Paloma Read online

  “He left,” DeRicci said. “I checked on a few things he said and stumbled on this.”

  “It’s related to the Paloma case, then?” Popova asked.

  “It started from that,” DeRicci said truthfully. “I found a notation in one of the files that Nyquist had given me that made no sense. Then I continued my research and found all of this. I don’t think any of these ships relate to Paloma’s case—”

  At least, DeRicci hoped not; she hadn’t searched for any connections other than the Lost Seas.

  “—but if you find that they are, let me know.”

  “Of course,” Popova said.

  “And I don’t have to remind you that this is all confidential,” DeRicci said, doing just that.

  “Of course not.” Popova seemed to stand at even greater attention. “How soon do you need this?”

  “As soon as possible,” DeRicci said.

  “You think we have a budding crisis on our hands?” Popova asked.

  “No,” DeRicci said. “I’m afraid we have an old neglected one.”

  Nineteen

  Ki Bowles arrived at her apartment to find piles of things outside her door. All had been neatly boxed, labeled, and laid out in a pattern that effectively blocked her entrance.

  All of the boxes had come from InterDome, and they contained a career’s worth of things—her possessions, her research materials, her demos and production recordings, and her best-stories archive. Everything she had ever brought or ever created at InterDome was in these boxes.

  Everything she’d thought she’d been.

  Someone had dumped them here without a care as to what was inside. Someone had set them where they could be stolen or destroyed or just plain lost.

  She had gone from being InterDome’s most important young employee to its whipping girl. She was afraid to watch anything on her link, afraid that she’d be mentioned in terrible tones.

  Or worse, that she wouldn’t be mentioned at all.

  She tried to shove a pile aside with her foot and found that she couldn’t budge it. Robots had packed these things and probably brought them here. Which explained why they were in such neat rows. InterDome hadn’t even had the courtesy to send a human with her belongings. They had sent a group of anal-retentive robots.

  Which, of course, was an oxymoron. Robots were what robots were. But she hated the gesture nonetheless.

  She sighed and leaned over the boxes so that she could put her palm on the door, activating the security system’s retinal scan. As it went through its varied procedure, the system sent out pulses of light—something she’d designed so that she wouldn’t be standing here, waiting for the system to unlock, only to discover (after maybe a half an hour of nothing) that it had somehow malfunctioned.

  She’d had too many problems like that over the years, and too many “interested fans” whom the law sometimes called stalkers, to allow that much time to pass while she waited.

  The door clicked and slid open. Interior lights turned on. She cleared her throat and called for her own house robots, small machines that were little more than cleaners and serving equipment, demanding that they pick up the boxes and move them inside.

  As the first robot appeared—a small dervish that she usually used for drinks—she commanded it to start with the boxes in the center. That way, she could get inside quickly.

  Levers came out of the robot’s thin sides and hoisted the box on top of the dervish as if the box weighed nothing. Half a dozen other robots appeared, all working off the same instruction, making the slight, low-pitched humming noise that robots were required to make by law so that no one would be surprised when they approached.

  Each ‘bot picked up a box or two or four and carried them inside, heading down the hall toward Bowles’ home office—or the room she called her home office. She’d never been home enough to work out of it. She used this place mostly for sleeping.

  Meals were eaten on the fly; research done in the office; any relaxation—holotales, 2-D flat movies, books—were enjoyed in a special room at InterDome, in one of Armstrong’s many libraries, or in a corner of her favorite restaurant.

  Mostly, she had worked—interviewing potential subjects, filming anything she saw that seemed unusual, stopping at crime scenes just to make sure everything was aboveboard. Even her interests had been work-related: she’d taken courses in the Disty language after the most recent Mars crisis, and spent some time studying the rudimentary elements of Earth Alliance law, learning that what she thought she knew hadn’t been anything at all.

  She stepped through the opening the ‘bots left and went inside the apartment. Except for the hall light, which came on automatically, the place was dark. Usually, she commanded lights up the moment she entered a room, but this time, she paused.

  The living area looked unfamiliar to her. She had bought the couch and the three extra-wide chairs, thinking them perfect for the kind of review that happened during research, but she’d never used them. She had a wall of screens, all framed as if they were art, but they looked strangely empty without anything playing on them, almost eerie, as if they were waiting for some family pictures to appear and give them life.

  The place smelled dusty and abandoned—no lingering food odors, no programmed odors like ocean or evergreen, not even a hint of the body perfumes she wore. The ‘bots cleaned the air as a matter of course; apparently, with nothing to clean, they had eliminated most odors entirely.

  The last ‘bot came in with the final box, disappearing down the hall into that hidden office. The main door closed behind it.

  “Lights up,” Bowles whispered.

  The room looked no better with its lights. It was dingy and unwelcome, like a showroom that had been abandoned. No pillows on the couch, not even a body dent. Had she sat on it for more than a few moments? She couldn’t remember, which meant she probably hadn’t.

