Law of Survival

by Kristine Smith

  “Mistress? I couldn’t stop him.” Hodge blinked rapidly, his equivalent of an emotional breakdown. “Colonel Derringer, Mistress. He’s on his way up.”

  “It’s all right, Hodge. I’ve been expecting him.” Jani swung her legs over the side of the bed. Stood. Counted. By the time she reached her front door, the entry bell rang.

  “Anais Ulanova should be shot,” Derringer muttered as he stormed in. He wore dress blue-greys and clutched his brimmed lid in his hand like a weapon at the ready. “Fifteen hours I spent at the embassy discussing tile specifications! Delivery dates! I felt like a goddamn building contractor.” He stopped in the middle of the floor and looked around. “What the hell?” He turned back to glare at Jani. “Where’s your furniture?”

  “Don’t believe in it. Makes visitors think they’re welcome.” She folded her arms and leaned against the wall.

  Derringer’s scowl altered to a frown. “Are you feeling all right, Kilian?”

  “No, sir.”

  Derringer flinched at the “sir.” He knew she didn’t mean it. “One of your many ailments, I assume.” He backed farther into the room. “You slipped out from under yesterday. We never had a chance to talk.” He offered a superior half-smile. “Tsecha. Information.” He walked to the window and sat on the sill. “Report.”

  Jani fought the urge to stand at attention. “He knows nothing about that letter. He reaffirmed his belief that any and all interactions between humanish and idomeni are desirable.”

  Derringer’s hand tightened around his hat brim. “And you accepted this at face value? You didn’t try to dig deeper?”

  “All there is with Nema is face value. There is no deep to dig into.” Jani let her arms drop and stepped away from the wall. “He’s being set up by someone with an interest in getting him out of the way. I have reason to believe that his position at the embassy is tenuous and that even the appearance that he is involved in subterfuge of this nature will result in his recall and possibly his execution.”

  “You said that at lunch yesterday. I don’t buy it.” Derringer sounded bored. Callum Burkett, his CO, had spent ten years working with the colonial Haárin. Derringer had heard all his stories and felt that he now knew all there was to know about the idomeni. “Tsecha’s still invited to the meetings. I’ve received no official notification that from such-and-such date on, he no longer speaks and acts for the Shèrá worldskein.”

  “Didn’t you see Shai’s posture at yesterday’s meeting? How she interrupted Nema when he tried to reprimand Ulanova about the tile?”

  Derringer brightened. “Wish he’d succeeded. Would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

  “Shai cut Nema out.” Jani’s voice rasped as her throat tightened—she waited until the worst of the clench abated. This was her best shot at convincing Derringer to leave Nema alone. If she lost her temper now, he’d never give her another chance. “Shai”—she paused—“Shai took over the discussions with Ulanova herself. She’s acting in Nema’s stead, preventing him from acting as the worldskein’s voice.”

  Derringer’s gaze moved from Jani’s face to some point above her head. “Why is she doing this? She’s always deferred to him before. Why the sudden change?”

  Jani spoke slowly, pacing her argument. “I think the Vynshàrau are studying us the way we study them, and they’ve realized that their habit of open disputation doesn’t play well with us. We see it as a sign of weakness, a crack in the united front. Shai knows Nema will never change his ways, no matter how it looks to us, so she’s trying to shut him out. If she does this, he’s little use as ambassador. Cèel has been looking for an excuse to shut down Nema for years. The least misstep on his part could mean recall, and if there’s a suspicion that he’s betrayed his people, the penalty will be much greater. We can’t afford to lose him. He’s our best friend. He’s the one who badgers Cèel to open up idomeni GateWays to our shipping, to permit technology exchanges. He’s the doorway—we don’t want that door to close. You’ve visited idomeni factories and military bases. You’ve seen their technologies. Do you really want them to shut themselves away, to develop and expand where you can’t see them? You don’t trust them? You think they’re the enemy? Well, what’s that old saying—keep your friends close—”

  “—and your enemies closer.” Derringer’s gaze dropped. He fussed with his lid, brushing invisible specks from the crown and running the cuff of his tunic over the brim.

