Code of Conduct

by Kristine Smith

  “For Jani Kilian.”

  “Kilian? Who is—”

  “Anais has been looking for her for months. She thought, for a time, that she had her.” Lucien rose and walked to the window. “Maybe she did.”

  Tsecha rubbed his eyes again. He shivered—it had grown very cold as well. He clapped his hands together to warm them. “Who is this Kilian of whom you speak, Jeremy? Are you sure of your names? You possess so many. They must be easily confused, and truly.”

  Lucien turned. For the shortest time, his face held no emotion. Then his teeth flashed and he raised his right hand in a Haàrin gesture of irreverence. “Touché, nìRau.” He refastened his tunic, wincing as he clasped the collar. “Well, we never had her, and you didn’t want her if we did. Nothing lost.”

  Tsecha again pressed his fingers to his eyelids. The films had begun to prickle, but at least that made his eyes water. He would have to find a heavier jacket for these humanish evenings, one that protected him from the icy Chicago air. The inset read, WINTER WOOL. Would he have to learn to read between the lines of clothing labels as well?

  Between the lines.

  Ah.

  “Well, I’m sorry to have wasted your time, nìRau,” Lucien said. “But if we’re lucky, that damned play might be over by the time we get back to the theater.”

  Tsecha remained seated. The chair proved quiet focusing. He had even developed a tolerance for the trousers. “Lucien, if you found this Kilian, what would you do with her?”

  “Bring her here,” the man answered after some time, “just to see the look on her face.” Under Tsecha’s steady stare, he hesitated. “I wouldn’t hurt her.” He stepped into the sanitary area and removed a comb from his pocket. “It’s all theory, of course, isn’t it, nìRau?” he said as he arranged his hair. “Seeing she’s dead.”

  I understand this Lucien now. Could Hansen even have done so well? “How humanish talk. When they wish something not to exist, they execute it by not speaking of it. And when they want something more than their own life, they invent it from nothing by speaking of it at all times.” Tsecha bared his teeth as Lucien turned to him, again expressionless. “But we have more than nothing here, do we not? She hides in plain sight. Where is she?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Where is she!”

  Lucien continued to comb his hair. “Safe, for now. In plain sight.” The hands stopped. “Could you shelter her, nìRau, if necessary?”

  “No.” Tsecha again scratched the skin on his hands, then stifled a sneeze as his face started to itch as well. “But I know one who could.”

  “One who could. Does that mean you still talk to your friend, John Shroud?”

  Tsecha shook his head. As an esteemed enemy, yes, but as a friend…. He shivered again, this time not from the cold. “I do not speak to Physician Shroud as a friend.”

  The lieutenant thrust his comb back into his pocket. “Well, the next time you don’t talk to him, don’t forget not to ask him about that illegal trial he never performed three years ago. The one where he studied the effects of Ascertane on some of the chev Haárin living on Elyas.”

  Don’t forget…not…never. Tsecha took a deep breath. His head cleared even as the inside of his nose tingled, forcing him to fight back another sneeze. So the rumors were true, John—yet how you denied. “Trial? Ascertane?”

  “A mild truth drug, nìRau. The Haárin can’t tolerate it. Doesn’t do a damn thing to get them to talk, and makes them violently ill besides. Tell him—” Lucien stopped, then gasped out another breath. He seemed surprised he could see the puff of air. He groped in his trouser pocket and pulled out a tiny black box, touching it so the red illumins on its surface dimmed.

  “Is that a recording device?” Tsecha asked, most carefully.

  “No, nìRau, an override. They’re a specialty of mine. This one lets me take over a room’s climate control. I can cool a room down.” Lucien coughed. “Dry it out.”

  Tsecha gently prodded his eyelids. “Do you so value disorder, Lucien?”

  “In myself, no.” White teeth shone. “But I enjoy inspiring it in others.” He opened the door, leaving the room before Tsecha, as was most proper. “Some advice, Mister Hansen,” he said, as they stepped into the hall. “As much as I admire your daring, you shouldn’t try a stunt like this again.”

  “My disguise is not good?”

