An Exchange of Hostages

by Susan R. Matthews

  Tutor Chonis turned in his chair, clicking the viewer to gray screen. “Yes, it could be better done. Do you resent the fact that it’s not your prisoner? Because there are enough to go around.”

  As obvious as the question seemed to Joslire, it appeared to be the furthest thing from Koscuisko’s mind. Half-rising in his seat, Koscuisko stared at Tutor Chonis with astonishment and horror. “Tutor Chonis. I do not know what to say. Surely I have not . . . I’m not . . . ”

  Tutor Chonis raised an eyebrow at the vehemence of Koscuisko’s response, and Koscuisko mastered himself with a fierce effort whose stern intensity was clearly communicated in his voice. “That is to say, I ask for pardon, to have spoken unadvisedly. I have not been troubled by such a thing as that, Tutor Chonis. And still I cannot say I like to see the thing ill-done.”

  It bothered Joslire in some obscure fashion to see his Student so anxious to conform, when he knew how ruthlessly Fleet would use that meek submissiveness. Tutor Chonis restored the visuals on-screen. Student Noycannir was crouched over her prisoner, and appeared to be taking a statement. At last. “Your performance is all you’re responsible for, Student Koscuisko.”

  Robert St. Clare would be sent to Scylla with Koscuisko, but Robert was virgin Security yet. First assignment was usually brutal for newly commissioned Inquisitors. What Koscuisko really needed was a seasoned hand to help him over the rough spots. Robert didn’t have the experience to do it.

  His eyes on the viewer, assessing Noycannir’s performance, Tutor Chonis almost sounded as though he was talking to himself. “We’ll let her run with this one; she’s not violated the Protocols, and she is taking confession now — so you need have no further cause for concern on that head. I’ll talk to her about it during debriefing.”

  As a compromise it wasn’t half bad. Joslire was afraid for Koscuisko’s sake that he might not recognize extraordinary Administrative flexibility when he saw it — not after having taken Robert back from the whip, the irons, the twister.

  “You know best, Tutor Chonis. I don’t mean to overstep my bounds.”

  Tutor Chonis seemed pleased with the exercise, but whether it was with Noycannir’s performance or Koscuisko’s, Joslire couldn’t tell. Chonis laid his hand on Koscuisko’s shoulder to give it a friendly avuncular shake, fond and forgiving at once.

  “Oh, it’s nothing to worry about, Andrej. You’re very much involved in the use of your formulations, we understand that. On your way to the lab now, I gather?”

  Dismissed to the lab, that was to say. Koscuisko rose to his feet, a little diffidently. “I had hoped to check on St. Clare on the way to the lab. Unless the Tutor would prefer — ”

  Chonis waved him off. “No, no, you know best how to deal with your time, Student Koscuisko. Let me know when you’re ready to return him to duty. We can have a better look at your speak-serum then. You’ll feel better.”

  Koscuisko bowed, his face empty of emotion.

  What were they going to do with Robert after the speak-serum trial?

  Robert had been assigned to Koscuisko; Joslire was assigned to Koscuisko.

  Did Chonis mean to reassign him in mid-Term?

  Did Chonis mean to relieve him of his duty?

  Koscuisko was waiting for him in the corridor to lead the way to Infirmary. His Student quirked an eyebrow at him, but said nothing; hastily, Joslire blanked his face of his confusion.

  A man would have to be crazy to be given a chance at light duty and not jump at it.

  And there was no reason under Jurisdiction why he should be jealous of Robert St. Clare.

  Chapter Ten

  He had been waking from time to time for a while now, although he couldn’t really judge how long the while had been. Someone would come in to reset a monitor, someone would test the transdermal patch that lay along his arm, someone would leave, and he would go back to sleep again.

  This time it seemed a little different.

  There was someone with him in the room. He guessed that simply because he was waking up. It seemed he couldn’t set his wakefulness aside this time, not as easily as he had done before. That didn’t bother him; it was probably past time to get out of bed.

  He lay and waited for his body to cooperate.

