Free Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

that had gone off, all the destruction and panic that were still continuing, all the lives ended, the lives disrupted, the change thrust upon an entire place, something that would never ever be the same again.
    She was glad her children were grown and her husband had passed away. She needed to see this alone.
    She took a deep breath of the fresh air, felt the wind blow softly over her, and closed her eyes for just a moment. Then she squared her shoulders, raised her face to the sky, and opened her eyes.
    Without thinking about it too much, she telescoped her vision, centering in on one of the dark patches.
    It took a moment for the images to coalesce. She saw vast expanses of Moon landscape, and then she saw tiny buildings near what appeared to be a road. Finally, she looked at the darkest area, and gasped.
    A dome—she didn’t know which one—broken and dark, its jagged edges visible even from this distance. She thought she saw smoke rising from it, but she knew that wasn’t possible. Was it dust, escaping from the opening? Dust or ash or something else?
    Or was she imagining it, based on all the news coverage she had been trying to ignore?
    Her stomach turned, but she made herself look. She looked at the other domes, not quite in the center of her vision. They weren’t as round and smooth as they had been. They appeared broken. Or maybe that was how her mind interpreted the data.
    Because she could see lights around center pools of darkness, darkness where there hadn’t been any before.
    She stared at the Moon for the longest time, shuddering, thinking about debris fields and the force that exploded materials exerted as they spiraled outward, away from the explosion.
    Even in zero-G.
    She closed her eyes, felt her eyelashes, wet and spikey, against her cheek.
    “Mrs. Landau?” The voice speaking to her seemed faint and far away. “Mrs. Landau, are you okay?”
    She made herself open her eyes. Her cheeks and chin were wet. She blinked, shutting off the telescope, and looked at the sound of the voice.
    One of her students. A boy, his face half in shadow. She couldn’t think of his name at the moment, which spoke to the depth of her distress. Because she had always been good with names.
    Always.
    She swallowed so that her throat was lubricated before she tried to speak.
    “I’m all right,” she said. “Thank you.”
    He didn’t move. He was peering at her. She knew who he was; his name just wasn’t coming to her. He was the boy who, at the start of the school year, had asked her why she insisted on being called “Mrs.” when none of the other married female teachers did.
    It’s an old-fashioned honorific , she had said, lying a bit. I like the sense of history.
    He hadn’t understood it then, and she doubted he would understand it now. She did like the sense of history, but not the history of the title. The history it spoke of with her husband, a man who had loved her in spite of everything. They had been happy together. They had spent years raising children and being traditional and learning how to live in an old-fashioned world when the rest of the universe seemed to thrive on the edges, on the new.
    She had loved that, and even though it was gone, even though she was the only one of her family remaining in Davenport, she wanted to honor it.
    “You don’t look all right,” the boy said after a moment.
    “It’s just disturbing, that’s all,” she said, as if destroyed cities were a small thing. “Have you ever been to the Moon?”
    He shook his head. “My dad wanted us to come out and look. For the history, you know. He said you’ll never forget this.”
    “He’s right,” she said softly, then looked up. “None of us ever will.”

 
     
     
     
    TEN
     
     
    DESHIN SAT AT the desk in his office, surrounded by screens. He felt like his son Paavo, trying to solve a particularly difficult math problem.
    Not that Paavo would have needed a ring of screens to see everything. That boy could see