“And scanning rights. And boarding rights. It’s the scanning rights that we’re worried about. They could monitor flyovers of experimental craft.” Ischi’s clear young brow furrowed in consternation. “I think they’re overreacting, personally.”
“You’re lucky they’re still in Chicago.” Jani took a bite of the sandwich. Cold roast beef on buttered bread, with slices of pickled hot pepper on the side. “If the Oligarch had had his way, he’d have recalled the whole crew back to Shèrá. Morden nìRau Cèel has been looking for an excuse to cut diplomatic ties with us ever since they reopened.” She bit a slice of pepper—Ischi cringed as he watched her chew. “It was a miracle that Nema talked him into only decamping to the Death Valley enclave. I wonder how he twisted his arm?”
“Nema?” Ischi chewed his lip in puzzlement. “Oh, the ambassador’s other name.” He eyed Jani intently. “Would you call him that to his face, ma’am?”
“No. To his face, I’d call him nì Rau. Or nì Rau ti nì Rau, if I wanted to be really formal. Or inshah—that’s informal High Vynshàrau for teacher. Not that he’d mind if I called him Nema, but I wouldn’t feel right.” Jani pondered her half-empty cup. “So, Lieutenant, what’s the word. Did the Exterior Minister insult the idomeni on purpose?”
Ischi’s guileless manner altered. His eyes narrowed. His voice deadened. “That’s Diplomatic’s call, ma’am. They don’t discuss those matters with us.”
“Why not? You’re part of this enterprise. You can watch as well as they can.”
“We’re not qualified, ma’am. So we’ve been told. We’ve been told a lot of things, lately.”
He wants to say more. That was obvious as hell. He just needs a push. And unlike with Hals, she could provide the helping hand. “Out with it, Lieutenant,” she said coldly.
Ischi’s words tumbled, laced with frustration and anger. “We’ve been getting questions from Diplo for weeks, ma’am. ‘When’s she coming? When’s she going to be here?’”
“Their point?”
“Burkett, ma’am. Brigadier General Callum Burkett. Head of Diplo. He said you’re halfway to being idomeni and you have no business being in a uniform, much less as a member of FT.” Ischi swallowed. “I’m quoting, ma’am.”
“I understand.”
“FT doesn’t hold with that opinion, ma’am.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Inasmuch as we’re allowed to express opinions. Ma’am.”
Jani stood, stretched her stiff back, and walked to her window. “The first students the idomeni allowed into the Academy weren’t diplomats, but documents examiners. To the idomeni, the order is in the paper, and order is all. They expect you to participate. They expect you to be able to make decisions and negotiate binding agreements because, I guarantee, their examiners sure as hell can.”
“Hantìa,” Ischi grumped. “She keeps trying to push Colonel Hals into saying things—”
“And Hals has been told to keep her mouth shut and scan the paper.” Jani tugged at the window shade so hard she crooked it. “I went to school with Hantìa. If she senses weakness, she is merciless unless you hit her and hit her hard. She expects you to—that’s the born-sect tradition of challenge and counterchallenge. She’s making overtures, inviting Hals to begin the negotiation process. If Hals keeps ignoring her, first she’ll become confused, then she’ll feel insulted, and at that point, no amount of diplomacy is going to lessen the perceived offense.”
“We’re more important than Diplo thinks we are?” Ischi’s voice bit, like he’d just had a long-nursed belief confirmed.
“Oh, yes.”
“What can we do?”
“I don’t know.” Jani returned to her desk and picked up her cup. “Hals seems to realize she needs to do something. I kept getting the feeling that she wanted to ask me questions, but she couldn’t work up the nerve.”
“That’s Vespucci. By the book—” Ischi swallowed his comment and stood up. “By your leave, ma’am—I have a tech meeting to prep.”
“They were arguing about me, weren’t they? About how involved I should get in this?”
“I think you’d better speak with Colonel Hals about that, ma’am.” Ischi kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “I can set up an appointment for you first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Please do, Lieutenant.” Jani took another sip of coffee, then leaned against her desk and absently examined her cup—
“By your leave, ma’am.” Ischi about-faced and made for the door.