  “You’re too distinctive-looking. Your posture. Your attitude. I wouldn’t advise a repeat performance.” Lucien led Tsecha down the hall, ignoring once more efforts made by other males to claim his attention. “But I can find you quite good makeup. And I can coach you. Escort you around Chicago. Show you the ropes, so to speak.” He smiled. “Our first conspiracy. The first of many, I hope.”

  Tsecha studied Anais’s unwilling warrior, now his own most willing guide. Another Hansen had found him, another teacher of humanish ways. What can you teach me, Lucien? He nodded to the young man, who smiled in a way Hansen had once warned him of. So bright. So wide. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Interesting. He tells me I do not look humanish. I, who have passed for Phillipan. He lies to me already, and keeps me from my Captain. Oh yes, he could learn much from watching Lucien, and truly.

  They left the building by a different walkway. Tsecha looked up into the night sky, picking out the brighter stars through the city glare and filtering glass.

  “How did you get here, nìRau?” Lucien asked. “Just out of curiosity.”

  “I drove, Lieutenant.”

  “Again!” Lucien skidded to a halt. “Where did you park?”

  “In the theater charge lot.” Tsecha rummaged through his pockets, removing a chip of brown plastic. “I have a stub.”

  “Yes. Well.” Lucien took the plastic piece away from him, then removed a small comunit from his pocket and keyed in a code. “I’ll see you and your vehicle get back to the embassy. Separately.” After a few hurried words, he repocketed the device. “How did you get out of the embassy in the first place?”

  “I told all I would be at prayer. Thus would I be left alone. I knew when the guards would be at early-evening sacrament. I knew which exits were not fully scanned.” Tsecha felt his inside jacket pocket, where his own black box rested. “I knew what to do when they were.”

  “And your clothes?”

  “Hidden in the Exterior Security outpost which shares our property border. If such were found in my quarters, I would be made Haárin, and truly. But if such are found in a humanish place…?” Tsecha hunched his shoulders in a most humanish shrug.

  Lucien smiled. Differently, this time. Often had Hansen smiled at him in that way, when they spoke of changes to come. “You’re quite different than I imagined, nìRau.”

  “Have you ever been in a war, Lucien?” Tsecha guessed the answer, but waited for the man to shake his head. “One learns the most alarming things in a war. You think you forget them, but you do not. They wait in your memory. They never leave.” This I know, as does my hidden Captain.

  Lucien stared at him in question. But before Tsecha could explain further, the skimmer the lieutenant had summoned glided up to the curb. Tsecha eased into the well-cushioned backseat, which, if not as demanding as a Vynshàrau chair, compensated by being as comfortable as a Vynshàrau bed. As the vehicle drifted down the street, Tsecha closed his eyes. The next thing he knew, the humanish was calling him awake, telling him they had reached the embassy.

  THE THIRD DAY

  CHAPTER 21

  What do you think, Eamon?

  Still the ugliest girl in the bar, John. DeVries’s rs rolled like pebbles down a hillside. Jani felt his breath abrade her newly grown cheek as he leaned closer. Not enough booze in the Commonwealth to make me take that home.

  She can hear you, Eamon. John’s voice rumbled, the warning growl of a watchdog.

  I know. Jani could hear the smile in DeVries’s voice. So what? Brutal chill washed over the fresh skin of her torso as he yanked down her sheet. I still think we shou
ld have given her bigger tits.

  No words after that. Sounds of a scuffle. DeVries’s startled yelp. The whine of a door mechanism being forced open, then closed.

  Footsteps.

  Don’t listen to him. John pulled up the thermal sheet and tucked it under her chin. You’re beautiful. Val made sure. Then came silence. The hum of a skimgurney. Another trip to another lab. Another immersion tank. More jostling, jostling, jostling….

  “God damn you, Risa!” The mild rocking ramped to a Level Ten landquake. “Wake up! Now!”

  Jani’s head pounded. She forced open one eye. Saw red. Hair. Glowing in too-bright light. “Where’s John?”

  “Who the hell is John?” Fingers worked into Jani’s hair, tilted her head up.

  White white ceiling ceiling oh shit—! Her stomach shuddered. She closed her eye.

  “Oh no. Don’t you dare pass out on me.” Skittering footsteps like fingernails on glass. Running water. “Stay awake this time, damn you!”

