen again, I would have stayed in Montana.”

  Then Daddy grabbed something from the floor. Her duffle. He tossed it on the bed.

  “You gotta stay here, baby, and be really really quiet, okay? My friends will come for you. They’ll take you to Aunt Leslie. You remember Aunt Leslie, right? She’ll take care of you.”

  He leaned over, all sharp sweat and cologne. His arms went around her and he squeezed too hard.

  She said, “Don’t wanna go with Aunt Leslie. Wanna stay with you.”

  “You can’t, baby. I screwed up. Again. I screwed up again. I’m so sorry.” He ran his hand through her hair, kissed her crown (My princess, he usually said when he did that), squeezed even harder. “I love you. I love you more than life itself. Can you remember that much, at least? That I love you.”

  Her heart was pounding. “I love you too, Daddy. Take me with you.”

  “No, honey. I can’t. You’ll be okay. I promise. Aunt Leslie—she’s a good woman. She’ll raise you right.”

  Raise? Daddy was raising Jhena. Daddy was raising Jhena alone ever since It All Went Down.

  “Daddy—”

  He put a finge
r over her mouth, shushing her. Then she heard the door close, the house telling someone that Daddy and Jhena were in the bedroom.

  He stood up. “You stay here, okay? They’ll come back here, and they’ll take you to Aunt Leslie.”

  “Wanna stay with you,” Jhena said, tears falling now.

  “I want to stay with you too,” he said. “But we don’t always get what we want, honey. God, I wish I wasn’t the one to teach you that.”

  He ran a hand over her head, cupped her chin, said, “I love you,” and then walked out of her bedroom, his back framed against the hall light, his shoulders square.

  He didn’t look back.

  But she kept looking at the space where he had been.

  Looking and seeing nothing.

  At all.

  SIXTY YEARS AGO

  TWO

  ALONSO STOTT PULLED open the door to their secret hiding place. Claudio had never seen his brother look so scared. Alonso’s black eyes were wide, his lips bleeding like he had bitten them.

  They’d found this place in the back of the house, a totally non-networked room, like someone had built it just for them, and they had never told Mom and Dad.

  The room was tiny and square, with some handmade blankets on the scuffed floor. The boys didn’t want anything in here made with nanofibers or that had any digital signatures. The boys didn’t even let the bots see them enter.

  The room was secret, that’s what Alonso said, and Claudio believed him.

  “You gotta get out of here,” Alonso said. Tears pooled in his eyes. “Hurry.”

  “Why?” Claudio asked.

  “The Wygnin are coming, and Daddy says—” Alonso’s voice broke, then he shook his head. “You gotta get out of here.”

  “Mommy said the lawyers took care of the Wygnin.” Claudio knew about the Wygnin. The Wygnin were bad, bad, bad creatures, evil creatures, that didn’t like human people. Daddy had visited them and made them mad, and the Wygnin wanted Alonso for payment. The firstborn.

  Mommy said they’d never give up the firstborn, and Daddy said they shouldn’t worry, but Alonso worried. He found the room.

  “Why can’t I stay here?” Claudio asked.

  “I think Mom knows about it,” Alonso said. “You only got five minutes. Daddy’s getting guns.”

  “To shoot the Wygnin?” Claudio asked.

  Alonso shook his head, and more tears fell. “You go to that building I showed you, okay? You tell them you’re not the firstborn, and that you’ll never be firstborn, no matter what. You tell them to fight for you, okay?”

  “Alonso, what’s going on?”

  “You tell them,” Alonso said, his voice fierce. “I’m going to talk to Daddy.”

  Claudio didn’t understand this. He didn’t understand any of it. There were four years between him and Alonso, and sometimes that four years was pretty big. Like now. Alonso wasn’t saying something.

  “What are you going to tell Daddy?” Claudio asked.

  “I’m going to tell him I’ll go with the Wygnin,” Alonso said. “Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

  “About what?” Claudio asked.

  “Using the guns,” Alonso said. “Now get out.”

  He held the door. Claudio knew better than to argue with his older brother, but he didn’t get it. If Daddy was going to shoot the Wygnin, then why would Alonso try to go with them? Mommy said Wygnin broke children and never gave them back. Mommy said it was the perfect punishment, and Daddy had goofed up really bad, but not to worry. The lawyers would protect them.

  “What about the lawyers?” Claudio asked.

  “They lost,” Alonso said. “If you don’t go, I’ll kick your stupid little butt from here to Valhalla Basin.”

  Alonso wouldn’t say that if he didn’t mean it. He always kicked Claudio’s butt when Claudio got in his way.

  “I want to stay,” Claudio said, but he was crawling over the blankets toward the door.

  “No, you don’t,” Alonso said. He looked over his shoulder.

  Mommy was sobbing. She was saying, “No, don’t, honey. There’s got to be another way. There’s got to—”

  Her voice just broke off, followed by a big crash.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Alonso hissed. He kicked open the secret side door—the one that led directly outside.

