Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  In order to give Geltoi time to make the shortfalls good?

  What sense did that make?

  Koscuisko would find no serious irregularity in his Infirmary audit. Geltoi would see to that. Or, rather, Belan would see to that, on Geltoi’s instruction. That meant Koscuisko’s story about losing the prisoner to an adulterated drug would seem the flimsiest of excuses: Geltoi would probably enjoy making that point with him, too.

  “As you say, Doctor Koscuisko. Good-greeting.”

  Of course Koscuisko could always claim convincingly that the medication he had taken was one bad lot in an otherwise unremarkable stores inventory, and cover up his error that way.

  It hadn’t been an error.

  They all knew that very well — he, Administrator Geltoi, Koscuisko, all of them.

  Koscuisko would come out of this looking incompetent, surely.

  Except nobody could take Koscuisko as incompetent on the strength of his previous performance.

  Was this some sort of a signal that Koscuisko meant to transmit thus indirectly to Chilleau Judiciary?

  And if it was — could he really trust Administrator Geltoi to see what was going on, in light of how easily Koscuisko had maneuvered him into the trap just now?

  Administrator Geltoi watched grimly as Koscuisko left the room, glaring at the Inquisitor’s back as though to plunge daggers into it. Large ones. Long blades. Sharp points.

  The glare made no perceptible impact on Andrej Koscuisko.

  The door closed behind the Inquisitor, and Geltoi turned his cold furious gaze to Belan’s face, as though he were to blame for the scene, having witnessed it.

  “You know what must be done,” Administrator Geltoi snarled. “Get cracking. There isn’t much time. Spare no expense. And be sure the documentation is in order, this time.”

  Still smarting over what Koscuisko had had to say about the Lerriback confusion, clearly.

  Not to speak of the amount of money it was going to cost to make Infirmary stores whole, after all of these months of harvesting prison stores for the black market. The drugs were there for prisoners, of course. But prisoners couldn’t complain about their treatment.

  Belan bowed in respectful silence and left.

  He wasn’t happy.

  Administrator Geltoi had not come off the better in this interview. Koscuisko had handled the Administrator as easily as — as easily as if Geltoi had been Nurail, and Koscuisko Pyana.

  What if he’d been wrong?

  What if Koscuisko found out the things the Administrator had assured him would stay buried forever —

  No.

  Belan shuddered, and had to stop in the corridor, leaning up against the wall to steady himself.

  They had been buried alive, he could still hear the screaming, and on late nights as the mist rose from the damp ground it was hard to avoid seeing faces in the night-fog. Nurail faces. Dead and half-rotted. Screaming in disbelief and terror forever, as they had died.

  He had put his trust in Administrator Geltoi, and Administrator Geltoi knew what he was doing.

  No other possibility could even be entertained.

  Infirmary audit.

  Yes.

  If he went to see the senior staff physician now, right now, he could be well clear of the containment wall before the sun went down, and he would have nothing to fear from the tortured dead.

  ###

  Mergau Noycannir could have shrieked in rage and frustration: but she had more control than that. It was just that the provocation was extreme.

  Two of the prisoners were dead.

  One of them useless for days to come, having bitten her own tongue clear through to avoid speaking. The First Secretary’s censor might well claim it had been in response to an excess of pain: but if people bit their tongues through every time they were put to the stretcher there would be no evidence obtained from seven out of eight of the wretches.

  Three prisoners, and no information.

  Mergau slammed her fist down atop the open tray of doses from the Controlled List that were arrayed in the work-room, ready for her use. It wasn’t fair. She was being watched too closely; this wasn’t an offsite. She didn’t dare spike the Levels with the First Secretary so interested in what results she might be getting, day by day. And she had lost three out of seven, two for good, and had got no useful information. Oh, information, yes, that. But nothing the Bench could use against the Langsariks.

