Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  “Of course. We’ll talk again. Now get out of here. Go to sleep, Andrej.”

  Of course.

  Turning the wonderful possibility of a Revocation of Bond over in his mind, Andrej went only semiconscious to find his quarters, and fall into bed, and sleep the still unmoving sleep of the exhausted.

  ###

  There was someone coming through the open door to his office, and Andrej Koscuisko let his stylus sag to one side in a loosened left-handed grip as he glanced up to see who it was. One of the staff physicians, almost certainly. Nobody else would walk into a senior officer’s workspace without pausing to announce himself — not unless it was an officer even more senior, and the only officer senior to one of Ship’s Primes was the Captain himself.

  Oh.

  It was the Captain, himself.

  Andrej was almost too startled to remember to stand up. Three years on board of Scylla, and the number of times the Captain had come to Andrej’s office — rather than calling Andrej to come to his — could be knotted on a short string. There was an uncommonly serious look to Irshah Parmin’s otherwise quite pleasant round face; waving Andrej to sit back down, the Captain palmed the interlock on the desk surface to seal the office door before he sat down himself.

  “As you were, Doctor. Only take an eighth. I’ve got good news, bad news, and news.”

  Being behind closed doors with the Captain was a very uncomfortable sort of thing; it only happened when Irshah Parmin had things to say he didn’t mean to share, and in the past that had meant points on which Andrej’s own behavior had failed to conform to expectation.

  “Rhyti, your Excellency? Cavene?”

  Andrej thought he sounded too serious by half, even to himself. What could this visit signify? He hadn’t done anything he shouldn’t have done, not recently.

  “Neither, thanks, not staying. Which news do you want first? Never mind, I’ll tell you. Good news, Secured Medical is out of order indefinitely, it won’t be operational again until after we refit.”

  “Yes, Captain, good news. Bad news to follow?”

  Something to do with the orders-packet that the Captain drew from the front of his uniform blouse, with a sigh of resignation. “This just in on courier. Since you’re surplus, in a sense, with Secured Medical off line. Chilleau Judiciary’s requisitioned you for the Domitt Prison until such time as we can demand you back to support the tactical mission as Scylla’s battle surgeon.”

  The Domitt Prison? Had he heard of that? The orders the Captain carried would tell him all about it, Andrej knew from experience. He had been detailed on temporary assignment before: always over the Captain’s explicit objection.

  “Prison duty, your Excellency. I don’t believe I’ve done a prison tour yet.” Prison duty didn’t have to be too bad, as long as it was a standard Judicial correctional center, and not a processing center. The only thing the Bench needed Inquisitors for at correctional centers was to provide legal sanction for the exercise of prison discipline, and handle the occasional Accused. Not like processing centers at all.

  Captain Irshah Parmin frowned. “It’ll be weeks at best before we can call for you, Andrej. I haven’t spoken to First Officer, but we’re going to want to keep that Nurail of yours here on board, the Domitt Prison being in the middle of a Nurail displacement camp. Well, in a sense.”

  Oh, this was worse.

  It was a processing center.

  So what they wanted an Inquisitor for was to conduct Inquiry, exercise the Protocols, and perform his Judicial function exclusive of any other duties he might have had elsewhere; and for how long?

  “I quite understand.” Andrej could hear the strain in his own voice. “Quite impossible. Who is to accompany me, then?” Bond-involuntaries, that went without saying. The Bench’s primary purpose for creating bond-involuntaries in the first place had been to provide Inquisitors with helping hands. The bond-involuntaries’ governors ensured that they couldn’t decline to inflict whatever tortures their officer required of them simply because it was grotesquely indecent to do so.

  He had eleven bond-involuntaries assigned to him here on Scylla, but that only made up two five-teams, with Vance as the only Bonded member on Security 5.1. So it had to be either 5.3 or 5.4. With Robert — and 5.3, by extension — held back, 5.4 would be assigned: well, why not? If it was to be hard duty for them, there was at least the hope in Andrej’s heart that it would be their last assignment before the Bench revoked their Bonds.

