“That won’t satisfy reasonable certainty,” Afolabi shook his head. “We’re done here.”
“Not just yet,” Jericho chided, “because, while your corruption was relatively minor and undeserving of Adjustment, when added to the pattern of abuses which appear early in your career—and topped off by this association with Agent Stiglitz—it paints a reasonably certain picture of a man who is willing to abuse his position to further his personal agendas. Need I remind you of the very public removal of Investigator Masozi from the Cantwell case—a removal which granted you the public exposure required to get your name on the ballot for the office you are about to assume as Vice Mayor?”
Silence hung between them as Afolabi’s eyes snapped back and forth between Jericho, the red dot on his own chest, and the many tools—some of them quite deadly-looking—strewn across the workbench. “What are you offering?” Afolabi asked tightly after the taut silence.
“Several things,” Jericho replied easily, “first, not to Adjust you; second, to go tie up any loose ends at the Interplanetary Investigative Unit that might lead back to you; third, to help you close down the Tsushima rare elements pipeline that very nearly got all of you caught; and fourth, to perform a complete interrogation of Agent Stiglitz and forward any relevant details pertaining to your circumstances in order to keep your feet out of the fire.”
“Blackmail?” Afolabi grunted with a shake of his head. “I was told you’d be a low-brow type; it would seem my source was misinformed.”
“Newman’s too full of himself for his own good,” Jericho said dismissively.
“Indeed he is,” Afolabi nodded, and Jericho had to fight to keep his features neutral as Afolabi fell right into his verbal trap, “he said the pipeline would be shut down last month, but I received word of a new shipment just yesterday.”
“I’ll need that shipment’s information,” Jericho explained, producing a data slate and offering it to the Vice Mayor Elect. “I can get to Tsushima in three hours, but—“
“It’s already off-world,” Afolabi interrupted with an irritable sigh.
“Then give me your contact at the Tsushima IIU,” Jericho pressed, “I can deal with him and erase his paper trail.”
Afolabi shook his head slowly, “It’s too late to kill him; he’s with the shipment.”
“Is the shipment on a standard cargo hauler?” Jericho asked, having failed to anticipate this particular turn in the conversation. “If so, I can beat it to Philippa and wait for him there.”
“How do you propose to get through the blockade?” Afolabi asked archly.
“There are only two Corvettes and a handful of fighters at Philippa,” Jericho said dismissively, proffering the slate yet again, “I can get past them. But every minute that passes makes my job harder.”
“I need proof that you’re already in this,” Afolabi said after leveling a hard look in Jericho’s direction, “and that this isn’t just an elaborate setup.”
Jericho had expected as much, so he shrugged and produced a small vial of liquefied human tissues which he tossed to Afolabi, “That’s all that remains of Investigator Masozi—who was more than a little determined to become a lethal thorn in your side, I might add.”
Afolabi caught the vial mid-air and rolled it between his fingers for a second before producing a small, expensive hand scanner. The scanner beeped to life and a small needle pierced the vial’s semi-permeable cap to draw a sample from the vial.
“There are neural tissue components present…” Afolabi mused, “and trace elements of auto-corrosive, weapons-grade proto-viruses. It looks legitimate,” he admitted with a note of surprise in his voice.
“You know as well as I do where this happened,” Jericho said grimly, causing the other man to meet his gaze briefly—and it was a moment that told Jericho he had succeeded in his deception.
“Why?” Afolabi asked after removing the vial from the hand scanner and handing it back to Jericho while snatching the data slate from his fingers. “Why kill her?”
Jericho shrugged, “She had outlived her purpose and I knew her death would play well in this meeting. I’m not exactly a sentimental person,” he added pointedly.
“So I’ve heard,” Afolabi said with a slow nod. “Fine; I’ll give you the shipment’s information—but only after you agree to deal with our friend, Mr. Newman.”
Jericho allowed a dark grin to fill his features, “I thought that part went without saying.”
