“We need to pick up Gaisaana-la,” Marr said. “She’s somewhere in South Tower Praha-Riz.”
I shook my head. “Everything in South Tower below the executive layer’s locked down, nobody in or out, at least right now. Those cops that just left told me. About three hundred Munie heavy tacticals are getting ready to storm South Tower and start clearing it level by level. They’re scared and their blood will be up. Even if we could get down below, if the Munies see either one of us, they’re likely to go nuts. The best thing we can do for Gaisaana-la is stay the hell away.”
“He is right, Boti-Marr,” Tweezaa said. “So many people here hate us, want to hurt us. Even before this I could feel it. At school I am afraid, and…I am so tired. So tired of it. Perhaps in Kootrin they will like us.” She stopped and looked down. Marr enfolded her in her arms and held her, then turned to me and nodded wordlessly.
* * *
Three quarters of an hour later we had Marr’s hired doc. Our pilot Huang and I were maneuvering The’On’s roller bed into the passenger cabin of the shuttle, up in the med center’s hangar bay, when a black-and-red-uniformed Varoki marched purposely toward us across the foamstone hangar floor. For a moment I considered having Huang fire that mother up and make a run for it, but this guy wasn’t a Munie. Black and red were the colors of CSJ, the Co-Gozhak Provost Corp.
There were one hundred and seventy-two sovereign political entities in the Cottohazz, the Stellar Commonwealth. Bakaa and Kootrin were just two of them, but pretty important ones. Still, get across the border and into Kootrin, and Bakaa had no way to get at you other than very complicated legal and/or diplomatic maneuvers, or an act of war. But the Cottohazz itself, the actual Stellar Commonwealth government, was different, and as the police arm of the Cottohazz the Provosts had jurisdiction everywhere, offices everywhere, operatives everywhere. There was no place in the Cottohazz we could run from them.
I touched Marr’s shoulder and nodded at the approaching CSJ provost. She stiffened.
“What do they want?” she asked.
“We’ll see. Don’t panic, okay? Everything stays simple. We give them what they want, then we follow our plan.”
He came to a halt by the passenger door. I climbed down to meet him and I could feel Marr and Tweezaa’s eyes on my back.
“Mr. Sasha Naradnyo?” he asked.
“That’s me. And you are?”
“Lance Corporal Kindoon, CSJ. My superior, Captain e-Tomai, requests your presence in two hours for an interview concerning the events this morning at the Praha-Riz Arcology.” He extracted a paper-thin flexi-card from his uniform breast pocket and handed it to me. “This has your appointment code and should be presented at our headquarters complex which is in this arcology. The card will also provide free automated public transportation to the complex by passing it over the fare scanner. I am to ask if this is clear and if you have any questions.”
I looked at the card for a couple seconds. All it said was Captain e-Tomai and the time and date of the appointment. Everything else must have been chip-coded. I’d met e-Tomai before, worked with him on some joint security issues. He was okay, for a provost.
“No questions, Corporal,” I said.
“Do you require any further assistance? he asked.
I shook my head and he turned and marched back across the hangar floor.
“We’ll wait for you here,” Marr said.
“Like hell you will. What you will do is stop at Praha-Riz and pick up Iris Tenryu and as many of our goons as can still walk to provide security in Kootrin. The executive layer’s still open, so you can manage. No comm in advance though, okay? Just face-to-face instructions.”
“Why are you like this?” she said, her voice rising in anger. “You almost died! Your arm is in a sling, you’re bruised all over, and you need a Human doctor to look at you. I won’t leave you here.”
I smiled. “Sure you will. Maybe if it was just you, it would be different. But there’s The’On, Tweezaa, and our unborn son, all of whom are absolutely dependent upon you one way or another. I’ll follow as soon as I can, but you’ve got to go now. Two hours from now it may be too late.”
“If it’s too late for us, then what about you?” The determination in her face flickered and then dissolved into tears. I held her with my good arm.