  Jani watched him ponder, and offered up a prayer to Ganesha, the favored god of her youth. The Remover of Obstacles. Please, Lord, make this idiot see sense. She thought of the shrine she had meant to construct for months. Tomorrow—I’ll build it tomorrow. No. If the Temple store on Devon Avenue was still open, she’d build it today.

  Then, slowly, like a clouded sunrise, Derringer’s head came up. “Sorry, Kilian, I don’t buy it. If the Vynshàrau are so averse to subterfuge, they wouldn’t have let Tsecha come here in the first place. He pulled a few tricks of his own during that last war of theirs. Hell, I heard he helped plan your evac from Interior the night van Reuter was arrested.” He shook his head. “He’s their boy, like it or not. The gods chose him, so the idomeni are stuck with him. He’s chosen us, and I have no intention of letting the opportunity go to waste.” He stood up, tucked his lid under his arm, shot the cuffs of his tunic. “Since your meeting with him got cut short, I’ve arranged another visit for tomorrow. Some documents transfers that just won’t wait.”

  Jani stepped out to the middle of the floor. The chill had flooded her limbs again—standing too near the wall made her feel trapped. “I will not go.”

  “You have no choice.”

  “I will not endanger Nema’s life.”

  “You will do as you are told.” Derringer started toward the door. “I’ll send a skimmer for you. Save you having to hike to the L. End of story.”

  Jani remained silent. Her throat ached too much to try to talk. She stepped to one side as Derringer brushed past her, her hands clenched, nails gouging her palms. She fought to ignore augie as he urged her to strike, and stood frozen until she heard the door close.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jani remained standing in the center of the room for some time after Derringer left. She performed her breathing exercises, then tried to concentrate on Baabette and her landscape design. Derringer’s face, however, kept superimposing itself over that of the sheep’s. The image of him coated in white wool quieted Jani’s wire-drawn nerves, much as envisioning a naked audience calmed an edgy speaker.

  The ploy didn’t work for long, though. Her throat soon ached again. Her stomach hitched along for the ride. She dragged her feet loose from their invisible moorings and paced the perimeter, her mind veering from thoughts of dockings at MarsPort to how she could pry Derringer off Nema’s back to—.

  I have an appointment with Roni McGaw. Lucky thing. The walking, riding, working out of her route would give her racing mind a track to ride on.

  She lowered to the floor beside her desk and checked the contents of her duffel. Her scanpack and other devices she had inserted into the scanproof compartment she had rebuilt into the duffel’s bottom. She fingered two torn edges where she had attached compartments that had been hacked out by overofficious investigators. My history in the bottom of a bag. One torn edge marked her detainment just prior to Evan’s arrest; the other served as reminder of her capture by the Service that summer. Bad things come in threes, Jani thought as she tugged at one of the polyfilm fragments. She struggled to her feet, hoisted the duffel, and grabbed a Service surplus jacket from the entryway closet on the way out the door.

  Jani disembarked the L at the station located just outside the entrance to the Exterior Ministry, and took some time to examine her target from the elevated platform.

  The Outer Circle world of Amsun served as the true home of the Cabinet office to which fell the job of administering the Commonwealth’s forty-six extrasolar colonies; to that placement belonged the sprawl one normally associated
with a Ministry HQ. Therefore, since it was considered an annex only, the Chicago compound paled when compared to the other Cabinet installations that stretched from just north of Chicago to the lower tip of Lake Michigan. Unlike the neighbor Interior Ministry, which was comprised of an immense Main building, a score of subsidiary structures, and a private estate for the minister, Exterior consisted only of a smallish office tower and a few security and utility outbuildings. Instead of grounds measured by the square kilometer, it possessed a yard of mortal scope, easily traversed by skimmer in a couple of minutes. And as for the estate, Anais Ulanova solved that problem by residing in the Family home that was located a block or so east of Jani’s own flat.

