Rules of Conflict

by Kristine Smith

  “Now that’s a match made in hell.” Jani shivered at the memory of DeVries’ rough examinations. Did that hurt, Kilian? Well, too damned bad.

  “But enough about me.” Lucien fixed her with an angry stare, every trace of good humor extinguished. “You never even said good-bye.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I had your escape route all planned. I also had interested parties to answer to for your disappearance. What happened, didn’t you trust me?”

  Not completely. “You know I don’t trust easily.”

  “I thought you understood me well enough to make an exception.” He tugged at his outpatient band. “Hell of a lot of good your secrecy did you. They still caught you.”

  “If you came here to cheer me up, you’re doing a good job.”

  “I came here to deliver a message.” To Jani’s surprise, Lucien slipped into Middle Vynshàrau, complete with posture and gestures. “The chief propitiator of the Vynshàrau bids the glories of the day to his most excellent Eyes and Ears.”

  “You—” She stopped. Counted to ten. Twice. “You’re working with Nema?”

  “Attached to the idomeni embassy—security liaison,” Lucien said in English. “I’m under arms at all times”—he lifted the flap of his belt holster, revealing an empty compartment—“except when I enter the loony bin and need to check my shooter at the front desk. Can’t let the crazies get their hands on the weaponry, can we? They might take over, and then where would we be?”

  “About where we are now. Who do you report to?”

  “All embassy staff report to the Xeno branch of Justice. So, not only am I in constant contact with your most powerful ally, I also have an in at the ministry that’s building the case against your old boyfriend.” He grinned wolfishly. “Kind of makes you want to treat me nicer, doesn’t it?”

  “What else did Nema ask you to tell me?”

  “Is that an apology?” Lucien held a hand to his ear. “I can’t tell with all this interference.”

  “Lucien.” Jani tried to stare him into submission, but he glared back in sullen stubbornness. He could get testy when he felt unappreciated, but in this case he had justification. He had earned Exterior Minister Anais Ulanova’s enmity when he forsook her patronage to throw in with Jani, and the animosity of a Cabinet Minister could destroy more than just a career. Right, Evan? “I’m sorry I bolted.”

  “Apology accepted.” Lucien’s smile bloomed anew.

  “So what else did Nema say?”

  “That you must watch and listen, as is your way. He also wanted me to ask you if the ring fits yet?” He ended with a teeth-baring grimace, an imitation of Nema’s version of a smile.

  The red-stone ring. Her Academy graduation gift from her esteemed teacher. Each of the six special students who had received their degrees in documents examination from the vaunted idomeni university had received one. Everyone else’s had fit, but when Jani had tried hers on, she couldn’t push it past her second knuckle. Not anymore. Several nervous sizing tests in Felix Majora confirmed the now-comfortable fit. “Tell him no.”

  “He told me that ring’s a monitor. When it fits, you’ll be hybridized enough to begin training to become his successor. Is that true?”

  “Lucien, I’m human.” Officially. For now. “That mitigates against me becoming the religious leader of a whole other race, don’t you think?” That and the fact the Service will have come to their senses and shot me by then.

  “But he said—”

  “The hell with what he said. Just because he says things doesn’t make them fact!”

  “Keep your voice down!” Lucien looked toward the sunroom door, on the alert for eavesdroppers. “You know, he wanted me to rig myself so I could record you. He said he wanted to hear your voice. I don’t think I’d want to be in the room with him after he heard that.”

  “Oh, it wouldn’t be bad. He’d disregard it as unimportant.” She was only the Eyes and Ears, after all. A tool. Her thoughts and fears didn’t matter. And I have thoughts and fears, you bet I do.

  Lucien rose and walked across the room to the holoVee display. “Keep your mouth shut until I set up some interference.” He activated the unit and flipped through the programs, stopped at an opera broadcast, and jacked up the audio until the swell of voices filled the room. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Ask my doctor—he keeps the running tally.” Jani watched Lucien stroll back to his chair. Part of her could have watched him forever. The part with the brain wished he’d go away. “What’s happening with Evan? What sort of plea bargain has Justice offered him? What’s he given them concerning me?”

