Law of Survival (3 page)

“You can say things like that to me—I understand. But re
marks like that tend to make psychotherapeuticians nervous.” Niall gathered up a handful of the spilled seed and tossed it to some squirrels that foraged in the grass. “Trust me—I know what I'm talking about.”

Jani gripped the feeder post and swung around to face him. “How did your last check-up go?”

“About as you'd expect.” Niall flung more seed with such force that the squirrels scattered. “Get your augmentation removed—the risks of depression and psychosis outweigh the benefits. Yes, we know it could save your life in case of severe injury, but if the injury resulted from the fact that you just slashed your wrists, define the benefit please, Colonel. Cut back on the workload, take a vacation, transfer to another area. At least no one suggested retirement this time.” He brushed off his hands and cut across the garden to the front gate. “Need a ride home?”

Jani tagged after him. “No, I'll take public. I've got to go to the embassy later. Sitting in a people-mover and watching the city float by helps me think.”

“More fun with diplomacy?”

“Yeah.”

“If I don't hear from you in a week, I'll send in an assault team.” Niall once more cut ahead of her as they came to the gate so he could hold it open for her. “The Cup semifinals are set for next week. Acadia Central United's playing Gruppo in the first match.”

“United got Desjarlais back just in time.” Jani shivered as her body once more decided it was cold, and closed her jacket fasteners up to her neck. “The government will go nuts if a colonial team wins the Cup. They're afraid that's all it would take for some of the more rebellious colonies to attempt to secede from the Commonwealth.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“You're a colony boy, Niall. You know better than that. It's all about politics, even when it's not.”

Niall sensed that she didn't feel like talking football. “Heard from your folks?”

“Yeah.” The 'mover that would take Jani back to the walkway drifted up to the stand. “They've gone to stay with Oncle Shamus at his lodge near Faeroe Outpost. I guess he
needs help with his systems again.”

“You guess?”

“They're not being real forthcoming. I'm wondering if times are bad in Ville Acadie, and they needed to sell the business.”

“Times are never bad for systems installers.”

“Well, something's wrong.” Jani stepped aboard the open-topped 'mover and took a seat near the rear. “I don't think they're comfortable talking to me. Maybe they don't think it's any of my business.”

Niall shot her a “let's have none of that” look. “Or maybe Shamus did need help. Sometimes the answers really are as simple as they seem.” He stepped back as the 'mover pulled away. “I'll look into that report.”

“Thanks.”

“Take it easy.” Niall smiled his crooked smile and again touched his forehead. “Captain.”

“Colonel.” As Jani returned the salute, she felt the slipcase jostle in her jacket pocket, and tried to forget it was there.

 

Jani changed people-movers three times on her way home. As she had told Niall, sitting and watching Chicago drift past her window helped her think. Unfortunately, she couldn't control what she thought about.

They got me.
She felt the slipcase every time she moved, saw the gleam of the white parchment sheets, heard their crackle as she had unfolded them under Niall's concerned eye.
I wonder how long it took them to uncover it all? When did they start? Last winter, when they realized that I lived? Or did they wait until the summer, when they had me in hand?

The six-lane tumult of the Boul Mich Sidebar gradually veered lakeward, narrowing and quieting into the tree-lined elegance of Chestnut Street. Jani looked through the branches to the establishments beyond…the glass-walled terrace of the restaurant where she and Lucien had dined the night before…the shops in which they'd debated other presents for her clients. Jani hadn't realized that she needed to worry about presents for her clients until Lucien had
broached the subject. Her comment that considering the way they ran her ragged, the presents should all flow in
her
direction had fallen on unsympathetic ears.
You're in the big city now,
Lucien had said.
We do things differently here.

“Do you?” Jani stood as the 'mover slowed to a stop. “Could've fooled me.” The only difference she had been able to discern thus far between the wilder colonies and the Commonwealth capital was that life in Chicago required more paperwork. And, at times, even more caution.