Afolabi searched Jericho’s face for several seconds, but Jericho knew more about lie detection than even the longtime Chief Investigator of New Lincoln. “The IIU agent’s name is Richards,” Afolabi relented, “and he’s scheduled to arrive at Philippa in two days. Here are my access codes; you’ll need them to conduct an inspection without the ship’s on-board defenses tearing you to ribbons.”
Afolabi tapped out the information on Jericho’s data slate, after which Jericho accepted it and saw that everything appeared to be in order. He would still need Shu to verify it, but it seemed he had received everything he would be getting out of Afolabi so he tucked the data slate into his coat and nodded before turning to leave the garage without a word.
“That’s it?” Afolabi called out as Jericho produced a fat cigar and lit the end with a pocket lighter, taking a deep draw from it on the would-be Vice Mayor’s driveway before exhaling into the night air.
“Were you expecting something else?” Jericho asked, turning with an expectant look on his face.
“What’s your end in all of this?” Afolabi demanded.
“Me?” Jericho sighed. “I’m just doing a favor for a friend.”
“Who?” Afolabi asked as he flexed his grip on the pistol.
“I think you know,” Jericho said patiently, taking another long drag off the cigar. “I gave her my word that you would share her neighbors’ fates…and I never go back on my word.”
Jericho heard a mechanical click, signifying that Afolabi had taken his point clearly enough—that point being that Jericho had just played him and was prepared to let him burn now that he served no further use.
“And you think I’ll just let you walk out of here?” Afolabi asked, raising the pistol until it was aimed squarely at Jericho’s chest. “You really are as stupid as Newman said you’d be.”
“The only thing that’s bothering me,” Jericho said, casually ignoring the barb—and the pistol—as he exhaled the cigar smoke, “is how you got involved in all this. I can see how Stiglitz and Newman might be associated since the former is obviously Presidential Secret Service, and the latter is an extremely competent Adjuster who would have cultivated assets like Stiglitz for one reason or another, but you’ve been involved in this since before Cantwell’s Adjustment. What purpose could a low-rent bureaucrat like you serve in Blanco’s plans?”
“Cantwell was the spark,” Afolabi explained as he pulled the hammer back on his pistol, “all they needed was an Investigator who would pose the right questions at the right time; thankfully for me, your barbarism at Philippa saved me from needing to play out my part.”
Jericho nodded, finally understanding the purpose of Afolabi’s having concealed the nature of Cantwell’s Adjustment at the outset. Coupled with what Masozi had told him regarding Stiglitz’ and Afolabi’s false concerns regarding the truth of Cantwell’s death, it became clear that Cantwell had been intended as the first domino in a sequence that would call the Timent Electorum into question.
“Which means that Obunda wasn’t working with you,” Jericho concluded, seeing it all for the first time in his mind’s eye.
“Obunda?” Afolabi snorted. “He was a bigger problem than the rest of you put together. But you dealt with him for us—an act I should thank you for, but I won’t.”
Jericho nodded, knowing he would need several days to mull over this information. “Thank you, Vice Mayor Elect,” he said with an inclination of his head, “I’ll go deal with that shipment now.”
He tossed the cigar onto t
he driveway, and before it even hit the pavement a pair of shots was fired almost simultaneously. Afolabi’s pistol bucked in his hand an instant before Jericho felt the far-too-familiar sensation of a high-caliber, explosive round smash into his chest. The impact sent Jericho flying several meters before he landed on his back and rolled to a painful, breathless stop at the end of the driveway.
After he cleared his vision with a vigorous shake of his head, Jericho saw that Afolabi was still standing in front of the garage. At first he was actually afraid—a curious sensation for him, since he rarely entered a situation where the probable outcomes were unexpected—that Shu had failed to do her part. But then he saw a pinpoint of light showing through Afolabi’s forehead and Jericho watched as the former Chief Investigator fell to his knees and keeled over onto his front. When Afolabi’s body came to a stop, it was clear that the back half of his head was now a ruined crater, and that much of his central nervous system now decorated the garage’s interior.
