Heaven's Only Daughter - Laura Resnick(1), ebook
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======================Heaven's Only Daughterby Laura Resnick======================Copyright (c)1992 by Laura ResnickFirst published in Whatdunits, October 1992Fictionwisewww.Fictionwise.comScience Fiction---------------------------------NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.---------------------------------It was a strange case right from the start. Mrs. Polona Heaven said that her daughter, one Kara Heaven, had been kidnapped by aliens. She hired us to get the girl back with the stipulation that there was to be no scandal or political embarrassment involved in the girl's retrieval. That was how she put it: retrieval. That should have tipped me off, but I was still relatively new to the business. The technical stuff, like tracing missing persons, verifying identities, tailing suspects -- you can learn all of that pretty quickly. But reading people? No, that takes years of experience.You may wonder what a nice girl like me is doing in this sordid business. Actually, ever since the first Interstellar Arms Reduction Treaty was signed, a lot of perfectly respectable people (i.e., ex-military types who sincerely believed they were honor-bound to destroy two whole planets in the Incubus system before we learned that those poisonous molds were actually sentient beings) have gone into private investigations. What's more, business is booming in the private sector. Let's face it, with the galaxy opening up and bureaucracy spearheading humankind's expansion into the Milky Way, there's not much point in expecting the government, the police, or the civil service to get anything done on behalf of the ordinary citizen. Sure, when the Governor of the United African States awoke one day to find her ceremonial tiara had been stolen, it was a big deal, and three interplanetary law enforcement networks searched half the solar system for the culprit (in addition to priceless gems, the tiara apparently had certain religious significance, and witch doctors far and wide were gleefully warning that the African union would crumble if the tiara were not successfully retrieved and the thief suitably punished). But if an ordinary person's tiara -- or daughter -- disappears these days, your only hope is to hire a team of private investigators.I actually used to be a reproductive counselor (or, more accurately, I used to advise people how to fornicate _without_ reproducing). But after that memorable altercation our men and women in uniform had with the fierce and bloodthirsty inhabitants of Polonius IV (all of whom are now safely dead or in "cheerfully decorated rehabilitation camps"), a lot of government funding was diverted to the military to pay for those weapons that we now have to liquidate, under the terms of the most recent Interstellar Arms Reduction Treaty.So I found myself out of work just about the time my best friend's partner disappeared -- after having embezzled three million credits from the business they owned jointly. I held her hand all through her dealings with the firm of detectives she hired to find the bastard. By the time they'd been on retainer for four months, I decided that after five years of being overworked and underpaid, _I'd_ sure like to make that much money for supplying so few results. So I went back to school for another year, then got an entry-level job with Harker and Fontina Investigations.Like some others in this business, I've read a few private eye books by some of the classic authors, many of whom have been dead for centuries -- Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler among them. A lot of the references are pretty baffling, even after you read the footnotes, but there's an archaic romanticism there that appeals to me. That, of course, is part of my problem.Even after two years at the agency, two years of catching adulterers in the act, dealing with perverts and sex offenders, tracing teenagers who probably had a damned good reason for running away in the first place, and retrieving stolen property that no sensible person would want back, I still had this crazy idea that I was in a moral profession. I believed that I was one of the good guys and that I was supposed to do what was right. How I managed to keep believing this, even as I photographed copulating couples without their knowledge (on adultery cases, I mean), is a question that could probably occupy a therapist for several years. Maybe some of that stuff I read, in which heroes and heroines were always doing the hard thing for the right reason, got to me.Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised (which shows how naive I was) when Harker and Fontina assigned me to the Heaven case. Though I had worked on over a dozen interplanetary cases, this was my first interstellar case. It was also my first case involving non-humans (which goes to follow, since the Interstellar Migration Act prohibits alien races who act like _us_ from coming here, which means we have virtually no alien crime in this system). It was potentially the most politically sensitive case I'd ever been assigned to, and I was very excited about having a chance to prove my mettle (we're talking _naive_). I thought the fact that I was assigned alone to the case, with no supervision other than the usual progress reports, was a measure of the firm's confidence in me (yes, I know, you needn't say it).Mrs. Heaven's personality made it immediately apparent to me why aliens had kidnapped her daughter instead of _her_. Though quite beautiful, she was as cold as ice, with a hard, ruthless edge and an imperious manner that made me long to do something undignified to her. If she had any motherly feelings toward her abducted daughter, she kept them well-hidden. I was given orders to bring the girl home with all due haste, primarily, it seemed, because Mrs. Heaven found the entire situation tediously inconvenient and socially embarrassing.I had dealt with kidnapping on a couple of earlier cases. I have to admit that, despite my bewilderment at Mrs. Heaven's apparent immunity to the emotional trauma of her daughter's kidnapping, I was somewhat relieved. A great deal of time is lost in consoling the family, delicate questions are difficult to ask of sobbing parents, and honest answers and estimates are almost impossible to give in the face of a terrified mother's desperate hopes."Now, then, Mrs. Heaven, when did your daughter disappear?"She checked her calendar, a luminous little holographic dial which hung from her neck on a chain made of crystallized quicksilver. "I noticed she was gone yesterday, around 1300 hours. I returned from my luncheon with Irina Halstead-Mao to find my daughter's chambers empty. I became worried when she didn't return toward evening, since she knew we were scheduled to attend the inaugural ball of the Interplanetary Governor."Fearing she might mention more VIPs if given the opportunity, I tried to get Mrs. Heaven to pinpoint the exact hour her daughter was last seen. It proved to be a futile exercise. Although Mrs. Heaven had noticed Kara was missing yesterday, she hadn't actually seen her for over two weeks."What about Mr. Heaven?" I asked."I saw him this morning.""No, I mean has _he_ seen her?""Of course not. Why would he see her?"Well, damned if I could think of a reason. We moved on. "Does Kara have any close friends who might have seen her during the past two weeks?""She has a fiance, _obviously_." The glacial look in Mrs. Heaven's eyes made it clear what she thought of private investigators who didn't keep abreast of society news. "The wedding is scheduled for the fifteenth of next month, and Kara must be back in time for the standard social functions.""I see. What's the name of her prospective husband, ma'am?" She appeared reluctant to answer, as if finding it distasteful to involve him in this messy business, so I prodded, "It's important that I talk to him, Mrs. Heaven. He probably knows something about her activities and can perhaps help me pinpoint the actual date of her disappearance." She relented, and we proceeded to the next, and most important, question. "What makes you think she was kidnapped by aliens, ma'am?""Who else would do such a thing?" she said frostily.I decided to return to that subject later."Does Kara have a job?" I asked, looking for some link to the real world. An incredulous stare was the only response. Silly question, I suppose. The Heavens were one of the five hundred richest families in the Western hemisphere. No, they weren't ordinary people, and they probably could have gotten powerful government agencies interested in locating their daughter. However, as I've mentioned, Mrs. Heaven wanted no breath of scandal, a requirement that clearly ruled out government involvement."Has there been a ransom demand?" I asked, continuing the interview with true grit."No, of course not. Aliens don't understand the value of money," she said contemptuously.Actually, that's not quite true. The Interstellar Migration Act was passed almost a century ago because a small band of Shirulians waylaid a ship carrying the semi-annual payroll of three major interplanetary corporations. They boarded her somewhere between Saturn and Jupiter and made off with the greatest sum of money any group of thieves had ever even attempted to steal. So I figured that at least _some_ aliens knew the value of a cred...
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