She disembarked and headed north, crossing Chestnut and turning onto the even more rarified gentility of Armour Place. Her goal rested in matronly repose in the middle of the block, a twelve-story sanctum of safety and security. Eighty-seven fifty-six—a sedate, marble-faced building with a live doorman and, according to Lucien, a century's worth of Family secrets buried within the walls.

Secrets…

I have secrets.
Jani's step slowed.
The funny thing is, some of them are common knowledge. But still they're ignored, denied, not talked about, in the hope that they'll disappear. A peculiarly humanish habit, one the idomeni mock.

My name is Jani Moragh Kilian, late of the Commonwealth Service. One of the conditions of my discharge disallows me from using the title Captain, Retired, but that's what I am.

Just as John Shroud resurrected me and rebuilt me as he saw fit, so my past has been gutted and reconstructed for the benefit of the few. What remains speaks to the facts, but the truth lies elsewhere. I tried to speak the truth, and they called me crazy. Now I stick to the facts, and bide my time.

Jani shook herself out of her grim reverie as she approached her apartment house, eyeing the entries of the buildings directly across the street. She did so mostly out of habit, but partly from unease. The small multilevel chargelot seemed quiet as usual. The commotion echoing from the building next door to it, however, scuttled the gracious ambience the avenue usually projected. Bangs and clangs, interspersed with the occasional muffled boom of a pinpoint
charge and the whine of heavy-duty construction machinery. The gutted former residence would soon twin its neighbor across the way—twelve stories of marble enclosing thirty of the finest flats money could rent. In the meantime, the carefully preserved white façades sheltered scaffolding, equipment, workers, and building materials sufficient to convert the shell into a hive.

Jani ducked beneath the low-hanging awning that sheltered her building entry and nodded to the morning doorman, who keyed open the triple-width door. The thick, ram-resistant scanglass swept aside and she stepped into the lobby, a low-ceilinged space filled with expensive furnishings, paintings, and sculpture. The sudden hush as the door shut behind her made her feel, as always, as though she'd been locked inside a vault.

She walked to the front desk, her shoes sinking to the ankle in the sound-deadening carpet; fellow residents passed her, their greetings muted, as though they spoke in church.

“You're back, Mistress Kilian.” Hodge the manager smiled a subdued greeting. “Confound the racket across the way.”

Jani sighed as she accepted the pile of paper mail he produced from beneath the desk. “Confound it, indeed.”

“Not much longer.” Hodge's voice held a hope-filled lilt—he'd mistaken her dismay at the amount of mail for weariness with the noise. “The rededication is scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend.” He grew subdued. “Armour Eight Seven Five Five. Seems a rather dull name.” He was a slight, older man with a schoolmaster's air. He'd worked in the neighborhood all his life and felt the changes like a father watching his children grow.

“Well, at least they're preserving the façade.” Jani tucked the mail under her arm and looked out at the bustle across the street. “But for the noise, they're remarkably self-contained. You never see the workers.”

“There are restrictions regarding these matters, to minimize the impact on the neighborhood.” Hodge frowned. “But I have seen things. The workers are supposed to use a contractor lot three blocks west, near the University Annex.
But I believe they sneak vehicles into our garage to avoid the walk.”

“Imagine that.” Jani bit back the comment that if she'd been in their place, she'd do the same thing. But that was a colonial sentiment, and she lived in the Commonwealth capital now. As Lucien said, they did things differently here.

The lift deposited Jani on the sixth floor. She walked to the last door at the end of the carpeted hall and keyed into her flat. The door slid open to reveal the large sitting room, an expanse of bare bleached wood flooring, unadorned off-white walls, and uncurtained windows.

Jani walked to her desk, the sole piece of furniture in the space, and pushed aside a stack of files so she could deposit her mail. Compared to the rest of the room, the desktop looked as though it belonged to another person. Masses of documents in multicolored folders and slipcases covered the surface from end to end, abutting her workstation on three sides and all but burying her comport.
I've got too much work.
But the commissions kept coming. The requests. The contracts. Niall had spoken the truth. Jani Kilian had more experience with the idomeni than anyone in Chicago, and Chicago seemed determined to take advantage in every way possible.

