Rules of Conflict (17 page)

“Hantìa,” Ischi grumped. “She keeps trying to push Colonel Hals
into saying things—”

“And Hals has been told to keep her mouth shut and scan the
paper.” Jani tugged at the window shade so hard she crooked it. “I went to
school with Hantìa. If she senses weakness, she is merciless unless you hit her
and hit her hard. She expects you to—that’s the born-sect tradition of
challenge and counterchallenge. She’s making overtures, inviting Hals to begin
the negotiation process. If Hals keeps ignoring her, first she’ll become
confused, then she’ll feel insulted, and at that point, no amount of diplomacy
is going to lessen the perceived offense.”

“We’re more important than Diplo thinks we are?” Ischi’s voice
bit, like he’d just had a long-nursed belief confirmed.

“Oh, yes.”

“What can we do?”

“I don’t know.” Jani returned to her desk and picked up her cup.
“Hals seems to realize she needs to do something. I kept getting the feeling
that she wanted to ask me questions, but she couldn’t work up the nerve.”

“That’s Vespucci. By the book—” Ischi swallowed his comment and
stood up. “By your leave, ma’am—I have a tech meeting to prep.”

“They were arguing about me, weren’t they? About how involved I
should get in this?”

“I think you’d better speak with Colonel Hals about that, ma’am.”
Ischi kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “I can set up an appointment for you
first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Please do, Lieutenant.” Jani took another sip of coffee, then
leaned against her desk and absently examined her cup—

“By your leave, ma’am.” Ischi about-faced and made for the door.

—bright blue with a black griffin rampant on a gold shield. “Stop
right where you are, Lieutenant!”

“Ma’am.” Ischi snapped to attention a mere step from freedom.

“What is this?” Jani held the cup within centimeters of his nose.

“It’s—a coffee cup, ma’am.”

“And?”

“It’s blue, ma’am.”

“
And
?”

“It has a bird on it.”

“No, Sergeant, this is not a bird. This, Corporal, is a griffin.
Do you know what a griffin is, Spacer?”

“Ma’am.”

“It’s the emblem of something called a Gruppo Helvetica, a
worthless assemblage of overpaid has-beens who are going to get their asses
flayed as soon as they play a
real
team.”

Ischi remained at attention as he looked at her sidelong. “Bet?”

“Name it.”

“The officers have a pool.”

“Put me down for Acadia Central United, all the way.”

“You’re on, ma’am.” Ischi removed a handheld from his trouser
pocket and coded an entry. “It’s a fifty-Comdollar stake, payable before the
first round begins. Ten percent off the top goes to the charity of your choice
so we don’t get gigged for gambling. Where do you want yours to go?”

“Colonial Outreach.”

“Colonial Outreach, it is.” Ischi tucked the device back in his
pocket. “It’ll be a pleasure to take your money, ma’am,” he said as he
departed, with a clipped coolness that would have given Lucien pause.

Jani stuck her tongue out at him as the door closed. Then she
returned to her desk, and her report, and the balance of her meal.

It was dark by the time Jani departed Doc Control. Had
been dark for hours—the only people out and about were third-shifters on their
way to work.
Pimentel is going to have my ass.
She stopped by the South
Central out of guilt and assembled dinner from the leavings of the salads and
soups. Everything scanned edible. Good thing. She’d forgotten to scan the
sandwich and the cake, and one of them had made her wheeze. Considering the
only other things that made her wheeze were shellfish and biopolymers,
unscanned foods were now officially expunged from her menu.

Her walk had slowed to a trudge by the time she entered the hostel
lobby. But she detoured to the holoVee room anyway, just to decompress.

“In other news,” the disembodied voice of the announcer continued,
“reaction to the idomeni ambassador’s visit to the Botany Department of Chicago
Combined University, undertaken in an effort to promote scientific exchange
between the Commonwealth and the Shèrá worldskein, remains mixed. Negotiations
are currently under way to allow teams of human and idomeni botanists to
conduct joint research in selected sites throughout both our domains. This
would be the first time such exchanges would be allowed since the idomeni civil
war, and agriculture officials fear these programs could draw attention and
funding from the more traditional research that has been conducted in the
colonies for decades.”

As the announcer continued his narration, Arrèl nì Rau Nema came
into view, flanked by white-coated human scientists. His golden skin seemed to
shimmer in the bright sun. Gold coils flashed from his ears. His straight, pale
brown hair had been braided into a series of thin loops that trimmed his head
like fringe. He wore the usual clothing of a male of his skein and station:
light brown trousers tucked into knee-high brown boots, open-necked shirt in
the same dusky color, an off-white overrobe trimmed with crimson. A human
wearing so many clothes in the extreme heat would have looked sweaty and
wilted, but Nema looked sharp and energetic.

Jani stepped closer to the display. Several Service officers stood
behind Nema, eyes fixed on the crowds. Lucien, she noted, wasn’t among them.

“I have most enjoyed my visit to this place,” Nema said. His light
voice sounded clipped, flat, English falling easily from his thin lips. “So
much have I learned, and truly.”

One of the reporters shouted a question. The scientists frowned
and tried to herd Nema away, but he planted his feet and rounded his shoulders.
His stubborn posture made Jani smile.

“I am curious of all things in this city,” he said. “
All
things.” He paused, then looked straight at the holocam. “My eyes and ears are
always open to that which I must know.” Amber eyes tunneled. Through the hours.
The distance. Straight at her. “Knowledge is power, isn’t that what all
humanish believe? Then so must we labor together, to build our power.”

He bared his teeth in a skeleton-like grimace. The expression was
the idomeni equivalent of a smile, though it looked in no way benign. Jani had
always referred to the expression as
Grim Death with a Deal for You.
The
term seemed more appropriate now than it ever had.

