The Devil and Deep Space

by Susan R. Matthews

  She could hardly argue with him on that. They both knew that he couldn’t surrender his Writ so long as the status of the Ragnarok’s appeal was in process. Surrendering his Writ while remaining on board would make him unauthorized personnel, and generate an additional charge against the ship — that of allowing an unauthorized person to exercise command and control of his Infirmary, and failure to discharge persons no longer under orders.

  “We can work it out, your Excellency. I’m sure of it.” She was stubborn. He knew she hated leaving him here. “And when we do, Chilleau Judiciary is going to need your influence, sir, more I think than the First Secretary anticipated.”

  Because Fleet was much more angry about Verlaine’s proposal than Verlaine had anticipated. Verlaine had concentrated his attention on the humanitarian aspects, the legal aspects, the civil aspects of challenging the whole system of Inquiry. He had underestimated the degree to which Fleet would feel that its prerogatives were being taken away from it.

  “All the more reason for a swift resolution to this entire problem. A swift and bloodless resolution, Specialist Ivers. And he shall have my whole–hearted support, as expert witness.”

  Fleet was not particularly committed to the system of Inquiry in and of itself. As an institution that was at base military, Fleet cared little for the concept of dishonoring itself by torturing civilians. Information required for military purposes could be gotten very simply with the right drugs.

  It was power, no more. What Verlaine proposed would significantly reduce the influence Fleet possessed in negotiation with the Bench for privileges, material, resources. Autonomy. It could be seen as a move to begin to draw Fleet more firmly under Bench control: and that was certainly how the Fleet appeared to be reacting to the concept.

  “You can come with me, your Excellency.”

  They had been over this before. “Thank you for all of your efforts on my behalf, Specialist Ivers, to the furtherance of the rule of Law. I am staying.”

  She held his eye for a long moment before she acknowledged her final defeat. “As you will, your Excellency. By your leave. And with my very sincere hope for a quick resolution.”

  And bloodless, Andrej added in his mind. But he didn’t need to repeat it, not again. She knew.

  Returning her salute with a respectful bow of his own — she was a Bench specialist, she wasn’t required to salute to anybody — Andrej watched her go up the ramp into the thula, with a moderate feeling of affectionate warmth in his heart for her. She had tried very hard. He liked her well enough. But she was a Bench specialist. Such people were dangerous to like, even on a professional level.

  Now it only remained that he take leave of Ferinc, and probe to see what damages the Saint would assess for the use Andrej had made of his thula. It was all very well for Stoshik to claim that the Malcontent’s efforts on Andrej’s behalf were owed by its duty to the Autocrat, and that its loan of the thula was its apology for its failure to anticipate Noycannir’s assassination attempt. That would be too easy all around. Things were never so straight–forward where the Malcontent was concerned.

  Andrej waited.

  Cousin Ferinc had been waiting as well, watching, and came forward once Ivers was into the thula and out of sight. Ferinc had tied his braids together at the back of his neck, using the plaits to gather his long hair into a single fall; he looked more like Haster Girag with his hair back from his face, but Andrej had made up his mind to forgive Ferinc for having been that person. There was no sense in holding any grudges. And more for Ferinc to forgive Andrej than otherwise, really.

  “You take the Bench specialist to Chilleau, then home?” Andrej asked, just to open the dialogue. “I hope that Anton will not be too much distressed that I do not come back. And yet it may be that he will not notice. If the Malcontent in mercy allows that you should remain his friend.”

  Ferinc shook his head. “Not so easy as that, your Excellency. He worships you like a saint under Canopy; it will cause him suffering. I’m sorry. But there’s no way around it. I’ll do what I can.”

  Ferinc was right. It would be too easy to pretend that having met his son and made re–contract with Marana, he could absent himself without explanation and for an unknown period of time to pursue his personal goals. There was no use in lying to himself. He was being cruel to his son, his own son, his beautiful child, a child who loved him.