  Cold. Wet. On her face, her neck, her hands. She opened both eyes this time as she licked away the droplets that had fallen on her lips.

  “Are you thirsty?” Angevin’s face lightened. “Good. Thirsty, I can handle.” She stared at the soggy washcloth as though it had appeared by magic, then folded it and laid it across Jani’s forehead. “Be right back.”

  Jani blinked, testing her films. The cloth slid down her face and settled in a drippy wad in the middle of her chest. Cold water soaked through her shirt, darkening the blue to black. She shivered.

  “Where the hell is—” Angevin’s voice bounced into the tiled bathroom from the kitchenette. “Oh, I found it—never mind.” Sounds of running. “Is this ok?”

  Jani turned her head. Carefully.

  Angevin stood in the doorway holding a filled glass. “It’s helgeth. Is that ok? I saw all the dispos in the front of the cooler—figured it was your favorite.”

  Jani nodded. Worked her stiff jaw. “Ye—yes. Thanks.” She struggled into a sitting position and wrapped her shaky hands around the glass. The first swallow stripped the film from her mouth and some of the haze from her brain. “What time is it?”

  “Two in the morning. At least it was when I—” Angevin glanced at her timepiece. “It’s two-twenty now. I found you here on the floor. You came to a couple times, but you kept drifting out again. You’ve got an awful knock on your forehead. Scared me. I thought you had a concussion. What the hell happened to you?”

  Out for almost six hours, eh? Jani forced herself to sip the juice. What went down in a hurry had a nasty habit of coming up the same way. “How did you get in here?”

  “Housekeeping let me in.” Angevin squatted on the tiled floor. She wasn’t dressed for an early-morning call. In her green-velvet evening suit and pearl jewelry, she looked like an upper-class cricket. “I said you had some papers Durian needed, but that you weren’t answering your comport. Everybody knows Durian—they let me in out of sympathy.”

  “You found me unconscious on my bathroom floor and didn’t call a doctor?”

  “No.” Angevin wavered under Jani’s hard stare. “I kept thinking about Lucien, about what I picked up for you. If anything happened to you, Durian would have found an excuse to search your suite.” Worry dulled her eyes to brown. “I didn’t want to get you into trouble.”

  “Thanks.” Jani took a larger swallow of juice. “What’s going on?”

  “All our staff meetings have been canceled until further notice. Durian’s been bumping all his appointments, but no one knows why.”

  “He saw me this afternoon.” Jani hesitated. “Make that yesterday afternoon.”

  Angevin sat down on the floor and plucked the washcloth from its damp resting spot in Jani’s lap. “He’s been making lots of calls to other Cabinet Houses. No one’s returning them. We were supposed to have a working dinner with the head of Commerce Doc Control tonight, but they canceled with about an hour’s notice. Durian ordered me to stay put in my office, but he won’t tell me anything.” She twisted the cloth, sending more water dripping to the tile.

  Jani drained her glass, then flexed her neck and shoulders. She could almost feel the sugar flood her bloodstream. “He met with Colonel Doyle.”

  Angevin shook her head. “He saw her, but not for long. Ginny teaches an advanced judo class three nights a week. A friend of mine takes it. Ginny was there tonight, same as always.” Her eyes lightened to mossy ice. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This involves Steve, doesn’t it? He’s in it up to his ears, isn’t he?”

  Jani rubbed a smudge on her glass. “I have no way of—”

  “Don’t give me that crap!” Angevin threw the cloth to the floor and bounded to her feet. Her green demiheels clicked on the glassy floor like finger cymbals. “He’s been pulling some scam with that bonehead Guernsey buddy of his. Betha. I tried to warn him about her, but would he listen? Hell, no. I mean, what am I, anyway? Just a ‘posh little anti-colonial Earthbounder’ who doesn’t understand what it means to have to work my way up!”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me,” Jani muttered.

  Angevin crouched down and grabbed a handful of Jani’s collar. “Well that just shows you don’t know everything either. So he’s colony—it bothers him a hell of a lot more than it bothers me!” She released her, then started patting the rumpled material back into shape. “So,” she said, her eyes on her task, “how bad is it?”

