“We have contacted seven such highly recommended ‘Artists,’” the speaker said, “before it became clear to us that none will take our money. They work for humans only.”
Of course. Yu hadn’t thought of that. Retrieval Artists worked against alien cultures, not with them.
“A Tracker, then,” Yu whispered. “Someone used to finding people. I find things.”
“A Fifth is not a person as we understand it,” the speaker said.
That statement was accurate as far as it went. “Person,” as the Gyonnese used the word, only counted the Original.
“Does this Fifth live within the Alliance?” Yu asked.
“Yes.” The speaker scuttled toward him. He realized that the Gyonnese thought the question meant he would take the job.
He took one step back, which was the Gyonnese equivalent of putting up his hands. “The reason I ask is this. If I recover a human Fifth that lives within the Alliance, I am breaking human laws. The action would be called a kidnapping. I could go to prison for the rest of my life.”
He wasn’t sure they understood what a kidnapping was, but they did understand prison. The Gyonnese had something similar for their own people, which was, he had heard, degrees worse.
All of the Gyonnese turned away from him. They merged into a small circle. They were discussing something, but he couldn’t hear because they had shut off their amplifiers.
His stomach ached. He hadn’t eaten well since Athenia ruined his life, and now the stress of this encounter was making him both hungry and nauseous. He wanted this meeting to end. He couldn’t help the Gyonnese, and he wasn’t sure how long it would take to convince them of that fact.
After a few minutes, they separated. They formed around him in a semicircle. The Gyonnese used circles as their primary meeting formation, and to include him inside one was a great honor.
“We understand kidnapping. We have studied much human law,” the speaker said to him. “We did not realize that such an act would apply to a Fifth. Our apologies.”
Yu felt his shoulders relax. He would be able to leave soon. “I accept your apologies.”
“We have another proposition for you instead,” the speaker said.
Yu had hunch he wouldn’t like this one either, but he couldn’t very well leave the circle.
“What’s that?”
“We need you to recover a human criminal.”
He was so nervous he wanted to make a joke: would any human criminal do? But he said nothing. He waited.
“Her name is Rhonda Flint. She has murdered generations of Gyonnese. She has been found guilty in Alliance court, but she has not complied with the court’s orders.”
“She’s Disappeared?” he asked.
“No,” the Gyonnese said. “She must turn over her Original child. But she has not done so. That child has Disappeared, or so we believe.”
“And no Retrieval Artist will help with this either, I suppose,” Yu said. “But I know for a fact that Trackers will.”
“Trackers believe the child dead.”
Despite himself, Yu was intrigued. “You don’t?”
“We think the Original might indeed be dead. But Rhonda Flint lives with a child, which we believe to be a Fifth. If the child is not a Fifth, we want that child. If the child is a Fifth, then Rhonda Flint is in violation of her court order. She has hidden the Original in such a way as to invalidate our legal rights. We want to take her to court, but the only way we can do that is to bring her ourselves.”
“Trackers,” Yu whispered. “They are your only hope.”
“Trackers must be hired through a human government. None will cooperate with us. We have a human lawyer who claims that such refusals negate Alliance law, but as we said, we cannot bring the case without her. So bring her to us. The same terms as before.”
“I don’t understand,” he whispered. He had never seen the Gyonnese so serious. “The court can compel her to come forward.”
“The court believes circumstances have discharged her debt,” the speaker said.
“For mass murder?” The shock almost made him raise his voice again, but at the last second he caught himself.
“That is the problem. The Alliance—the humans within the Alliance do not believe that she has committed a true crime. That is the problem with this system all along.” The speaker crossed his long arms over his torso. It was an attempt to mimic the human gesture, but every time Yu saw it, it looked like sausages wrapped around a stick.
“I still don’t understand,” Yu whispered.
“You humans allow what you call Disappearance Services for people like Rhonda Flint—”
“I thought she hadn’t Disappeared,” Yu whispered.
A nearby Gyonnese touched the speaker behind his back. The speaker’s whiskers flailed slightly, making a sound that didn’t reach the amplifier.
“She did not Disappear, because the court and her corporation protect her. But let me be clear. It is the same thing. You humans commit crimes, serious crimes, and they do not fit in your customs, so you allow those criminals to escape, to build new identities. It is causing rifts in the Earth Alliance, one that may lead to the exclusion of humans from the Alliance if the situation isn’t remedied.”
Yu’s head hurt. This was much more complex than he was used to.
“Okay,” he whispered. “By your standards, she’s a criminal.”
“By anyone’s standards,” the speaker said. “She has committed mass murder. She is not going to be punished. We are going to demand punishment.”
“Or what?” Yu asked. “Cause an interstellar incident?”
“That is not your concern. Your concern is recovering this woman for us.”
“I’m not licensed for human trafficking,” he whispered. No one in the Alliance was.
“It is simply the recovery of an unwilling criminal,” the speaker said.
“Which I’m not trained for either. I work with
“This woman works for one of the largest corporations in the human universe. No human government is going to cross it.”
Which, Yu realized, was the crux of the problem.
“We will double the fee we initially offered you,” the speaker said.
The coldness grew worse. Clearly, he was their last hope.
“Show me what she did,” he whispered, knowing he was already lost.
Rhonda Flint worked for one of the largest corporations in the known universe. Aleyd developed products all over the Alliance. Twenty years ago, the corporation had leased a lot of land on Gyonne, and had negotiated various deals with the Gyonnese to market the Gyonnese’s farming techniques to poor regions of planets with difficult environments.
The Gyonnese had a terraforming technique that worked extremely well with unusual environments. Aleyd would market that in exchange for permission to lease Gyonnese land for its work on colonial products.
One of those products was a new fertilizer designed by Rhonda Flint. It was an aerial spray, which she tested near one of the Gyonnese’s larval beds.
The spray was lethal to Gyonnese larvae. Sixty thousand Gyonnese larvae died. Had these larvae grown, they would have been Original Gyonnese. One hundred and twenty thousand families probably lost the ability to reproduce. The effect to the Gyonnese was devastating. It was as if an entire section of the planet had been wiped out.
For the first time in his life, Yu understood both sides of an argument. The Gyonnese larvae had already split. The genetic material had been preserved in a secondary larval bed. From a human perspective, the equivalent of a
