Code of Conduct

by Kristine Smith

  Tsecha looked Prime Minister Cao in the face as he tried to discern her meaning. The female raised her chin in acknowledgment of his attention and curved her lips without baring her teeth. On its own, Tsecha had learned over the past weeks, the expression meant nothing. Cao always smiled.

  “I do not understand you, nìa,” he said. “Please explain.” The female’s lips curved even more. Yes, it is good to have called her nìa. The only other humanish female he had called by the informal title in this damned cold city had been Hansen Wyle’s daughter. And she had not smiled. She had shouted, in fact, and stamped her foot. Her voice had grown so loud, embassy Security had wanted to expel her from the grounds. How the young one had cried out. I’m not my father!

  “Bygones, nìRau.” Cao shifted in her high seat. Like Ulanova, her legs were not long enough to provide adequate counterbalance. She tottered and had to grab hold of the sides of her seat cushion to keep from falling. “We will ignore the fact the Elyasian Haárin are trying to monopolize transport refitting in most of the Outer Circle. In return, your colonial Council will cease its attempts to secure full and unrestricted access to Padishah GateWay.”

  Tsecha nodded, his eyes fixed on the Prime Minister’s pale-knuckled grip on her chair. If I moved quickly, she would tumble to the floor. He had done such once before, to Enne-gret Nawar, during the young male’s Academy entrance interview. As Tsecha remembered, Nawar had not thought it very funny. He bruised his hip, and split his trousers. Nervous humanish, he had learned, needed to be treated carefully.

  “NìRau? Are you listening to me?”

  Tsecha studied Cao’s round, golden face. Her eyebrows, thin as black pencil lines, had drawn down in puzzlement. “Yes, nìa,” he replied. “You will allow my Sìah Haárin to continue to attempt to rebuild your most aged, unspaceworthy ships. In exchange, we the idomeni are to surrender in our efforts to gain more direct access to our Vren colonies, which suffer already from undersupply and dwindling populations. Thank you. Most generous. My Oligarch will be most pleased.”

  “NìRau—”

  “Why do you not say what you mean? Why do humanish never say what they mean? As long as Padishah remains secure, you will have no worry that Haárin will try to settle on Nueva Madrid. Your Service hospital will remain safe from our observation. Your experiments will remain safe from our observation.”

  “NìRau!”

  “We have known of the Ascertane work for some time, Your Excellency.” Tsecha’s use of Cao’s humanish title upset the female, as he knew it would. Every trace of her constant smile disappeared. “We also know of the attempts John Shroud’s colonial hospitals have made to recruit Haárin into other medical studies. So much have our outcasts been promised in return for their help. Access to business. Status. I wonder how Albino John is able to offer so much. I wonder who allows Albino John to offer so much.”

  The pleasing color drained from Cao’s face, changing from Sìah-like gold to the bloodless sand of her tunic. Shards of pure color, formed by the lake reflection through idomeni window glass, danced over her face as though small flares burned beneath her skin. The lake itself, Tsecha could see, had calmed, the shore ice that had been shattered by the storm re-formed. A pleasing observation, a well-ordered reflection of the room itself: large, lake-facing, quiet, with chairs even a humanish would consider tolerable. With the exception of his own rooms, Tsecha favored this place most in all the embassy.

  Cao breathed in deeply. “Since we’re being so open and aboveboard with one another, nìRau—”

  Ah, sarcasm.

  “—perhaps you would be so good as to explain your actions of the past few days?”

  “Actions?” Tsecha folded his arms into the full sleeves of his overrobe and shifted on his low stool. Had they found traces of his presence in the Exterior skimmer? Clothes? Hair? Skinprints? But I took such care. Would they be watching his hiding places tonight? But I have so much to do!

  “The Exterior Minister has complained to me—”

  Tsecha held his breath.

  “—of your surprising attitude toward our requests for information concerning Haárin soil- and water-treatment systems in our Outer Circle. The reluctance of your Oligarch, of your Council and Temple, didn’t surprise us, but we expected more of you, nìRau. Considering your history of kindliness toward us, even during difficult times, we find this sudden lack of cooperation on your part most unsettling—”

  Tsecha watched the lake shimmer in the cold sunlight like metal foil. My two favorites would have liked this room, I think.