  There didn’t seem to be a great deal of pain, which was unusual, since all he could remember — since before the start of the exercise — was pain. Not a lot of pain, not a lot of pressure; and he wasn’t hungry, and he wasn’t cold. It was probably a mistake to want to sit up, because the odds were good that the waking world was going to be considerably less comfortable for him than this half-dreaming one. It would feel good to stretch, though, and his mouth tasted foul with an excess of sleep and a rotten taint of old blood.

  Whomever it was came nearer to him now, exposing his arm to adjust the transdermal patch. No, to remove the trans-dermal patch, and he guessed that there had been a drug in whatever they’d been feeding him-because his mind started to sharpen almost immediately. A drug? That was right, a speak-serum. The Student Interrogator — Koscuisko — had taken his secret, somehow, some way, but there was to be only a speak-serum to test instead of the penalty he had incurred. The Tutor had said . . . What? Twenty-six years? And how long had he been lying in this bed to have his wounds healed to the point that he felt little discomfort from them?

  Closing his eyes tightly, he nerved himself to the effort of sitting up, turning to his side to give himself some leverage. Sitting up. Yes. Sitting up, with whoever’s help — and there might actually turn out to be two whoevers, from what he could gather from the count of helping hands — sitting up, and his brain fogged in immediately, and he had to give himself a moment to let his blood pressure catch up with his posture. It didn’t do to try to sit up too quickly. Careful. He would be careful.

  After a moment the supportive hands fell away, and he could steady himself on the bed’s surface by leaning on his hands. Oddly enough, it seemed to be a stasis field, like the ones rich men slept on — or children with burns. Or people who had been whipped, he supposed, as long as they weren’t bond-involuntaries. So what was he doing here?

  His shoulder didn’t hurt.

  Setting his weight carefully over his rubbery legs he stood up very slowly, using the bed and the wall for support. His shoulder should hurt, shouldn’t it? He rotated the shoulder gingerly, using his other hand for support in case he should hit a sore spot while he wasn’t looking. No, it didn’t hurt, and that meant that, to the very best of what little analytical ability he had, there was only one possible conclusion to be drawn.

  To wit: He only thought he was Rabin with the Ice Traverse, Robert St. Clare.

  There was a reflector in the room, hung above the sanitary basin in one corner. Stumbling a bit, but otherwise steady on his feet, he took himself over to look in the mirror and see whom it would turn out to be that he was. Who would have such an odd sort of delusion?

  It wasn’t as if being him was any fun at all. Surely it was preferable by far to be some rich man who could afford to sleep in the pressure-neutral embrace of a stasis field, who had clearly not been beaten to within an inch of his life by an up-and-coming young poisoner with a whip, who had not failed in his mission to deliver his sister from her shame.

  Some kind of a pervert: that had to be it.

  In his home valley, a pervert had generally been taken to be a man who preferred women to drinking, but allowances were to be made for the more subtle derangements of an alien species. Maybe he wasn’t even a Nurail at all. It might be nice not to be Nurail; so many terrible things would not have had to have happened.

  For a moment he didn’t quite know his own face, staring into the reflector. He looked very white, and needed to scrape the hair off his chin. He was sorry to realize that he did recognize himself, though, once he’d had a chance to think about it. He was still unmistakably who he thought he was.

  And the people in the room with him, the people he’d not been paying proper attention to, the peopl
e wearing darker colors than Infirmary staff?

  Ducking his head as if to catch his wits, he stole a sidewise glance. Dark uniform, Security, no telling whether it was bond-involuntary or Station Security from the leg portion. Light-colored uniform, not light like Infirmary, light like Administrator Clellelan, like Tutor Chonis, like . . .

  Best faced at once, if faced it must be, he reminded himself grimly. Straightening his back as best he could — his governor knew the color, and would not be argued against — he faced the problem head-on, to know the worst of it.

  Koscuisko.

  Student Interrogator, promising young poisoner, soon-to-be Inquisitor.

  His officer.

  He stared for a long moment, too confused to heed the yammering of the governor in his head. This was the man, then, and he looked a deal shorter than Robert had remembered, but the eyes were the same, and the pale voice —

  “You should sit down, Mister St. Clare.”

