The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (8 page)

His biggest worry wasn’t so much getting the Peyti clones to talk—he already saw that as close to impossible. His biggest worry was that another group no one paid attention to would try a third attack.

And he was afraid the third group would learn from their predecessors’ mistakes.

He was afraid the third attack would succeed.

ELEVEN

LUC DESHIN DID something unusual. He went home only an hour after he arrived at the office.

He needed to. He had to settle something before he could move ahead on his business.

He knew coming home would worry his wife; he also knew that it could not be helped.

He swept through the front door. His home was modest. Most of the money he spent on the house he’d spent on security. He kept all the security features up to date, and since the latest attacks, he’d also placed some guards—human guards—outside.

For once, Gerda hadn’t objected. She was good in an emergency, but she sometimes needed help, and he hadn’t been here for either attack—Anniversary Day or the attack last week. Much as he wanted to be available for his family, he so rarely was.

The house smelled of baking bread, which overlay the usual faint mint scent that Gerda used to calm them all. Gerda had been cooking ever since the Peyti Crisis. She either cooked or organized when she felt helpless.

He preferred the cooking. The organizing sometimes felt compulsive.

He threaded past the living room chairs, which looked like they hadn’t been used in weeks, and went into the heart of his home—the kitchen.

His small wife bent over the old-fashioned oven, door open and hot fragrant air wafting into the room. Deshin’s son, Paavo, stood beside her, protective gloves on his hands, a streak of flour on his cheek. The evenness of the streak told Deshin that the flour was expensive Earth-made flour, not the Moon flour that most people used.

Gerda was getting fancy. She had been cooking the old way for weeks now, not using any of the conveniences he had purchased for her. She had asked for this oven long ago, and he had protested: He hadn’t wanted Paavo near anything that could heat up like that.

But Gerda had convinced him, and he had benefitted. He loved the food she made with the slow heating unit.

“Daddy!” Paavo shouted and ran to Deshin. He hit Deshin with a force that rocked him slightly.

His boy, eight now, was no longer so thin that Deshin worried about him. He was getting taller as well. He hadn’t hit a growth spurt yet, but it was coming. His face held hints of the adult he would become.

In the two years since Deshin had solved the problem of Paavo’s ghosts, the problems that had filtered into the illegal links his biological parents had installed before Disappearing, Paavo had become a steadier, happier child.

He still treated his father as if his father—not his mother—were the center of his world. Deshin constantly braced himself for the day that would change: his memory of growing up and all of the child-rearing experts said at some point in his pre-teen years, Paavo would challenge his father’s authority. But that point hadn’t come yet.

Paavo looked up at him. The streak of flour was no longer on Paavo’s cheek, which meant it was probably on Deshin’s clothes.

“Something wrong?” Paavo asked, and his tone held that adultness that had threatened for months now.

Deshin didn’t know how to answer that.

Something always was wrong when he arrived home in the middle of the afternoon, but Paavo had meant the question in a particular way. He was asking if something as drastic as Anniversary Day or the Peyti Crisis had occurred.

Deshin’s gaze met Gerda’s. There were lines on her face that hadn’t been there before. She clearly had the same question their son did.

Deshin didn’t want to talk about the family’s future with Paavo. The boy was brilliant, one of the smartest children ever to attend Aristotle Academy, but he was still very young emotionally. And Deshin never had a good handle on the boy—what he could deal with and what he couldn’t.

Deshin had thought that Paavo would have trouble with the Peyti Crisis, particularly since several people—including a student—had died in the United Domes emergency action to stop the Peyti clones. But Paavo had taken that in stride. He was too young to know the student, and somehow he had come to the conclusion that bad things happened everywhere.

The only thing Deshin didn’t like about Paavo’s attitude was that Paavo also seemed to believe his father would make everything right.

“We haven’t heard anything on the news,” Gerda said. “Has something happened?”

“Not like that,” Deshin said, his hands still on Paavo’s back. The boy’s muscles had developed now, partly because he had insisted on learning how to be as strong as his father.

Some day, his boy would be as strong as his father and fifty times smarter. His boy would be the most formidable man in Armstrong, maybe in the Alliance—if there was anything left of Armstrong or the Alliance by then.

“Some business has come up,” Deshin said. “Paavo, can you let your mother and I—”

“You’re going to leave?” Paavo asked, his grip tightening. “Mom’s scared and you’re going to go away on business?”

Gerda winced, confirming Paavo’s words—as if Deshin needed them confirmed. Deshin’s heart sank. He knew that Gerda was upset by all that had happened; he hadn’t realized that her fears had seeped into the boy as well.

Deshin didn’t want to lie to his son, so he told an incomplete truth. “That’s not why I’m here.”

The actual truth would have been “that’s not
exactly
why I’m here,” although it was close.

Gerda must have seen the thought cross his face. She tried to get control of her own expression, but didn’t seem able to. Instead, she bent down, turned the bread pans around inside the oven, then closed the oven door, her face flushed from the heat. She had done that so she wouldn’t have to look at him, so that he wouldn’t see her reaction to his news.

“Can you give us a minute, Paavo?” Gerda asked, only her tone brooked no disagreement. She had made it sound like a question, but both the men in her life knew she was commanding Paavo to leave the room.

“I’m old enough—”

“Yes, you are,” Deshin said. “But right now, this isn’t about age. This is about private things between your parents. Please, let us talk.”