“Hey, it’ll be okay,” I said. “Remember, you guys are the real targets. I’m just muscle. Maybe they don’t like me, but I’m nothing to them. Once you’re away, they’re not going to care enough to cross the street to spit on me.”
“You lie so convincingly to everyone else,” she said. “Why can’t you manage it to me?”
* * *
Two hours later I showed the flexi-card at the security station in front of the CSJ complex, submitted to the whole-body scan, gave a finger scraping to verify my DNA, and was escorted into the Sakkatto City regional office of Cottohazz-Gozhakampta Sugkat Jitobonaan—CSJ for short, or in English the Stellar Commonwealth Armed Forces Provost Corps. Technically they were the military police force of the Cottohazz. In reality, they were as close to a secret police as the Commonwealth had, and how close they really were was, of course, a secret.
Five minutes earlier I’d gotten the comm from Marr telling me they had just crossed into uKootrin air space and had picked up a drone escort, courtesy of uKootrin Ground Forces. They expected to be gear-down at the uKootrin capital in another forty minutes. Since CSJ knew pretty much everything going on, I imagined this was going to be part of the subject of my interview.
Back at the trauma/med center I’d finally managed to put Marr a little more at ease by reminding her that she’d never thought of the Co-Gozhak Provosts as essentially evil. For that matter I didn’t either. CSJ was just a powerful bureaucracy, a big black-and-red machine that would probably grind you up if you got enmeshed in its gears, but not out of sadistic delight. It just turned the gears and then whatever happened, happened. Hell, one of my best friends in my previous life had turned out to be an undercover CSJ major. A pretty decent guy, too, all things considered.
A Varoki lance corporal escorted me into the large foyer and stood with me as we waited for another guide to walk me to my appointment. The foyer was about three stories tall, mostly glass and polished metal. A very large replica of the CSJ service badge dominated it, hanging from the ceiling and slowly turning, the silver facetted surfaces catching the sunlight and sparkling. I’d seen it a lot of times in my life, usually the ten centimeter version worn on a provost’s chest. I realized I hadn’t seen one since I became fluent in aGavoosh. I wondered about the three black characters from the Varoki alphabet in the center of the silver sunburst device, characters I’d always ignored as gibberish before.
“J, H, S,” I said to the lance corporal. “What does that stand for?”
“Jiihi, Haramaayi, Sanzaat,” he answered immediately.
Knowledge, Resolve, Obedience.
I took a deep breath. Just a big bureaucracy, I reminded myself. Just a big bureaucracy.
A junior sergeant showed up and walked me through the internal security checkpoint, which served less to screen people than contain them. The local jammers came up and I turned down the feed volume on my commlink. The dull metal alloy of the sliding door looked like armor plate to me, about two centimeters thick, and it just let us into a holding room. The door on the far side opened as soon as the one behind us closed and clunked like a massive bank vault. Someone could force the security screening stations at the outside doors but they’d play merry hell getting into the bowels of the building.
And once you were in, you’d play merry hell getting out unless they wanted you out.
Although I’d dealt with CSJ liaison officers before, I’d never been to this office. Now I wondered why. This setup gave the guys behind the desks a hell of a psychological advantage. Maybe they didn’t want people to get too used to the experience, lest it lose its special luster.
Chapter Ten
E-Tomai rose from b
ehind his desk when I entered. His face was slightly flushed and his ears lay flat against the sides of his head, so when he said he was happy to see me again, I didn’t believe him. He offered his hand in a Human handshake, though, and I took it.
“I hope you will not mind if my superior joins us,” e-Tomai said once we were seated. “He is visiting and is naturally interested in today’s unfortunate events.”
I didn’t mind, and I realized that was probably why e-Tomai was uneasy. Something to remember when trying to read people: it’s not always about you. The door behind me opened and e-Tomai sprang to his feet. I’m not sure I normally would have risen myself but those massive vault doors made me at least open to the idea of respect for authority.
