Imperative - eARC

by Steve White

  “How’s that coming?” asked Harry Li who, after receiving Wethermere’s casual acknowledgment of his own salute, had turned back to look at the rather crestfallen detainee. Clearly, incarceration—even of the most comfortable kind—did not agree with Ishmael at all.

  “Well,” replied Ossian, “when it comes to getting workable leads from our unwilling guest, there’s good news and there’s bad news.”

  “What’s the good news?” asked Magee hopefully.

  “Well, Ishmael hasn’t maintained his tough-guy act. He’s given us pretty much everything we’ve asked for when it comes to implicating others. Anything that might implicate him—that’s a different story. And the genetic samples we pulled from his collection of hair follicles”—all of which the thug had cataloged and maintained with surprising precision—“pinged on a whole lot of promising identicodes. A good number of Ishmael’s contacts and clients are convicted or suspected middlemen: they are purveyors of contraband, but the kind who deal in connections, not the goods themselves. A number of others were predominantly hands-on felons: fences, con artists, black-market mules for really small packages, and petty frauds. Only a few hardcore criminals in the bunch. We figure they were probably peripheral players: muscle brought along just to make sure that the deals went down as advertised.”

  “And the bad news?” asked the habitually sour Harry Li.

  “The bad news is that two-thirds of those suspects are missing or dead. About equal portions in the morgue and at-large. And the last third of our suspects aren’t even in the identicode master registry, so we have no way of knowing what their status is or how to track them.”

  “No identicodes?” Jennifer frowned. “How’s that possible?”

  Her husband shrugged his impressive shoulders. “There are plenty of backwater worlds in the Rim Federation, Jen. Even more in the Terran Republic.”

  “Yes, I know. But even if their birth didn’t take place in a hospital or wasn’t otherwise officially recorded, the first time anyone leaves a planet, they’re supposed to be gene-swiped. That’s the law. Not only here in the Rim, but throughout the Republic as well. It’s even become standard practice in Orion space.”

  Harry leaned against the one-way glass. Ossian decided not to point out that it was both against policy and a bad habit to acquire. “Jennifer, the key qualifier in your comment is the phrase ‘supposed to be.’ Like most laws and pronouncements, there are lots of places where the gene swiping protocols are not—or can’t—be obeyed. To start with, lots of folks aren’t born planetside or in big communities, so their first trip outsystem doesn’t require that they pass through an identicode reader. It’s easy to forget that, since there are so many shirt-sleeve planets at our disposal. But belters, moon-dwellers, folks who inhabit the older or out of the way space-stations: there are plenty of places off the beaten trail where unrecorded babies are being born daily. And when each of those little tykes grows up, each is likely to get a job offer from an interstellar black marketeer or con artist.”

  “Just because they were born off the grid?” Jennifer’s tone was moderately surprised and profoundly disgusted.

  Ossian shrugged. “It’s an unfortunate but well-established fact that a person without an identicode finds it much easier to commit crimes that can’t be definitively attributed. And so, if they are smart, they can avoid having a file accumulate on their activities and thereby dodge a lot of typical security checks, particularly if they restrict their activities to planets and communities that aren’t fully tied into the database. Which is pretty easy to do in the Terran Republic, since a lot of worlds flatly refuse the ‘intrusion’ of submitting any personal information to a central database.”

  Jennifer looked perplexed. “I wonder why the Republic worlds are not overrun by crime, then.”

  “Oh, they breed plenty of criminals,” Harry drawled sardonically, “but most of them leave home. Right away.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Magee spoke softly. “Jen, have you ever read about the average local penalties for crime in the Republic? And in the real backwaters, they are often carried out after a drumhead trial by an armed posse. Criminals there have pretty short life expectancies.”

  Jen stared. “And those posses never make mistakes?”

  Harry Li’s grin was feral. “Not much more than our beloved and overburdened court system does.”

  “Which errs to the side of caution, Harry—since real lives are involved. Proof beyond reasonable doubt, remember?”

