The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (35 page)

But he didn’t like what he was thinking. He needed to quash the thoughts, if possible.

He needed more information before he made a choice he might regret. Because right now, the information that Jiolitti had given him would force him to choose between his duties to his client, and his duties as an officer of the court.

If he knew that someone in the Alliance was trying to bring down the Alliance, he needed to let the authorities know who that was.

But right now, he had nothing except paranoid speculation, brought on by the death of a friend, an enthusiasm for the law, and a willingness to take risks.

He couldn’t take a risk here. He had to be certain.

Or he couldn’t do anything at all.

THIRTY-NINE

ZHU HAD TO get out of the office, if only for a few minutes. He had hired twenty-five people in the past day, and if he had to repeat their names without using the images on the information chip in his hand, he wouldn’t be able. He wasn’t even certain he would recognize all of the new people tomorrow.

And he needed to. He needed some form of security in the office, but that required hiring a firm for it, and vetting everyone, and he didn’t really have time.

He had been over his head since Salehi had pulled him out of that bar—maybe since he passed the bar—and he was only diving deeper.

It was moments like that—
thoughts
like that—which were driving Zhu crazy. He needed help, he needed support, and he would get some of that when Salehi arrived a few days from now, but Zhu would still be point man on some of this stuff.

Maybe Zhu could become the office manager. Maybe he would tell Salehi to assign him that job.

And maybe the entire Moon would forget that the Peyti Crisis ever happened.

Yeah, right. As if that would ever happen.

Zhu walked around the corner to a deli he had discovered two days ago. The place, named Sevryn’s, was keeping him sane. It had real meat, sliced thin—turkey, beef, things you couldn’t get far out on Athena Base as well as all of the cured meats he could desire. The cured meats were even better here—he’d never tasted pastrami like they had in this place. The sausages seemed to come in an infinite variety, as did the cheeses.

The place was expensive as hell—even the bread was made with ingredients imported from Earth—and he didn’t care. He paid for it all with his S
3
accounts. S
3
was working him to death; they could at least pay for the privilege.

For all its expense, the deli was tiny. It had four tables near the windows overlooking the sidewalk, and those tables were always full. A line formed before the place opened (he knew, because the last two mornings, he had been in that line) and continued until eight, when one of the employees would activate the closing protocol.

Whoever was in line at closing got to stay in line; anyone who arrived five minutes too late was out of luck.

He knew that as well, because last night, he’d been out of luck. Which was why he’d come this morning.

He looked at the types of meats, rotating in a glass cabinet. He knew they were holographic representations of whatever the deli had in its back room, and he didn’t care. They looked phenomenal.

Something about all of this work was making him ravenous continually.

Maybe it
was
all of the work.

He was staring at some bluish cheese he couldn’t identify when someone bumped him, hard. He scooted to one side. If he hadn’t moved quickly, he would have been covered with hot coffee.

He looked up at a woman half a foot taller than he was. She wore an Armstrong police uniform.

“Sorry,” she said in a tone that told him that she wasn’t sorry at all.

Then someone bumped him from behind. He moved again, but this time he didn’t avoid some hot chicken soup slopping on his polished shoes. The soup filtered through old-fashioned laces he had been so proud of, cooling as it did. Fortunately, it didn’t burn the tops of his feet, but oh, man, did he feel the warmth—and the wet thickness of the soup itself.

“Yeah,” said a man, also in uniform, still holding the soup carton. “I’m sorry, too.”

Then a third person bumped Zhu, also a cop, and this time, he got drenched with some kind of cold drink. The drink stank of overripe lemons and it made him instantly sticky.

“Oh, my,” said the third cop. “Lookie what a mess you made.”

For a moment, Zhu thought he had misunderstood the cop. Zhu thought the cop had said,
Lookie what a mess
I
made
. But the cop had definitely said
you
instead of
I.

If Zhu had had any doubts this attack was deliberate, they were gone now.

He held up his hands. “Look, guys, I didn’t mean—”

“
Guys?”
the female cop asked. “Do I look like a
guy
to you?”

She waved her coffee as she did so, and it splattered on the floor.

“That’s enough!” said the man behind the counter. He was older, burly, with a tired air. Zhu had seen him here every day. The older man was probably the owner. “If you four have a beef with each other, take it outside. And don’t waste my good food.”

“We’re not wasting food, Mr. Sevryn,” the woman said. “It’s coffee.”

“I don’t care if it’s pisswater you brought in from that dive next door,” the man—Sevryn—said. “You’re slopping it in my place of business, and offending my customers, which ain’t allowed. Now, either quit your childish behavior or get the hell out of my store.”

“Sorry, Sev,” said the second cop. “Didn’t mean to offend.”

“Well, you did,” the man said. “Now get out.”

The cops nodded, then headed for the door, bumping Zhu one last time for good measure. He let out a sigh. He was soaked. He smelled of coffee, lemon water, and soup.

The floor was covered in puddles.

“I’ll help you clean up, sir,” he said to the owner.

“Naw,” the man said. “I got bots for that. But I don’t want to see your face around here no more.”

“I didn’t—they—”

“They did, and you did too,” the man said. “Don’t think I don’t know who you are. I didn’t lose nobody last week, but on Anniversary Day, I lost a son, two uncles, and my Aunt Marie. So I don’t need your kind here.”

