An Exchange of Hostages (34 page)

He had a long blunt sliver of metal in his hand, and she couldn’t see where he had drawn it from. The practice came naturally to him, it seemed; but she was surprised he didn’t realize why his slave couldn’t possibly permit Koscuisko to go armed between his exercises. The Administration didn’t like to take chances with Students, not until they were safely out of the Administration’s area of responsibility.

“Very well.” Tutor Chonis’s raised hand called the conversation back to order. “Let us be done for the moment with Student Koscuisko’s love life. The Intermediate Levels are behind us, and it is time to consider those Advanced Levels required in preparation for the Tenth Level graduation test.”

She didn’t really care about the Advanced Levels, or the Tenth Level test. She didn’t need to worry about violating the Protocols at the Advanced Levels. The drugs Koscuisko gave were proof against failure. It didn’t matter if she let them die.

“Student Koscuisko, the Administration is very pleased with your work, both in the theater and in the lab. Incidentally, the additional trial for your original speak-sera has been scheduled for four-and-thirty-two this second-shift.”

Koscuisko bowed his head. “I haven’t forgotten, no, Tutor Chonis. Where is the test to be held, with the Tutor’s permission?”

“Curran will show you to your usual exercise theater. Now, Student Noycannir, we must report to Secretary Verlaine. An uplink has been scheduled for tomorrow at four on second. This only gives us a few hours to review the Administrator’s comments.”

Of course the Advanced Levels would matter when she returned to Chilleau Judiciary. The Advanced Levels would perhaps matter most of all, and she would not have Koscuisko at her disposal then to provide her with the drugs that made it work. A problem, perhaps, because Koscuisko had quite clearly indicated that nothing he had come up with so far could be used safely against all of her Patron’s enemies. Even the speak-sera had limitations. The one she had used in her Sixth Level had done perfectly well for the Sascevon prisoner, but Koscuisko said it was quick poison or any Class One or class-six hominid.

“Are we to review now, Tutor Chonis?” She was a little uncomfortable asking; she knew she didn’t want to be reviewed in Koscuisko’s presence. But the Tutor hadn’t set the study schedule for the Advanced Levels. Perhaps there would be time.

“First things first, please, Student Noycannir.” And she’d left herself open to rebuke, having asked without being bidden. The Tutor knew how she felt about having her insufficiencies discussed in public. Or even in front of Koscuisko. “First it is required of me to give formal notice that you have both been passed at the Levels to date. Student Koscuisko, there is an issue with your use of the driver; not an immediate one, but one that needs to be brought before you.”

And if Chonis would criticize Koscuisko in her presence, she knew he would expose her failings in front of Koscuisko. They both knew she might not have gotten this far without Koscuisko’s help. What would she do when she could no longer demand Koscuisko’s services?

“Yes, Tutor Chonis?”

From Koscuisko’s voice there was a hidden message there that was not to be made available to her. She wondered what it might be. Koscuisko sounded a little fearful, to her ear; had it something to do with the belt, perhaps — the one Chonis had used to humble Koscuisko so completely?

“The Administrator only applauds your desire to learn the driver, and your quite obvious aptitude for it. I have been asked to clarify a minor point.”

She didn’t like the driver. She’d tried it, but she had been so clumsy that she had hurt herself worse than her prisoner. The driver was an ugly thing. She had known people to die from it.

Chonis was picking his words out carefully, now, as if he were speaking in some kind of code. “As you know, any of the Intermediate Level instruments may be lawfully employed for two-and-twenty as you see fit. You may wish to keep in mind that at a more advanced disciplinary level — oh, four-and-forty, for example — because of the driver’s unique characteristics, the disciplinary expectation is for the snapper to be allowed to impact as well as the stock. Otherwise the discipline is not considered sufficiently serious to address the Charges.”

Quite a long speech, and the bright, blissful gleam had dropped out of Koscuisko’s eyes well before Tutor Chonis had finished. Had he been required to deliver discipline, perhaps? Was he to be required to deliver discipline? What could his slave have done that merited four-and-forty?

“The point is well taken, Tutor Chonis. That I may not cheat the Fleet of discipline, can the Tutor provide some ratio guidance, perhaps?”

