Warring States

by Susan R. Matthews

  Koscuisko was an Inquisitor. Part of his reputation was that of knowing what you were thinking. Rukota had no idea what expression might be found on his face, but Koscuisko apparently read enough of the question in Rukota’s eyes to answer it.

  “An explosion in Secured Medical has destroyed a small area of Ship’s Stores with unusual efficiency for so contained a blast. One assumes that there has been a problem with the forged record that you and Vogel were examining. Doctor Narion will attend to you. You are not bleeding and nothing appears to be broken but we will assume the worst until we can complete a scan. I must go and pick some pieces of the wall out of Vogel’s cerebral cortex. More later.”

  Rukota listened very carefully, trying to be sure he could commit the speech to memory. There were large parts of it that made no sense to him. He needed to be able to retrieve those later, at which time he could examine them more carefully with better hope of determining the actual meaning of the words.

  It sounded like Koscuisko had things under control. Rukota closed his eyes. When he opened them again there was another officer there, one he recognized as Doctor Narion — Koscuisko’s soft-tissue specialist. “We’re ready to go for scan,” she said, “So we’ll be able to tell you what your status is within an eight or so. All right? Yes. Good.”

  If she said so. He could hear, but things were a little fuzzy around their edges as though everybody in the room was drunk but him. There were good odds that in that case he was the one who was drunk, Rukota knew — or drugged, at minimum.

  Fair enough, he told himself, and closed his eyes again.

  ###

  Chapter Nine

  Unthinkable Alternatives

  Farilk’s office was much smaller than Andrej’s own, of course, but there was no sense of confinement — merely the security of a quiet, comfortable room. The chairs were set up carefully so that the one in which he had been invited to sit faced the door, so that one could be sure that it was closed. Andrej had never been seated in Farilk’s chair before. It was very comfortable.

  “As it happens Vogel had a pad of scar tissue on his scalp already,” Andrej said, looking at the milky surface of the flask of rhyti in his hand. “And it was a small sort of a bomb. Damaged tissue, yes, but it’s all insult and no bleeding. I put in a temporary plate. It’ll metabolize itself away inside of two or three months.”

  He’d feared the damage to be much worse when they’d brought Vogel in, just yesterday. Farilk hadn’t given him the least indication of needing an explanation for why Andrej had rescheduled his appointment; it was only Andrej’s own discomfort that made him chatter on about it.

  But he had noticed that he was chattering on about it, now. And that was not acceptable. It betrayed an acute case of nerves, and Farilk would simply sit quietly until he was ready to talk, and then he would have to make another appointment. He felt uncomfortable enough as it was, despite the chair. He didn’t want to have to make another appointment.

  “Scar tissue can come in very handy sometimes,” Farilk said. “And there’s definite value to not having to feel anything at the site of injury. Not feeling can also become an issue, of course. It’s hard to know when to let scar tissue alone, isn’t it?”

  All right, Farilk wouldn’t sit quietly and let Andrej talk. Maybe he wasn’t interested in another appointment either. He had a fairly full case-load, between stress and sleep disturbances associated with the Ragnarok’s current status and recent adventures. And there were always issues arising on board. There were more than seven hundred souls on board of the Ragnarok. What would Farilk do if Two needed the assistance of a psychiatrist?

  No, Farilk was just trying to help Andrej get over a difficult spot. That was all. He should accept the help when it was offered. Farilk was the professional, here.

  “I have a survey of the literature conducted.” He was going to lose track of that flask of rhyti, and drop it. Better to set it aside. “The experiences and police records of Fleet inquisitors returning to civilian life. Many of them I find form a relationship with the local civil authorities. In one instance on record there was a problem with the abuse of patients, but other indications in the personal history perhaps concealed the truth. You will laugh at me. I laugh at myself. I never imagined that I would have this difficulty.”

  Farilk dropped his eyes to his lap, considering, giving Andrej a moment to struggle with himself. “The first thing that must be done is to name the problem, your Excellency. This is helpful on many levels. On the most obvious it helps to reduce the possibility of a mistaken diagnosis, and consequent inappropriate treatment recommendations, on my part. On a less obvious but more meaningful level there is in many cultures the feeling that to name the thing gives us power over it.”

  Or gave the monster life. Names were difficult to predict, that way. “It is the absence in my life of torture.” He could name it, if Farilk needed to hear that. He had spent enough time wrestling with it in his own mind before now. “I yearn for it. The pleasure that I had. The fact of taking pleasure was a horror to me. Now I thirst.”

  Farilk was not surprised; or, if he was, he hid it exceptionally well. He’d known Farilk for years. And although the talent was a product of habit and attention and learning how to read — and not the occult curse of some demon bestial or angelic — it was true more often than not that Andrej did know when a man was dissembling with him, or not.

  “You still experience distress in the consideration of the requirements of Secured Medical, your Excellency?”

  Farilk was just checking. Andrej stifled his temptation to leap to his feet and kiss Farilk on both cheeks, declare himself cured by virtue of overcoming his dread at last, and rushing out of the room to hang himself. Farilk was just establishing the clinical baseline. That was all.