  “In determination of guilt, not sentencing,” Harry countered.

  “Yeah, and a ‘try-and-hang’ posse is a really great means of ensuring objective and measured ‘determination of guilt,’” Jennifer retorted, color rising in her face.

  Ossian had heard about scenes in which Harry and Jennifer debated social issues until the night threatened to become morning and the patience of both threatened to fray and split. He stepped in to prevent a midday command performance. “So, returning to the topic at hand…” Wethermere inserted a pause pregnant enough to signify triplets. The two social-issue combatants looked gratifyingly sheepish.

  ’Sandro Magee hid a grin behind a broad-knuckled and red-furred paw. “So, grilling Ishmael hasn’t produced any useful leads, Captain Wethermere?”

  “Not many. But the deaths and last known locations of his missing contacts are astrographically significant. They all fall along a line that reaches from the Rim’s capitol in the Zephrain system, passes through Metifilli, and leads all the way to Skraozpfurr’n in Orion space. It’s also significant that all the relevant homicides and missing person reports along that route were registered within the last five months.”

  Harry frowned. “But we only busted Ishmael a month ago. So how is it that the masterminds behind this scheme knew to start killing off their hirelings four months before we came on the scene? They had no reason to suspect that their operation was compromised.”

  Ossian shrugged. “Because it was not our grabbing Ishmael that prompted the killings and disappearings. The masterminds were clearly committed to using their hirelings only for a while, and then cutting them loose. And later, when no one who was clued-in to their operation was in a position to see or learn, their old bosses got rid of them. Permanently. In short, the intel braintrust running this operation has adopted an SOP of periodically burning dismissed assets to maintain a security firewall.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “In English, please.”

  “Sorry, Ms. Pietchkov—”

  “Jennifer, please.”

  “Uh—okay; Jennifer. Apologies: I slipped into trade-speak. I’m pretty sure that the persons running this operation are such a ruthless bunch that they’ve decided to protect the secrecy of their pipeline by replacing the people who service it every so often. And then, when a little time has gone by and the people they’ve dismissed are no longer in contact with any of their current scam-artists, the bosses eliminate their former hirelings. That’s called ‘firewalling’ the operation: it leaves no external traces for us to find and follow.”

  “So we hit the nexus of their operations on Metifilli for nothing?” Harry’s disappointment had evidently dissolved his sense of the tone and decorum that their difference in ranks required.

  Up until eight years ago, Ossian had lived most of his life as a naval reservist and he remained more accustomed to the casual exchanges of civilian life than the formal ones of the military. However, this time, he put a stern edge in his tone. “That is not correct, Lieutenant Li. If we hadn’t grabbed Ishmael and his team of courier drone baby-sitters on Metifilli, we’d still be in the dark about the opposition’s method of information transfer.”

  Li straightened up sharply. “Yes, sir. It’s just frustrating not to have any leads to follow, now.”

  “I couldn’t agree more—although we do have investigatory options, even though we don’t have living leads. As I said, the deaths and disappearances follow the trail from Zephrain to Orion space with
almost no variance. What little drift there is from that route is probably because the former henchmen put a little distance between the places they worked for these drone grabbers and the site of their next illicit activity.”

  “Modus operandi for most con artists and informers,” put in ’Sandro.

  Jennifer lightly punched her behemothic husband in the bicep. “You’re starting to sound like a cop, now, Tank.”

  Alessandro Magee half-scowled at Jennifer’s use of his size-and behavior-related nickname. Since becoming a father more than six years ago, during the late war with the Arduans, Alessandro Magee’s customary problem-solving behavior had evolved from that of a bull in a china shop into that of a honeybear with a beehive. “Well, the professional slang kind of rubs off on you, Jen. Don’t worry: underneath, I’m still just the big, dumb grunt you’ve come to love and domesticate.”

  Ossian smiled and silently reflected that while Alessandro Magee was big, he had never been dumb, and fatherhood had imparted a salutary sobering effect that made him both a better field agent and officer.