  “Slow down.” Lucien sprawled unServicelike and picked at his nails in irritation. “His attorneys are worried—they don’t like the publicity this case is drawing.”

  “They need publicity. They need to show what a great guy Evan was and what an evil influence I was.”

  “Well, that’s not what they’re getting. The Earth news services aren’t carrying anything about you. The colony services are another story. On FelNet, Felix is complaining about the arrest of colonials with insufficient evidence. In the smoke-filled rooms, the Felician governor called your capture kidnapping and filed a formal complaint against the Service. She’s threatening to cancel the landlease for Fort Constanza. She can’t do that, legally, but that doesn’t seem to concern her. Acadia and toute La Manche back her up. They’re threatening to boycott the Commonwealth Cup—”

  “What!”

  “—but they’ve been sweeping the prelims, so they may decide defeating the Earthbound teams serves their cause better.” Lucien chuckled. “Nema takes a different tack. He asks about you in meetings with the PM, usually after she inquires after rights to use the idomeni GateWays near the Outer Circle.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question about Evan.”

  “If he attacks you, he has to admit the part he played in your transport explosion.”

  “That’s the point of the plea bargain. He tells them how much I hated Neumann, and they let him off the hook for ordering the bomb to be planted on my transport.”

  “His pride won’t allow him to admit what he did. That being the case, he’ll sit in his little house forever.”

  It can’t be that easy. “They haven’t charged me with Neumann’s murder yet.” Jani rolled up the magazine and whacked herself on the thigh. “I shouldn’t be here. I should be in a brig infirmary waiting to get scanned and strip-searched.”

  But instead, colonial governors were lodging protests on her behalf.

  What the hell is going on?

  Lucien looked at his timepiece. “Test time—I have to go. Then it’s off to the city. I’m in charge of an advance team checking out Chicago Combined. Nema will be meeting with their botany professors. They’re going to discuss the possibilities of idomeni-humanish hybridizations. For plants.” He stared down at his shoes.

  “Lucky you,” Jani said, ignoring his allusion. “Has he been behaving himself?”

  “No.” Lucien looked up with a smile. “He left the embassy without his guard the day before yesterday. They corralled him in a park. Some kids were teaching him how to use the seesaw.” He stood, then pulled her to her feet as well. Before she could react, he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. His lips felt warm and soft; he smelled of soap and clean clothes.

  Jani backed away. When he tried to pull her to him again, she placed her hands against his chest and pushed.

  “That’s OK, I thrive on rejection.” He hunched his shoulders and kicked at the floor. “The least you can do is walk me to my appointment.”

  The halls were filled with people, including two colonels and a major, all mainline. The sight of all that red-striped brass compelled Lucien to behave. Somewhat.

  “If you still feel strongly about that strip search after you get out of here, let me know.” He walked down the hall toward the testing labs. “I’m an expert in that sort of thing.” He paused to wink at her before
disappearing around the corner.

  Jani leaned against the wall for a few minutes and recovered her blond-addled wits. Then she wandered back to the sunroom. The colonial guvs are making a stink. And if the tension over the Shenandoah Gate was any indication, Service solidarity in a colonial crisis was not guaranteed. And Nema’s raising his own brand of hell.

  But in the end, what good would their interferences do? She traced the Pathen Haárin word for garbage on a wall with her finger. Their protests and a vend token, Lucien. Or a Vynshàrau ring.

  Pimentel placed a drop of her blood on a cartridge tester. “The only reason John Shroud is still walking the streets rather than occupying a prison cell is because he’s convinced certain people he’s closing in on the secret to eternal life.”

  Jani sat on the edge of her bed. I hope he won’t be drawing any more blood. The crook of her right arm already looked like a dartboard and stung to the touch. “What happened to your open mind? He saved my life.” She waited for Pimental to reply, but he continued to manipulate testing materials and capillary tubes. “Cal Montoya from Neoclona Chicago treated me about five months ago,” she said as she settled back against her pillow. “He prescribed enzyme supplements to help my digestion. He didn’t say anything about porphyria.”

