Law of Survival (6 page)

“That's what made Exterior Doc Control suspicious about the document's origins.” Lescaux's face reddened as the soup-spattered woman graced them with a highbred scowl. “That letter was subjected to five full-bore scans and each time, seventeen separate incompatibilities registered.”

Jani lowered the volume on her 'pack output and rescanned the same spot; this time, the device emitted a barely detectable chirp. She read the error coordinates on the display, and frowned. “Did all the inconsistencies show up in the same places each time?”

“Yes.” Lescaux fell silent as the waiter arrived with their main courses.

“Do you have a copy of your chief dexxie's report delineating the locations and types of errors?”

“Y-yes.” Lescaux fidgeted as the waiter hovered.

“Better give it to her now, boyo. She's going to keep asking questions until you do.” Derringer tore his attention away from his sauce-drenched steak just long enough to shoot Jani a self-satisfied smirk.

“Just doing my job, Eugene.”

“I know, Jani. And nothing kicks your overofficious ass into high gear like a professional anxiety attack.” He hacked the meat with a heavy hand, bloody juice spilling across his plate. “That's the initiator chip that's set your 'pack to bleating. All it does is tell your scanpack that it's about to scan a document. It's basic, a throwaway, a nonissue, and your 'pack can't read it.” He shrugged off Jani's unspoken question. “I've been taking a crash course in chip placement, courtesy of your good friend, Frances Hals. It's been a pretty goddamn interesting last couple of days.”

Lescaux removed a slim packet of files from his briefbag and handed it to Jani. “Here's our doc chief's report, along with her affidavit that she stands by her conclusions. She's worked for Exterior since her graduation from Chicago Combined. She has extensive colonial experience and she acted very carefully once she realized what she had.” His chin came up again. “Yes, I guess you could say we all understand the accusation we're leveling.”

Jani unbound the packet and riffled through the documents until she found the chief's report.
So, Roni McGaw, you think you know from idomeni paper.
She read the first few lines. “McGaw's basing her conclusion that this document is of idomeni origin on the fact that she and her staff can't read a few chips.” She read further. “There's no discussion here of prescan testing of any of the 'packs, no record of paper analysis stating whether it's of human or idomeni origin, no mention of the conditions under which the documents were stored and transported or whether they were stressed by temperature or humidity extremes—”

“You're grasping at straws, Kilian,” Derringer snapped.

“You realize that this level of subterfuge is alien to the idomeni mind-set?” Jani directed her attention at Lescaux, knowing Derringer a lost cause. “They despise lies and secrecy more than the crimes they're meant to cover up. That's why they accept me despite the fact that I was the first human to ever kill any of them in one of their wars, because no one ever tried to hide the fact that I had done it. That's why they refuse to acknowledge Gisela Detmers-Neumann and the other descendants of the instigators of Knevçet Shèràa, because they've denied to this day that Rikart Neumann and his co-conspirators did anything wrong.”

“Human experimentation.” Lescaux looked down at his own rare steak, and nudged the plate aside.

“Rikart and crew couldn't have arranged any experimentation without Laumrau participation.” Derringer took a sip from his water glass and grimaced as though he longed for wine. “Seems to me they took to secrecy and subterfuge rather well.”

“And they paid for it during the Night of the Blade. What was the last estimate you heard of the number of Laumrau who were executed that night? Twenty-five thousand? Fifty thousand? An entire sect, wiped out within hours.” Jani pushed her chair away from the table and the stench of charred meat, the sight of blood, the memories of that final terrifying dash through the city. “That's how the born-sect idomeni punish secrecy and lies among their own. Does this give you some idea of how they would punish Nema if they discovered he had perpetrated such a deception, and do you believe for even a fraction of a second that Nema doesn't realize that?”

Derringer pointed his steak knife at her. “Spies have always risked death. It's part of the job description.”

“You're basing your conclusions on human behavior. You've made that mistake before and damn it, you just won't learn!” Jani returned the chief's report to its slipcase. “The Elyan Haárin are outcast of Sìah and hard-headed as they come. They never had a great deal of patience with either Nema's plan for the universe or Cèel's distrust of us. They do, however, possess a deep and abiding respect for a signed contract. Karistos needs Haárin technology, and the Family-
affiliated businesses are worried enough to try to upset the deal by defaming Nema. It all boils down to money, gentlemen, and it's going to take a hell of a lot more than one jazzed precis to convince me otherwise.”

