The Injustice Collector

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

For two centuries, Injustice Collecting allowed for balance in a system populated by many sentient species. Everyone understood the system and its necessity. Until the humans arrived. They want justice for what happened to their children. But the humans don’t understand the proceedings. And misunderstandings might prove the catalyst to the greatest threat the system will ever face.“...a powerful, thought-provoking story.”—SF Crow’s NestUSA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com, fictionriver.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Feb 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311157959

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

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Copyright Information

The Injustice Collector

Copyright © 2014 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

First published in I, Alien, edited by Mike Resnick, Daw Books, April 2005

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © 2014 by WMG Publishing

Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Bcon Management Inc./Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Information

Record of Proceeding

Incident at Gray’s Brook

Injustice Collector 0080 Presiding

Testimony of Requesting Party

They trusted us with their children.

Later, they claimed they trusted us because we resembled animals from their world. Canines. I have seen representations of such things, and the resemblance is superficial.

We are thinner, taller, and we do not stand on all fours. (Many of my people were insulted by this implication—that we could not walk upright—but I was more insulted by the look of the beasts: shaggy, unkempt, and that appendage at the base of the spine—the tail—looked vaguely ominous to me, as if the creatures were slapped together by a careless scientist.)

It is true that we do not have bald skin as the humans do; ours is dusted attractively with fine hairs, making each of us distinctive. Our noses are larger and our mouths open beneath them—perhaps the most canine of our features—but we, as a people, have come to resent the word snout.

As for the rest, we do not see ourselves as too different from the humans. We use our arms in much the same way, we have hands, we wear clothing. It is true that we do not wear shoes, but the bottoms of our feet are tough and hair-covered. We do not injure as easily as the humans do.

Which, I suppose, is the heart of the problem.

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