  She mastered her emotion with an effort. Her fourth prisoner was in the room with her, behind her on the worktable; and she had to maintain her superiority before him. Granted that he was probably not paying attention: there was never any telling when a prisoner might notice what, to the detriment of the exercise.

  The whole difficulty lay in the fact that these people were accused on circumstantial evidence alone. The Protocols were clear. People could not be forced to incriminate themselves on the basis of circumstantial evidence; they could only be pressed to do so. If they were determined enough to withstand the maximum lawful degree of pressure, the Bench would grant them not guilty by default; and release them.

  She was not allowed the efficient out, the obvious out, the one best technique for obtaining confession. The coercive classes of speak-sera were only authorized at the Advanced Levels, and she wasn’t authorized to invoke the Advanced Levels against these people. Yet.

  The Bench required more evidence than circumstantial before it would allow the Advanced Levels prior to receipt of a confession. She was to be expected to obtain the high-quality evidence that only a speak-serum could reliably deliver without the use of the only tools she had to obtain it reliably.

  If she’d been offsite she could have cheated, gone off Record and invoked the Eighth Level. Then she could have her confession, and after that whatever speak-sera she wanted. There were ways to invoke the Eighth Level that left no obvious visible physical evidence on Record; it had worked for her before.

  She didn’t dare.

  There would be too many questions about the chronological gap, if she went off-Record in the middle of one of these interrogations.

  Taking a deep breath, forcing herself to be calm and in control, Mergau started to sort the doses back into array on the dose-tray. They had been jarred ajumble when she’d struck it with her fist. The Controlled List, but what good did it do her? Wake-keepers were authorized, yes, but only at a very low level. Pain-maintenance drugs not at all. Nerve agents, so moderate as to be functionally useless to her need, and speak-sera restricted to the guarantee of candid speech, with no coercive aspect to them.

  The doses had got mixed up.

  It took some thought to get them sorted out again.

  And when she had finished sorting the doses, she noticed that she’d inadvertently included an Advanced Level instrument in amongst the Intermediate Level drugs that the psycho-pharmacologist from Gatzie had selected for her use.

  Nor was it just any Advanced Level instrument, it was her favorite, Andrej Koscuisko’s finest contribution to the Controlled List, the one she used more than anything else. It worked on almost all classes of hominid, and in much the same way.

  And if it frequently hastened the prisoner’s death, what difference did that make, as long as she got the information? It was an Advanced Level instrument. Referral at the Advanced Level meant a death sentence one way or another, either execution for crimes confessed or death under torture to obtain confession in order to put the prisoner to death for crimes confessed.

  And here it was, neatly replaced, in with her row of authorized and appropriate medications.

  Did she dare pretend?

  Advanced Level for most classes of hominid, yes; that was doubtless why it had been held out from her work-set this time. But Intermediate Level for some classes of hominid, and very effective in the Intermediate Levels at obtaining satisfactory results if a person chanced to make a small error and use it on the wrong people. Its inclusion in her work-set would not surprise her. She could ea
sily have overlooked its sudden appearance in her work-set, in her concentration on her task.

  She could make it work.

  Even if the First Secretary reviewed the Record — and there was no reason to expect he would — no one need ever even notice. She had expected to use one drug. She would announce the drug she intended to use, on Record. It would take a psycho-pharmacologist or an autopsy to surface any small mistake on her part. Mergau anticipated neither; and once she had the information . . .

  She picked out the stylus with the dose and turned back to her waiting prisoner.

  She would prevail.

  She was not Koscuisko; but she was as good as, and all that she was doing was exactly what he must have done, to have built up such an inflated name for himself.

  “Let the Record show administration of six units of tincture of quillock per body weight.”

  Six units would do it, all right.

  Yes, that would take care of the problem once and for all.

  ###

  “So we’ll get an Infirmary audit out of the way, all to the good,” Administrator Geltoi sneered bitterly. “And we haven’t had any complaints on the kitchen audit. Still our young Koscuisko makes demands, then calls for prisoners off of work crew, and not so much as three words in courtesy to explain why he needs thus-and-such a soul.”