“Jazzed?” Lescaux's face flushed. “You mean
faked,
don't you? If you're saying that Her Excellency—”

Jani held up her hands in mock surrender. “I'm not saying who, Peter. I'm just saying what.” She picked up The Nema Letter. “This arrived, I assume, with the rest of the contract documents in the regular diplomatic pouch from Karistos?”

Derringer bit down on a breadstick—it crunched like brittle bone.
“Yes.”

“Did any of the other docs in the pouch show the same faults? McGaw's report doesn't mention supplementary testing.”

Lescaux hesitated just an instant too long. “No.”

Jani nodded as though she believed him.
You didn't check. You found one anomaly and ran barking to Derringer, who got so jacked about the prospect of placing a mole in the idomeni embassy that he didn't run any confirmation either.
“To prove definitively that this document is what you claim, you'd need an idomeni to scan it with their scanpack and prove the chips aren't simply damaged or faulty.”

Derringer shook his head. “We don't want any of them to even know this exists. Couldn't you just load an idomeni chip in your unit?”

It was Jani's turn to respond in the negative. “Chips are designed to operate in unison with the thought processes of the brain matter that drives the 'pack. Idomeni brains and human brains function differently in several key areas. An idomeni chip wouldn't work in a human scanpack.”

“Not even yours?” Derringer didn't quite manage to keep the slyness out of his voice.

This time, Jani counted all the way to ten. “The brain between my ears may change over time. The brain in
this
”—she held her 'pack up to his face—“is a self-contained unit—it won't change unless I do a refarm-rebuild.”

“I suppose I could have our labs analyze the chips.” Lescaux's voice sounded tight—the accusation that he peddled a fake document still rankled.

Jani waved him off. “This is a diplomatic-grade document. Therefore, if you attempt to remove the chips from the paper or try to analyze them with anything other than a scanpack, they will self-destruct. The only way you will ever know for sure if an idomeni assembled this document would be to get one of the embassy examiners to scan it.”

“I thought you could just ask he who wrote it.” Derringer plucked another breadstick out of the basket and snapped it in two. “During our embassy visit today, just before you ask him whether there are any other useful tidbits of information he thinks we should know.”

Jani looked at Lescaux, who looked away. “What?”

“You heard me.” Derringer pressed the two breadstick halves together lengthwise, and broke them again.

The noise around Jani faded. The babble of conversations. The clatter of plates and cutlery. The rustle of the breeze through the trees. “You want me to spy—”

“No.
Tsecha's doing the spying. You just need to ferry the information from him to us. He wants to help us. We only have to provide him the opportunity.” Derringer grinned. “You were the first person I thought of when this fortuity presented itself.”

Lescaux tossed his napkin on his plate and rose from the table. “I need to clean my teeth.” He held out his hand to Jani. “The precis, please.” A look passed between them—on his part, it held fear, and dislike, but also a shade of uncertainty. “You can keep McGaw's report overnight, but I need it back tomorrow first thing.” Jani handed him the letter—he slid it back into its slipcase and tucked it into his bag. “I'll meet you both back at the skimmer.” His shoes clicked on the flagstones. He looked like a well-dressed prep schooler on his way to address student-teacher assembly.

Derringer watched him. “Think it's true what they say about him and his boss? He only did time in a couple of dinky colonial posts before he nailed the Chief of Staff job—I mean, he must have nailed her first, right?” He
glanced at Jani. “Cheer up, Kilian. Tsecha bubbles like a fountain around you—once you get him started, you won't be able to shut him up.”

“Don't you remember what I said would happen if Cèel suspected him of this level of duplicity?”

Derringer shrugged. “We disavow immediately. Standard cut and run.”

“No,
not what happens to your operation. What happens to
him!”

“I could not care less.”

“You bastard.”

Derringer leaned toward her. “No. Not a bastard. A human being. Which is what you still are too, at least officially. I'm just offering you a chance to prove it.” He pointed his fork at McGaw's report. “You take that home to your posh flat on posh Armour Place, and you study it as much as you want. Then you take a good, hard look at your posh walls and your rapidly growing credit account and your flash lieutenant boyfriend, and then you do what you are told.”

Jani took a deep breath. She felt agitated enough for her augmentation to weigh in, and an aborted augie overdrive was the last thing she needed right now. “You are threatening a Registered documents examiner. You are trying to intimidate said examiner into making grave and important—I quote these words from the Registry Code of Ethics—
grave
and
important
decisions based on the conclusions drawn from a document that she does not trust. That's a Commonwealth felony, Eugene. I may lose my posh flat when all this settles, but you'll lose a lot more.”