  “—if not downright alarming.” The Prime Minister paused to dab perspiration from her forehead with a wisp of white cloth she then tucked inside her tunic sleeve. Outside, the air could freeze one’s blood, but the temperature inside the viewing room was most pleasant. “This place is set up to remind you of Rauta Shèràa, nìRau?” she asked as she made a small gesture toward the sand-painted walls and sun-stone-tiled floor.

  “Yes, nìa.”

  “Even the temperature?”

  “Do you not find it comforting?” Tsecha inhaled deeply of the hot, dry air. “I was told you would find it comforting.” He had, of course, been told no such thing. The ease with which he lied about such an inconsequence was lessened by the fact that, for the first time since he had arrived in this frozen city, he felt truly warm.

  Cao patted her forehead again. “I think you are pulling my leg, nìRau.”

  “Pulling your leg, nìa?” Tsecha looked at the female’s cloth-covered limbs in alarm. He and the Prime Minister sat an arm’s length apart—he had not touched her! “I only enjoy the warmth,” he admitted, “and wish you to think I provided it for you.” A humiliating admission, perhaps, but better that than to suffer such disorder!

  Cao drew up straighter in her seat. “The strategy sounds familiar. Which of your Six taught you that particular lesson, nìRau?”

  “My Tongue taught me most.” Tsecha bared his teeth. “My Hansen.”

  “I should have guessed,” Cao said, frowning. “I watched Hansen Wyle grow up. He schooled with my children. With all due respect, nìRau, learning humanish ways from that man was the equivalent of learning table manners from Vlad the Impaler.”

  “Vlad, nìa?”

  “A long-dead dominant of ours. You would have considered him most disordered.” A shadow of a smile revisited Cao. “Do you think much of Hansen these days, nìRau?”

  Tsecha felt the female’s stare, chilling where the sun had so recently warmed. “I think of Hansen every day, nìa.”

  “Do you think of any of the the others, as well?”

  To lie successfully, Nema, you need to think of it as a game. His Hansen had sat in a room much like this one. Fallow time had come to the north-central regions; rain and wind had beaten against the window like souls screaming for mercy. The best human liars think of it as a game. Don’t think of the importance of what you’re saying, or what you’re trying to accomplish—if you do that, you’ll lose. It’s just a game Nema. Just a game.

  “No, nìa,” Tsecha answered, “I think of no other.” I am as a young one, playing my game.

  “Exterior Minister Ulanova believes otherwise, nìRau.”

  A good liar knows how to use truth, Nema. He realizes its value better than anyone. “My Anais, nìa,” Tsecha said, “has much of which to worry. Much which gives her trouble.” He bit his lip to avoid baring his teeth as his Lucien’s stiff posture at the theater sprang up from his memory. “The youngish lieutenant. Pascal.”

  “Yes.” Cao’s look held surprise. “Well, if you can figure out what’s going on, someone had better have a talk with our Anais, and soon.” She slid carefully off her seat. The click of her shoes on the bare tile echoed within the room. “I must go, nìRau. Time for my staff to begin the dance with your staff, I suppose. As usual, I have had an interesting time.”

  Tsecha followed Cao out of the room. In the hall, Sànalàn appeared from the shadowed interior of a side hall and took o
ver the escort duties. Blessedly alone, Tsecha hurried back to his rooms. The time for midevening sacrament was fast approaching, and he had much for which to prepare.

  He stripped off his clothing as soon as his doors slid closed and hurried to the sanitary room for a quick laving. Even as water dripped from his soaked head, Tsecha rummaged through his clothing cupboard for that which he needed for his evening’s work: the silkweave cold-weather suit which would fit under his clothes like skin and the battered bronze-metal case containing other lessons learned from war.

  Tsecha finished dressing. On its cupboard shelf, the metal case awaited his attention. He lifted it, its weight as nothing in his hands, and dumped its contents onto his bed. The two thin Vynshàrau blades he strapped over the sleeves of his coldsuit. The Pathen Haárin shooter he shoved into a pocket in the coldsuit’s front. The weapon bulged from his chest as a second heart, but it would be most easy to reach if it proved needed. This he knew from experience.