  Well, because the prisoners currently under interrogation had named the names, Belan thought to himself. Standing quietly beside Geltoi’s desk, waiting for his instructions. Geltoi was annoyed about the prisoners as much because they had to be pulled from work-crew as anything else; and the work-crews were starting to thin out a bit. The Domitt hadn’t gotten a good shipment of replacements in since Koscuisko’s arrival.

  “What are you going to do, Administrator?”

  That wasn’t exactly Koscuisko’s fault. Or was it? They couldn’t afford any irregularities, not right under Koscuisko’s nose. Captain Sinjosi Vopalar seemed as little inclined to leave administrative details to locals as Koscuisko had proved himself to be. Their Port Authority contacts were worried about questions one of Vopalar’s junior officers was asking, and it was rumored that Koscuisko had put him up to it.

  Maybe that was actually Koscuisko’s fault, come to that. Rising from his chair, Administrator Geltoi turned his back to gaze out of the window toward Port Rudistal. “Losing money on work-detail, we can’t supply the labor, not between Koscuisko and that Captain Vopalar. Losing money on victuals, the kitchen’s gotten nervous and timid, insists on serving what we’re issued for the duration. Losing a great bloody chunk of money just so Koscuisko can’t find anything wrong in Infirmary. And he killed Robis Darmon, Merig, make no mistake about it. We could have had more evidence from him.”

  Which would have strengthened their hand at Chilleau Judiciary in case of any awkwardness: that was the unspoken subtext to Administrator Geltoi’s argument. Belan didn’t like it. Why did Geltoi feel the need for insurance?

  The Port Authority and the kitchen might be excused for suffering a failure of nerve. But Geltoi was the mastermind. Belan believed in him. If other Pyana started to feel concern, did that mean that they weren’t smart for Pyana?

  Or that Geltoi wasn’t smart for a Pyana?

  If Geltoi wasn’t really in control of this —

  The idea was unthinkable.

  “Perhaps if you were to make complaint to Chilleau Judiciary,” Belan suggested, a little diffidently.

  “And why the people he wants for the work-rooms?” Geltoi ignored the question, clearly more concerned about his own issues than what Belan had to suggest. “There isn’t any logic to it. What’s he up to?”

  They could just ask.

  Belan was tempted to propose they do just that. Koscuisko had been blunt enough about whether or not Darmon’s death had been attributable to a blunder on his part. Maybe all they had to do was ask — and Koscuisko would tell them.

  Maybe it was important that they know.

  There were voices in the fog between the wall of the Domitt Prison and its containment wall, when the fog rose. It could be clear in front of the building. It could be clear at the north of the building. The fog would still creep out of the ground on the south side of the building, at a little remove.

  Right where the massive crane had been anchored in the ground to lift materials onto the fast-rising floors of the Domitt Prison.

  Right where the bodies of those dead were buried, but they hadn’t all been dead when they’d been buried, and the chemical accelerant the Pyana had dumped into the pit to speed decomposition ate into living flesh and burned like fire.

  Belan had been there.

  He had heard the screaming.

  The voices didn’t scream, they only hinted, teased, warned, proposing riddles that drove him half-mad. He hadn’t gotten out of the building in time, last night. He’d been forced to spend the night in his office, pretending to be working diligently.

  Now Geltoi turned back to the desk-table and sat down once again. Sighing deeply. “He’s really left me with no other choice, Belan.” Geltoi’s tone of voice was aggrieved, as though forced into some action against his better judgment. “I’d rather we had been able to work things out, but he’s chosen not to bring his concerns to me before taking official action. This isn’t the sort of conduct one expects from a ranking officer.”

  The words and phrases flowed in majestic measure. Rehearsed, almost. Maybe Geltoi had rehearsed. Artificial, one way or the other — all except Geltoi’s undoubted frustration with how things had worked out for them.