“You're crazy, Kilian. It's public record. No one will believe you.”

“If that's the case, why would anyone believe anything I say I heard from Nema? That little blade cuts both ways.”

“That little blade is supposed to get lifted from your slender throat by year's end. Employee assessments are going to have some bearing on whether that in fact occurs.” Derringer sat back and hooked his thumbs in his trouser pockets, like a gambler who knew he held the winning card. “Do not cross me on this. Burkett's not exactly wild about you—if I push a
recommendation that they yank your 'pack, he'll listen.” He glanced at his timepiece and looked around. “Do it. You have no choice.”

“Eugene, the last time someone thought they'd left me without a choice, I wrote a chapter in idomeni mythology.”

“You wrote a few other chapters, didn't you? I read that white paper, Kilian—my, my, what a bad girl you were. Combine that with your present emotional state, I see someone who can't afford to say no.” Derringer stood, removed his garrison cap from his belt, and set it on his head. “I'm willing to let you start slow. Grab a few minutes with Tsecha during a break in today's meeting, feel him out. He loves to talk to you—you're his pet. It shouldn't take much effort to get this rolling.” He started walking in the direction Lescaux had gone. “Now let's go. We're keeping Young Peter waiting.”

Jani watched Derringer stride away. In her ear, she heard her augmentation whisper about pressure points and methods of dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of body parts, but augie tended toward the direct approach when it sensed she was in danger and that wasn't what was needed right now. She wasn't sure what was, but she'd think of something. For Nema's sake, she had to.

“And with this bite of ground, of soil, I—”
Tsecha fell silent and stared at the slice of
faria
impaled on the end of his fork.
“Bite of ground…”

The piece of purple-skinned tuber offered him no clue as to the words he needed to say to complete the prayer. No prompting scrolled across its glistening white surface, as it did across the broadcasters' eyepieces at the holoVee studio he had visited earlier that humanish week. Instead, it stared in death glaze, as white and blank as a humanish eye, leaving him to suffer the humiliation of a chief priest who had forgotten how to petition his gods.

“I have prayed such for years,” Tsecha murmured in English. He often talked to himself in English. He found the language's hard sounds complemented his mood. “I prayed such only yesterday.” But yesterday seemed an age ago.

“Now yesterday is today and all is hell.” He shoved the slice of
faria
into his mouth and chewed without the benefit of prayer. The bitterness of the vegetable stung his throat—he coughed into his sleeve so his cook-priest wouldn't hear. He knew she waited near the outer door of his private altar-room, pacing the hall like a nervous beast as she prayed for his soul. She esteemed him—he knew that. She possessed the proper skein and standing. He sensed she might ask him to breed her, and if she did so, he could not refuse.

Then she would leave me to make her birth-house, and I would need to find a new cook-priest.
One who didn't worry so much. Yes, that would be most pleasant. It weighed upon Tsecha, the way others worried after his soul.

He removed his handheld from his overrobe's inner pocket and entered the English word “weight.” The aged device took some time to search and collate. It had been built for him many seasons before, prior even to the War of Vynshàrau Ascension, when humanish had first begun to visit his Shèrá homeworld. It contained his favorite humanish languages: French, English, and Mandarin, along with the many odd terms and definitions he had compiled during the glorious Academy days more than twenty humanish years before, when Jani Kilian and Hansen Wyle taught him so much.

Such days.
He studied his handheld's scratched display.
Weight
. He shook the device gently as words appeared, then faded.
Ballast. Tonnage. Anchor….

Anchor.
Yes, that was the word. The fears of others weighted him as an anchor. They immobilized him, kept him motionless, static, changeless, at a time when change meant life and stasis meant something quite different.

Tsecha sipped his water, warmed and sweetened with
veir
blossom. It soothed his throat, and quelled the burning on his tongue.

“Pain focuses the mind.” He spoke softly, so his cook-priest would not hear his ungodly English. “With the pain I have experienced this day, mine should be the most focused mind in the universe.” First, he awoke to the ache of age in his knees and back. Then he recalled his upcoming meeting, which like most such gatherings promised hellish depths of boredom and confusion. They were to discuss the Karistos contract today—such a ridiculous thing, and truly. Haárin and colonial humanish had entered into such agreements since before the last war, so many that one lost count. Why Anais and her allies objected so to this particular agreement, he could not understand.

He set down his cup, and picked with ungodly indifference at his food.

 

“They are assembling, nìRau.”

Tsecha looked up from his reading. Sànalàn, his suborn, stood in the doorway of his front room. She had already donned her own formal overrobe, and carried his draped
over her arm. “Is it time already?” He folded the Council reports with heavy hands and inserted them back into their sheaths.