  “Depressing,” she muttered as she headed to the kitchen. She kept it well stocked, just in case she wanted to eat in. Keeping up the food gave the ‘bots something to do. She paid a lot for this place and the ‘bots that kept it functioning. She always felt that they needed to be busy, even though they probably wouldn’t notice if they weren’t.

  She took out a bottle of Real Earth Water and opened it, tossing the cap into the recycler, and then headed down the hall.

  By Armstrong standards, this apartment was large and impressive. The neighborhood wasn’t the most upscale in the city. It wasn’t even as tony as Paloma’s had been. But it was a good, prestigious address, in an improving area. By the time Bowles retired, she’d thought when she bought the place, it would be worth millions of credits more than it was now.

  A gamble she had taken. One of many. Now the upscale address didn’t mean as much, and the apartment seemed more a symbol of the life she’d lived this morning than the one she was living this afternoon.

  The boxes filled her small office. She didn’t even look at them. Instead, she walked into the guest room, a space no guest had ever stayed in. She wasn’t even sure why she had had a second bed made up, furnished a comfortable discussion area in the corner, and added a small cooking corner to the side.

  Maybe it was the presence of the en suite bathroom, or maybe it was because she’d been taught that all homes had a guest area. Or maybe she had hoped, way back when she’d bought the place, to have guests.

  She’d once believed reporters were popular people. She’d never really understood until a year or two into the job that they were hated. The hatred became fascination as the reporter gained fame. Then she had to deal with hatred or worse, people who became her friend because she could get them something—whether it was a job at InterDome, some measure of their own fame, or a bit of prestige just from knowing her.

  None of those people had ever been invited to her home.

  The only people who had come to her home, besides the service people who were the human faces of management here, had been her colleagues for her annual private party, which
she’d always held on her birthday.

  She’d never told anyone it was her birthday, so she never got gifts. Her parents were far away, and their presents were always sent a long time in advance. She’d open those when the gifts arrived, not on the actual day, but she’d always felt the need for a celebration.

  This year, she’d even had a large cake. No one asked about it, but everyone had enjoyed it.

  Everyone except her.

  The guest room smelled even mustier than the main room. She ran a hand along the comforter, noting that it was a bit clammy, and wondered if she’d ever instructed the ‘bots to clean here.

  Probably not. She probably hadn’t seen the point.

  Her bedroom was the only room in the place with any personality. It smelled faintly of her soaps and perfumes. The bed looked a bit rumpled, its bright red comforter familiar and welcoming.

  She resisted the urge to sprawl on it—if she lay down, she’d never get back up again. Depression, in the form of an understandable pity party, waited to take her in its blackness and hold her there as long as she wanted to stay.

  She wasn’t going to do that.

  She sank into the fourth oversized chair in the apartment, the only one that had an impression of her body, the only chair that ever got used. She ran a hand over her face and leaned back.

  What she needed was a plan. She had options. She could apply at the other media outlets. They’d know InterDome had let her go. They’d assume they knew why. She would explain her side.

  But they’d probably want to put her on Gossip, too. She hadn’t repaired her reputation, and now the dismissal from InterDome would simply make that reputation worse.

  She could volunteer to work for minimal salary, be treated as the lowliest intern, just like she had done when she started at InterDome, but the very thought of humbling herself that much made her stomach hurt.

  She could produce her own ‘casts, send up stories without the benefit of InterDome’s connections, using the public access areas of the newslinks. She could make her ‘casts personal and chatty or cover riskier topics than InterDome allowed her to do.

  But she would know—and some of her fans would know—that she had settled. That she was doing this because she could no longer function on a Moon-wide level. Her stories would only reach Armstrong, and then only parts of it. She would have to rely on word of mouth to get any buzz at all.

  She sipped the water. It was cold and fresh. Moon water had a flatness, an almost metallic taste that probably came from all of the recycling. It was probably healthier than the stuff imported from Earth—who knew what germs that stuff had—and it was certainly less expensive, but it didn’t have the taste.

  She would have to let her parents know she’d been fired. They liked watching InterDome’s Alliance-wide reports, hoping to see something she had put together. The last thing she’d want was her parents to find out her career was over long before she told them.

  Only a few things to do—talk to her parents, figure out a plan—and already she was overwhelmed.

  She supposed she could contact her lawyer and see if InterDome had the right to terminate her contract in such a preemptory manner, particularly when she had been cooperating with them.

  But she’d always hated whiners, people who sued rather than solved. Besides, the case would eat her alive, keep her focused on past injustices, rather than make her future.

  And she was afraid, ironically enough, of the publicity. If she took on InterDome, the gossips would cover the story as if it were the destruction of Armstrong media. She would have to face former colleagues and tell them to leave her alone, or pretend to confide in them so that she could manipulate them.

  Her name would be all over the news, but as a newsmaker, not as a reporter.

  She couldn’t stomach that, either.

  She leaned the bottle on the arm of her chair and closed her eyes. Maybe she would follow Flint’s example. Maybe she would get a completely new profession. She never trained as a journalist. She’d been an art historian.