  “What happened?” Claudio asked.

  Alonso looked over his shoulder again. “I’ll…tell you later, okay? Get out now.”

  Then he pushed Claudio, and Claudio tumbled toward the door, the jamb scratching his palms. He landed on the grass Daddy had been so proud of—Real Earth Grass! Daddy had said with pride, after it started growing.

  Alonso closed the door behind him, and Claudio couldn’t even see its edges. That was the beauty of the room, but it meant that if Claudio went back in, he would have to go in through the front door, and there was something wrong in the house. Something wrong with that crash, something in Mommy’s voice he’d never heard before.

  Besides, Alonso said he’d kick Claudio’s butt if Claudio didn’t go to that building. Claudio would tell them he wasn’t the firstborn, and maybe they’d understand, and then they’d come back with him to the house.

  Claudio ran, crushing the grass Daddy was so proud of, into the trees that Daddy had special-grown as a barrier against the other houses in the neighborhood.

  The building, old and dusty and built long before Claudio was born, didn’t look like it fit in. It was two blocks away, but Alonso said it got built when the secret room got built, back when people thought the Earth Alliance was abandoning Earth.

  Claudio didn’t know what that meant, but Alonso did, and that was good enough right now.

  Claudio thought he heard a scream, then thought that wasn’t possible, thought nobody screamed except when they were playing.

  Only this didn’t sound like an in-fun scream. It sounded like a really scared scream.

  It sounded like Alonso.

  Claudio ran as fast as he could, and tried not to hear the wail that came from his house.

  That was Daddy. Claudio knew it was Daddy.

  And then the wail stopped.

  But Claudio kept running.

  Because Alonso told him to.

  FIFTY-FOUR YEARS AGO

  THREE

  PEARL BROOKS SET down her school-issued tablet, and opened the refrigerator. Nothing. No money until the end of the month. They were out of fresh food, unless Pearl gave up some of her stash.

  Mom couldn’t work at her real job any more, not when they were on the run like this. And Mom’s corporation didn’t have Disappearance services.

  The corporation is a nonprofit, sweetheart, Mom would say, like that explained everything. Disappearance services aren’t ethical.

  Neither was running, and living in tiny crap-ass apartments that had low-level refrigerators that didn’t even say when food was close to spoiling. Mom had cried when the expensive, local-grown eggs they’d been doling out spoiled before they could use the last of them.

  Pearl hadn’t even known that eggs could spoil.

  The breakfast dishes were still crowded around the sink. Even if Mom could afford a bot, she wouldn’t get one—too risky, she said. She believed bots collected information, and maybe she was right. It was tough enough to find an apartment whose super didn’t care if the in-house network worked or not. And the place was a mess—one bedroom (for both of them), a living room that wasn’t big enough for living, and a kitchen so small the table had to be moved out if anyone wanted to cook.

  Not that they wanted to cook. But they had no choice. Take-out was too expensive.

  The only good thing about the apartment was the roof access. A side door, a few stairs, an almost-room-sized landing, and then the door to the flat space that overlooked this part of Injar.

  Pearl liked the view. It was unusual. She’d grown up in Valhalla Basin, where everything was the same. But here, at a crossroads at the edge of the Earth Alliance, the neighborhoods had
no regulation at all. She wasn’t even sure if the dome had sections.

  She could tell, just from glancing at the other rooftops, which buildings were built when. Different heights, different materials making the colors change from roof to roof, sometimes from floor to floor. Some buildings had add-ons, so they went from the dark gray of ancient permaplastic to the light gray of nanowallboard to the pale white of the latest building materials. Of course, those added-on buildings always looked like they were about to tumble over.

  Maybe she would go up to the roof and do her homework. The days when she could do half her work on her links were long gone, and the school-issued tablet she had only worked half the time. She spent most of her homework time trying to log onto the school’s public network.

  She hadn’t realized how good she had it, back when Mom worked for that nonprofit, Humans United. Back then, Pearl thought the two of them had no money.

  Now that Mom was fighting for jobs in wealthy neighborhoods where people paid a premium for human-served goods that could easily be distributed by bots, Pearl was learning what “no money” really meant.

  She looked at the tablet, then decided against bringing it. The day had been particularly hard. She was smart—she knew she was smart—but the kids were mean. They made fun of her clothes and her lack of links and her hair, and the fact she couldn’t network fast in class. Today, they’d been particularly nasty about the fact that she had worn the same black pants just two days before.

  She sighed, and pulled open the door to the hallway. Since Mom wasn’t in the apartment, and didn’t have a shift, she was probably on the roof. Maybe they could talk a little. Maybe Pearl could convince her this time that Pearl needed a job too. Just part time.

  Pearl pulled open the door to the roof, then blinked as a waft of foul-smelling air hit her. It smelled like someone had vomited in the stairwell. Vomited and lost control of their bowels.