  Pimentel returned the testing equipment to his crammed carryall. “What else would you expect? Can you imagine the damage to Shroud’s reputation if it got out that he had inflicted a genetic disorder on his legendary patient? That ‘word from the mountaintop’ aura is the main thing Neoclona has going for it. Service Medical has never bought into their mystique. Our physicians all receive their training in unaffiliated schools. And even Shroud will admit, if squeezed hard enough, that our people can hold their own against his by any measure you can think of.”

  Jani squirmed beneath her covers. She would be the first to admit her feelings for John had never made sense. In the months they’d been sequestered together, he’d treated her as either goddess or entitlement, depending on his mood. Galatea to his Pygmalion one minute, oyster to his pearl knife the next. For her part, she’d exploited his affection even as she ached for his touch; as the years passed, she’d come to resent him mightily for the things he had done to her. Every time her gut cramped or her muscles spasmed as though torn, she cursed him, yet when someone attacked him, she felt compelled to jump to his defense. “He thought he was helping me,” she said, knowing how weak it sounded, to her ears as well as Pimentel’s.

  “He helped you, all right. I’ve spent the morning studying your tissue scans.” He straightened her blanket with a sharp tug. “It amazes me you can speak kindly of him, considering what he did to you. He treated you like an experimental culture. Genius he may possess—unfortunately for you, he lacks the judgment and ethics to go with it. Every half-baked hypothesis that stewed in his brain concerning the benefits of human-idomeni tissue hybridization, he tried out on you. And now here you are, forced to cope with the consequences of his criminal negligence.” Pimentel picked up the carryall and regarded her levelly. “You need sound medical care. You don’t need John Shroud or one of his acolytes trying to fix you with the same useless tools with which he broke you in the first place.”

  Friesian breached the Morley-run defenses at midafternoon break. The enforced downtime had done him good. His fresh summerweights fit crisply, with not a pucker to be seen. He had gotten a haircut as well, and had shaved so closely his cheeks shone like a baby’s.

  “It felt good to sleep in a grounded rack.” He led her into a vacant office located around the corner from her room. “All my friends live for ship duty, but I’ll take a nice, solid planet any day.” He closed the door, sat down at the desk, and pulled file folders and loose papers from a black-leather documents case.

  Jani sat across from him and watched the desktop disappear beneath a layer of Service paper. “You’ve been working?”

  “Oh, yes.” He glanced at her in surprise, as though hitting the stacks directly after coming off a three-week-long haul was the most normal thing in the world. “Spent the better part of yesterday afternoon filing motions. Extensions, mostly, since you and I weren’t able to work together to prepare your case. I also visited the Service Investigative Bureau Archives.” The eager look in his eyes altered, becoming harder, more cold-blooded.

  Jani caught a glimpse of Friesian-in-court and grudgingly admitted she liked what she saw. “What did you find there?”

  “Better to ask what I didn’t find.” Finally, he removed a small watercooler and a couple of dispo cups from the case’s side pocket, then dropped the case to the floor beside his chair. “Anything relating to your history after your transfer from First Documents and Documentation to the Twelfth Rovers. It’s as though you disappeared.”

  Jani picked through a stack of papers. Most were formal requests to examine documents, formatted in the current style—lightest blue parchment with a stylized eagle watermark. Friesian had noted the places where she needed to sign. “That makes no sense. That’s their case.”

  Friesian grinned. “Exactly.”

  “They’re up to something.” Jani crossed her arms, tucking her hands in her sleeves in an effort to warm them. Why do they keep these rooms so damned cold? She’d supplemented the long-sleeved winter-issue pajamas with a winterweight robe and two pairs of socks, yet she still felt cold. “They can’t let me get away with this.”

  “Get away with what?” Friesian’s voice grew measured. Another courtroom tic surfacing. “Jani, why do you believe you’re here?”

  Is this a trick question? She tried to cross her right leg over her left. The weak limb wouldn’t budge, forcing her to grab a handful of pajama leg and hoist up and over. “Check the posting board in any colonial Government Hall.”

  “We aren’t in a Government Hall now, and I want to hear it from you.”