  There were museums all over the solar system that needed an expert in multicultural art. She could revive the career she’d abandoned.

  But she’d abandoned that for a reason. It seemed like a waste to spend her life managing someone else’s art, even if it were the most respected art of various cultures. She wanted to create on her own. She had no artistic skills—she couldn’t draw or paint or sculpt—but she could tell stories, and she adored doing that.

  Reviving the art history career wasn’t for her.

  But she could revive her own career somewhere else. Take her credentials and show up at the outer reaches of the solar system, maybe even go farther into human-settled territory, and report from there. Not as a link to InterDome or any of the other Moon-based media, but for the local media in whatever place she’d ended up in.

  She would tell them she needed a change of pace, or she wanted to become a real reporter, one who explored the dangerous parts of the Earth Alliance, rather than sitting in its tame hub.

  But the thought of danger worried her. She wasn’t that courageous. She’d often thought of those Disappeared, average people who, because of circumstances, had had to give up everything and start all over again.

  They didn’t even have their names to work with. They couldn’t mention their personal histories.

  They only had their pluck and their willingness to live a new life.

  And people like Paloma and Miles Flint destroyed those lives.

  Bowles sat up, her eyes opening. No one had ever done a long, in-depth study of the Disappeared. No one had done more than a series of reports on the phenomenon. Everyone was afraid of it.

  But she had some contacts and she had a hook—Paloma’s murder. She could do the series freelance, or maybe even do it as a nonfiction study, one of those week-long things that people downloaded, then watched in pieces, sometimes over the space of months.

  She had the credentials to pull this off. And the ability, although she’d never done anything so in-depth.

  What she needed was help from her manager getting a deal with one of the outlets—not a news outlet, but an educational one—and maybe some assistance, like an educational grant while she put the entire thing together.

  Her heart started pounding the way it always did when she felt like she had a good story. She could even use some of her back pieces, pieces that went nowhere, like the Child Martyr story. She could look at Noelle DeRicci in context and see if the rumors that DeRicci had helped some Disappeareds vanish were true.

  Bowles sent a message to her manager, asking for a meeting, and then she got up and went into that home office. She summoned a single ‘bot and got it to move some of the boxes so that she could sit at her desk.

  There she started a file of notes, ideas for the longer piece, things she had to investigate.

  On her own. Without a team of rookies mucking her up. Without a boss overseeing her effort. Without a group of lawyers worrying about her every word.

  If she did a good enough job, this story would open doors for her and give her a new career that used the skills of both of her old careers—investigating the past, and digging into the present.

  She smiled. One thing she had learned at InterDome. She would survive this. Even if they publicized why she was no longer there, people would forget by the time this long piece hit the links. Her reputation would have a black mark, but the mark would mean little compared to all the accolades she’d received over her career, the award-winning stories she’d told, the scoops she’d broken.

  She would survive this, and she would do better than she ever had.

  She was amazed she hadn’t made a change like this a long, long time ago.

  Twenty

  Maxine Van Alen had offices in a five-story office building that had once been Armstrong’s first courthouse. Called the Old Legal Building, the place was on the historic registry for the Earth Alliance, and was even considered a tourist attrac
tion.

  Flint thought that a good omen.

  The neighborhood wasn’t as old as his and it was better kept up. But it was in Old Armstrong, and the dome filters here were as poor as the ones near his building. A fine layer of Moon dust covered everything. A few locals wore breathing masks over their mouths and noses. The masks were designed to look like skin, but because they had to have a small space for oxygen, they looked like enhancements gone wrong.

  The buildings themselves looked fine in the dust. Most were made of Moon brick here, so the dust seemed like part of them. In fact, Flint couldn’t guarantee that the dust didn’t come from them. In the last few decades, early Moon brick had started to crumble because it was made with the wrong combination of ingredients. The early colonists hadn’t had the resources or the know-how to make proper brick, but had done the best they could.

  Inside the Old Legal Building, the walls had been fortified, first with permaplastic (probably by the old colonists, when it became clear that their brick might not hold up) and then with various modern substances. The Old Legal Building’s brick covered the outside like a disaster waiting to happen, but the inside, for all its historical significance, was as much a modern building as the one he’d worked in when he’d been with the police.

  Maxine Van Alen had the entire fifth floor. At the moment, elevators made Flint think of Paloma, so he took the stairs.

  The stairs ended not in a hallway, but in a fully functional office space that had no entrance door. Desks were scattered about the wide room and employees scurried about as if each person’s mission was important.

  ‘Bots picked up leftover equipment, probably to protect confidentiality, and made certain no coffee cups or half-eaten sandwiches marred any surface. The air smelled faintly of lavender, which was one of the soothing designer scents often sold to large office buildings. The smell always made Flint sneeze.

  His sneeze caught the attention of a red-haired young man with muttonchop whiskers. He wore a long paisley coat and carried actual files, probably for effect.