—bright blue with a black griffin rampant on a gold shield. “Stop right where you are, Lieutenant!”
“Ma’am.” Ischi snapped to attention a mere step from freedom.
“What is this?” Jani held the cup within centimeters of his nose.
“It’s—a coffee cup, ma’am.”
“And?”
“It’s blue, ma’am.”
“And?”
“It has a bird on it.”
“No, Sergeant, this is not a bird. This, Corporal, is a griffin. Do you know what a griffin is, Spacer?”
“Ma’am.”
“It’s the emblem of something called a Gruppo Helvetica, a worthless assemblage of overpaid has-beens who are going to get their asses flayed as soon as they play a real team.”
Ischi remained at attention as he looked at her sidelong. “Bet?”
“Name it.”
“The officers have a pool.”
“Put me down for Acadia Central United, all the way.”
“You’re on, ma’am.” Ischi removed a handheld from his trouser pocket and coded an entry. “It’s a fifty-Comdollar stake, payable before the first round begins. Ten percent off the top goes to the charity of your choice so we don’t get gigged for gambling. Where do you want yours to go?”
“Colonial Outreach.”
“Colonial Outreach, it is.” Ischi tucked the device back in his pocket. “It’ll be a pleasure to take your money, ma’am,” he said as he departed, with a clipped coolness that would have given Lucien pause.
Jani stuck her tongue out at him as the door closed. Then she returned to her desk, and her report, and the balance of her meal.
It was dark by the time Jani departed Doc Control. Had been dark for hours—the only people out and about were third-shifters on their way to work. Pimentel is going to have my ass. She stopped by the South Central out of guilt and assembled dinner from the leavings of the salads and soups. Everything scanned edible. Good thing. She’d forgotten to scan the sandwich and the cake, and one of them had made her wheeze. Considering the only other things that made her wheeze were shellfish and biopolymers, unscanned foods were now officially expunged from her menu.
Her walk had slowed to a trudge by the time she entered the hostel lobby. But she detoured to the holoVee room anyway, just to decompress.
“In other news,” the disembodied voice of the announcer continued, “reaction to the idomeni ambassador’s visit to the Botany Department of Chicago Combined University, undertaken in an effort to promote scientific exchange between the Commonwealth and the Shèrá worldskein, remains mixed. Negotiations are currently under way to allow teams of human and idomeni botanists to conduct joint research in selected sites throughout both our domains. This would be the first time such exchanges would be allowed since the idomeni civil war, and agriculture officials fear these programs could draw attention and funding from the more traditional research that has been conducted in the colonies for decades.”
As the announcer continued his narration, Arrèl nì Rau Nema came into view, flanked by white-coated human scientists. His golden skin seemed to shimmer in the bright sun. Gold coils flashed from his ears. His straight, pale brown hair had been braided into a series of thin loops that trimmed his head like fringe. He wore the usual clothing of a male of his skein and station: light brown trousers tucked into knee-high brown boots, open-necked shirt in the same dusky color, an off-white overrobe trimmed with crimson. A human wearing so many clothes in
the extreme heat would have looked sweaty and wilted, but Nema looked sharp and energetic.
Jani stepped closer to the display. Several Service officers stood behind Nema, eyes fixed on the crowds. Lucien, she noted, wasn’t among them.
“I have most enjoyed my visit to this place,” Nema said. His light voice sounded clipped, flat, English falling easily from his thin lips. “So much have I learned, and truly.”
One of the reporters shouted a question. The scientists frowned and tried to herd Nema away, but he planted his feet and rounded his shoulders. His stubborn posture made Jani smile.
“I am curious of all things in this city,” he said. “All things.” He paused, then looked straight at the holocam. “My eyes and ears are always open to that which I must know.” Amber eyes tunneled. Through the hours. The distance. Straight at her. “Knowledge is power, isn’t that what all humanish believe? Then so must we labor together, to build our power.”
He bared his teeth in a skeleton-like grimace. The expression was the idomeni equivalent of a smile, though it looked in no way benign. Jani had always referred to the expression as Grim Death with a Deal for You. The term seemed more appropriate now than it ever had.