  “When Captain Lowden was alive and I was to go to seek confession on his direction I felt always the conflict between knowing what I was about to do and knowing that I was going to enjoy it. The passion that I feel in my heart when I remember frightens me. How long can I endure this before what is left to me of common decency is worn away at last?”

  How long would it be before the savage hunger in his heart to hear the helpless cries of pain overpowered him, and betrayed a patient to the Inquisitor? Was Lowden to conquer him, was Lowden to continue to rule him, from beyond the borderlands of Death? Was it Lowden’s vengeance against Andrej for his murder?

  “Let’s explore this, your Excellency.”

  No. Let us not. Let me go find a gun and shoot myself. Or — better — yes. Let us go down to Secured Medical, you and I, and I will provide you with all of the practical demonstration you can bear. “Yes?”

  “You’re accustomed to this stimulus, a very powerful one. Many others have failed to sustain the degree of stress you have been under. Your accommodation was extreme, but survival-oriented.”

  It was no such thing. It was the beast in the blood, the tyranny of his ancestors and the shame of his pretenses to decency. It had been no accommodation strategy. It had been the unfettering of an appetite so huge and powerful that he had had to struggle to restrain it, every time, every day, every hour. He had not always won. But if Farilk needed to believe that his delight in torture had been a psychological quirk evolved under pressure, if that was what Farilk needed to believe in order to continue to speak to him as though he was a human being — “I do not feel that I am surviving with any notable degree of success at this time, Doctor.”

  Farilk smiled, a bit painfully, at the formality of that title. “You are our staff expert on the mechanics of addiction, your Excellency. A thought experiment, and I only propose it to you now for you to conduct later at your leisure. Sometimes an addiction can be managed with smaller doses of a pharmacologically similar drug whose effect need not be as damaging.”

  Yes, and sometimes a very small amount of a related substance was enough to bring an addict’s craving to the fore with newly redoubled savagery and force. “A thought experiment, you
say.”

  Farilk nodded. “I mention this to you strictly in my capacity as your mental health partner, your Excellency. I don’t know whether your personal experimentation has ever led you to take advantage of the services of a pain-worker. But the therapeutic value of a professional pain-worker’s services is unquestioned,” Farilk said, very firmly, as though to get it all out and said before Andrej could strike him across the face and stalk out. “A wide range of both physiological and psychological deficits can be very adequately addressed in selected individuals with the carefully controlled provision of extreme stimulus. The thought experiment that I propose to you is this, your Excellency, if you will entertain it.”

  He did feel like striking Farilk and stalking out. He wasn’t sure what Farilk was getting at, not exactly, but whatever it was, it was deeply offensive. He was certain of that much.

  Or it could be his emotional reaction to a threat, to a suggestion that terrified him. Either way Farilk was not going to continue unless Andrej agreed to hear him. Tiresome. As strict as any Protocol, but for much the same reasons, Andrej realized. Cooperation could not be forced. Temporary compliance could be obtained with fear and pain and the fear of pain, but people had to be tricked into cooperation, especially if it was to be in the service of their own torment. “I am listening.”

  Having said so, he was honor-bound to do so. No matter how violently his heart rejected what he thought Farilk was about to tell him.

  “Imagine, if you will, your Excellency, that there is a person whose body will not respond to normal pleasurable sensation until it has been sensitized by the application of controlled stimulus. A person is suffering, your Excellency, and you are in a position to provide healing in a form that is unusual for you. You are going to treat this person who is in need of healing, but you are not going to harm her.”

  Farilk meant to make a sex professional of him. That was all this was about. Farilk meant to prostitute him to some silly girl who thought she wanted to be hit. No, of course Farilk meant to do no such thing; Andrej struggled to sit and listen while his mind and heart raged against the shocking suggestions that Farilk continued to propose, calmly, carefully, quietly.

  “They are very glad to surrender their suffering to you because they are in need, so that you may take pleasure in it with their consent and their entire good-will, which is given to you freely and without coercion or duress. There are people who will intervene if the situation warrants it, and if at any time distress overpowers her she will stop the exercise.”

  Farilk stood up. “Would such a situation be the drug that helps manage the addiction? Or the irritation that makes withdrawal all the more difficult to bear? Which?”

  Andrej admired his timing in more than one way: yes, the period for the interview was over — neither of them could bear too long spent in so intense a conversation — and also, yes, he had had all that he could bear to hear for the present, and he had to get away from here now. Right now. He couldn’t even think of what Farilk had proposed to him. His mind was full of turmoil; he could not stop thinking — remembering — wishing. He had to get away.

  “Think on it, please, your Excellency,” Farilk said. Andrej stood up, dizzy. “And come back to see me in a few days. If I don’t hear from you by next five I’ll see about getting a place on your scheduler.”

  Because he was not to be permitted to let this lapse, now that he had raised the issue. That was only fair. That was only to be expected. He would himself find fault with Farilk if Farilk let any other soul come to him for assistance and then never come again, unless the problem solved itself, and this one was not going to solve itself unless someone should chance to honor him when he went to Emandis to visit Joslire’s tablet by setting the memorial-hill slope on fire, and ending his life.