  But I don’t want to say it. Once she said the words, that would be it. No going back. No pretending the past eighteen years had never happened, that her Service career had continued uninterrupted, that she was simply in hospital for her annual physical. She stared over Friesian’s head at a point on the blank wall and listened to her words as if they emerged from another mouth. “I’m wanted for murder. The murder of Colonel Rikart Neumann, my commanding officer.”

  “The correct wording is, Wanted for questioning in connection with . . . Hardly the same.”

  “Words.”

  “In my game, words count.” Friesian freed a recording board from beneath one of the piles. “Jani, what you’re actually charged with is Article Ninety-two of the Service Code. ‘Missing movement.’” He unsnapped a stylus from its board niche, activated it, and began writing.

  “Miss—” Jani tried to speak, but the words stalled in her throat. They’re saying I missed a ship. Neumann dead. The patients dead. Twenty-six Laumrau and fifteen Rovers. And they track me for eighteen years and arrest me for missing a ship. “That—that’s a joke.”

  “You think so?” Friesian continued writing. “As the highest-ranked documents examiner in the Twelfth Rover Corps, it was your sworn duty to ensure that the paper under your control made transfer during the evac of Rauta Shèràa Base. According to the charge, you failed to appear at your post the night the evacuation took place.” Friesian picked a document off the top of one of the piles and studied it. Older Service paper—pale grey parchment. Paper from Jani’s time. “The Night of the Blade. The night the Vynshàrau took over.”

  “The Twelfth Rovers—” Jani shivered. She felt even colder now. “The Twelfth Rovers never made it back to Rauta Shèràa Base.”

  “No, but you did, according to Colonel Veda. One of the documents that went missing recorded your transfer, via people-mover, from Knevçet Shèràa to Rauta Shèràa Base.”

  “That never happened!”

  Friesian tapped his thumbs on the edges of his board. “What did happen?”

  “From the beginning?” Jani pulled her robe more closely around her. “We were se
nt to Knevçet Shèràa to hook up with the group of Bandan xenogeologists who had been trapped by the fighting and escort them back to Rauta Shèràa.”

  “You were a documents examiner. Why bring you on a pickup?”

  “Neumann said he needed me to confirm their papers. What he really needed me for was to validate and code their patient files for transport back to Earth, but I didn’t realize that until too late.” Jani blew on her hands—so cold. “The first patient died soon after. Her name was Eva Yatni. Then Simyam Baru mutilated himself, and I tracked down Neumann to find out what the hell was going on. We fought. That was when I killed him.” She stared at her hands, skin paled from inner chill. “The Laumrau staff fled to the hills, warned their compatriots that word of their collusion with humans would get out if they didn’t act. So they started bombing. Yolan Cray died during the first wave. She was my corporal. A wall collapsed on her. Then the bombing stopped.”

  She could hear the silence again, the silence that fell after the last shatterbox found its target. Silence too afraid to open its eyes. Silence with its heart torn out.

  “A Night of Convergence.” Friesian cleared his throat, then poured himself water from the cooler. “The idomeni government conducted an investigation that confirmed the action you took against the twenty-six Laumrau encamped outside Knevçet Shèràa.”

  “It wasn’t an action—I killed them one by one as they took a sacramental meal in their tents.”

  “They also advised us that they have no interest in pursuing any type of case against you at this time.” He paused to drink, then pressed the cup against his forehead. “That part of your story, at least, can be confirmed.”

  Jani recrossed her legs. She still needed to hoist her right. “What do you mean, confirmed?”

  Friesian sighed. “Ever since I started working this case, all I’ve encountered is one rumor after the other.” He pressed fingertips to forehead. “Rumor that the doctors who founded Neoclona salvaged you from the transport van Reuter allegedly arranged to have bombed. Rumor that they kidnapped you off the street and smuggled you offworld to experiment on you. I hear different stories every day concerning how Rikart Neumann died.” He picked up the documents bag and rummaged through the flaps and pockets until he freed a small packet. He tore it open, shook a bright pink tablet into his hand, and tossed it into his mouth, washing it down with water.