  He was going to fall over, and that would be awkward, because he would knock into the officer if he did, and that would be a violation. He yielded himself up gratefully to the hands that guided him back to the bed, trying not to think about Koscuisko’s hands. These hands felt different. Perhaps Koscuisko had extra, and traded them off, fastening them to his wrists as he had need of them for various tasks?

  It was good to sit; he was dizzy. He could hear Koscuisko’s voice, sending the Security — Curran, that would be — out for a seat; and all the while supported by Koscuisko’s hands. As long as they were the nonviolent pair, Robert supposed that he was ahead of the game.

  Still, it was passing strange that his flesh didn’t crawl or his stomach turn at the very smell of the man. There was a nagging sense of familiarity tied in somehow with Koscuisko’s touch, as if his body thought it was the same as the touch that had soothed his aches and comforted his hurt in his dreaming half-sleep. That was the problem with medication, a man’s body took up all manner of strange notions. No wonder honest Nurail stuck to drink, although where a man could hope to find a corner to distill a bit of drinkable on a Jurisdiction base escaped him quite.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Joslire Curran had left the room; they were alone. St. Clare raised his head to meet the officer’s curious gaze. He was too close, it made a man uncomfortable. The last time he’d seen Koscuisko so close up . . .

  “The officer.”

  His voice didn’t seem to want to work. Koscuisko passed him a tumbler full of clear liquid from the top shelf above the bed’s status bar; it was cool and sweet, and didn’t taste like poison. Robert cleared his throat and tried again.

  “The officer is Student Koscuisko. A’think. Sir.”

  Koscuisko smiled at his confusion, but Robert didn’t take offense. He was too confused to take offense. He had thought that he had regained consciousness, but all he could remember of recent events — after his torture — were too obviously fantasies of the most unbelievable sort for any man to credit.

  “Even so. Do you remember who you are, come to that?”

  This question he knew. He could answer this question.

  “Robert St. Clare. Sir. — As it please the officer,” he added hastily, mindful of his governor. Which didn’t seem to have noticed his potential lapse of military courtesy. He couldn’t spare the energy to ponder on it now, however; here was Joslire with a seat for Student Koscuisko, and Koscuisko settled him gently where he sat and moved away a pace and a half to rest himself.

  “Now comes the critical part, though, you will have to concentrate. Rehearse for me if you will where we first met, and what has happened in your life since then.”

  Oh, he didn’t want to. Really he was not at all interested. He shook his head, rejecting and resisting. “Na, the officer can’t be serious.” Joslire Curran — who had posted himself behind the officer, per procedure — looked shocked; and that was a hint to St. Clare that there was something wrong with what he’d said. “A’mean with respect. Boring. Little that suits a story.”

  Joslire started speaking almost before he’d finished. “If the officer please, there must be a malfunction. Extreme stress can disable the governor. There is surely no disrespect — ”

  Joslire sounded just short of frightened, as well as disapproving. Frightened? Robert consulted the silence in his mind. Oh, yes. He was supposed to remember his etiquette, and mind his manners. And never speak of “I” or “me” or “mine” in front of officers, lest he should give offense whilst not looking.

  Koscuisko made a smoothing gesture with his hand. “It’s all right, Joslire. I’m not about to fault him for it. But really, St. Clare, I need to know how much you remember. So that we will know where we stand with each other.”

  And he was also never, ever supposed to so much as hint that any suggestion an officer made was less than sweet and sensible instruction, self-evidently logical, absolutely true and correct. Never. Well, he would try to do better; he supposed it would only be prudent of him to pretend.

  “Yes, sir. No offense was meant, sir. I am — that is, this troop . . . am . . . is . . . ”

  Casting about for the right words, the correct lie, he found himself at a loss to complete his phrase, confused about which words were safe to use. Koscuisko smiled, and finished the thought for him.

  “You are only a little bit drunk, Mister St. Clare. There is a residual euphoria, I regret that it will not persist. Never mind.”

  He wished Koscuisko wouldn’t call him Mister. He knew his place; Megh hadn’t been married, after all. He’d never tried to lay claim to the authority due a mother’s brother. “Not a Warrant.” He shook his head, deciding to get stubborn about it — for Megh’s sake, if for no other reason. “Work for my living, Robert.”