“The Exterior Minister arrived most early.” Sànalàn lapsed into the curt cadences and minimal gestures of Low Vynshàrau as she fussed with the overrobe's folds. “She asked one of the Haárin to show her the allowed areas of the embassy, and he did.”

Tsecha rose slowly from his favored chair. The frame had stabbed him in all the usual places, but even that discomfort had failed to sharpen his mind. “It is allowed that our Anais tour the allowed areas of the embassy, nìa.” He let Sànalàn help him don his robe, since such was her temper that he did not think it wise to reject her assistance. “That is what the word means.”

“It is unseemly.” Sànalàn prodded and yanked as though she dressed a squirming youngish and not her aged dominant. “You must reprimand him. He should have directed her to me or to nìaRauta Inèa instead of taking charge of her himself.”

“I must take care how I admonish any embassy Haárin, and truly.” Tsecha adjusted his twisted, red-trimmed sleeves as unobtrusively as he could. “They maintain our utilities. Our air and our water, our fire and our foundation. I berate this one you speak of too strongly, and we may all freeze in our beds.”

“Not this one. He is the tilemaster.”

“Ah. You have complained of him before.”

“And still you have done nothing.”

Tsecha offered a hand wave of acquiescence. “I will speak to him. I will threaten him with the anger of the gods.” He waited for Sànalàn to precede him to the door, then fell in behind her. “What is his name?”

“Dathim Naré.” Sànalàn gestured abruptly. “He is unseemly.”

“So you said, nìa. So you said.” Tsecha tried to recall the last time he had witnessed such agitation in his suborn as he continued to wrestle with his sleeves. “Jani is here?”

“Your Kièrshia has just now arrived, along with Colonel Derringer and Lescaux, Ulanova's suborn.”

“The one who looks as my Lucien? He did not arrive with Anais?”

“No, nìRau.
With Derringer and Kièrshia, as I said.”

“Ah.” Tsecha slackened off his pace so that he fell a stride farther behind the aggravated Sànalàn.

He entered the windowless meeting room to find it as Sànalàn described. Humanish filled one side of the banked spectator seats, Vynshàrau the other, the murmurs of conversation stilling as all faces turned to him.

How different we look.
The contrasts struck him particularly in these meetings. The humanish appeared stunted, truncated in every way. So short they were—even the tallest only reached Tsecha's nose, while the shortest…well, one had to watch where one stepped. Males and females both wore their hair in clipped styles that showed their ears and the shapes of their heads, and dressed in fitted clothing in dark, forest colors of leaf and wood and pool. Even his Jani, who sat in one of the banked rows of seats behind the tan-garbed Colonel Derringer, wore a green as dark as the depths of a well.

Against the multihued gloom of their clothing, their skins shone every color from worm-white to wood-brown, their pale-trimmed eyes glittering with feverish death glaze. Not an aesthetically pleasing people, humanish—Tsecha could admit this despite his affection for them. As ever, they seemed to war with their surroundings, rather than blend with them.

So different are my Vynshàrau.
Gold-skinned and gold-eyed, garbed in flowing robes of sand and stone that complemented the muted hues of the walls and floor, long of limb and fluid of line and motion. Like him, most wore their hair in the braided fringe of the breeder; the few unbred, like his Sànalàn, wore theirs in tight napeknots. All wore shoulder-grazing hoops or helices in their ears.
We are the Gold People of the High Sands. A dène vynshàne Rauta Shèràa.
He never felt the surety of this more than in the contrast with humanish. Never more than now, the differences daunted him. So vast. So overwhelming.

He took his seat at the point of the arrowhead-shaped table, in a chair so low that his knees complained as he low
ered into it. On one side of the arrowhead sat the secular dominants who acted in Cèel's stead, Suborn Oligarch Shai and next to her, Speaker to Colonies Daès, their chairs pitched slightly higher than Tsecha's in deference to his status as their religious dominant. Tsecha stretched out one leg beneath the table as surreptitiously as he could, and wished that they had deferred to the status of his old joints instead.

He looked to his Jani again. She looked back, her eyes half-closed as though her head pained her, her face as a wall. He nodded, and she responded with a flick and waver of the fingers of her left hand, a Low Vynshàrau gesture of agitation and the need for explanation. Then Derringer turned around to speak to her, and she let her hand drop.

