SEVENTEEN

 

 

SOMETIMES FLINT WONDERED why he came to his office. He didn’t take clients anymore. He had retired as a Retrieval Artist, at least until Talia had made it through school.

He had put her in danger too many times.

Flint’s office was in an unprepossessing building in Old Armstrong. The dome was ancient here, and the filters didn’t work very well. Outside, Moon dust covered everything.

Inside his office, the Moon dust was no longer a factor. He had bought a state-of-the-art filter and upgraded it continually. His environmental systems here were as close to perfect as such systems could get on the Moon itself. They were almost as good as the ones in his space yacht.

He was rebuilding his entire computer system from scratch. As a young man, he had gotten his start in computers. When he had married Rhonda, Talia’s mother, his programming skills were legendary, and he combined them with hardware skills.

If his daughter Emmeline hadn’t died, he probably would have stayed in computers and never gone on to work for the City of Armstrong Police Department or branched out on his own as a Retrieval Artist.

Of course, that’s what he always assumed. Since Rhonda died and Talia came into his life, he wondered if his assumptions were wrong. Rhonda had planned her escape from their marriage years before Flint had even known there was a problem.

Still, he found it hard to get past years of assumptions with what he actually knew had happened. Particularly when what had happened was so very inexplicable. And Rhonda was dead, so he couldn’t ask her about her motives.

He desperately wanted to ask her about her motives.

Computer parts sat all around him. He had disassembled his entire front desk. Only one screen still worked. It was a floating holoscreen and he had it on random, so sometimes it was in his line of sight and sometimes it wasn’t.

He had it on a live feed that mixed entertainment news with sports and a few current events. Normally he had regular news or history programming on while he did this kind of work, but today he knew all that he would get was Anniversary Day programming. Either he’d hear all of the stupid speeches live or he would listen to the history programming droning on about what had happened.

Suddenly the screen stopped floating, and flew with great deliberation to the space just in front of his eyes. The entire screen glowed red.

Breaking news. Something important.

He sighed. He didn’t even want to look. It was Anniversary Day. Either the news would be something stupid or it would be something awful.

He expected stupid. Some politician said something idiotic in a speech or a bystander accidentally dropped a knife.

He glanced up and concentrated on the female anchor standing in a sea of images. He didn’t recognize this woman. He hadn’t paid attention to reporters since Ki Bowles died, probably because he still felt a bit guilty about that.

“…shortly after giving his speech, Mayor Arek Soseki collapsed outside O’Malley’s. Aides say Soseki died of natural causes, but add that the authorities must always investigate a sudden death….”

Flint frowned. Authorities didn’t have to investigate a sudden death.

He tapped the screen and opened it to all the Soseki news. Each media service had the same story. Then he glanced at his own computer system in pieces around him. His most powerful system was down.

But that didn’t stop him from using the little screen in front of him. He tapped it because he never used voice commands in his office—voice commands were too easy to compromise—and he searched for information that he knew had to be publicly available.

All of the Moon’s senior public officials had to put their latest health records into a public database. DeRicci had complained about this, because not every dome had ratified that law, which was a United Domes of the Moon law. But Armstrong had.

So Soseki’s health information should have been readily available.

Flint found the file quickly enough. But his screen told him that he couldn’t access that material because the system was overloaded.

He shook his head slightly. The system never got overloaded, not for a simple information search.

That little excuse was something that officials used when they took down information they didn’t want the public to see.

The hair rose on the back of Flint’s neck. He didn’t like this.

No reporter had ever flagged Soseki’s health. In fact, the reporters always expressed surprise at how very healthy Soseki was. Flint moved away from the public file and went back to the old news files.

There they were: all the reports on Soseki’s good health.

He leaned back, frowning. Why take down Soseki’s public health records if Soseki had been in perfect health?

Why would anyone cover that up?

Unless Soseki hadn’t died of natural causes.

Flint pushed the screen away, and it returned to its random float. He was being too paranoid. He always thought in terms of things going wrong.

Only something had gone wrong here.

Soseki had died on Anniversary Day, and now someone—for whatever reason—had decided to blame Soseki’s death on natural causes. But that same someone hid the health records which would have backed up that claim.

Flint didn’t like this. Right now, the news was calm, reporting the death of the mayor exactly way that the authorities wanted it reported. But eventually a dogged reporter, like Ki Bowles had been, would discover that something was odd.

All it took was one bad news story on a day like this, and the entire city would panic.

He stood and wiped off his hands. He didn’t want Talia to be alone if panic broke out.

Not that she would be alone, not at Aristotle Academy. The place was a fortress.

But she wouldn’t have him there.

If something went wrong, Talia would need him.

And maybe, if he was being honest with himself, he would need her.