  “You’ll probably end up with 5.4. And Miss Samons hasn’t been told, First Officer wants to keep things to herself to avoid rumors. It could take months to get the petition through.”

  Andrej could understand that. The possibility in itself was almost too much to keep to himself; it could only be worse for Chief Samons, who worked with Andrej’s people much more intimately. “That’s good news and bad news, then, your Excellency. What about news?”

  “Ah. In quarters, actually, I didn’t hold it, none of my business.” Irshah Parmin’s raised eyebrows gave him the look of a man suddenly realizing that he’d misplaced something or another. “Came in with the courier, letters for you from home. There’s a packet of some sort. We’re to turn you over to the Dramissoi Relocation Fleet when it arrives, Andrej, that’s just three or four days out.”

  The Captain stood up as he spoke, and rubbed his face with his hands as though just waking up. “All I can do is promise to try to get you back as soon as possible. My hands are tied. I’d rather have you here.”

  Because his Captain felt that the Ship’s Surgeon should be with the ship, regardless of how young and inexperienced he might be. And would have spared Andrej the ordeal that awaited him, if he could have; and yet Andrej had learned years ago that once he got started with the Protocols he had no difficulty at all implementing them.

  “Thank you, your Excellency.” The respect he owed his superior officer was offered freely, out of genuine appreciation. “I’ll tell someone to pack.”

  Three or four days, well, he’d have plenty of prep time with as many as three days to reckon with. But what had the Captain said?

  Letters from home?

  From whom, at home?

  From Marana, with pictures of his child, and news of how the son he’d yet to meet was growing?

  Or from his father, grim and formal and imbued with decorous grief over the fact that Andrej — in violation of the very filial piety after whose Saint he had been named — refused to be reconciled to the duty his father had set him to, and still declined to beg forgiveness for having challenged his father’s desire that he go to Fleet to be Inquisitor?

  His father had no more idea of what Andrej’s life was like in Secured Medical than Andrej himself had once had, before his training. Andrej had never tried to more than hint at the horrors that comprised Inquisition. His father would only take it as cowardice on his part, evidence of shameful reluctance to do his duty to the Bench and Jurisdiction.

  “Security Chief Warrant Officer Caleigh Samons. For his Excellency, Chief Medical.”

  The calm clear voice that sounded from the talk-alert provided a very welcome distraction for Andrej. Chief Samons. That was right. It was exercise period. She would be wondering where he was; or if not where he was, what excuse he might be thinking of to offer this time in his half-hearted but perpetual efforts to get out of the extra laps she would require of him.

  “Coming directly, Chief. Koscuisko away, here.”

  Nothing was going to change his father’s mind. Nothing was going to change the test to come, however many months at the Domitt Prison. Nothing could change the horror that he had of the hunger in his blood, but while he ran his laps he did not think about any of the things he could not change. He only thought of laps, while he was running.

  That relief from mindfulness alone would have compelled him to seek exercise, were it not for the fact that Chief Samons put limits on his laps, to prevent injury.

  Andrej went to join his Security and run his
laps, and tried not to think too hard about the Domitt Prison.

  Chapter Two

  It was five days after her early return from Worlibeg before Mergau Noycannir could get in to see First Secretary Sindha Verlaine, Chilleau Judiciary. She’d come back early on purpose to be sure that she was on site when the decision was made, only to discover that the decision had been made without her, the assignment she coveted given away to the last person in the world to whom she would wish it to go.

  She’d waited five days for an explanation.

  Admitted to the First Secretary’s office, punctual to the eighth, Mergau stared at him as he sat behind his desk and did what she could to disguise her hunger. He was a thin reedy man, red-haired and pale-skinned, with watery eyes and a thin high-boned nose that made him look like a prey-animal flaring its nostrils anxiously into the wind to scent for hunters.

  He looked small and rather insignificant, behind the great glaring expanse of his desk-table. And yet he held the power she desired above all things.

