iles Flint is a Retrieval Artist, hired to find the Disappeared, humans typically convicted of crimes against alien societies. But because these crimes are trivial transgressions in human culture, the guilty party often "disappears" under a new identity. Thus, cordial relations between humans and aliens are maintained by providing the illusion of respecting extraterrestrial law while cheating it. Situations occur, however, when the Disappeared need to be found, in which case a Retrieval Artist is hired to trace the whereabouts of the Disappeared while protecting their identity from those who would cause them harm, in particular Trackers, bounty hunters who seek the Disappeared for the purpose of fulfilling justice.
The Moon Marathon is an ordinary 26.2-mile race, save for the fact that it is conducted on the lunar surface in one-sixth of Earth's gravity. So it is less running than leaping. The danger is that an ill-timed lunge that lands on a jagged rock can easily cause an injury, even rip an environmental suit. Sometimes, especially with inexperienced runners, it can lead to death.
Jane Zweig is a veteran competitor and therefore an odd fatality. Even more peculiar is that her environmental suit, indeed her very boots, are devoid of the lunar dust that coats everything that treads the surface, suggesting her death was not on the race path.
During Detective Noelle DeRicci's investigation, a highly infectious deadly disease among the race participants breaks out. They are quarantined for fear of spreading it to the larger dome colony. If a cure cannot be administered, everyone in quarantine will die.
Miriam Oliviari believes the source of the disease is Freida Tey, a scientist who has Disappeared following her conviction for fatally infecting human subjects. It is Tey's contention that extreme experimental circumstances to test human survival strategies are necessary to develop resilience in space-based existence among alien civilizations. Oliviari, a Tracker who suspects one of the racers is Tey, fears that another such an experiment is underway.
Meanwhile, our man Flint is asked to take on the case of a Disappeared who appears to be the very murder victim his old police partner is investigating.
A tense sequel of future justice
In connecting the dots among these three situations, Rusch provides quickly moving and suitably cliff-hanging narratives told in alternating chapters among these three characters. One reason why Rusch effectively blends together the detective/murder mystery elements with the science-fictional elements of off-world adventure and mutant disease disaster (though in these days of SARS and anthrax mail, it doesn't seem so science-fictional any more) is that she's a skilled practitioner in both fields. Indeed, her previous genre-straddling novel, The Disappeared, in which DeRicci and Flint also appear.
The fast-paced action serves to make it easy to overlook some flaws in logic, while genre cliches serve the purpose of "knowing winks" that make it fun, rather than hackneyed. The novel ends in typical noir fashion, with Flint wiser and surer of his role if perhaps no more sure of himself, an experience that makes him a bit more cynical and, of course, better prepared for the next adventure. "All he knew was that what looked to be the right thing at the moment might not be the right thing in hindsight."
A couple of things, however, don't quite make sense. Would alien cultures
really be so tolerant of practices designed to subvert their justice
systems? (Oddly, in Extremes, there are no alien characters, or even much mention of them.) Moreover, the whole "mad scientist" idea struck me as a little thin. Indeed, Freida Tey's crime willfully causes deaths, hardly a trivial transgression, making me wonder why human society isn't riddled with heinous crimes if retribution can be so easily avoided.