  With an ease he knew would have surprised his Lucien, Tsecha stowed supplemental shooter power packs and assorted scanning and blocking devices within other pockets in the suit. Shielded by the special polymer weave, his weapons would fail to activate embassy scanners. I am most as Haárin. He had felt such during the war, when he had allowed Hansen to persuade him to have the suit made. The materials were meant to be used in weapons-systems construction only—the fact a chief propitiator caused them to be used in ways not their own moved beyond disorder and into chaos.

  I have always been as Haárin. Tsecha pulled on a fresh overrobe, then sat in his favored chair. Because of such, I understand my Captain. After a time, room illumins lulled by stillness darkened to thin half-light. Tsecha felt along his sleeves and touched each blade in turn. Through the altar-room door, he heard the soft sounds of his cook-priest and her suborn as they readied midevening sacrament.

  I feel no fear. His hands were dry and steady. His heart did not thud beneath his ribs. Soon I shall walk into the night, as my Captain did. The thought should have sickened him, but it did not. He knew, as she had known before him, that a disordered way sometimes proved the only one possible.

  CHAPTER 31

  She lay on her back. She couldn’t move. Efforts to flex her legs caused her right thigh to cramp. A tight strap pressed around her ribs just beneath her breasts, barely allowing her to breathe. A band like bony fingers encircled her right wrist and presumably her left, as well.

  Jani opened her right eye and felt the depressingly familiar release of tension as her film split. She blinked. A slimy hydropolymer fragment slid off her eyeball and down her cheek, leaving a cold, damp snail track in its wake.

  Well, let’s see how much more damage we can do. She opened both eyes wide. Her left film remained intact, but her right continued to fissure. Her vision alternately blurred and sharpened as bits and pieces floated across her eye, then over the side, leaving her right cheek cool and sticky.

  After a few determined blinks, Jani’s vision cleared enough that she could look around. Up to a point. Nice ceiling. Dull white, from what she could tell, since the room’s lighting left something to be desired. She lifted her head as high as she could. Darker walls, somewhere in the cheery blue family. In the far corner, near the door, two frame chairs squatted near a low, dispo-littered table. Someone had eaten their meal out of a box. More than one someone, judging from the number of containers.

  They ate and watched me sleep? Jani tried to swallow and coughed as her dry throat prickled. Her mouth felt lined with absorbent, her lips, dry and rough. She summoned up what saliva she could and ran her tongue over her teeth. She pulled against her restraints again; her lower back tightened. She sagged back on the bed and tried to gather her scattering thoughts.

  Not just any room. I’m in a hospital. Jani could tell from the smells in the air. Chemical. Antiseptic. Freshly cleaned bed linens and an underlying hint of metal. Especially metal. Instruments. Cold, sharp, and always too large.

  This is for your own good, Captain.

  Jani shivered at the memory of her examinations, embedded in flesh and bone and brought to life by her surroundings. John had gotten to the point where he flinched each time she did, which only made things worse. Val Parini, meanwhile, always examined her with the distracted air of one who had seen the worst, and rest assured, Jani, you aren’t even close.

  But that bastard DeVries had enjoyed hurting her. At first, she thought herself the unlucky recipient of his warped version of foreplay. But as time went on, she was compelled to conclude the man simply did not like her.

  Hell, he hated my guts. He felt I distracted John from their greater purpose. She had heard the arguments. Raised voices in the hall outside her room.

  “Open your little rat eyes, John! The A-G wants her, so hand her over. Hang on to her, she’ll drag us and everything we’ve worked for right into the sewer with her. We’ve learned what we needed from her—give her up!”

  Jani stroked the bedsheet. Warm, where her hand had rested. Smooth. Pure white. Like John. He never lost his temper during DeVries’s tirades. He’d slip into her room afterward, pull a chair beside her bed, and watch her as she pretended to sleep. Always the same position, legs crossed at the knees, hands folded in his lap. The attitude of a man who owned the store and the street besides.

  Hello, creation—my name is John Shroud, he’d said to her the first time she’d opened her eyes to find him there. Unfortunate name for a physician, don’t you think? His milk white skin had seemed to glow in the harsh light, his voice rumbling from a source nowhere near his heart. Palest blue eyes had glittered like cut crystal. In the stupor following the reversal of her induced coma, Jani had thought him some sort of implacable, medically trained angel.