Another reporter shouted another question, but before Nema could
respond, the white coats maneuvered him into a nearby building.

Jani turned and walked slowly from the room. Up the stairs. Down
the hall.

Nema’s turning the screws to keep me out of jail because he
wants me to look for something.
She changed into pajamas, set out her late
dinner, ate.
Something powerful.
She washed, burrowed into bed, nestled
Val the Bear on the adjoining pillow.
But what?

Did it matter? She esteemed Nema, and always would. And who could
help liking him?
But he could teach John a thing or two about treating
people like objects.
She had taken care to leave his ring in her bag. It
was a keepsake, from a time long past. She didn’t have the ability, or the
will, to jump when he called anymore.

She punched her pillow, thought of the scalpel on her desk, and
knew she should start planning her escape.
Not now.
Later, when she
could think more clearly. When thoughts of victimized archivists and troubles
with the idomeni didn’t prey on her mind. When she’d seen everything through to
the end. Left things tight.

She fell asleep slowly, fitfully. Her stomach had started to ache
again.

Sam sat on the scanbed and watched the morning sun stream
though the examination-room windows. The light fractured into rainbows as it
struck analyzer displays, flashed like flares as it reflected off metal stands.
He found the brightness cheering. So different here than in the SIB basement.

In some respects.

“You understand my problem, don’t you, Sam?” Pimentel activated
one of the analyzers. “Why I’m reluctant to discharge you?”

Sam twisted the end of his bathrobe sash around his fingers. “I
understand why you believe you have a problem, Doctor. I do not, however,
understand why you feel it must become mine.”

Pimentel dragged a lab stool next to the scanbed and sat down. He
closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sam, it’s gone beyond
simply taking on other people’s pasts and calling them your own. You’ve been
caught in a direct lie about your work. You’d never lied about your work
before. Your condition is deteriorating.”

“Your opinion.”

“My
medical
opinion, Sam. It’s worth a lot.” He leaned
forward, his hands splayed across his knees. Narrow hands, for a man. Thin
fingers. “I’ve spoken with your immediate supervisor, as well as his
supervisor. They told me what happened the other night. They told me about
finding two drawers’ full of missing documents in your desk.”

“I did not put them there.”

“You checked out those documents. Your name is on the sign-out.”

“Be that as it may. I did not hide them.”

“Sam, according to Lieutenant Yance, no one else has access to
those particular papers.” Pimentel stood. He wore summerweights, although as
usual he had left his rank designators in his desk drawer. “You were put in
charge of everything connected with Rauta Shèràa Base because you possessed a
reputation beyond reproach and organizational abilities Yance called second to
none.” He paced in front of the bed, his hands inscribing strokes and circles
in the air, a conductor without his baton. “You were able to surmise a series
of events from just a few documents. You knew where the holes were, where
people needed to look to fill them. You figured out paper protocols the idomeni
hadn’t used since the Laumrau fell from power. ‘Almost as if he’d worked there
himself,’ was how Yance put it.”

Sam nodded. “I understand research.”

Pimentel stopped in front of him. “Yes, you spent years building
your reputation. Refining your expertise.” He braced one narrow-fingered hand
on the edge of the bed. “Every day you delay the removal of the tumor increases
the chances that you could suffer permanent brain damage, and with that,
permanent damage to your expertise. Even with the knowledge base we have, some
things can’t be fixed.” He leaned close. “Sam, please let me schedule you for
surgery.”

Sam edged away from Pimentel. His view of the door was blocked by
the way the doctor had positioned himself. If he tried to slide off the bed,
Pimentel only had to move a little to his right to stop him. He didn’t like
that. He hated the sensation of feeling trapped. He hated the sight of
Pimentel’s spindly hands. “No.”

“Sam—!”

“No, Doctor! That’s my decision, and unless you hold me prisoner
here, there’s nothing you can do about it!” He slid off the bed and darted
around Pimentel until he stood in a direct line with the door. “I will be
leaving this place as soon as I change my clothes.”

“
Sam.
” Pimentel struck the scanbed with his fist. Once.
Twice. “I assume you’ve given no thought to what we spoke of the other day.”

“No.”

“I can’t stand by and watch a man destroy himself. If you persist
on this course, I will initiate the paperwork necessary to have you declared a
ward of the Commonwealth.”

“You can try, Doctor.” Sam bolted from the room, almost colliding
with an orderly pushing a skimcart laden with equipment. He mumbled an apology
and scurried down the hall, the ends of his sash bouncing off his knees like
clappers in a silent bell.

No doctors inside my head, ever again.
He’d die if he let
them in. He knew it.

He wove up and down halls, ignoring the
signs, using doors and nurses’ stations and inset lights as his guides. Things
that couldn’t be moved, couldn’t be changed.
There’s nothing wrong with my
memory.
Not for the things that mattered. Escape. Freedom. Keeping the
doctors out of his head.

Sam turned the corner onto the hallway that led to his room and
collided with a uniformed man walking in the opposite direction. Dress
blue-greys, unusual for that area of the base. Sam looked up into the man’s
face and stifled a cry.
Scar.
From his nose to his mouth. It drew the
eye like any accident. Sam barely kept from blurting out that he was in the
right place to get it fixed.

The man brought his hands up to chest level, palms toward Sam, as
though to grab him. But in the same motion, he backed off a step. The hands
dropped. “My apologies.” He smiled—not the most pleasant sight. “I came by to
pick up some test results, but I can’t find the lab drop.”

“Scan or wet analysis?”

“Scan.”

“Two halls to the right. Middle door. Blue.” Sam’s gaze flicked
over the man’s badges and designators. Any more, and he’d have looked
ridiculous; any fewer, and he’d have looked like everybody else. Then Sam
looked at the name tag. “Colonel Pierce.”