Paavo pulled away from him. Gerda half-smiled at Deshin. He never said “please” to anyone except his boy.

He and Gerda had brought him into their lives as a baby, but hadn’t formally adopted him until two years ago, fearing legal complications with his Disappeared parents. They ended up having legal complications, just not the ones they expected.

But he was theirs now, and that moment when Deshin thought he might lose the boy, that was the worst moment of his life.

He never expected to be this kind of parent. He thought he would be the father of half a dozen children, coming home to a large laughing household filled with playful athletic kids, not a quiet place with his wife and his brilliant son, thinking the day away.

But early on, Paavo had proven such a difficult child and they had loved him so much they didn’t want to lose focus on him when they brought in a different child.

Deshin and Gerda had talked about adopting another child. They felt that it might be good for Paavo now. But that had been just before Anniversary Day.

Anniversary Day changed everything.

Gerda walked to the kitchen door and stood, arms crossed. She watched as Paavo walked into his room and pulled the door closed.

Then she turned to Deshin.

“You can’t leave us now. There’s going to be another attack. We’ll die without you.”

He’d never heard his wife sound so terrified. He had married her for her courage as well as her heart. She had stood up to horrible things in their past, and she had defended Paavo like a she-tiger during the crisis with his biological parents.

If Gerda were one of his valued employees or even one of his friends, he would have tried to placate her. But she knew him better than anyone. She knew when he was trying to manipulate her.

He extended his hand toward the table, so that she would sit down. She shook her head slightly, clearly too upset to sit calmly. So he did.

He sat in one of the soft chairs that were such a part of his comfortable home, and stretched out his legs, crossed at the ankle, as if he were relaxing after one of Gerda’s marvelous meals.

“I’m not here to talk about my absence,” he said.

She frowned. She clearly didn’t understand.

“Sit, please,” he said.

She did. She sat on the edge of one of the chairs as if she were going to spring up at any moment. Behind her, he could see bowls on the counter. They were filled fresh-cut vegetables, some meat, and a spice mixture. He had no idea what she was going to make, but he knew it would be good.

“Since the Peyti Crisis, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Hell, since Anniversary Day. Since I couldn’t get home.”

“Luc, we’ve talked about that—”

He held up a hand, silencing her, then instantly regretted it. He didn’t want to treat her like staff, but he didn’t apologize either.

“Let me, Gerda,” he said.

Her lips thinned. She leaned back in the chair like a petulant teenager, and he almost—almost—smiled at the movement.

He’d been married to her long enough to know better than to smile at anything in a serious discussion.

“You remember that Retrieval Artist? Flint?”

She nodded.

“Before the crisis last week, I asked him to get me information on the explosions—what materials were used.”

“Luc, you promised you wouldn’t get involved.” That exasperation again.

He
hadn’t
promised. He had dodged. He had believed, after he had traveled to trace the zoodeh, that someone in authority would take over the investigations he was running.

He had hoped it would be Flint, but Deshin was just beginning to realize how stretched everyone was, and how clueless.

He didn’t argue with his wife. He couldn’t.

“I know you’re worried for me,” he said. “And—.”

“It’s not just me,” she said. “Paavo is afraid for you. He knows how close you came to dying on Anniversary Day. I don’t know how he knows, but he does.”

Deshin’s cheeks flushed. He hadn’t wanted his boy to know, but it was hard to hide information from Paavo. The boy was getting good at ferreting out a lot of things he shouldn’t know.

Another sidetrack.

Deshin nodded, working hard to keep his focus on Gerda.

“I’ve been talking to Flint, and my people have been following the official investigation.” Deshin made certain his tone was slow and measured. “They know nothing more than they did six months ago. And yet we all agree on one thing: there will be another attack.”

She shook her head. Denial.

“Gerda,” he said softly. “You know it too. That was the first thing you and Paavo thought of when you saw me.”

She closed her eyes and bowed her head. She wasn’t denying anything.

“I used to make fun of people who stayed in war zones,” he said quietly. “Especially people who had the money to escape. I wondered what kind of delusion kept them in place.”

She raised her head, eyes open now. She was watching him closely.

“Now, I know,” he said. “It’s a feeling that things just can’t get worse. Nothing else can happen. We’ve been through it all.”

That guarded expression had returned to her face. If the circumstances were different, he’d kiss the expression away.

“Gerda,” he said, “I’d like you and Paavo to go to Earth until this is all over. Somewhere with fantastic schools, somewhere pretty or with great weather or lots of history. Somewhere that will nurture our son.”

“
You
nurture our son,” she said.

“I protect our son,” Deshin said. “And I’ve been trying to come up with some place safe for him. There’s nowhere on the Moon right now. And you know it.”

Gerda stood. She walked over to the counter, and put her hands on two of the bowls as if she were thinking of doing something with them. Only she didn’t.

“You’ll come with us?” she asked with her back to him. Her posture told him she already knew the answer, and she didn’t want to see it on his face before he spoke.

“No,” he said.

“Because of
business
.” She had never spit the word like that, never made it sound so very hateful, before.

“No,” he said.

She whirled. Her face had gone gray.

“Then what?” she asked.

“There’s an investigation that only I can do.”

“
You?
” She said in that same tone, the one he’d never heard before. “You’re going to work with the authorities?
You
?”

It was a sign of how stressed she was, how frightened she was, that she was going to attack him.