Warring States

by Susan R. Matthews

  They’d have to take her by surprise if they took her at all. Had the judge’s choice of data been a subtle warning, then, a reminder that a dead Bench specialist could not speak for the rights of Chilleau Judiciary?

  It was four days Standard between here and Brisinje, even by elite courier. Computer analysis and statistics could only go so far. It could take months for even the most sophisticated computer analysis protocol to surface a connection that a human with the right background could make in a single flash of insight. Whether or not somebody else was already working on this information, it was her business to see how far she could get with it.

  Whether nor not somebody was going to try to kill her at Brisinje, Jils had no intention of losing sight of her goal: to discover who had caused the turmoil that was costing lives and resources from one end of Jurisdiction Space to the other, who had thrown Chilleau Judiciary into such disarray, who had cast Jils Ivers herself under suspicion of murder. And kill them.

  ###

  Out of monographs. Sick of the Keldar mysteries. Out of patience with even Dasidar and Dyraine, and he had never been a man capable of gaining a meditative trance through prayer. Four days of questioning had left Andrej bored to a perceptible degree, but at least it was almost over. Just one or two more interviews. That was all he needed. He had finished in the surgery; now all five of his bond-involuntaries had headaches and wore their Safes for show and necessary camouflage. He had six bond-involuntaries, but Robert’s governor had been legally and lawfully pulled, in Port Burkhayden. The thing was done. Stildyne was suspicious. Andrej hadn’t decided how much he dared tell Stildyne, but he was going to have to tell Stildyne something.

  It was the middle of the morning, but his interviewee was only just now arriving, and that was annoying. Andrej couldn’t blame the wench for being nervous, not really, but he was bored and irritable accordingly. “Your Excellency — ”

  He turned from brooding out of the window with a touch too much anticipatory greed so that his interviewee, the ship’s stores inventory officer, shrank back visibly, backing into her escort. If he were to get as drunk as he thought he might like to be, it would be a week before he could promise the vector control officer that she could release her detainees, and if that happened Fleet’s interrogation group might catch up with them and decide to do just a little spot-checking in light of Andrej’s status as a might-be mutineer. That wouldn’t do.

  The stores inventory officer was a redhead who reminded him vaguely of somebody. Maybe she was one of those women who flirted when she was terrified? He could hope. But not much.

  “Come on, Hatt,” her escort said. “You know we’ve got to get it over with. Have any of the others been so much as touched? Come on.”

  Birrin Banch was the mess officer, the man Dawson had sent to represent the interests of the detainees and observe the proceedings to be sure that Andrej did not lapse into any old, bad habits. Dawson need not have worried, Andrej told himself bitterly. Stildyne was not about to let him lapse into any old bad habits either, and it was very tedious of Stildyne to be that way, too. They were none of them any fun at all.

  Did they have the first idea of how much it tormented him to be here in this place, to be constantly in the company of people who were frightened of him — with good reason — but who could not be touched, not in any interesting manner?

  The woman, Hatt, seemed to collect herself. She squared her shoulders and marched in through the door from the corridor to step right up to the table in the middle of the room, seating herself with a species of nervous bravado that Andrej could recognize and empathize with. Yes, she was frightened — and disgusted by him. There was to be no flirting, clearly. That was too bad. He liked red-heads. Women, for that matter.

  “Has Birrin here told you of what will happen?” Andrej asked politely, keeping his distance. “There are doses there, on the table, whose effect is to relax you and make it easier for me to tell that you are truthful. Or not.”

  Not all of the people to whom he had spoken since he’d started here had told him the truth, but it hadn’t mattered. It was only one sort of truth he needed, that which pertained to complicity in the disaster at Port Ghan. The confidence that came from believing that one had put one over on Andrej Koscuisko was as effective as any drug in the Controlled List, and considerably cheaper. Not that the cost concerned Andrej personally, no, but this station had not been re-supplied for some time, and there was no telling when they would be able to refresh their stores of high-grade pharmaceuticals.