Maybe this was the whip that had made Koscuisko so manageable, if Curran had offended. Koscuisko did not seem to be capable of maintaining good order amongst his subordinate Security. She had too often seen him fail to admonish Curran as they left the Tutor’s office together.

“If you wish to be conservative in discipline, the driver is an excellent choice. But one is expected to deliver a taste of real punishment — perhaps every eight. A good hit every eight. Note this information for your use, if you will.”

Whatever it was, Koscuisko didn’t like it. He wasn’t fit for Fleet duty, Mergau realized suddenly. Not if he shrank from discipline.

“Thank you, Tutor Chonis, I am grateful for your guidance.”

But if he wasn’t fit for Fleet duty, where could he be fully utilized? Where could his skill in mixing the drugs for her be effectively exploited — unless he went with her, to support her for the duration of his term of service?

“Yes, Student Koscuisko. I understand.” Then Chonis brought her into the conversation once again, with an inclusive gesture. “Enough of that. Do you have any questions about the Intermediate Levels? Student Noycannir?”

In fact he would serve Chilleau Judiciary well, if First Secretary Verlaine could be made to see how useful such a talent could prove in the long run. Verlaine would find a way to hold Koscuisko back from Fleet, if Verlaine felt Koscuisko could be useful. She was certain that Verlaine could get Koscuisko on his staff, under her direction. If only she could let him know why such an arrangement was to his best interest . . .

“Very well. Your first exercise at the Advanced Levels is scheduled for eight days’ time, and we have a good deal of material to cover before then. Student Koscuisko, you may be excused to your lab. Don’t forget your appointment. Student Noycannir, stay as you are, and we will talk about the report we are to make to Secretary Verlaine.”

They would have to report to Verlaine about the drugs. She would have a natural opportunity to raise the issue then, especially if the Tutor didn’t anticipate her comments ahead of time.

Rising to his feet, Koscuisko bowed to the Tutor and left the room. If he was under her, he would have to yield to her superior position in the rank-structure; she really rather enjoyed that idea. If she could not seriously wish to have him for her prisoner, she could at least have him for her subordinate; that could be considered to be equivalent, in a sense.

“Now, Student Noycannir. Let’s you and I talk about this, shall we?”

Definitely she would have to suggest to Verlaine that Koscuisko be posted to produce more drugs rather than being allowed to go free. Or to Fleet.

And definitely she would not talk to Tutor Chonis about the plan. Let him not find out until Verlaine heard what she suggested.

Let her Tutor understand that she could find a way to rule his preference, howsoever indirectly, as surely as he had found a way to rule Student Koscuisko.

###

He couldn’t help but be a little anxious, but Andrej didn’t want it to show. For one, he was the most junior officer present, and was clearly not expected to call any attention to himself. For another, it might be misinterpreted as a lack of confidence. However he felt about other issues, he knew that he was more than merely adequate in the lab.

“Your name?”

He stood behind the seated evaluators, facing St. Clare and the flanking escort behind him. Released from Infirmary to custody; to be released from custody — when?

“M’name is Rabin, from Marleborne. But my mother’s people hold the Ice-Traverse weave.”

Robert St. Clare, if the officer please.
Tutor Chonis had gone over the first response set with Andrej before the evaluation panel had been formally seated. It was a simple set of questions; the first set of responses conformed to the Jurisdiction Standard for a bond-involuntary. Now Tutor Chonis would ask the questions again, and the panel would judge whether the speak-serum did its job.

“You will declare your Bond.”

Sir. For weighty offenses committed without adequate extenuating circumstance I have been justly condemned by the solemn adjudication of the Jurisdiction’s Bench. According to the provisions of Fleet Penal Consideration number eighty-three, subheading twenty, article nine, my life belongs to the Jurisdiction’s Bench, which has deeded it to the Fleet for thirty years.

“I’ll not, it’s none of it true except the prisoning part. You know damned well it was just Simmer treachery, bastard of a Jurisdiction butcher . . . ”

St. Clare looked surprised to hear himself use such language, and cut it off with an evident effort. So far, so good. Ordinarily St. Clare’s clear sense of consequences would have prevented him from using such confrontational language.

