Rules of Conflict (6 page)

He eased into the passenger seat beside his rose-loving attorney
and looked out at the bowl of poured concrete that some architect had inverted
and dubbed the Service Investigative Bureau. Odd area of Sheridan for the
supreme commander to be wandering, despite his reputation for digging into the
daily workings of the base.

Whatever’s going on, he needed his hatchet along to check it
out.
Evan remembered the feeling—he had dragged Durian Ridgeway along on so
many cleanup projects, the man had earned the nickname
the janitor.

Made one wonder what service Scarface had performed to merit the
confidence.

“Did an officer named Pierce serve on either the
Hilfington
or the
Kensington
, Quino?” Evan must have done a good job keeping the
curiosity out of his voice—Joaquin barely glanced up from his handheld.

“Crew rosters are included in the documents we’ve requested from
Veda, Evan. I can’t answer that question until I have them in hand.”

Evan nodded. “It’s just that he looks familiar.” He tapped his
thumb on his knee and watched Joaquin’s face in the angled reflection of the
driver’s rearview mirror. “I could have seen him at the Consulate, I suppose.”

“Those rosters we have, thanks to your father’s meticulous
recordkeeping. I’ll have one of the clerks check when I get back to the
office.” He looked at Evan with an air of quiet interest. “Do you recall the
circumstances under which you think you saw him?”

Evan shook his head. “No. Sorry. If anything comes to me, I’ll let
you know.” With that, he dropped it. He had known Joaquin for over thirty years
and had worked with him professionally for fifteen. The man sensed a possible
lead; therefore, he would
check.
Whichever Service records he could
access. Whatever other official sources he could tap. Then, just to make sure
he hadn’t missed anything, he would assign an agent or two to work the
unofficial side of the street, to research Pierce’s past from the cradle to what
he had for breakfast that morning, and see where the reports overlapped.

Or didn’t.

And then I’ll know.
It didn’t have to be big—it just had to
hurt. A failed marriage. An embarrassing relative. A rumor of cheating in
school. Something to fling in Pierce’s battered face the next time they met.
Pierce,
Pierce, I’d heard of a Pierce who—oh, I’m sorry. Are you related?

The skimmer passed beneath the base entryway. The shadow of the
Shenandoah Gate darkened the vehicle interior; the illuminated names of the Greatest
War dead inscribed on the stone’s surface shone like stars. The sudden
nightfall shook Evan out of his bitter daydream.
Why the hell am I
bothering?
Did he crave a respite from his legal travails? Or did being
rebuffed at by a colonial counter-jumper aggravate him that much?

Which colonial counter-jumper am I thinking about?
He
rubbed his aching knee and pushed thoughts of Jani from his mind.

“I can’t find it, Mr. Duong.”

Sam looked up from the stack of files that he had balanced
precariously on his lap. “Which is
it
, Tory? The
Hilfington
passenger roster or the
Kensington
master?”

The Clerk Four shifted from foot to foot. “Both. Neither.” Her
eyes filled. “Mr. Odergaard said that Mr. Loiaza threatened to notify the Prime
Minister.”

Sam closed the file he had been rooting through and hoisted the
pile from his lap to the tabletop. “He can try,” he said as he smoothed his
rumpled civilian greys. “Prime Minister Cao does not jump to the beat of
lawyers who make a show of stamping their well-shod feet.”

“But Mr. Loiaza is
Mr. van Reuter’s
lawyer.”

“That’s no great honor.” Sam stood, shivering as conditioned air
brushed across his sweat-damp back. He could visualize the light grey shirting
darkened to charcoal, and wondered if he dared escape to the locker room for a
shower and change of clothes. It wouldn’t make the hell that the day had become
go any more smoothly, but at least he would feel better. Comparatively
speaking. He felt a battered wreck now.

“Mr. Odergaard says that if we can’t track down the docs in the
next half hour, you have to contact Lieutenant Yance.” Tory’s eyes widened. She
was seventeen years old—the Clerk Four position was her first job since
graduating prep school. Judging from the mounting panic on her round, fresh
face, she would be starting her second position sometime next week. “Mr.
Odergaard says—”

“As second shift Tech One, Mr. Odergaard is responsible for the
live documents on his watch.” Sam folded his arms. “I am the archivist. The
dead belong to me.”

Tory’s agitation ceased, replaced by the so-still attitude Sam had
encountered more and more frequently as the weeks passed. The weeks since ex-Interior
Minister van Reuter and his lawyer had begun visiting Fort Sheridan. The weeks
since they had begun asking for documents from the Service Investigative Bureau
Archives. Documents describing murder. Mutiny. Conspiracy. Documents that could
not be found.

And everyone blames me.
Little Sam—you know him. Small,
wiry chap. Hair like tar. Face like a daze.

He stepped from behind the table and beckoned for Tory to follow
him back to the aisle after aisle of paper-crammed shelving that constituted
the SIB stacks.
Because they think I’m . . . unwell.

“Unwell or not,
K
still comes after
H
.” He waited at
the stack entry for Tory, who lagged behind. He’d gotten used to that, too. The
aversion people evinced at having to work with him, talk to him. The vague
feeling that people just wished he’d go away.

We have that in common, van Reuter.
The ex-minister’s
hawklike visage surfaced in Sam’s memory. From the stairwell scuttlebutt he had
heard, the man who had once been the
V
in the NUVA-SCAN technology
conglomerate had become a pariah amongst his own. Isolated. Maligned. Blamed
for every misstep taken by the Families in the last twenty years.

Sam felt a chill sense of kinship with van Reuter, in spite of the
crimes the man was alleged to have committed.
It’s all your fault, and no
one wants to hear you explain.
He held the door open for Tory, and
maintained his air of polite reserve as she dodged past him into the stacks. A
great thing, to have so much in common with such a great man.