  “I’ve nothing to lie to you about.” She had a thin tight voice full of resentment. She was angry because she was afraid. “Dose or no dose. Ask.”

  Fair enough. “I ask you to accept these doses, then. I will not force them on you.” He hadn’t asked Dawson. But the deeper he got into this the more clear it was to him that things were clean, and people had a right to be elect to be terrified and overstressed if they liked. It was all the same to him.

  If it had been the way it used to be Security would have held the prisoner for the dose, and then he would have done anything he liked to, anything at all. Captain Lowden had been good to him. Captain Lowden had seen to it that he had as much recreation as he could stand, and then some.

  Hatt turned her head to look at Birrin, who nodded reassuringly. Go ahead. It’s all right. Taking a visibly deep breath Hatt nodded and turned back to Andrej. “Do as you like.”

  How could she know? It wasn’t what he liked that troubled him. It was the fact of liking it. He had had such freedom, and been its prisoner. Now he was free of the freedom to commit atrocity, prisoner of his own determination and subject to the penalty of death by his own free will.

  He put the dose through at the back of her shoulder through her garment, then sat down. It would be a moment before the dose began to take effect. Andrej looked around for whomever was handy, catching Godsalt’s eye. A flask of rhyti. By the time Godsalt had brought the beverage Hatt was very relaxed indeed. Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes she smiled with evident appreciation.

  “Do you take rhyti, Miss Hatt?” Andrej asked, surprised. Dawson’s observer shifted where he sat, just a bit, but Andrej already knew that Birrin didn’t take rhyti.

  “Yes, please, if there’s to be had.” The eagerness of her response was unfeigned. “Beautiful stuff, that. At least by the perfume of it.”

  Godsalt hadn’t needed Andrej’s implied instruction to bring a second flask, one as milky as the first. Less sweet, Andrej hoped. Dolgorukij liked sweet things to be sweeter than the general taste of many other sorts of hominids. It was because the Dolgorukij base metabolism ran high to the Jurisdiction standard.

  “One is a little puzzled,” Andrej said politely, watching her take a clearly appreciative sip of the hot infusion. “One has rarely met persons not from Combine worlds who care for rhyti.”

  There was a limited luxury market for good-quality rhyti, true enough, and naturally it was a staple of ethnic restaurants. There was not much demand for Dolgorukij cuisine outside markets with displaced Dolgorukij populations, though. Where would Hatt have had occasion to acquire a taste for it?

  “In Port Rudistal I had an information service,” Hatt said. She was sensitive to his confusion, Andrej guessed. “One of my clients was a guest of a religious establishment. They always offered rhyti. Cakes. Pastries. You didn’t dare eat for a day you went to see the cousins at the sister’s house.”

  No, wait. A feeling of unrest had started to build in Andrej’s mind as Hatt explained, and it got worse as she got further. A religious establishment in Port Rudistal, and they served rhyti, so it was a Dolgorukij religious establishment. There was only one Dolgorukij religious establishment in Port Rudistal that Andrej knew anything about — the one that he had himself had established so that the Nurail service bond-involuntary who had shared his bed while he was at the Domitt Prison need not go back to enforced prostitution once he was gone. It couldn’t be Ailynn that Hatt was talking
about. Cousins, she’d said cousins, well, that could be anybody, but cousins at the sister’s house — Ailynn.

  “I think I know of that establishment,” Andrej said. He didn’t have any brief to talk about it; he was here to ask about Ghan, and for no other reason. He had to finish his inquiries and let these people go so that he could have a word with Stildyne about bond-involuntaries. “If I do, it is a woman named Ailynn.”

  Hatt nodded. “It’s well his Excellency should know, it’s your own house, after all. That man of yours. The one who died there.” Joslire, she meant, Joslire dead in the street. “I met Birrin there, did you know?”

  Was that why Birrin had seemed so uncomfortable? He’d been steady enough over the past days, acting his role of advocate-observer with quiet competence. But now he gave unmistakable evidence of nerves. Andrej could smell it in his sweat.