There were two points to be made in this trial: one was· that the speak-serum overrode internal edits, thereby gaining access to truths a man would otherwise rather conceal. And the other was that it felt so natural and right for St. Clare to speak his incautious and uncensored truth that his governor saw nothing wrong with what almost amounted to treason.

“State your chain of Command, as here present.”

Sir. The officer of assignment is Student Koscuisko. Student Koscuisko’s immediate superior is Tutor Chonis. The Station Provost is Marshall Journis; Administrator Clellelan represents the Bench authority. Sir.

Doctor Chaymalt was here as well, but it was Marshall Journis that had given Andrej the worst start. Why had he assumed that Joslire’s hunting party had been of Joslire’s general rank? It had been ego, plain and simple, to have assumed that Joslire had somehow come up with recreation for him, instead of realizing the quite obvious fact that he’d been recreation for persons unknown. Granted, he hadn’t been thinking clearly at the time, but why hadn’t he realized that the senior man had worn her authority with significantly more conviction than any five given Warrants taken together? And no, he didn’t need any opinions from his fish.

Still, she’d given no sign of recognition, for which Andrej was deeply grateful.

“There’s the Marshall, don’t know anything about her, but the name. There’s the Tutor, I had a cousin once with a beard like that, died of a surfeit of rolled-meal and drinkable podge. Tutor’s a decent sort from what little a dog like me would know, and Clellelan the like. It’s about yon undertall beauty that I’m not sure, Koscuisko, and what kind of an ignorant accent is it? I mean to ask.”

Any sign of discomfort or reticence had passed away from St. Clare’s easy — flamboyantly disrespectful — speech. Well, perhaps not too disrespectful of the senior people here, the panel members who were to pass his drug or fail it. Andrej was quite certain that for himself he didn’t care to be called an undertall beauty of any sort. And it was St. Clare who had an accent, flat and nasal.

But that only meant that the speak-serum was doing its work a little too well for his personal sense of propriety, and that was all to the good. Under the influence of the speak-serum, St. Clare clearly felt so comfortable making off-the-cuff judgments about his chain of command that his governor found no actionable offense in it. Any speak-serum that could turn a bond-involuntary’s conditioning off as thoroughly as that would do the same or worse to ordinary prisoners, and was a genuine find for the Controlled List — as he had promised.

The panel — the Administrator, the Provost Marshall, Doctor Chaymalt — seemed to come to much the same conclusion, if Andrej read their body-language correctly from behind. Tutor Chonis raised an amused eyebrow in Andrej’s direction, but Andrej could suffer Chonis’s amusement easily — as long as Marshall Journis did not turn around.

“Thank you, Robert, if we can confine ourselves to the issues before us — ”

“But I can tell you that I don’t care for your damned cheek, Tutor or no. You’d think a man had no right to his own name, the way you throw it about.”

St. Clare was starting to sound a little drunk, a little belligerent. The internal censors were clearly eroding quickly. If St. Clare didn’t like his name used casually, why had he made such a point of being called by his name when Andrej had first spoken with him in Infirmary? Had St. Clare granted the use of his personal name to him, Andrej? Or had St. Clare merely objected to being called “Mister”?

“That’s fine, St. Clare.” Chonis’s voice was patient and soothing, even though he’d been rather rudely interrupted. “This is the last one, now. Please state your duty assignment.”

Sir. My duty is to serve and to protect according to the requirements of my Bond. My honor is to die in defense of my officer of assignment. It is just and judicious that it should be so, as I hope for the Day. Sir.

Nobody expected bond-involuntaries to like what had happened to them; no one demanded that they lie about the fact that their life was a sentence of penal servitude. Their conditioning — constantly reinforced by the governor — was in place to keep them from compromising themselves, among other things. For the rest, a series of abstract impersonal formulae had been created for them to use for their protection, and those formulae had been duly rehearsed and placed on Record during Robert’s first responses to the questions he’d been asked.

It was a hard test, a brutal conflict between self-preservation and the censorship of the governor on one side; the speak-serum — and deeply held, if unacknowledged, conviction — on the other. St. Clare shook his head as if to clear it of a confusion of some sort, all but physically staggering as he struggled with the question.