  The door opened behind Ossian. Ankaht, Ossian’s opposite number among their Arduan partners, glided into the now crowded room, surveying it with her largest, central eye while amiably fluttering the tendril-clusters that were her race’s hand-analogs.

  Harry Li stiffened slightly. Despite working regularly with Ankaht and her staff, he still grew tense when Arduans were around, increasingly so in direct proportion to their proximity.

  Jennifer smiled and her face went through a set of quick, subtle transformations, as if she were engaged in lively conversation—and she probably was, Ossian reflected. The telempathic link she was able to share with Arduans—but Ankaht in particular—facilitated extremely rapid communication. The best measurements by the forensic intel folks who’d surreptitiously monitored casual data transfer rates among Arduans indicated a tenfold speed advantage over human conversation.

  Ankaht turned her three eyes upon the other humans in the room, gave a somewhat spasmodic nod: her attempts at adopting human physical gestures had improved but the results were still crude and rudimentary. Hardly surprising since, relying almost solely on the telempathy they called selnarm, Arduans had little physical speech and even less body language—beyond what they showed in the tendril clusters that served as their hands. It was that difference—along with the Arduans’ reincarnative nature—which had made communication between their species and humans so difficult—tragically so. Those differences in communication had not only caused but perpetuated the horrifically costly two-year war that followed their first encounter with humanity.

  And despite the armistice which ended that war, and the cautious cooperation which succeeded it, interactions between Arduans and humans were still challenging on both conceptual and physical levels. As if underscoring the latter, Ankaht adjusted a selnarmic headset on her earless and hairless cranium so that the new portable translator she carried—a “vocoder” which massed five kilos—would receive her telempathic sendings with maximum clarity. “Hello, colleagues,” was the smooth alto greeting that emerged from the device. “I trust the human interview subject is not proving to be too uncooperative this day?”

  Ossian gestured at the sound-proof glass. “Not intentionally, but as you’ve seen, he’s difficult to debrief. He’s relatively intelligent, but gets easily distracted and goes off on tangents that we don’t initially know are, in fact, just tangents.”

  Ankaht’s clusters—anemone-like bunches of ten prehensile tentacles—curled and flexed in frustration. “Yes. He has a disorderly mind. I suspect it is congenital, and may have led him into criminal behavior.”

  “Come again?” said Harry Li. His tone was flat, but Ossian heard a readiness for contention behind its careful neutrality. He wondered if the new vocoder was capable of detecting and alerting Ankaht to such nuances.

  If it was, Ankaht maintained her typical equanimity. “I simply mean that his combination of traits—relatively high intelligence, impatience, undisciplined thought—will make him ultimately unsuitable for so many of the pursuits that you humans reward most richly. And since he would have discovered at an early age that, despite having greater perspicacity than the majority of his peers, he was not to be rewarded for it, that would logically lead to frustration and resentment with the system of education and labor that denied him suitable gratification.”

  “Whereas Arduan methods would have prevented him from evolving into a criminal at all?” Li’s tone was now so provocatively flat that Wethermere was sure the vocoder had to be alerting Ankaht to it. He turned toward Harry—

  But not before Jen had rounded on the diminutive lieutenant. “Ankaht didn’t say, or imply, that, Harry.”

  Ankaht raised her left cluster. The smaller tentacles—tendrils, really—seemed to wave in a nonexistent wind: Ossian found the effect vaguely soothing. “I meant no offense, and have taken none from Lieutenant Li’s question. Perhaps I can clarify. It is true that our Firstlings—our young—are provided with selnarmic intervention to help them recognize and manage any cognitive traits that obstructed forming adequate relationships with either their peers or our society in general. With proper resources, your species often does no less, and it demonstrates incredible inventiveness in doing so, since it does not have the shortcut of selnarmic contact. It is, after all, much harder to explain a difference than it is to show and share the feeling of that difference—which is what selnarm enables.

  “But our Firstlings are no less susceptible to going astray when deprived of appropriate nurture. If we once were proud enough to think otherwise, we need merely look at the rift that divides our people today.”