  It was the color of his eyes that did it—turned out they were fake. John’s eyes were pink, in reality. He’d been the one who taught her how to film. And how to walk, dress, and feed herself with the aid of numb, twitchy animandroid limbs. Being a freak has its drawbacks, he’d told her. But it has its advantages, as well. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.

  But he’d never shown her how to burst a restraint. Bad John. Jani pulled against the straps until the pain brought tears to her eyes. Then she raised her head and looked at herself. I was wearing clothes, wasn’t I? If she had, they’d since been replaced by a plain-fronted white gown. In the crook of her right arm, a raised silver disc glittered in the dim light.

  Oh hell—!

  Too late. Cued by her increased movement and elevated blood pressure, the sedative pump activated. Jani felt the skin beneath the disc tingle. A heartbeat later, warmth rippled up her arm and across her chest. I don’t want to sleep anymore, damn it! She yanked again at her restraints, but the straps held fast.

  Sweat bloomed on her forehead, under her arms. Chills. Her stomach spasmed. Burning rose in her throat. I’m going to vomit! She tried to turn on her side, but the chest strap held her down. I’ll drown in it! She forced herself still, breathed in slowly and deeply, willed the nausea to pass. Acid harshness percolated to the base of her tongue and stayed there. For now. If she continued moving, the pump would administer another dose after a buffer period had passed. Could be thirty minutes, or thirty seconds, depending on the drug.

  Jani looked toward the door. Funny no one had checked on her. The sensors in the bed had to be monitoring her vitals. Didn’t anyone notice the increased activity?

  She worked her hands. The skin on her right wrist burned as she moved. I’m hurting myself—these shouldn’t hurt. What kind of restraints were these? Old. And poorly applied. I’m not in a place where they’re used to strapping people down. That seemed promising. Maybe they wouldn’t know how to handle her if she broke loose.

  She pulled against her left wrist restraint. Gently and firmly at first, then not so gently and much more firmly. All she felt was the compression. When her hand became stuck, she tugged harder still. A few muffled cracks sounded. It worked through the narrow opening more ea
sily after that.

  Jani held up the hand for inspection. The little finger twitched uselessly, corkscrew-twisted wrong side up. The thumb’s movement was barely perceptible. The whole hand had numbed—she couldn’t even detect pressure anymore. She loosened the strap beneath her breasts. Thumbs come in handy when you’re trying to work buckles, she thought as she tried to unlatch the strap she couldn’t see using fingers she couldn’t feel.

  “How’s it goin’ there, Captain?”

  Jani glanced to the side. Borgie sat perched on her end table, cradling his T-40 like a bouquet of long-stemmed roses. “You could help,” she replied.

  Smoke puffed from the man’s flak jacket as he shrugged. “Can’t, ma’am. You know that.” The fact seemed to desolate him—his hangdog expression appeared even more gloomy than usual. “Yolan’s here, too,” he said, momentarily brightening. “She’s found a new friend.”

  The chest strap fell away. Jani sat up and freed her right wrist and ankles. “Are they out in the hall, Sergeant? Does that mean you know where we are?” She looked again at Borgie, whose smile faded.

  “Can’t help you, ma’am,” he repeated. “You know that.” As Jani struggled out of bed, he stood up and shouldered the T-40. An odd odor wafted about him as he moved. Not scorched gloves, this time, but something familiar that Jani couldn’t quite place. Scorched, yes, but not gloves…

  “Oh, great!” She felt for the back of the knee-length gown and caught a handful of bare ass. “I had clothes, didn’t I? Where the hell are they!” She caught Borgie’s eye just as he was about to shrug another negative. His shoulders sagged.

  “—bullshit—!” The sound pierced through the closed door. Jani backpedaled toward the bed, prepared to dive under the sheet if anyone entered, but no one came. Instead, the voices grew louder.

  “—see you in hell before I call him in! Once you call in a facility chief, forget it!” A man’s voice. Enraged. “—empty bedpans for the rest of my life—!” Jani tasted the panic, as well. Like bile. The taste reminded her of the pump. She worked her index finger beneath the thin disc—it left a raised, bloody welt in the crook of her arm. The itch had taken on a squirmy life of its own, as though worms crawled through her elbow and up her arm.