“Who has time to buy furniture?” Jani muttered as she cleared a space around her comport.
Give me a credit line,
Lucien asked repeatedly,
I'll get you whatever you need.
But she had turned him down because she didn't want him to become too well acquainted with her finances.

There are companies that handle this,
Niall had commented, his assumption being that after years of living in the Commonwealth's outer reaches, she didn't trust her taste.

But it was her friend Frances Hals who had nailed the perplexity as well as anyone could have.
The two sides of Jani Kilian—paper and nothing,
she had said when she visited earlier that week to find the floors still bare.
When are you
going to start filling in, and with what?
She had served as Jani's CO for only a few weeks that summer, but years spent managing recalcitrant documents examiners had further honed an already keen insight. She didn't want to hear that Jani had no interest in life outside the documents realm, that the workload was too heavy, the responsibilities too great.
You're still running. You need to decide whether it's force of habit or fear of what you'll find if you stand still.

“Always a pleasure, Frances.” The comport's incoming message light fluttered in mad blue abandon—Jani flicked the activator pad and watched a harried male face form on the display.

“Hey, Jan.” Kern Standish, the Deputy Treasury Minister, stifled a yawn. He'd already loosened his neckpiece, and sat with both hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. “We're having a meeting about you this morning, which will be a continuation of the meeting we had about you last night. I'm guessing that you know what I'm talking about.”

Jani patted her pocket, and felt the outline of the documents slipcase. “Yes, Kern,” she said to the recorded image. “I know.”

“Anyway…” Standish tilted his wrist to glance at his timepiece, and sighed. “Gotta go. Just wanted to give you a heads-up. I'd appreciate if you'd erase this after you listen to it.” His brown skin looked greyed in the harsh office lighting. “Most folks here think it's water under the bridge, but you know Jorge. He's worried about Anais, and how miserable she can make his political life if she finds out he's on your side.” He smiled weakly. “I'll let you know what happens.” The screen blanked. Jani duly erased the message, then tapped the pad to open the next one.

“Ja-ni.” The man offered a mouth-only smile. Devinham from NUVA-SCAN Colonial Projects Division—one of her errors in professional judgment. He kept moving the targets and still expected her to hit every one with a single shot. “The presentation I'm giving has been moved up to next Monday, and I need the Phillipan dock data a little earlier than I'd anticipated—”

“That's news, Frank.” She tapped the pad again.

“—please help—”

Again.

“—if you have the time—”

Jani checked the counter.
Twenty-one messages
. Judging from the number of pleas she'd heard so far, the white paper hadn't yet scared off any clients.
Too bad—I could use the break.
She settled for taking refuge in her bedroom.

Unlike the rest of the flat, Jani had furnished her bedroom. Lucien had insisted. After all, he needed an armoire to store his clothes, a nightstand so he could reach a comport immediately in case of an emergency call from Sheridan, and lamps so he didn't kill himself when he arrived late at night to find her already asleep.

But most especially, Jani felt, he wanted a place to display his gifts to her. Last winter's tin soldier stood sentry atop the armoire. This summer's fatigue-clad teddy bear guarded the bed. They had since been joined by a set of nested matryoshka dolls and a watercolor of a costumed couple eyeing one another across a crowded room. The painting, which hung alongside the dresser, was exquisitely detailed and framed in tasteful gilt. The doll set, which had joined the soldier atop the armoire, had been hand-carved from wood and painted bright red and blue. Both objects contained flaws of use—the picture frame had been nicked in several places, and the fact that the tiniest doll in the matryoshka set could be opened implied that the littlest one had gone missing. In Jani's experience, only one type of person treated works of art like everyday objects, to be used as intended regardless of their value.