  He didn’t see what Koscuisko found so amusing, but Koscuisko certainly seemed to be entertained. “As you like. Do tell me, Robert, I’m due in the lab, in less than four.”

  As long as that was settled, he supposed he would cooperate. Frowning, he set his mind to hunt back over the past few days; with luck, he would find out what he was doing here, and why he didn’t hurt.

  “The officer conducted a practical exercise, an interrogation exercise. The Intermediate Levels, Four and Five.” There was a little uncertainty in his mind about the wisdom of reminding Koscuisko. But Koscuisko had been calling him by his name, not by his alias. So clearly he didn’t have to worry that Koscuisko didn’t already know he’d been a prisoner-surrogate.

  “There was a failure of duty, on . . . this troop’s part. I’m not sure . . . with respect . . . ”

  The more he thought about it, however, the more confused he became. There had to be a problem. Didn’t there? He’d not been successful, he could remember that, because he’d been taken from the exercise theater to detention. Not to Infirmary. It didn’t weave.

  “It isn’t important, Robert. What is important is that you must test my speak-serum for me, you must hold that in your mind. And also there is another unpleasant truth.”

  Failed in his purpose, though he did not know how. Tutor Chonis had come to see him, in his disgrace, with some bee-sweet in his mouth about substitution of penalties; and speak-sera had been mentioned. He thought, perhaps, maybe. There had been a hearing, hadn’t there been?

  “Something of that, if the officer pleases,” he agreed, slowly, thinking hard. A hearing. His Class Two violation hearing. It rose into his mind with the brutal force of nightmare, and behind the Administrator’s voice he could hear the crackling of the fires that had burned out the high-camps, and the screaming of the animals. Of his family. What had Clellelan said?

  He couldn’t keep his balance any more, the effort was too much. Turning to one side on the edge of the bed, he tried to keep his body more or less erect; but his arms would not support his weight, and he sank down to lie within the stasis field, awkwardly.

  “Elects to test the officer’s new speak-serum, instead of . . . what was promised beforetime. And the officer
will discipline a matter of insubordination. But they have reduced my Bond.”

  How long had he had to sleep on it, to assimilate this extraordinary change in the rules of his life? Not long enough. Staring at the ceiling, now, he was vaguely aware of being set straight on the bed once more, the trans-dermal patch reapplied, an injection of something pressed through at his shoulder.

  “There, that’s quite enough for now.” Koscuisko was standing beside him, from the sound of his voice, and Koscuisko sounded gentle indeed. “There will be a day or two of therapy, and when you are returned to duty, there will be the speak-serum. It will be like being more drunk, without the morning after. Sleep well.”

  Koscuisko, who stood beside him; Koscuisko, who had tortured the secret away from him; Koscuisko, who — as his body insisted — had salved his wounds. Koscuisko, who had a drug for him to test, but who had discipline in hand at the same time.

  Koscuisko, who was to be his officer for as long as Koscuisko remained with Fleet — until the Day, perhaps, if Koscuisko should stay with Fleet for so long as that. But the Day was four years closer than it had been when they had sent him here to play at prisoner-surrogate.

  What was he supposed to make of it?

  He knew the answer to that one, he did, and his governor knew he knew. He was supposed to make nothing of it. He had his orders. Student Koscuisko was his officer. He was to go to sleep.

  Shrugging mental shoulders at himself, at the governor in his brain, at Koscuisko’s ambiguous image in his mind, Robert let himself drift away with the medication and his weariness. Sleep was a good idea. Fine. He’d go back to sleep.

  With any luck he’d understand it all when next he woke.

  ###

  The lab work was going well, that was a good thing. St. Clare was doing well, which was a very good thing indeed. The Sixth Level exercise wouldn’t start until tomorrow morning; there was a cushion of time yet before he had to face the next trial-that was good. Life was not bad, not for this minute slice of it. It could have been residual euphoria, left over from the morning; had he really made remarks of that sort to Joslire, dark-eyed women, twins? He had to have been thinking with his fish. That was the only explanation. Sometimes a man simply woke with a brisk fish breaching from his hip-wrap, half-drunk with some unfocused and erotic dream of the ocean every woman carried with her and fish that sought their source and native place.