  Magee nodded. “You’re referring to your warrior caste’s increasing rejection of selnarm.”

  “Just so, Captain Magee. What you call our ‘warrior caste’—and many of the Destoshaz have redefined themselves in just that way—became so demographically dominant during our long, slower-than-light exodus to this part of space that there were not enough of the selnarm-specializing castes, the shaxzhu and the selnarshaz, to provide that nurture. Our research, since arriving here, has identified this as a key variable in our collective loss of narmata—of the overarching social unity that we once enjoyed through our openly shared selnarmic connections. Indeed, the Destoshaz have become markedly more reliant upon vocalizing their thoughts and upon writings devoid of a selnarmic accompaniment. They are increasingly turning their back upon the rest of Illudor’s children, upon the narmata that joins us as one.”

  “In short, the genocidal radicals among your Destoshaz warrior caste are becoming more individualistic and non-selnarmic—like us humans.” Li sounded mostly mollified, but his tone was still sardonic.

  “It would be misleading to believe the Destoshaz to be strictly a warrior caste, or that their changes make them more akin to humans,” Ankaht demurred mildly. “After all, your species, lacking selnarm, has evolved a wide array of socializing customs, pedagogies, and rituals that transform your young into balanced members of your society. You have never relied upon selnarm as a socializing force. But the Destoshaz now increasingly assert that selnarm is merely emotional noise, and that past-life knowledge—shaxzhutok—is either useless or mostly illusory. However, like the rest of the Children of Illudor, the Destoshaz lack your many institutions that detect and correct antisocial development.” Ankaht grew still. “It is not a revelation to anyone in this room that this troubles me more than any other development in either of our species, for I fear that this rift among my own people cannot help but increase hostilities with yours. And after all, that is what brings us here today, in our investigation of this unwitting human proxy you have captured: the certainty that he is but a cat’s paw of a Destoshaz plot.” Her cluster writhed briefly at Ishmael.

  ’Sandro leaned forward. “A Destoshaz plot?”

  Ankaht looked at Ossian.

  He shrugged. “I hadn’t brought them up to speed on that yet,” he explained. �
��But I think the time is right.”

  Harry Li looked from Ankaht to Ossian. “I know there are Arduan intelligence specialists working on this case, too, but I thought that was just, well, pro forma. You know, we each tend our own gardens and pull our own weeds.”

  Jen glanced at Harry—almost pityingly, Ossian thought—and said, “Harry, I think your—well, ‘anxieties’—are blinding you to certain aspects of Arduan culture, and therefore why it would be essential that their personnel are partners in our investigation.”

  Harry folded his arms. “Enlighten me.”

  “Harry, tell me something: what do you know about Arduan economics?”

  “Uh…” Li’s reply trailed into annoyed silence.

  “That’s what I mean, Harry. Read a little about how they share resources, how their narmata makes them not only intellectually aware, but emotionally invested, in any distress within their own community. The motive we’ve officially conjectured to be the foundation of this conspiracy—profit—was always just a cover story, a blind to keep the real reason from generating a political firestorm. Culturally, the Destoshaz-as-sulhaji radicals would never carry out such a scheme for money.”

  Ossian studied her. “So you’ve known these crimes were politically motivated from the start, Jen?”

  She shrugged. “Known? No. Guessed? Yeah. The mere fact that all the courier drones being swiped were modified to carry selnarmic messages made that a near-certainty.”

  “Yeah, that didn’t slip my notice either, you know,” Harry protested. “But it doesn’t follow that Destoshaz are behind it. And for all we know, it could be humans trying to adjust or falsify data in the selnarmic data banks—you know, rile up tensions in our community with a false-flag operation. There are plenty of people still chanting the postwar slogan that ‘the only good Baldie is a dead Baldie.’” Li darkened as he became conscious of having uttered the slur “Baldie” in the act of repeating the favorite slogan of human genocidalists. “Their words, not mine, Ankaht,” he muttered contritely.