  “That’s none of my business, Miss Hatt.” He wanted to ask how things were. The Bench had called him back to Rudistal to execute judgment against Administrator Geltoi, tenth-level command termination. He’d made a good demonstration of it. It had been a public execution, it had been important that it be as horrifically impressive as possible. Kaydence had been there with Ailynn at that time. And a party had come from Emandis space demanding the return of Joslire’s knives, but they were his knives now. Joslire had given them to him.

  He was letting himself become distracted. Emandis and Joslire’s knives were very much on his mind; he’d asked Two for research on any family Joslire might have left, and hoped to visit the place where Joslire’s ashes had been buried. They did it in orchards on Emandis, he understood. “I’ve no interest in extraneous matters. I only need to know about Port Ghan.”

  She shuddered and put her hand to her mouth as if her stomach hurt her suddenly and very badly indeed. “Horrible,” she said. “Children. Animals. I thought the furnaces at the Domitt were the worst thing I could ever see, your Excellency. I was wrong.”

  Andrej thought he knew what she was saying, but he had a duty to be sure. “You saw the children dead at Port Ghan?” he asked, carefully; just because he wanted her to be innocent so that he could let them all go did not mean he could take any short cuts. Because it was horrible, at Port Ghan. Children. Yes. And their parents and teachers and friends, every living thing within the entire zone serviced from that one fuel distribution station, all dead.

  “No,” Hatt said, too clear and honest and mildly confused for there to be any ambiguity in her meaning. “I saw the furnaces. And the pit. But I’ve seen pictures from Port Ghan. Horrible.”

  Birrin was more uncomfortable moment by moment. It piqued Andrej’s curiosity; nothing to do with Ghan, surely, but something to do with the Domitt Prison. “Tell me, Miss Hatt,” Andrej said. “Do you know anything about who was responsible for that? Anything at all?”

  What she said next caught him by surprise, again. This interview was full of perplexities — “He was a guard, that’s true. But the days of blood for blood are over. Birrin’s a good man. It doesn’t matter what he might have done, before, and it’s yourself that shares the shame of what happened there, but do we count it against you? No. We’re mindful of your word that stopped the burning. It more than counts. With both of you.”

  Andrej understood. “And we are both rightfully humbled,” he assured her, not looking at Dawson’s observer. “But as to what has happened at Port Ghan. I ask if you have any knowledge of who is responsible for that. You were there. Did any among you put the plot forward, in any way?”

  Opening her mouth to answer him with strong words she seemed to collect herself, to remind herself that after all the whole point of the thing lay in that question. She shut her mouth and swallowed once, and then spoke.

  “I had no knowledge of it,” she said. “And have gained no knowledge since. No, your Excellency. We took on goods at Port Ghan, but brought none, nor did anybody but a few even go out of ship. For fear of arousing suspicions. You can guess.”

  True enough — they would have minimized their contacts in the port, and he could indeed guess why. “Thank you, Miss Hatt. Gentlemen, if you would see Miss Hatt safely back to her place, please.” He did not offer to excuse Birrin. Birrin did not attempt to leave.

  When the security were gone and Hatt with them, Andrej leaned back in his chair and looked at Birrin, curious. “You’re Pyana. Not Nurail at all.”

  “You pretend you can’t tell?” Birrin demanded, but it was in a tone of voice that was defeated, almost helpless. “Yes. I was a guard at the Domitt Prison. His Excellency would not remember ever seeing me.”

  Well, Birrin hadn’t been a work crew boss or among the unauthorized and unofficial torturers from that one long ugly barrack, or he would not be here. It didn’t mean he hadn’t committed abuses. It was merely that so many crimes had been committed there that bringing the worst of the criminals to account had exhausted the resources of the Judicial system. After a point there was no point in criminalizing bullying, distasteful as it was.

  “But you saw me? We were there together?”