Derringer.
Tsecha watched the man point his finger in Jani's face, his expression stern. He scolded her constantly, for reasons Tsecha could never comprehend and Jani refused to discuss.
But only when his dominant is absent.
When General Callum Burkett attended meetings, he and Jani talked as Derringer sat most quietly. Which was not to say that Burkett never scolded Jani, or that Jani never scolded him in return. In the end, Burkett listened. Derringer never did.

I have used up all my dried pokegrass, Eugene.
But the Haárin who managed the ornamental gardens did grow leafbarb to discourage the feral animals that evaded embassy security barriers. A wondrous plant, leafbarb, and truly. Not only did the blade-sharp yellow leaves poke through clothing admirably, but their clear juice contained a chemical that caused humanish skin to erupt in a seeping rash….

“Minister Ulanova.” Suborn Oligarch Shai gestured toward the chair at her side. “Join us at table, so we may begin.”

A miniature figure rose from her front row seat beside Lescaux and walked to the table. Her hair and clothes were as wood-brown, her face as sharpened stone, her steps as minced as a youngish. “My gratitude is yours, and truly, nìaRauta,” Anais Ulanova replied in stilted High Vynshàrau as she mounted the chair across from Shai. Her knuckles whitened as she clenched the rim of the seat to keep her balance, her tiny feet dangling half an arm's length above the floor.

Tsecha glanced at Jani, who bit her lip and looked away.

“In deference to Vynshàrau directness and openness, I will simply begin.” Anais had returned to English, which sounded as forced as her Vynshàrau. Many of the assembled attached translator headpieces as she spoke, while others paged through their copies of the official Exterior report that had been provided them. “I wish to state for the record how much the Commonwealth esteems the Oligarch's candor in dealing with this unfortunate chain of events. I would also like to state that this idomeni custom of facing difficult matters in such a straightforward manner is one that humanish also esteem and appreciate, and one that we will seek to maintain as our diplomatic relations strengthen.”

How glorious, Anais!
Tsecha had to clench his hands to keep from erupting into humanish applause.
Somewhere in that speech was a point, I believe, although it would take a crew of deep-pit miners many seasons to uncover it.

Anais continued. “The situation I speak of is, of course, this regrettable circumstance in Karistos, which is the capital of Elyas, one of our Outer Circle colonies. It is indeed unfortunate that Karistos city officials failed to explore all avenues of recourse available within the Commonwealth before taking it upon themselves to set precedent.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tsecha watched Shai tap her headpiece and gesture to Daès, who curved his right hand in supplication. “You should clarify your thoughts for we the direct and open, nìaRauta.” Daès glanced at Anais's report on the table in front of him, which even now the Vynshàrau xenolinguists studied for the hidden meaning that existed in all humanish documents, the words between the lines. “You are angered that the Karistos dominants acted without consulting you. Except that they have consulted with you for many months, and pleaded for assistance in solving their water problems. Elyan humanish died, yet you told them to wait. Elyan humanish died, yet you told them to draw up plans and obtain estimates.”

Anais raised a hand, palm facing up. A subtle variation of a plea, Tsecha had learned, a request for the speaker to rethink their words. Not her usual reaction to Daès's questions—she usually fluttered her hands and turned most red.
“A great tragedy, which occurred because the water treatment facility in question was built too hastily, from a design that had not been adequately thought out. We must take the time to think now, nìRau. We are most concerned that to act in haste again could result in even greater tragedy.”

Tsecha closed the report before him with one finger, then pushed it away with such force that it slid to the middle of the table. “You are most concerned, you say. Most concerned. Yet when the Elyan Haárin offer a way to stop the dying
now,
you protest. Because your colonial business interests lose money, you assemble reports with graphs and charts and financial analyses, reports that could not be assembled when it was only your
people
whom you lost.”

Anais's face reddened in a most gratifying manner as in the banked rows, whispered conversation rose. “Are you accusing me of allowing my people to die in the interest of financial gain, nìRau?”

Tsecha folded his hands before him. “Is there any question—”

“Tsecha.”

The droning humanish conversation silenced. Jani sat up most straight, her gaze fixed on Suborn Oligarch Shai, whose shoulders had rounded in anger.

Shai gestured to her suborn, who reached to the table's center and removed Tsecha's copy of the report. “Allow nìaRauta Ulanova to finish,” she said as she opened her own copy.

Tsecha barely restrained his laughter as he watched Shai study a triaxial graph as though she understood what it meant. “Shai—”

“Allow nìaRauta Ulanova to finish.”
Shai spoke to him without any clarifying gesture, which was most unlike her. “We are all most aware of your thought in this.”