“I’m not doing anything connected with Anniversary Day,” Zhu started. “I’m—”

“The hell you’re not.” The man had raised his voice. Everyone in the deli was looking at Zhu. “Those clones, they were working with them other clones, and they’re all trying to destroy us. Now you’re out there, recruiting soulless lawyers to save their asses. You have every right to conduct your business as you see fit, and so do I. And I don’t see fit to feed the likes of you. Now get out.”

Zhu opened his mouth to defend himself, and then sighed. No one had stepped forward to help him, no one had lifted a finger to stop those cops, and no one spoke up for him now. If anything, the people in line had moved farther away from him.

At first, Zhu had thought that was because of all the liquid splashing around. Then he had blamed it on the cops. But now, he felt vulnerable—truly vulnerable—because he was visible in a very real way.

Did everyone know who he was and what he was trying to do?

“I’m sorry,” Zhu said, not sure what else he could do. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I didn’t ask for the job—”

“Then you shouldn’ta done it, now should you?” the owner snapped. “Now, get out of my place.”

Zhu nodded, turned around, and sloshed his way to the door. His socks were heavy with soup, his suit hung on him, and he left little footprints on the floor. As he made his way across the deli, he thought of telling the owner how wonderful the food was, and trying for yet another defense.

But as he thought of the words, he realized he didn’t want to say that.

Instead, he put his hand on the door, and stopped.

“For the record,” he said in his courtroom voice, “we’re hiring more than a hundred people. They’ll need some place to eat. You just screwed yourself out of a lot of business, old man.”

The owner chuckled. “I don’t need your kinda business,” he said. “Have you looked around?”

“You pissed off a lawyer, buddy,” Zhu said, “who is hiring a bunch of other lawyers from off-Moon. Think it through.”

“Are you threatening him?” a woman asked as she stood.

Zhu ran a hand down his ruined clothing. “Do I look like a man who can make a credible threat?” he asked.

And then he walked out of the building.

He walked until he was past the windows, and then he stopped. He needed lunch, but he didn’t feel like he could go anywhere dressed like this.

He sighed, then decided that it didn’t matter. No one cared about him here. And he didn’t have to look presentable. Theoretically, word would get out—well, actually, it seemed that word
had
gotten out—and everyone would know what S
3
was doing.

Time to embrace it.

He pivoted and walked into the place that the old man had called “the dive next door.”

It wasn’t nearly as pretty, and Zhu’s lemon-filled nostrils couldn’t tell if it had much of a good-food smell at all. But it had more tables, and they were full.

He bellied his way up to the counter.

“So you’re the guy, eh?” the thin young man behind that counter asked. “I heard what happened next door.”

“I’m the guy,” Zhu said. “I have an expense account, and I’m extremely hungry. You want make some money?”

“I don’t ask what my customers do for a living, so long as their money is good,” the young man said. “Whatcha need?”

Zhu hesitated. The food looked a lot less appetizing here. The sandwiches were on bread clearly made with Moon flour, and the meat was the same old stuff that he saw at every other lunch counter between here and S
3
’s offices on the other side of the sector.

But the sandwiches made from vegetables looked spectacular. He actually perused the menu, saw that this place specialized in Moon food, getting fresh vegetables and fruits daily from the Growing Pits.

Zhu tapped the chip in his left index finger, the chip with S
3
’s expense account in it, and said, “I’m going to order a couple of sandwiches. If I like what I’m eating, then I’ll make a standing order for the office. Do you deliver?”

The young man smiled. “Do I deliver? Absolutely. On everything.”

Zhu smiled in return. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad day after all. Maybe he just needed to embrace who he had become, and everyone else would.

Or maybe he just had to learn to ignore the negative treatment.

Like any good defense attorney would.

FORTY

DESHIN STAYED IN the business suite long after Conte had left. Conte’s story had obvious flaws and miscues in it. It was very self-absorbed, like Conte himself, but it also had elements of the truth.

Deshin sat at the built-in breakfast bar with a view of those unknown snow-capped mountains. He could see the faint outline of trees on them—fir trees? He couldn’t quite tell, and he knew he wouldn’t be here long enough to find out.

He had already spent more time with Conte than he wanted to. Conte hadn’t made any money on this meeting—he had probably known coming in that he wouldn’t, which was why he had been so late—and he had left bruised. Kaielynn seemed to enjoy twisting Conte’s limbs enough to make the man wince.

But from all indications, Conte had told the truth as he knew it. He had found the body of PierLuigi Frémont in his cell. Maybe Conte had provided the drugs Frémont had used to kill himself, maybe not. That wasn’t Deshin’s concern.

But Conte had taken advantage of Frémont’s death to collect DNA in variety of forms. He was a guard in the prison, and he had done it before. But his usual co-conspirator was off that night, so he enlisted the help of a newcomer, a woman named Jhena Andre.

She had a thing for me
, Conte had said, and as he said that, Kaielynn had sent Deshin a message.

A thing?
Kaielynn sent.
She probably wanted to kill the bastard
.

Deshin usually liked it when Kaielynn couldn’t keep her opinions to herself, but in that instance, he didn’t. He wanted to concentrate on what Conte was saying.

And Conte was telling him how the girl smuggled the DNA out of the cellblock, leaving it in an unguarded closet. Conte had come for the DNA when his shift was over. He thought every bag was there, but that was years ago, and he never really checked.

After the Frémont DNA showed up on Anniversary Day in the form of very real clones, and slow-grow clones at that, Conte started looking for the source. If he partnered with that source, he could make a small fortune. Or maybe a large one.