  Birrin nodded, his face full of shame. “I was in the guard mount on the morning that you turned off the furnaces. There was something that was beyond natural about the fog, that morning, and I was afraid.”

  Andrej wasn’t sure he quite followed Birrin’s line of thought, but he wasn’t trying very hard. If he wanted to remember he’d have to think about it. He didn’t want to think about it. He relived it all frequently enough, in his dreams —

  “We are both well quit of it. That’s all that matters.” And yes, he understood very well why a Pyana with blood-guilt to atone for might be here among these Nurail. “It can never be made right, but we have finished with it, you and I.”

  There was no making amends — at least not for him. His crimes had been too great. For Birrin, Andrej had no doubt that his atonement overbalanced whatever fault he had committed, but the important thing was only — first — to stop. To quit. It didn’t matter in the least how sorry you were about what you had done if you were at the same time still doing it.

  “Done,” Birrin agreed with a nod. There was a peculiar catch in his voice; what was on his mind? “I’ve watched you, and I can’t tell. Am I the only one who — sometimes — who is sorry that it’s over?”

  For all the hesitation in Birrin’s voice there was no mistaking his meaning. Andrej stared, and Birrin stumbled on, clearly feeling more miserable by the moment.

  “And it’s not that I would ever do it again. I think about the things I did, I can’t believe it was me, I know I did them, I can’t imagine doing anything like that. But I can’t stop wishing. I remember things when I’m not thinking about it. It was so easy. It felt so good, to have so much power.”

  Certainly Andrej knew what Birrin meant. “You can’t help it.” Neither could Andrej himself. “Of course you remember. It’s your mind trying to make sense of it all. ‘How could I have abused those people,’ you ask yourself.”

  “What do you do?”

  Birrin had been a prison guard. His crimes, whatever they had been, could hardly be comparable to those that Andrej had committed in the name of the Judicial order. But Birrin was in pain, and this was no time for perverse pride. “I stay out of situations that remind me, as much as I can,” Andrej said. “And if the truth be told I drink a great deal, friend Birrin, though I cannot recommend that as a strategy.”

  “You miss it also?”

  Andrej could hardly bear to answer, for a moment. Yes. He missed it. He wanted — “Fiercely, but it is only right, that I should be in pain.” He didn’t want to talk about it. Had Birrin heard what he needed to hear, to know that there was nothing uniquely monstrous about longing for days of power and lordship that were over, when they had been enjoyed at the expense of other feeling creatures? “Let us go to the vector officer. I have all the information that I need to release the convoy with full confidence.”

  All of this time, Birrin had stood at his post, leaning aga
inst the wall just to one side of the doorway. He turned without another word, and waited; Andrej stood up and followed him, resigned, depressed, but glad at least that he could help Dawson’s convoy on its way.

  ###

  Chapter Three

  Manifest Irregularities

  Jils Ivers stood up from the small table of the passenger cabin and stretched with her hands at the back of her waist, her fingers not quite touching the track of her spine. She was getting nowhere.

  Her mind kept wandering; she couldn’t concentrate. She found herself scanning the scrolled sections on her viewer, awakening to the fact that she couldn’t remember a thing about the last sub-segment or the section prior to the one on which she’d just stopped, going back to find the last place she could remember and discovering that she didn’t recognize a single data-point between where she’d left off last and where she was now.

  She could almost have believed that someone had laid down a hypnotic subliminal in the text except that she didn’t believe in subliminals. She’d never validated a single instance where they’d worked with any degree of consistency at all. She’d known that she was stressed. She hadn’t realized that it was as bad as it was. She knew what to do about stress, though.

  Closing up the data reader, Jils tucked it away in the secured locker with her kit and then started to clear the room. The hollow globe was really the best solution. She had stowed the table and was latching the bed into its wall-mount when the talk-alert sounded; it was the courier’s pilot.

  “Twenty hours clear of Chilleau, Dame,” he said. “There’s news from Brisinje, we won’t be coming in to the launch-fields near the city. They’re burning. Trade protests of some sort, they say.”