  “I can’t accept a working relationship that’s all take and no give, the Administration does deserve some consideration, after all. I’m asking Chilleau Judiciary to recall Andrej Koscuisko to Scylla. No Writ at all would be better than this one.”

  One hand flat to the table’s surface, Geltoi waited for a response, staring at Belan. Oh. It was time for the chorus, then.

  “Such an undeserved disappointment.” Yes, that had been his cue; the look of irritation that had started to build in Geltoi’s eyes faded into bland self-satisfied self-pity. “After you took every measure to see him comfortable and provided for. Treated him with every evidence of respect.”

  Shut him up on the roof, and that so effectively that as far as Belan knew Koscuisko hadn’t noticed yet. Koscuisko had taken guards from the torture-block to show him the way to Infirmary. Not their fault if Koscuisko had refused to wait even as short a time as it would have taken to call down to Infirmary and let them know Koscuisko was coming.

  “Thank you. Good friend. You’re a great help to me, Belan.” And an accomplice, in this up to his neck. That was the way to translate Pyana. Praise was only given to point out the threat. “We should be through with Koscuisko’s stunts soon enough. I can be gracious. He won’t get the satisfaction of provoking me into undignified reprisals.”

  No, Belan thought, in sudden silent rebellion. You’ll get me to make them.

  “You’re a true leader, Administrator.” Aloud he only recited the lines he knew were expected of him. “It’s too bad Koscuisko couldn’t have learned from your example.”

  Else Koscuisko would be butchering his prisoners and demanding adulation for his hackwork. Rather than taking a slow and methodical approach, which yielded results for almost every death on Koscuisko’s hands since he’d arrived at the Domitt Prison.

  Administrator Geltoi waved Belan away in dismissal, a look of pained and patient noble suffering on his face. Belan bowed and went away.

  Just in time.

  He had had all of Administrator Geltoi he could take for now.

  What if Geltoi wasn’t smart?

  What if the truth about the Domitt Prison should come out, somehow, some way, despite all the Pyana cleverness that had surrounded it from the very start?

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  Pyana were smart, and Geltoi was Pyana. Also Koscuisko was leaving. Things would be back to normal in no time.

  But he�
��d brought a nice length of good rope to the office, just in case he was mistaken after all.

  ###

  “ ‘Multiple and egregious instances of behavior betraying a regrettable lack of delicacy and sensitivity to his position of responsibility within the structure of Judicial Inquiry,’ ” First Secretary Verlaine read aloud, his voice remarkably light for such a deep bass and his tone emphatically less than serious. “ ‘ — Which would be in themselves unimportant if support for the Inquisitorial function was being exercised at an acceptable level of skill and professionalism.’ Oh, my. He has annoyed somebody.”

  Morning-meeting, and Verlaine was sharing the new items on his desk. Mergau was resigned. Her disgrace was temporary; and could be best managed if she showed herself to be quite unconcerned about it. Not dismissing the gravity of the situation, no. Simply serene and confident that anyone could make a mistake.

  Inquisition was an imperfect science at best, and it would all be behind her soon enough. The language the Domitt Prison’s Administrator had used to complain about Andrej Koscuisko was unquestionably strong; if even Koscuisko could fail, that would strengthen her point. On the other hand, Verlaine was unquestionably not very upset: that would have rather the opposite influence on the question.

  “Koscuisko’s Captain wants him back,” Bench Specialist Vogel observed. “There’s a request in. To support his medical function, not his Judicial one, since Scylla’s duty status is still suspended. Maybe it would be just as well, but there’s something that should be bothering us about all this.”

  The timing couldn’t have been better had she planned it, Mergau congratulated herself. She could see the record cubes in Bench Intelligence Specialist Vogel’s loose-fingered grasp; autopsy or Record or both, it hardly mattered. If Andrej Koscuisko, for whose reputed skills and talent the First Secretary had such evident if undeserved admiration, could lose a prisoner before time to a bad dose — why, any failing on her part was more than adequately covered.