Another reporter shouted another question, but before Nema could respond, the white coats maneuvered him into a nearby building.
Jani turned and walked slowly from the room. Up the stairs. Down the hall.
Nema’s turning the screws to keep me out of jail because he wants me to look for something. She changed into pajamas, set out her late dinner, ate. Something powerful. She washed, burrowed into bed, nestled Val the Bear on the adjoining pillow. But what?
Did it matter? She esteemed Nema, and always would. And who could help liking him? But he could teach John a thing or two about treating people like objects. She had taken care to leave his ring in her bag. It was a keepsake, from a time long past. She didn’t have the ability, or the will, to jump when he called anymore.
She punched her pillow, thought of the scalpel on her desk, and knew she should start planning her escape. Not now. Later, when she could think more clearly. When thoughts of victimized archivists and troubles with the idomeni didn’t prey on her mind. When she’d seen everything through to the end. Left things tight.
She fell asleep slowly, fitfully. Her stomach had started to ache again.
Chapter 10
Sam sat on the scanbed and watched the morning sun stream though the examination-room windows. The light fractured into rainbows as it struck analyzer displays, flashed like flares as it reflected off metal stands. He found the brightness cheering. So different here than in the SIB basement.
In some respects.
“You understand my problem, don’t you, Sam?” Pimentel activated one of the analyzers. “Why I’m reluctant to discharge you?”
Sam twisted the end of his bathrobe sash around his fingers. “I understand why you believe you have a problem, Doctor. I do not, however, understand why you feel it must become mine.”
Pimentel dragged a lab stool next to the scanbed and sat down. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sam, it’s gone beyond simply taking on other people’s pasts and calling them your own. You’ve been caught in a direct lie about your work. You’d never lied about your work before. Your condition is deteriorating.”
“Your opinion.”
“My medical opinion, Sam. It’s worth a lot.” He leaned forward, his hands splayed across his knees. Narrow hands, for a man. Thin fingers. “I’ve spoken with your immediate supervisor, as well as his supervisor. They told me what happened the other night. They told me about finding two drawers’ full of missing documents in your desk.”
“I did not put them there.”
“You checked out those documents. Your name is on the sign-out.”
“Be that as it may. I did not hide them.”
“Sam, according to Lieutenant Yance, no one else has access to those particular papers.” Pimentel stood. He wore summerweights, although as usual he had left his rank designators in his desk drawer. “You were put in charge of everything connected with Rauta Shèràa Base because you possessed a reputation beyond reproach and organizational abilities Yance called second to none.” He paced in front of the bed, his hands inscribing strokes and circles in the air, a conductor without his baton. “You were able to surmise a series of events from just a few documents. You knew where the holes were, where people needed to look to fill them. You figured out paper protocols the idomeni hadn’t used since the Laumrau fell from power. ‘Almost as if he’d worked there himself,’ was how Yance put it.”
Sam nodded. “I understand research.”
Pimentel stopped in front of him. “Yes, you spent years building your reputation. Refining your expertise.” He braced one narrow-fingered hand on the edge of the bed. “Every day you delay the removal of the tumor increases the chances that you could suffer permanent brain damage, and with that, permanent damage to your expertise. Even with the knowledge base we have, some things can’t be fixed.” He leaned close. “Sam, please let me schedule you for surgery.”
Sam edged away from Pimentel. His view of the door was blocked by the way the doctor had positioned himself. If he tried to slide off the bed, Pimentel only had to move a little to his right to stop him. He didn’t like that. He hated the sensation of feeling trapped. He hated the sight of Pimentel’s spindly hands. “No.”
“Sam—!”
“No, Doctor! That’s my decision, and unless you hold me prisoner here, there’s nothing you can do about it!” He slid off the bed and darted around Pimentel until he stood in a direct line with the door. “I will be leaving this place as soon as I change my clothes.”
“Sam.” Pimentel struck the scanbed with his fist. Once. Twice. “I assume you’ve given no thought to what we spoke of the other day.”