The older Varoki standing in the doorway wore a plain black-and-red uniform, the front adorned only by the silver starburst CSJ badge and two dull metal chest gorgets trimmed in red gold, the rank insignia of a field marshal lieutenant. I felt a little of the blood drain from my own face. E-Tomai had called him his superior. He wasn’t kidding. There was only one field marshal lieutenant in the Provost Corps: its commandant.
The officer’s face gave nothing away, ears relaxed, skin all but colorless. His head and hands had lost much of their iridescence with age, or perhaps exposure to sun and the elements. He had not acquired the thick midriff common to almost all older Varoki, but he also did not have a lot of muscle mass on his upper body. He had the lean build of an ascetic, not an athlete.
“You are Mr. Naradnyo,” he said. “I am Field Marshal Lieutenant e-Loyolaan. Please proceed, Captain.” He crossed the room and took a chair where e-Tomai and I could both see him. If he really wanted to spook one of us he would have sat where that person couldn’t see him, so that was something.
“Mr. Naradnyo,” Captain e-Tomai began, “as you know, we have a very serious situation developing as a result of the Praha-Riz disturbance. It has been only about four hours and we are still trying to assess the cause and extent of the riot. Any light you could shed on the incident would be most appreciated.”
“Whatever vid you’ve seen on the float, I didn’t have anything to do with starting that,” I said.
Captain e-Tomai exchanged a glance with his boss, e-Loyolaan, before answering. “We have already reached the same tentative conclusion. We have also studied the audio and video feed from your commlink and that of two other witnesses, so we have a fair idea of the sequence of physical events. We are more interested in your impressions.”
Impressions? I thought about that for a couple seconds.
“What, you mean like my gut feeling? Some staffer panicked. Gaant caught everyone by surprise, first with the jammers going down and then when the crowd started in. The staffer overreacted, and then everything came apart. I don’t think Gaant intended it to play out that way.”
“You say it caught everyone by surprise,” he said. “Does that include you?”
I noticed e-Loyolaan studying me pretty hard, probably wishing I had big ears to help him tell if I was nervous.
“Good question,” I answered. “It sort of did, but in retrospect it shouldn’t have.”
And then I told them about the whole scene out in the atrium, the creepy mob of Gaant’s followers, and what he’d said to pull me into the meeting, that the guys on the other side of the table would be surprised at what happened. At the time I’d thought his little speech about what a bunch of no-good greedy bastards they were was the surprise he had in mind, but he’d meant the whole business of taking control of the meeting, making it public.
“And you believe that is all Mr. Gaant intended?” he asked. “To simply make the meeting public?”
I shrugged. “You want impressions and I’ll give them to you, but remember, I hardly knew the guy. I only met him a half-dozen times before today. If I had to guess, I’d say yeah, he just meant to embarrass all those guys, shame them, and maybe stir the public up against them. I think he has this big bunch of followers and he figured to make it even bigger, make some sort of play for political leadership. But what his long-term plans were is anybody’s guess. Now that he’s dead I guess we’ll never know for sure.”
“Oh, Mr. Gaant is not dead,” Field Marshal Lieutenant e-Loyolaan said, his first comment in the interview.
“Not dead? I saw him…” I stopped. What had I seen? He fell, he hit his head, the crowd moved his body back out of the way, and they said he was dead.
“So, just unconscious?” I asked.
E-Loyolaan nodded to e-Tomai and the captain continued. “We located him in the South Tower trauma/med facility. The last report was that he was stable but comatose and under guard by the municipal police, charged with incitement to riot. Communication with Praha-Riz has been temporarily interrupted.”
“Yeah, the three officers I talked to in Katammu-Arc said their tacticals were going to clear South Tower. If so, they shut down the comms themselves—standard procedure. But you guys know that, right?”
They exchanged a look and then e-Tomai nodded.
I wasn’t sure if Gaant being alive was a good thing or a bad thing. Alive and in police custody he was a living symbol for his followers, and a target for action. Dead he was a martyr, and you can’t negotiate with a dead man. I looked at e-Loyolaan, who was studying me again. He cocked his head slightly to the side.