  Jani took a steadying breath. “He could go to jail for a very long time. Betha jazzed paper for Lyssa. Steve helped her cover it up.”

  “Fuck. And the general audit’s next week.” Angevin sagged to the floor. “Why?”

  “Loyalty to another Guernsey kid. The need to show up a system he hates and wants to join at the same time.”

  “Yeah.” Angevin picked up the discarded cloth and twisted it into knots. “So how did you find out so much? Did Steve tell you?” She gave the cloth a particularly strong yank.

  Jani gave a quick rundown of Lyssa’s possible discovery of Acton van Reuter’s dealings with the Laumrau. “If we can prove Lyssa was killed because of what she knew, I think we hand the Cabinet Court a much bigger problem than two low-level dexxies jazzing docs. They won’t get off scot-free, but since they were involved in bringing a much greater crime to light, they won’t sit in jail until they’re eighty, either.”

  “And you trust Betha to see this through?”

  “What else can she do? If she goes to any of her superiors with things as they now stand, she’s screwed. I also tried to impress upon her the fact that, if she flees, her life on the run would be hell.”

  “Might work.” Angevin made a sour face. “I have my doubts.” She stared at the floor for a moment. When she looked up, her eyes were glistening. “Why did he shut me out? Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “In case it went to hell, he didn’t want you involved.”

  Angevin’s anxious expression did a slow melt into despair. She buried her face in her hands. “He puts his ass on the line for that cow, but he can’t trust me enough to see him through!”

  “Accessory after the fact.”

  “Bonehead.” Angevin sniffled into her hands. “Is it too late to volunteer for save-the-idiot duty? I can’t just sit around and wait for the ax to fall—I have to do something.”

  Jani maneuvered into a crouch, stopping every so often to let the private star show between her ears wink out. Her right knee popped as she rose. “You know, he may be doing you a favor.”

  “Yeah.” Angevin straightened without any joints cracking. “But I’m going where he’s going.” She smiled sadly. “Believe it or not, I actually feel better. I thought Steve dumped me because he started sleeping with Betha.”

  Jani bit her lip before extreme stress has made people do stranger things slipped out. She checked herself in the mirror, dabbed cold water on her bruise, then toweled her face in an effort to rub some life into her ashen cheeks.
/>   “Of course,” Angevin continued with brittle gaiety, “if they are having it off, they won’t have to worry about jail, will they?” She cracked her knuckles, the sound amplified by the tile into a rapid-fire of gravel crunches. “Let’s go,” she said as she clicked out of the bathroom.

  “Coming, Your Excellency.” Jani gave her face one last swipe and tossed the towel into the sink.

  Jani wanted to work off the last of her muddle, and Angevin was pumping enough adrenaline to stock Neoclona for a month, so they walked the underground route to Interior Main. It was well populated for that hour of the morning. They passed grocery-laden skimtrollies, laundry and supply skiffs, and other vehicles that inhabited the world beneath the buildings.

  All calm on the surface, but down here we have the business end of the duck. Jani walked quietly for a few minutes, her duffel bouncing comfortably against her left hip, when an unpleasantly familiar sound claimed her attention. She pulled up short as an overloaded skiff eased past them, the whine of its lift array pitched dangerously high. She took off after the vehicle, waving off Angevin’s protest.

  “You’re too heavy!” She pointed to the skiff’s cargo of a huge, chocolate-hued truewood desk, topped with a bookcase for sauce and a serving table as the tottering cherry. “Break that load down!”

  “What?” The driver blinked at Jani as though coming out of a daze. “I’m not going to haul this stuff all the way back to Private.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re going to unload that bookcase and table right here.”

  “Yeah, right,” the driver said. “In your dreams, lady.”

  “Don’t. Move.” Jani stared at the side of the driver’s face, could almost hear the scrape of her grinding teeth. “You’ve had safety training, I assume?”

  The woman’s glance flicked down at the vehicle’s dash, where the load gauge must have been thumping red like an overworked heart. She hesitated. “Yeah, but—”

  “You know the damage that can occur when a mag shield fails in an enclosed space? To systems? To nearby human brains? Yours and those of all the poor innocents who just happen to be walking by?”