“I apologize for taking you away from your work, Sam. I
understand you’ve been very busy.”

“That’s all right, Doctor.”

“Look into the light.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Sam lifted his head and stared into the red glow,
positioned a scant meter in front of his face. At first, it shone with a
single, steady beat. Then it fluttered, skipped, skittered across its source
surface like a bug in a bottle.

Another light joined it. Another. Finally, an entire series of red
pulses stuttered and popped, filling his range of vision like a silent,
monochrome-fireworks display.

After a few minutes, the reversal began. Fewer lights. Fewer. Mad
perturbations slowed and steadied. A handful of lights. Five. Three. Two. One.

Stopped.

Sam blinked, worked his neck, yawned. Sitting in the dark had
reminded him how tired he was. The
Hilfington
rosters had finally turned
up. Tory had found them shoved in between two accounts-receivable folders,
under the letter
P
.
One crisis averted.
But the
Kensington
rosters remained missing, as were so many other things. The day’s single
success did little to lessen the pressure Sam felt from Odergaard, who felt it
from Yance, who felt it from the Head of Archives, who in turn had to deal with
Veda’s foot on her neck.

Normally, he despised his visits to Sheridan’s Main Hospital. But
today, the relief he felt at being able to leave the SIB basement made him want
to cry.

The room lights blazed to life. Sam shut his eyes against the
assault.

“Did that bother you at all?”

He opened one watering eye to see Dr. Pimentel standing near the
examining-room entry, his hand still resting on the lighting pad. He shrugged.
“I found it interesting, at first. Then it became irritating.”

Pimentel hung his head. He seemed to grow older with each passing
visit. The blond hair, more dull and lank. The eyes, more fatigued. He had to
be at least twenty years younger than Sam, no more than thirty-five. What did
he do that drained him so? “Irritating? How?”

Sam struggled to construct an explanation. It seemed such a
trivial thing, hardly worth the effort. “It appeared so . . . tentative.
I kept waiting for it to make up its mind.”

Pimentel continued to watch him from his post by the door. Then he
walked back to his seat next to Sam’s examining table with the round-shouldered
trudge of someone who bore the weight of the world. “Sam.” He always took care
to pronounce Sam’s name in proper Bandan fashion—
Sahm
rhymes with
Mom
,
not
Sam
rhymes with
damn
. “I subjected you to that test for a
reason. If you were indeed augmented, as you claimed during your last visit,
you would not have been able to look into that light for more than a few
seconds without it affecting you.”

Sam thought back to his previous visit. Tried to think back. It
had been sunny . . . no, rainy . . . wait, they
hadn’t had any rain for over a month. Or had it been two? “Affecting me?”

The ergoworks in Pimentel’s seat creaked as he leaned forward.
“Blink patterns are designed to affect Service augments in very specific ways.
You’ve been here often enough in the past few months to have heard the term
takedown.
That’s when we use blink patterns to halt the progression of an unwanted
overdrive state, a situation where the panic-dampening function of the augment
asserts itself in a non-conflict situation. We do it both as a semiannual
precautionary treatment, and, when necessary, to short-circuit an acute event.”

“I told you I was augmented?” Sam reached into his shirt pocket
and pulled out his Service-issued handheld. He kept all his appointments in it.
And his little notations. Where the men’s room was, for example. Well, the SIB
was a large building—it was an easy thing to forget.
What did I tell
Pimentel, and when?
He’d kept no record of that, unfortunately.

“Yes, Sam. You did.” Pimentel glanced at the handheld, his tired
eyes flaring with curiosity. “The aftereffects of a takedown aren’t pleasant.
The patient can feel fatigued and disoriented for as long as a week after
treatment. Unfortunately, much milder versions of blink patterns can have a
similar, though lesser, effect. For that reason, many augments develop an
aversion to the color red, and become highly agitated when exposed to arrays of
blinking lights. We take that into account here at Sheridan, where the
augmented population stands at twenty-seven percent. Certain types of lighted
displays and exhibits are expressly forbidden. Enforcement becomes difficult
during the various holiday celebrations, of course.” He grinned weakly. “But
it’s different in the world outside the Shenandoah Gate. No holds barred in
Chicago, a city you visit three to four times a week.” He grew serious. “Am I
right?”

Sam nodded, resisting the urge to check his handheld again. “I
visit the city, yes.”

“You visit the various Service Archives to research the names for
inclusion in the Gate. You travel at night, from what you told me. You find it
easier to work when no one else is around. You take the Sheridan Local Line,
which passes the Pier exhibits, the Bluffs Zoo, the Commonwealth Gardens. They
each have thrill rides. All-night exhibits.” Pimentel’s weary gaze never left
Sam’s face. He seemed to be prompting him, reminding him of his life. As
though—

As though he doesn’t think I can remember on my own.

“I guarantee you, Sam,” the doctor continued, “if you were
augmented, you couldn’t look at those exhibits, because
every
augment I
examine mentions having a problem with at least one of them when they visit the
city. Some wear special eyefilms to filter out the light. Some wear hearing
protection because they’ve developed related sensitivity to any sound
resembling emergency sirens or explosions. But every one of them does
something
,
because otherwise, they become very sick very quickly.

Sam’s chest tightened as his anger grew. “You knew from my
encephaloscan that I didn’t have a Service-type augmentation?”

“Yes, Sam. You’re the one who seemed to require convincing.”

“My augmentation is different.” Yes, that was it. Pimentel must
have only asked him whether he was augmented, not what type of augmentation he
had. He hammered Sam with vagueness, then called foul when Sam responded in
kind.
Don’t ask me what I remember, Doctor, ask me what I know.
“It’s
not a Service augmentation. It’s something else.”