“I do not know either, Mr. Naradnyo,” he said.
“Know what?”
“Whether we are better off with him alive or dead.”
So this guy was a mind reader too? Or was I just getting that obvious?
“We received word that the Honorable e-Lotonaa, your wife, and the e-Traak heiress have crossed the uKootrin frontier,” e-Loyolaan said. “Do we have you to thank for that?”
Here it comes, I thought.
“Just doing my job,” I answered, and to my surprise he nodded.
“Yes, your duty. I understand. And it was the only sensible course of action. I want to thank you for saving e-Lotonaa’s life at Praha-Riz and in the water afterwards. You call him The’On, I am told, short for The Honorable. I do not imagine he enjoys that, and yet he seems to tolerate it from you.”
“I didn’t know you two were friends,” I said.
“Not friends. We are opponents on many matters of policy. But whatever our differences, e-Lotonaa wishes the best for the Cottohazz, as do I, and I respect him for that. I respect and value him, regardless of our disagreements.”
He said nothing after that, just looked at me. The silence stretched out, but I did not get the sense he was trying to stare me down. He was probably thinking, but I honestly couldn’t say for sure. Most people look away from you while they’re thinking, so they won’t make you uncomfortable, but he was not most people.
“What was it like to be dead?” he finally asked.
Not the question I was expecting.
“I liked it,” I said. “You will too.”
He leaned back slightly, almost imperceptibly, in his chair and an expression flickered across his face just for an instant, a hint of fear, and then it was gone.
“Were you disappointed to come back?” he asked.
“Little bit. But I had somebody worth coming back to. It makes a difference.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Many say your soul must have left you while you were dead, and that only your body was reanimated. Are you now a soulless creature, Sasha Naradnyo?”
“No more so than ever.”
He actually smiled at that and seemed to relax a little.
“Will we soon be seeing mass resurrections of long-dead Humans?”
“No chance. They only managed to get me back because I expired about twenty meters from a starship cold-sleep capsule. They deoxygenated and froze me before morbidity set it. Once you start to rot, I guess that’s it.”
“That is comforting,” he said, leaning all the way back in his chair and folding his hands in his lap. “Please understand I do not share the distaste for Humans many Varoki seem to feel th
ese days. All loyal members of the Cottohazz are of equal value to me. But given Human propensity for…creative forms of interaction with law and government, there are already more than enough of you to keep me busy.”
“Just think of us as job security,” I said.
Ten minutes ago I’d never have considered saying anything as flippant as that to the head of the Provost Corps. A lot had changed in ten minutes. Was he my pal? No way. Did I think he was any less dangerous? No, maybe even more so. But I knew that whatever drove him, it wasn’t personal insecurity. He wasn’t the sort of guy to take a joke personally. I wasn’t sure he took anything personally.
“You should know,” he said, “that the Sakkatto municipal police have issued a material witness summons for you, which will mean your cross-border travel privileges have been suspended.”
Shit! I was stuck. Marr was going to go crazy.
“Are you sure?” I said. “I just talked to them a couple hours ago.”
He tilted his head to the side, the Varoki equivalent of a shrug.
“So, are you turning me over to them?” I asked.
“No. The CSJ tries not to interfere in the internal affairs of member polities, so we have no interest in detaining you. Until they are finished with you, however, I do not think you will be able to rejoin your party in Kootrin, and the inquiry into this affair may go on for some time.”
“But they’ll probably be waiting for me outside,” I said.
“Possibly. But the public safety situation has deteriorated further in the past hour and I suspect the police have more pressing calls on their manpower. Shortly before this meeting, we intercepted an order for all investigative personnel to report for riot control duty. I also understand that over seven hundred such material witness summons were issued at first, and more are expected soon. They may consider you of particular interest and assign a higher priority to locating you, but that suggests a capacity for nuance which I have never known the Sakkatto police to display.”
Come the Revolution - eARC Page 7
