Retrieval Artist Omnibus by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Author:Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Read, Not Read, scifi, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

28

About two hours after ordering his second coffee and sandwich, Flint moved to another table with a different screen and started using a different stolen identification. The law school cafeteria was filling up with students, most of whom seemed very intent on getting their food and finishing whatever project they were working on. A group of humans sat two tables over, arguing about the origins of the Multicultural Tribunals. Flint tried to tune out the argument, but at least two of the students were witty; he found himself smiling more than he thought possible when doing this kind of grunt work.

And grunt work this was. Corporate records, corporate finances, corporate regulations made his eyes cross. He was about to give up and move to a different line of research when he finally found what he was looking for.

A company that subcontracted to one of the subcorporations of Gale Research and Development had a single employee, a woman named Mary Sue Jørgen Meister. On most of the corporate records, she was listed as M. S. J. Meister, but on one he found her full name.

It hadn't shown up in his initial search because the company was so small that it was buried in the records. Still, Mary Sue Jørgen Meister made Gale Research and Development two hundred thousand credits in the space of a month.

She had acquired water rights for a small tributary in an Outlying Colony. She sold those rights to a subsidiary of Gale Research and Development, who then sold those rights to Gale, who then transferred the rights to BiMela. Who then resold those rights to another corporation (not affiliated) for two hundred thousand more than Gale had originally paid for them.

Flint followed the lead all the way down to the tributary itself, which, it turned out, didn't exist. The tributary had dried up decades before, shortly after that nation in the Outlying Colonies settled a city upriver, but for some reason, mapmakers kept the tributary on the map. The owners of the land didn't mind selling the water rights for cheap, even though there was currently no water. They assumed that water would come back at some point, ignoring the dams that had been installed farther upstream.

But the hydropower corporation that had bought the rights from BiMela claimed fraud. BiMela claimed ignorance, and went all the way back down the chain, suing the company that M. S. J. Meister had founded. A company that had disbanded in the years it took the hydropower corporation to realize it had bought the rights to a nonexistent stream.

M. S. J. Meister had vanished as well. But Flint had names to work with: Mary Sue and Meister. He found various spellings and more scams, some connected to BiMela, some not.

Mary Sue had her fingerprints all over BiMela's corporate entity, but Meister didn't. That name ended with the hydropower case.

But the name began long before that.

A flashing red light caught Flint's attention. This table warned him with an obnoxious flashing sign that his free privileges were about to be suspended.

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