“No.”
“I can’t stand by and watch a man destroy himself. If you persist on this course, I will initiate the paperwork necessary to have you declared a ward of the Commonwealth.”
“You can try, Doctor.” Sam bolted from the room, almost colliding with an orderly pushing a skimcart laden with equipment. He mumbled an apology and scurried down the hall, the ends of his sash bouncing off his knees like clappers in a silent bell.
No doctors inside my head, ever again. He’d die if he let them in. He knew it.
He wove up and down halls, ignoring the signs, using doors and nurses’ stations and inset lights as his guides. Things that couldn’t be moved, couldn’t be changed. There’s nothing wrong with my memory. Not for the things that mattered. Escape. Freedom. Keeping the doctors out of his head.
Sam turned the corner onto the hallway that led to his room and collided with a uniformed man walking in the opposite direction. Dress blue-greys, unusual for that area of the base. Sam looked up into the man’s face and stifled a cry. Scar. From his nose to his mouth. It drew the eye like any accident. Sam barely kept from blurting out that he was in the right place to get it fixed.
The man brought his hands up to chest level, palms toward Sam, as though to grab him. But in the same motion, he backed off a step. The hands dropped. “My apologies.” He smiled—not the most pleasant sight. “I came by to pick up some test results, but I can’t find the lab drop.”
“Scan or wet analysis?”
“Scan.”
“Two halls to the right. Middle door. Blue.” Sam’s gaze flicked over the man’s badges and designators. Any more, and he’d have looked ridiculous; any fewer, and he’d have looked like everybody else. Then Sam looked at the name tag. “Colonel Pierce.”
“Yes.” The man looked over the top of Sam’s head, toward the distant goal of the ScanLab.
“I’ve seen you before.” Sam nodded in recognition. “On ServNet broadcasts. You accompany the Admiral-General to meetings.” He rattled off the particulars as though the man’s ServRec lay open on a desk in front of him. “Pierce. Niall. One I, two Ls. C-number M-five-si
x-dash-three-three-dash-one-one-one-S. You were a sergeant, assigned to the CSS Kensington. You led A Squad, Platoon Four-oh-nine-eight, during the evacuation of Rauta Shèràa Base, during the Night of the Blade.”
Pierce lowered his gaze slowly, his scar smoothing as his smile died. As each detail found voice, he grew more and more still, until Sam thought he had turned to stone. “You have the advantage of me, sir,” he said, so quietly not even his scar moved.
“Yes,” Sam said, “I do.” He sidestepped Pierce and broke into a trot, darting into his room and pushing the door closed. He pressed his ear to the panel, straining for any sound. He didn’t trust doctors, no, but he trusted colonels even less. He couldn’t remember why, although he knew there had to be a reason. Sufficient for now that he simply knew, that the instinct that helped him hack his trails through paper would see him clear to the door with regard to doctors who wanted to take away his freedom and colonels who wanted to know his name.
He tossed the robe in a corner, followed by the pajamas. Pulled his clothes from the tiny armoire and dressed as though the room were on fire.
Ward of the Commonwealth. Sam cracked the door open, eased his head out, and checked the hallway for colonels and doctors. Then he dashed out of the room and down the hall in the direction opposite the way he had come, not stopping until he found a doc tech office.
“Excuse me.” He stepped just inside the doorway and waited for one of the techs to attend him. “I can make changes to the personal data in my file here, can’t I?”
“Yes, sir.” A young woman approached him, smiling. Younger even than Tory, and no one was younger than Tory. “What changes do you need to make?”
“Next of kin.”
The tech scanned his patient bracelet with her handheld, then waited for his file to open. “Name, please?” she asked, her stylus tip poised above the device input.
“Jani. Kilian. She is a captain, on this base.”
“Could you define the relationship, please, sir?”
“Friend.” His only friend—this he believed with all his heart. She believed me. She had looked him in the eye and told him so, when everyone else preferred to trust in the lies. She’ll take care of me. He couldn’t pinpoint why he felt so sure, but he did. He knew he could trust her. He just knew.
Rules of Conflict Page 12