  “You have sent Andrej Koscuisko to the Domitt Prison instead of me.” She had been Clerk of Court under Sindha Verlaine for only five years, but she was the one who had earned the Writ for him. She was entitled to speak to him directly. She was different from the others. “Why? I thought it was my assignment. Especially after what I did for you at Worlibeg, First Secretary.”

  He didn’t look particularly receptive, his expression blank. Perhaps she should have been more formal with him: but no, she was expressing her natural sense of outrage at being denied a privilege well-earned and well-deserved. To be mistress of the Domitt Prison . . .

  Reaching for a stack of report-cubes, the First Secretary toppled them toward him, walking his fingers over the edges one by one. “Yes. Worlibeg. We’re getting reports from Worlibeg, Mergau.” He had a deep voice somewhat surprising to hear from a thin man. “They’ll be talking about you for years. It’s not exactly the kind of talk I’d hoped for, though.”

  He was avoiding the issue, and she wasn’t about to let him. “I did as you instructed. I investigated and obtained confession, with collaterals. I executed the Protocols under my Writ, all as you desired.”

  Verlaine sighed, and kicked the stack of documents-cubes back with a decisive flick of his index finger. “Rather too much so. Mergau, I question your judgment sometimes: how likely was it that all of the Provost’s family were plotting against the Bench? Five of them less than sixteen years of age, Standard.”

  “Confessed under speak-sera and were remanded to the Bench, with a neutral observer on site at all times.” She was surprised at his expressed discomfort. She knew how to handle children under the Protocols. Hadn’t she been especially gentle with the youngest? “And there was no question that a message had to be sent. You said so yourself. To send a Fleet Inquisitor to the Domitt Prison sends a message too, and I believe I have a right to understand why I am being publicly disgraced in this manner.”

  She’d thought carefully beforehand about whether she should use the word “disgraced.” The First Secretary didn’t take well to manipulation; it was necessary to be subtler with him than with previous Patrons. But she had held his Writ for three years, the only person in the history of the Fleet to be admitted to Orientation Station Medical without a medical degree.

  It was in his best interest to save her face. She was the visible symbol of his power and his influence.

  Still, from his reaction she realized she should not have used so strong a word. “ ‘Disgraced.’ ” He spoke it as though it were not plain Standard, as though it were a word in a language unknown to him. “How are you disgraced because Koscuisko is to go to the Domitt Prison?”

  Andrej Koscuisko to be master of the place, Andrej Koscuisko to enjoy the absolute power, but he would not. He didn’t have the temperament to understand how to be master of the Domitt Prison. This was a man who would not discipline his slaves. The Domitt Prison would have as little respect for him as she did.

  “It is a very significant. Highly visible. Politically critical job that needs to be done there. And you have chosen to send a borrowed Fleet resource rather than me. The message is clear enough.”

  Verlaine nodded. “Yes, indeed it is. Chilleau Judiciary elects an independent Inquisitor at the Domitt Prison because it is vital to our credibility that the evidence be perceived as sound. Andrej Koscuisko has acquired a bit of a reputation in Fleet circles over the years, Mergau. I’ve been keeping an eye on him.”

  She knew. And she needed to fix his attention on her, and not her hated rival. “I don’t think it’s unfair to say I earned that posting, First Secretary, and I had a right to expect it. Or at least to be privy to your decision before it became clear to all that I hadn’t been so much as informed beforehand.”

  Verlaine reached for a dossier, looking bored. “You were in Worlibeg, Mergau. Or at least I thought you were in Worlibeg. I have an assignment for you of particular sensitivity, you may as well have this to begin review.”

  Mergau took a long slow breath, concentrating. All right. There was to be no discussion. It would only expose her to his irritation to press any further. She had to do what she could to salvage something from this interview: People were watching, listening, talking behind her back. She knew. She had informants.

  So did he. He had more of them, and in more places. She was one of them, after all.

  “Very good, First Secretary. The nature of the assignment, sir?”