“Are you ok, Jay?” Shu asked anxiously as she came running across the street before kneeling beside him.
Jericho tried to speak, but even his single-use, carbon fiber flak jacket had failed to prevent all the damage from Afolabi’s weapon. It took him nearly a minute before he could stand, and only then did he manage to gasp, “It’s just…a couple of…ribs. I’ll be fine.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Shu suggested, offering her body as a makeshift crutch—one which Jericho grudgingly accepted—and helping him back to the hover-car.
This time Jericho settled into the passenger’s seat while Shu took the wheel, but Jericho stopped her and wheezed, “Get the…Tyrannis Mark.”
Shu nodded and ran across the street, retrieving the Mark from Afolabi’s bench—but leaving the Infectus Mark just as the plan had called for—and returned to the hover-car.
As soon as the engines were primed, Shu drove the car out of Afolabi’s neighborhood as fast as they could go without attracting attention.
Chapter XVIII: The Fourth Stop
“You awake, Soze?” Masozi heard Eve’s unmistakable voice ask through the odd haze clouding her mind.
“What happened?” she asked groggily as her last conscious moments slowly came back to her.
“The docs said your leg needed to be recalibrated,” Eve explained with no small relief in her voice, “Apparently it was mucking with your epinephrine feedback cycles somehow; they said they got it all under control, but it was a real bastard getting them to quit insisting that you be on bed-rest for the next month.”
“You argued with them on my behalf?” Masozi asked, oddly preoccupied by the fact that her left eye was still blurry while her right was more or less back to its usual self.
“What else are sisters for?” Eve asked incredulously.
Masozi looked down at her prosthetic leg and saw that everything appeared as it had the last time she’d seen it. “Thank you, Eve,” she said with genuine feeling.
“No prob, babe,” Eve said happily, and only then did Masozi see that Eve’s image was on the bedside monitor rather than the wrist-link lying on the bedside table.
“How did you—“ Masozi began, only to be interrupted by her virtual ‘sister.’
“It’s got a wireless jack; I didn’t go infecting the Kongming’s systems with my particular brand of awesome…not yet, anyway,” Eve assured her with a mischievous wink. “But, if you don’t mind, I’d really like to get myself downloaded back into something with a little more elbow room; this cramped link is drivin’ me bonkers!”
“Let’s do that,” Masozi agreed, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed only to have a nearby nurse rush to her side.
“We need you to lie down for a little while longer, ma’am,” the nurse protested, but Masozi pushed her aside as gently as she thought she could manage while preventing future objections.
“How long have I been out?” Masozi asked as she gathered the wrist-link up, noticing that Eve’s core unit was also on the floor at bedside. She picked it up and found her arms were weaker than she had expected them to be.
“A little over two days,” the nurse assured her, “and the captain says we’re still a week from our next stop. You’ll have plenty of time to heal up—“
“I’ll do that in my quarters,” Masozi cut in as she made her way to the door.
The nurse sighed, “At least wear a vital signs monitor so we’ll know if you have another problem?”
Masozi considered the offer and reluctantly nodded. The nurse quickly retrieved a wrist band and slid it over Masozi’s hand, and after a quick test of its telemetry Masozi made her way to Eve’s compartment buried deep within the ship.
“I didn’t mean for you to jump outta bed,” Eve said apologetically after Masozi entered the access code for the compartment which housed Eve’s ‘fiddly bits.’
“It’s ok, Eve,” Masozi assured her as she slid Eve’s core unit into place on the far bench. She activated the system just as she had done before, and asked, “Can you transfer yourself from the wrist-link?”
“Sure can!” Eve beamed, and a second later her avatar appeared on the main screen behind the bench. “Whew,” she said with obvious relief as she stretched her digital arms luxuriously over her head, “that is much better.”