  “Be his friend still, Ferinc.” He was an unnatural father, perhaps, to be unable to set his son’s suffering above the lives of the crew of the Ragnarok. And if he was, Marana would tell him. There would be no use in hoping for a life with her, not if he betrayed her son to suffer for such a small thing as four or eight or seven hundred souls; or was he being unfair?

  Marana. “And be a friend to my wife as well, if she will take solace. She will have much fault to find with my behavior, and rightly so, but I fear for her contest against my family. She will need powerful defenders. Will the Malcontent protect my wife, and my son Anton?”

  “He is no longer your son, your Excellency,” Ferinc pointed out, reasonably. “He is the inheriting son of the Koscuisko familial corporation. It is the Saint’s natural business to look after his best interest. But since you ask. I will relay the request, your Excellency, to my ecclesiastical superior. Knowing that you know better than I do what it means to ask a favor from the Malcontent.”

  There was no help for it. The future was too much in question. He had made his son safe in the event of his own sudden death; and in so doing, had put Anton in need of a different sort of protection.

  “Aside from that, Ferinc.” Andrej paused for a moment to master his own irritation; it was no use losing one’s patience with Malcontents. “And the Saint aside. You were only a man at one time. It may be that I wronged you once.”

  Cousin Ferinc shuddered and stepped back, apparently taken by surprise. It was another moment before he replied. “On balance,” Ferinc said, “no, your Excellency. It was no more than Fleet itself would have done, had the crime been reported. Much less, perhaps. Fleet would not have so reduced me in spirit, I can admit that much, yes, sir.”

  If Andrej had reported the crime Ferinc would have lost rank and privilege, and gone to prison for some years. Andrej had spared him that, but not because he had meant to be pitiful. No. He had broken Haster Girag because he had believed Girag deserved to be broken into the dust, and because he knew that he was going to enjoy it. And so he had.

  “My motives were vengeful.” And he had been drunk, in those days, on the absolute power at his command, his absolute privilege to execute it, the absolute atrocity that Fleet and the rule of Law permitted him. Required of him. “All else apart, that was a sin. I have savaged you. To elect the Malcontent is a desperate thing, Ferinc. I am to blame for it. If I were to ask you for the peace of the Saint, could you from your heart grant it, and forgive me?”

  “For my own part?” Ferinc asked, as if in wonder. Yes, it was an extreme sort of a thing to ask. Andrej could recognize the selfish unreason of his demand. “And not what my reconciler has demanded? If you could not have let me see Anton. But you did. And therefore.”

  Coming closer to him, standing between Andrej and the ramp into the thula, Ferinc put his hand to the back of Andrej’s neck; a very precise signal, for Dolgorukij, and one that Ferinc had obviously learned. “The peace of the Malcontent I give you,” Cousin Ferinc said, and kissed him. Very seriously.

  Breaking off suddenly, though, to straighten up, leaving Andrej to wonder —

  “But not where Chief Stildyne can see me,” Cousin Ferinc explained. “Might cause all sorts of misunderstandings. With all my heart, your Excellency, peace between us, and I’m out of here.”

  There was the sound of Stildyne feet behind Andrej on the docking apron as Cousin Ferinc ducked his head and disappeared into the thula.

  The loading ramp began to close.

  “You’ll want to wash your neck, sir,” Stildyne said, and his voice was deeply disapproving
. “Maybe rinse your mouth. Malcontents. Filthy people. Or so at least they tell me.”

  Watching the thula prepare to take flight, listening to Stildyne, Andrej’s mind went back to the night he’d had dinner with, his family at Chelatring Side, before Mergau Noycannir had arrived to attack him. Stildyne had disappeared. Stoshik also. The Gallery; and on the following day —

  “One never knows what such depraved souls will get up to. No. You are quite right. Let us by all means go, Brachi.”

  Anton would be loved and cared for until his father could come home again. Marana perhaps also, and though there was less comfort in that idea than the first it was still good to know that he had not abandoned her entirely without resources.

  And when the Ragnarok and its crew were safe he could go home and bow down at her feet and beg for her forgiveness, as well. When the ship was safe.