“Which of his Family lovers did Lucien steal you from?” she asked the largest matryoshka doll as she took her down from her resting place. “And why?” They certainly weren't the sort of gifts one usually bestowed on the object of one's rapture. Lucien took particular delight in showing Jani the clothes and jewelry that he received for services rendered—he ranked every present by its monetary value, and negligent admirers weathered the brunt of his indifference until they dug into their pockets and rectified the situation.

Jani returned the doll to its place. “Frances thinks that at heart, all men are children and that they show their truest feelings with childlike gifts.” But then, Frances liked Lucien, and thought he had feelings to show. Jani liked him too, even though she knew that he didn't.

She walked to the window and deactivated the privacy shield. The milky scanglass lightened to transparency, revealing clear views of both the garden alley that ran along the rear of the building and Oak Street, a shopping lane that paralleled Chestnut and also merged with the Boul Sidebar. An escape route, one of many she'd worked out over the months. Not that she'd ever need them. She was yesterday's news, useful only as a subject of gossip and the occasional damning security evaluation.

Jani sat down on the bed, and girded herself for another go-round with her comport. And so they went in spite of the white paper. Requests for research updates. Meeting reschedules. Hat-in-hand queries into her availability. Jani demurred, assented, and rejected—if she applied herself, she could meet the most pressing of her deadlines and accommodate a few of the more challenging, and therefore more expensive, requests.

In theory.
She'd been pushing herself the past few months, and only yesterday had caught several slips that would have proved embarrassing if they'd gotten into a final report. Niall had taken to calling her “the Red Queen”—her request for an explanation won her a lecture about the storied Alice.

Running faster and faster to stay in one place.
She knew she spent too much time performing routine research. But she didn't trust the contractor firms, and her searches for help had left her muttering dark damnations about the current state of the documents profession.

When she had whittled the queue to the final message, she took a breather, sitting forward and letting her head drop between her knees to stretch her tightening back. Her stomach ached again. Hungry or not, she'd have to choke down breakfast. Her life had come to revolve around the care and feeding of her mutating body and her physician, Calvin Montoya, possessed a sorcerous knack for diagnosing patient noncompliance with a single look.

She hit the message pad, and stared open-mouthed at the face that formed.

“Hullo, Jan.” Steven Forell grinned and pushed a shaggy
auburn lock out of his eyes. “Bet yer surprised to see me.” His lapsed altar boy face looked despairingly youthful.

“You might say that, yes,” Jani said with a laugh. She'd last seen him that past winter, when she left him hiding in her Interior Ministry suite while she hunted down whoever had framed him for murder. She had uncovered the true culprit and much more besides, and almost died during the subsequent shakeout that wound up costing Evan van Reuter his Ministry.

“We're back—Ange and me—froom Helier.” Steve's Channel-Guernsey accent ground his words together into a single lumpy mass. “Bit of a bang job. In and out—word from the nobbies—here we are and back again.”

You and Angevin received a short-term special assignment from some higher-ups in Interior Colonial Affairs…got it.

“We'd heard about yer to-do, o'course…” Steve's brow drew down as his look sombered. “Rum go you had, gel. Ange thinks it were all a setup from on-high. She tried to tap some of her late dad's friends fer info. You'd think she'd asked them to give a few years off their lives.” His words stalled as he searched his pockets. He uncovered a nicstick, ignited it, and was soon enveloped by the cloud of smoke Jani recalled so well. “So we're here. Still a few days till our return to the grind—Ange thought you might like a dinner. Tomorrow night? Gaetan's? Our treat, since we never got to thank you proper.” He coughed and looked away. The seconds ticked. “Sevenish, then? Meet ya there.” He turned back to the display. His grin froze and faded as the message ended.

Jani stared at the blank screen.
Ya see, there's this bang job,
she thought in Steve-speak.
I don't have the time,
she continued in her own. She reached out, her finger hovering above the reply pad.
I don't have the time.
A very simple sentence. By now, she could say it in her sleep.

Instead, she undressed. Showered. Chose a suit in dark green from the conservative array in her closet and dressed with absent care, her mind carefully focused on nothing. Styled her hair. Applied makeup. Avoided the mirror.