“So…what now?” Masozi asked as she slid onto the stool in front of the workbench.
“Now,” Eve said smartly, “we go over a few things—if you’ve got the time.”
“Sure thing,” Masozi nodded, “anything to get me out of that hospital bed.”
“Then,” Eve said as she pulled up a few images which had been taken during their first Adjustment on Rationem, “I’d like you to explain something to me.”
“Fire away,” Masozi said, noticing that the room was considerably warmer than it had been during her previous visit. “Did you turn up the heat in here?”
“Of course,” Eve said seriously, “you clearly prefer it a little warmer than my hardware’s optimal thermal environment, so I made sure it would be better for you this time around.”
“Eve, I don’t want you causing harm to your…fiddly bits,” she said, gesturing to the room full of equipment.
“It’s nice that you care,” Eve said with what seemed like sincerity, “but it’s not that big of a deal. The only way the higher temperature becomes a problem is if I need to go max-power to the processors for more than nine minutes—and that would be a proverbial ‘shit, meet fan’ type of situation.” As she said that, a disgusting graphic depicting what she had just so crassly described appeared on the main screen, accompanied by equally foul sound effects. Anyway,” Eve gestured to the image of Mrs. Kearcher on the screen after waving away the virtual mess, “I can’t seem to figure this one out.”
“How can I help?” Masozi asked, finding herself considerably less emotional than she had expected to be when confronted with the woman’s image. She had thought that the feelings she’d felt in the taxi ride from Kearcher’s home would come flooding back to the surface, but she felt strangely at peace with the whole affair now that she’d had several days to reflect on it.
And she genuinely could not tell if that was a good or bad thing.
“This woman,” Eve gestured, “spent her whole career in the educational system. Her entire life was spent preparing the next generation to contribute to society. Rusty circuit boards,” Eve swore, prompting Masozi to quirk a grin at the unusual phrase, “she even had children of her own that seemed pretty well-adjusted. Why in the wormhole would she actively interrupt the established educational system for a personal agenda?”
“She was in pain after the loss of her husband,” Masozi explained, having already wrestled with the issue herself, “and when people are in pain they sometimes do irrational things—or they may even believe things that make no sense. She looked for someone to blame for her loss when, in reality, there was nobody to blame. When people are free, the heaviest price is that sometimes they abuse that freedom and bring ha
rm to those around them. Her husband died, in an extremely esoteric fashion, in service to the Sector’s continued freedom.”
“I think I understand that part,” Eve allowed. “Even I’ve been known to act irrationally from time to time when my basic existence is threatened, after all,” she said with a dark, distant look. “But this woman…didn’t she realize that if she was allowed to get away with her crimes against those children that someone else might do it to her kids—or her grandkids?”
“She wasn’t thinking that far ahead,” Masozi said slowly, having failed to consider this particular line of reasoning in the days since Kearcher’s Adjustment. “It’s one of the weaknesses of our way of thinking, Eve…sometimes we can’t look three moves deep.”
“I still don’t get it,” Eve sighed.
Masozi thought about it for a few moments and decided to make another attempt at explaining. “I suppose it’s like a feedback loop,” she explained, “she was in pain, and instead of accepting her loss and moving on with her life she clung to part of her anger and resentment toward her fellow citizens. She pointed a finger at the group of people she had convinced herself were responsible for her husband’s death, and made it her life’s work to oppress them—or, in her mind, to remove their ability to cause harm—using whatever means were available to her. If she hadn’t been able to succeed then she probably would have given up a long time ago, but she did have success.”
“I think I get it,” Eve said slowly, “her misuse of power at work sustained her negative emotional state, which would have exhausted its fuel supply without replenishment?”
“That’s probably accurate,” Masozi nodded.
“Ok…but I still don’t get one thing,” Eve said while tapping her chin. “How was she supposed to break out of the feedback loop—assuming it didn’t run out of fuel like you suggest it would?”
Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Page 25