  Until then he could not abandon the people to whom he owed so great a debt, on board the Ragnarok.

  Epilogue

  Jils Ivers came direct from the common transport docks at Chilleau Judiciary up through the maintenance corridors, past the Security checkpoints, and onto the grounds that held the Chambers offices. It was early in the morning. Verlaine would be in his office already, she was sure of it. She didn’t bother to signal ahead. Security would let Verlaine know when she crossed the checkpoint. He would know that she was coming.

  It was much busier in Chambers than it had been the last time she’d come through these gates, across the park, into the administration building. More than forty days from span to span, but the Second Judge had announced her program and her intentions now. The bid was active; the stakes much higher.

  Verlaine was probably living in his office. She knew he had a foldaway in a closet, and kept a supply of clean linen there. The morning shift had yet to come into the offices; there were just Security there, and the janitors finishing their nightly cleaning tasks.

  It was quiet. Jils relished the peace, knowing how short a period it would last. She could catch Verlaine at the start of the day. If she was lucky she would not find him at the end of a long sleepless night, still less the end of several sleepless nights run together. If she was lucky.

  The door into the First Secretary’s central office complex was propped open, for the cleaners. There were no lights on except for the dim lamps in Verlaine’s office itself, diffusing out into the quiet office area through a gap in the not–quite– completely closed door.

  She didn’t hear anything. Had Verlaine fallen asleep?

  Gone out to the canteen, perhaps, to ask for breakfast, taking an excuse to get away from his office while it was still early enough in the day that he could?

  She knocked at the door to announce herself. “Specialist Ivers, First Secretary, may I come in?” But there was no response. So he was out. She pushed the door open and stepped into the room, meaning to sit and marshal her thoughts as she waited for him to return to his desk.

  She hadn’t taken four steps into the room before she realized that it wasn’t going to be necessary to wait, after all. Verlaine was there. He was seated behind his desk, his head laid down across the documents that he had been reviewing. One arm had slid forward across the desk’s surface, as though he had been turning a page when he had slumped forward. Blood all over. On the desk. Pooled on the floor. Dead.

  She stopped and stilled herself and listened, sniffing the air. Blood had ceased to drip. And the room was cold. There were no signs that she could see of violence or forced entry. How had this happened?

  She didn’t think she needed to ask why he had been killed.

  “Security alert,” she said, to catch the attention of the room’s monitors. “Complete quarantine in effect, all transport, immediately. Forensics team to the First Secretary’s office. No transmission secured or unsecured. Confirm.”

  It took a moment, as the communications protocols alerted attendants, attendants the officers, officers the Security forces. Interpreting the orders and the physical location, cross–referencing with Jils Ivers’s voice–ident, realizing what the problem was.

  “Confirmed.”

  She waited. It would take some time for the quarantine to be properly implemented from the outside in. She could expect to see forensics within moments; that gave her moments alone still to think.

  Verlaine who had been Noycannir’s patron, who had obtained relief of Writ for Andrej Koscuisko, Verlaine whose administration was potentially compromised by a forged Record, whose announced program challenged the entrenched power of the whole system of Inquiry — Sindha Verlaine was dead.

  She had no hope of enlisting his support in constructing a solution to the problem of the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok. The Ragnarok would have to be left to its own devices, now, until the death of the First Secretary could be investigated, until the Selection could be carried out and confirmed.

  The Second Judge had had a strong position for First Judge. But now Verlaine was dead, and with him the strength of the Second Judge’s administration as well as the suspected source of her radical plans. Now everything was cast into confusion.

  The political stability of the Bench was all that stood between the rule of Law and chaos, failure of infrastructure, anarchy and barbarism. One misstep now and all of Jurisdiction could fall into dissention and disorder and the unimaginable horror of civil war.

  The Ragnarok’s Appeal would have to wait.

  For supplementary text and miscellaneous vignettes please see “Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor” at www.sff.net/people/susan.scribens/excerpt.HTM.

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