Finally, boots in hand, she removed Niall's slipcase from the pocket of her discarded jacket, padded out to the sitting room, and inserted the data wafer in her workstation's reader slot. She sat down and pulled on her boots, concentrating on adjusting the fasteners to the proper tension before looking at the display.

It scrolled before her, cross-referenced and footnoted. The officially researched life of Jani Moragh Kilian, written in bland government style. The anonymous authors didn't spend much time on her first seventeen years—a single paragraph defined her parents and her early schooling in the Acadian capital of Ville Acadie. Only when they discussed her performance on a formidable array of Commonwealth-wide qualifying exams and her subsequent acceptance into the idomeni Academy in Rauta Shèràa did they become more verbose.

“‘After her arrival in Rauta Shèràa, Kilian's lack of Family connections and singular personality caused her to seek support and companionship in unlikely quarters. Kilian's ready adoption of idomeni languages and customs alienated her from peers even as it increased her value in the diplomatic sphere. While her singling-out as a favorite by the Chief Propitiator of the Vynshà, Avrèl nìRau Nema, alarmed Consulate officials, the general feeling was that even this could be worked to Commonwealth advantage. Her subsequent commissioning into the Commonwealth Service, while a sound decision on the face of it, only served to highlight her flagrant disrespect for traditional seats of human authority and intensify her estrangement from those who could have assisted her in her reassimilation.'”

Jani smacked the side of the workstation display with the flat of her hand. “This is a reference to Evan, is it? The only reassimilating he wanted from me was the illegal transfer of idomeni brain research data into his late father's hands!” She didn't find that out until years later, however.
Just last winter, in fact. The uncovering of that information led to Evan's downfall.
She stood and paced a circuit of her barren sitting room before returning to her desk.

Knevçet Shèràa, the authors touched on only briefly. The deaths of humans as the result of mind control experimenta
tion performed on them by Laumrau physician-priests, well, they had to discuss that since it was a matter of record to which the idomeni admitted freely. The role that Colonel Rikart Neumann played in planning and gathering the research was glossed over as unsubstantiated rumor; his murder was blamed on his sergeant, Emil Burgoyne, who supposedly sought revenge for a recent demotion. “Except Borgie didn't do it. Mako made him the scapegoat so that Prime Minister Cao would accept the idea of my medical discharge.” Jani felt her throat tighten. “Mako couldn't afford to let me face court-martial. He has his own bodies to keep buried.” She blinked until her eyes cleared, then continued to read.

“‘As the Vynshà worked to weaken Laumrau defenses around the dominant city of Rauta Shèràa, the Laumrau sought to maintain strategic positions in the mountainous desert regions that surrounded the city. Knevçet Shèràa, which they considered a holy place, was one of those positions. The presence of human beings in the area was, they felt, a mistake that they needed to rectify in order to regain the favor of Shiou, their goddess of order. For that reason, as was admitted later in a closed-door session cited below footnote addendum et cetera et cetera, they planned to retake the hospital-shrine from the remaining members of the Twelfth Rover Corps. The battle would follow a night of prayer and sacramental meal-taking that they referred to as a Night of Convergence.'”

Jani's voice slowed as her sense memory of that night returned. The sear of pain as she hacked her left arm with a mess knife. The warm flow of her blood, captured with strips torn from a red machinist's rag, the closest facsimile she could find to a Vynshà soul cloth. The growing numbness in her slashed arm, the rough dampness of the rag between her fingers as she braided the strips into a skein that would house her soul, and shelter it from the actions of her body. The slip of the sand under her boots as she walked down the hill toward the Laumrau encampment. “‘As the twenty-six Laumrau based at the encampment took sacrament in their tents, Kilian crept in under cover of night and shot them one by one.'” That much, the fact-finders nailed
perfectly. But then, they'd found it out from the idomeni. Unlike humans, the idomeni always admitted truth freely, no matter how damning the result.