  Jani shaded her eyes and looked to the south, where the sudden shift from the grey-green of native scrub grass to the bluish tint of the Shèrá hybrid species marked the boundary with the idomeni embassy. Only that southern boundary possessed any significant security presence—Jani could just detect the top of one of the boxy concrete booths that dotted the border from the western line of the Ministry access road east to the lakeshore.

  That’s not my problem. If Jani ever needed to infiltrate Exterior grounds from that direction, she need only ask Nema how he did it. He had, after all, penetrated the boundary regularly that previous winter, hiding clothing and makeup in one of the booths and using it as a jumping-off point for disguised forays into the city.

  He blended right in. Well, truth be told, he must have looked rather strange. So tall and stick-thin. Cracked amber eyes obscured by filming. But excellent clothes, and lightly accented English. People must have taken him for one of Chicago Combined University’s more eccentric professors.

  The more Jani thought about it, the more she realized how well that particular shoe fit. He does understand subterfuge, you know. And plotting. And planning. He’s not the naïf you think he is. So why did she feel so bound to protect him? What made her think he couldn’t talk himself out of this jam as he had out of so many others?

  Because at times, he is as blind and deaf here. At such times, I become his Eyes and Ears. I watch his back. I kill the wasps. A duty long-evaded, reclaimed. My job.

  She switched her attention to the Exterior Ministry entrance. The long, curved drive was filled with double- and triple-length skimmers. Chauffeurs stood in groups, chatting and smoking, while security guards walked among the vehicles, scanning Registrations and making notes in recording boards. Of course, the skimmers had already been identified, cross-matched, and effectively searched when they turned onto the drive and passed through the sensor fence, but that was invisible and therefore had little effect on the nerves. Better for potential infiltrators to see the burgundy-clad guards, holstered shooters hanging on their belts, walking from vehicle to vehicle, opening boots and huddling in low-pitched discussion.

  Jani brushed a hand over her jacket front and started down the stairs.

  “Name?”

  “Jani Kilian.” Jani handed the lobby desk her ID, then waited as the young woman scanned her eyes. A distinct change of pace, announcing herself to a guard using her real name.

  The guard checked her workstation display. “Ms. McGaw will be right out, ma’am. Please have a seat.” She handed Jani back her ID, professional seriousness framed by a Service short-back-and-sides and the brilliant white collar of a fallweight “A” shirt.

  “I’ll stand, thanks.” Jani strolled across the marble tile floor and pretended a pointed examination of the lakescapes on the walls. I wonder if the Haárin tilemaster will be retiling this particular floor? If Lucien’s assessment proved accurate, and Jani felt it would, such a public display of his singular artistry would lead to more requests. And after the tilemaster will come a painter, or a woodworker, or a skimmer designer. Anais, you do realize that you opened the door you wanted to keep shut? Unfortunately, months or years would pass before open trade sank its roots in Chicago, and that would be much too late to do the Karistosians any good.

  Jani turned as she heard the brush of a door mech and the high-pitched clip of thin-soled shoes.

  “I wondered when you’d show.” McGaw tugged at the pockets of her wine-red trouser suit. She looked even more drained and restive today than she had at Jani’s flat. “My office.”

  McGaw closed the door, then touched an inset pad that Jani hoped activated an anti-surveillance array. “It’s funny. Anais has been taking your name in vain on a regular basis ever since you started working closely with Tsecha. All I could think of was, ‘Wow—Jani Kilian. She studied at the Academy. She walked the streets of Rauta Shèràa.’”

  Jani sat in the visitor’s chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Except for the night the Vynshà ascended to rau and their Haárin overran the place. Then we ran.”

  “You know what I mean.” McGaw eyed her peevishly as she sat behind her large desk, which was covered from side to side with stacks of documents. “Must be something to turn to the face page of the Registry and find your name there.”

  “I don’t really think about it anymore.”

  “You aren’t going to give me a break, are you?”