  He accepted her retreat into formality without any visible sign of having noticed it. “The Langsarik pirates. Bench specialists Ivers and Vogel have been working the problem. There are prisoners in transit to Chilleau Judiciary with what may amount to very pertinent information.”

  Langsariks!

  The Langsarik pirates had been the mercenary fleet employed by the world-family of Palaam against its neighbors until those neighbors had cried to Jurisdiction for admittance and protection. Since then the Langsariks had persisted as pirates, never quite stamped out, and of late their depredations had become increasingly savage and frequent.

  The severity of the problem could be judged by the assignment of not one, but actually two, Bench intelligence specialists to find the Langsariks and their backers and put an end to them once and for all. Under most circumstances, one Bench intelligence specialist was considered more than adequate for any three given wars: one Judicial Irregularity, one Bench intelligence specialist.

  If she was to have Langsariks to question . . .

  “Are there any preliminaries?” Mergau asked eagerly, reaching for the dossier. She could use Langsariks. With careful handling, the interrogation of some Langsariks could easily overbalance the snub the First Secretary had handed her over the Domitt Prison. “And am I to work with the Bench specialists involved?”

  Verlaine held on to the dossier for just long enough to cause her to lift her eyes to his face, startled, to see what was the matter. “The usual statements.” His expression was unusually severe. “I want you to take every precaution with these people, Mergau. Full cooperation with Medical staff. I’ll have someone detailed to cull the Controlled List for you. We must have information, not just confessions. This could mean the end of the Langsariks, if Ivers and Vogel are right about what these people should know.”

  “Of course, First Secretary.” Only now did Verlaine release the dossier into Mergau’s anxious grasp. “I’ll get right on it. When do they arrive?”

  If she could get the confessions, that would enable Fleet to put paid to the Langsarik pirates at last: she would be the crucial element in the Second Judge’s triumph, a stunning achievement that would easily silence the critics who continued to question Chilleau Judiciary’s handling of the Nurail problem.

  “Twenty days out yet, Mergau. Plenty of time to start your preparations. And I want you to put everything else aside and concentrate on this. Information. Not just confessions. Information.”

  Twenty days.

  Twenty days, and then
she’d get what she needed to more than make up for the fact that Andrej Koscuisko, and not she, was to vindicate the Second Judge at the Domitt Prison.

  ###

  Working their way through the displacement camp, row by dreary row . . . this was one of the most depressing places Joslire Curran had ever been in his life, the Curran Detention Center where he’d lost his name and taken his Bond not excepted. Most of the population of Port Eild was here. The city itself hadn’t been badly damaged, but the Bench had determined that the population would be easier to handle if they were removed from their homes.

  How many souls had there been in Port Eild?

  How many souls were here in these shacks, huddled together in misery and distress?

  Their Captain had seconded them on order to the Dramissoi Relocation Fleet, to serve with Bench Captain Sinjosi Vopalar’s other medical resources and travel with the relocation fleet from Eild to Port Rudistal in the Sardish system, weeks away from this world. Where the officer would place his Writ at the disposal of the Domitt Prison.

  The sky had been overcast since they’d got here, six Standard days of unrelieved mist and fog. Dirty yellow clouds, and the cloud cover no relief from the oppressive atmosphere, though it wasn’t as cold as it could have been — and a good thing, too. The local stores were grievously inadequate to supply a population with sufficient clothing and bedding for cold weather.

  He’d heard it said — by displaced Nurail, and more than once — that it had been deliberate, an artificial shortage to increase their suffering; but Joslire knew better. To imagine that the Bench spared a second thought for their suffering was to be misguided. The Bench simply didn’t care.

  It was Koscuisko’s responsibility to work through the holding areas, the ad-hoc cells set aside to hold the Nurail identified as prisoners as well as deportees. There was a difference, and it could be a critically important difference — deportees were subject to privation and dehumanization, but they could not be put to the torture merely because they were no longer to be permitted to die on their own land.