  Therefore Andrej nodded, and choked out the appropriate response. “Yes, of course, Doctor. In a few days. Till then.”

  The door to Farilk’s office opened as Andrej drew near, and he fled through it, so caught up in his own distress of spirit that he could not more than nod in response to the salute of the Intelligence technician that he passed in the corridor on his way out of Infirmary.

  ###

  There were a limited number of places on this station that could reasonably be used for formal argument. It required a room large enough for one observer to sit in far enough away from the two disputants to be effectively ignored while still being close enough to hear and see; it had to have privacy — for concentration — and have observation capacity in place, for the historical record.

  At the same time there were only nine of them, which meant that the most sessions that could possibly run concurrently was three. Three sites had been decided on, agreed upon, set up; one in the pantry, one in the main theater, and here. This was the one that Rafenkel liked best.

  “Specialist Ivers, the Second Judge should be selected at Chilleau Judiciary; Specialist Delleroy, there should be no selection. Initial discussions. Specialist Rafenkel observing.”

  Her voice sounded oddly flattened to her in this little room, in some sense. It wasn’t a room, exactly, perhaps; it was a floating observation station, eight-sided, tethered to the station on shore by a narrow causeway on pontoons. It hadn’t been out on the lake earlier. They’d only gotten it set up over the past day, since Delleroy had arrived with Ivers.

  Who were both waiting for her. “Call it,” she said to Ivers. Ivers represented the status quo. The status quo, to the extent that it could reasonably be supported, was the default solution for the conservation of peace and order — if the mare hadn’t foaled, there was no need to milk her.

  “Even,” Ivers said. Square-shouldered and cautious she sat there at the work-table opposite Delleroy, one hand loosely clenched on the table’s surface. “Chilleau should be selected even though the First Secretary is dead.”

  All right. Rafenkel smiled — she’d have said odd, because of how odd the entire situation was. She toggled the random repeater and waited for a binary hit. Even. So Ivers got the first argument. There were advantages to going first; but advantages to hearing the other person’s opening arguments first, too.

  “You’re open, Ivers,” Rafenkel announced, just for formality’s sake. Delleroy — slumped slantwise at his ease in his chair with his feet stretched well out — nodded his maned head in acknowledgement. Delleroy was all willow and brick where Ivers was an octave’s growth of nut-bearing blackwood; a different sort of a tree entirely, but each with their own strength. Delleroy was prettier, but Ivers . . . what? She wasn’t taller, darker, fairer, balder, anything that Rafenkel could think of just now.

  All in all, Ivers really hadn’t made much of an impression on a person at first meeting, no more than any other regiment of tactical cavalry might. No flash, no noise, no light reflecting off polished surfaces, just a quiet self-assured block of mortuary stone communicating a serene understanding of the fact that she would roll over you as though you weren’t there, if need should be.

  “Short meeting,” Ivers said to Delleroy. Once the discussion started it was Rafenkel’s business to become invisible unless something came up. “No contest that I can see, no contest at all. The Second Judge had already been identified as the dominant choice across all Judiciaries. We know what the citizenry want, we know who is preferred, confederacy wasn’t on the options list and there is no reason to introduce it now. I’ll take your tiles and we can all go take naps, Padrake.”

  Ivers held out her hand flat-palmed and precisely centered on the broad white line that divided the work-table into two symbolic spaces. There was a small stack of ceramic tiles in front of Delleroy; another at Ivers’ elbow. Each of them represented one of the time-honored measures of the public welfare and prosperity of the common weal: incidence of violent crime, public compliance as measured by tax receipts and off-the-market economies, durable and perishable goods in pipeline. All of them issues that Bench specialists were accustomed to examine to make a determination on the health o
f any given system or situation; all of them measures of the effective rule of Law and the regulation of trade.

  “Not so fast.” Delleroy’s tone of voice made it clear that he was no more serious about his theatrically exaggerated resentment than Ivers had been about her demand. Rafenkel didn’t envy Delleroy the battle; she didn’t know of anybody who would have chosen to defend the confederacy model, not with any other alternative available. “Let’s just start at the beginning, here, Jils. Specialist Ivers. Sorry.”

  “All right, Delleroy,” Ivers agreed. Reaching across the table, she muddled about with her fingers in his tile-array, and turned one up at random. “What have we got, here? Taxation base. How is the total tax burden of an enterprise in Haspirzak improved by not selecting the Second Judge? Instead of one central authority there will be nine, and each of them will inevitably develop its own procedures and requirements.”

  Ivers sat back, playing with the tile, turning it over and over again in her fingers. “Which means nine times as many people to go between and implement, lawyers and law courts and port authorities and the explosion of existing administrative structures into a whole new entrenched hierarchy more concerned with perpetuating its own survival and development than encouraging the free and fair exchange of goods and services.”

  Rafenkel let her breath out in a rush, leaning against the padded curve of the low-backed chair almost staggered. Delleroy straightened up in his seat for his own part, and if Rafenkel wasn’t mistaken Delleroy winked at her. Yes. It was an impressive rant, wasn’t it? But that’s our job, ranting impressively.