  “What break? You’ve romanticized it. I lived it. It loses a lot in translation, believe me.” Jani’s thigh muscles twitched as her news-from-home nerves finally abated and post-augie tremors settled in. Afterward would come post-augie languor, a muddle-headed state that would spell the end to her fieldwork for…how long? Minutes? Hours? Days? Her physical condition, once so reliable, had become more and more unpredictable. She could no longer time her augie stages as she used to—her increased hybridization had altered the old, familiar progression to a stop-and-start dissonance. “Hansen Wyle and Jani Kilian, the senses, the infiltrators,” McGaw continued, determined to shoulder on regardless. “Gina Senna and Carson Tsai, the musicians. The pacifiers. Dorothea Aryton and Ennegret Nawar, the Family members. The muscle.” The recitation did some good—her calm seemed to reassert itself as she discussed Jani’s history. “One of Six for Tongue of Gold, Two for Eyes and Ears, Three and Four for Hands of Light, Five and Six for Earthly Might.”

  Lives there a dexxie anywhere that doesn’t know that damned verse? Who would have thought that the rhyme the six of them had concocted during a late-night study burnout would dog them for life? “Ms. McGaw, I thought you were in a hurry.”

  “I admire you. You helped mold my profession.”

  “You’re confusing a set of circumstances with the person who lived through them. That’s a common mistake, a dangerous one, one that a woman in your position can’t afford to make.”

  “I—” McGaw sat back, the blear in her eyes slowly sharpening. “Angie Wyle’s a friend of mine. We had a long talk about you last winter, before she headed off to Guernsey. She said you were different from the others.” She shifted uncertainly. “Please call me Roni.” It sounded more a plea than a request. She sat forward, elbows on desk, and covered her face with her hands. “Hurry. Yes. Where does one start? Audits brought me the letter a week ago and asked me to scan it. The first time my ’pack balked, I figured the mirrors needed cleaning, so I cleaned them. The second time it balked, I switched out filters and lenses. The third time, I thought the brain had suffered some sort of tissue damage, so I called in a friend from Commerce to check it out. My ’pack was fine, of course, so I asked him to scan the letter. That’s when all hell broke loose.”

  “Why?” Jani spread her hands in question. “You should have let Labs check it out. A chip can hang up for many reasons. Oxidation. Degree of protein crosslinking. You always have some, but sometimes you can exceed the critical limit, and you’re left with a worthless chip that scans like garbage.”

  Roni’s head came up. “That’s what I wanted to do, but Peter Lescaux wandered in. He had heard I had called in someone from Commerce on a consult, and he thought I was giving away the Family jewels. He hates to share.” She snorted. “I told him not to fly off to Derringer until I had time to go over the letter with Forensics, but he saw a chance to mak
e points with Service Diplo. God knows why.” She lowered her hands, then let them drop to her desk. “He’s always jumping the starter, always trying to come off like the big shot Exterior mover-and-groover. Little bastard sows chaos wherever he goes.”

  Jani thought of Lescaux’s wide-open face. The earnest questions. Save us, Lord, from simple, uncomplicated ambition.

  “I don’t believe he let you scan it. He made us all look like fools.” Roni fell back in her chair; the ergoworks hummed and squeaked. “I’m still waiting for the quality records for that batch of initiators. If they were manufactured near the upper cross-link limit, and the document resided in an uncontrolled environment for too long, that could be the answer.”

  “There’s another possibility.” Jani paused to look around the large office. Expensive hardwood furnishings, befitting a department chief. The requisite potted plants inhabiting the corners. Windows facing the lake. Holos adorning the walls. Roni’s diploma from Chicago Combined. Nice, normal surroundings, inappropriate to the discussion. We should have met someplace else—I should have insisted. She hated the walls, and what could be hidden within. “What if the errors weren’t accidents? What if they were purposely put in place to toss a stinkbomb in the midst of human-idomeni relations?” She took a deep breath, and opened a door she would have preferred to keep closed. “Why didn’t you want to talk in front of Lucien? He’s been out of Exterior for months, and he left under a cloud. You’ve nothing to fear from him.”

  “He works for the competition. He probably knows about this letter.”

  Yes, well he might. The fact that he didn’t mention the fact to Jani…well, Lucien adhered to his own pattern of consistency. “Peter apparently consults him on a regular basis.”