Impersonations

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Who else would it be, my lady?” Koridun asked. She was clearly puzzled. “I have video. Would you like to see it?”

  Sula would and did. The person in the video was clearly Goojie, smiling in the familiar way, wearing the familiar bright fabrics, walking with the familiar swinging stride. She was as much Goojie as the woman at the Continental Club had been Sula.

  So, Goojie had been Goojie all along, and the imposter was someone else.

  Sula was surprised at how relieved she was by the news. Goojie had been genuine, had genuinely been her friend.

  “My lady?” Koridun said. “I have assembled my personnel and a group of medical and rescue techs, and we’re ready to drop to Sulawesi to help secure the station and other imperial facilities from the Karangetang eruption. May we have your permission to embark?”

  “Yes,” Sula said, distracted. “Yes, of course.”

  She wondered how many other relatives of Caro Sula were wandering around Terra at the moment, embarked on clandestine errands.

  She’d find out. But first, she had to meet with the commissioner of police.

  * * *

  Lady Gudrun Bjorge had very kindly agreed to meet Sula at the main branch of the Consolidated Bank of Zanshaa, and arrived in her grand, bemedaled uniform along with a pair of constables and the Lai-own recorder with his tablet. Sula came with Spence and Macnamara and a car loaded with firearms. The floor, ceiling, and walls of the bank were sheathed in cream-colored laminate, and the sleek desks and cabinets were a slightly darker cream color with brass accents. Sula reckoned the bank probably spent a fortune in robots keeping the place polished.

  The bank manager, one Lady Oso Pai-tor, had been forewarned of their coming, and took them into her office, which featured a grand view of the Avon River, slate-gray within its banks, and brightly colored houseboats moored to the quay. The office was as brilliant white as the rest of the interior. Perched on fluted white podiums were pale porcelain flower vases filled with white lilies that filled the room with a slightly astringent scent.

  Lady Oso offered refreshment, Sula accepted tea, and Lady Gudrun coffee. “I wonder if you can locate my account in your bank, Lady Oso,” Sula said.

  Lady Oso said that she would. Lady Oso gave verbal commands to her desk while Sula paused to admire her teacup—Guraware, from Zanshaa. Displays in the desk and on one wall brightened with new information.

  “Yes,” said Lady Oso. “You have an account here.”

  “Can you tell me when the account was opened?”

  Lady Oso looked at the display. “A little over eight months ago,” she said. “On Zanshaa.”

  Sula sipped her tea. “I was in the capital eight months ago. I wonder if you can tell me how much money is in the account?”

  Lady Oso looked at the figures again. “Forty-five thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one zeniths, fourteen septiles.”

  Which was enough to live the rest of her life in very comfortable retirement, provided she stayed away from Zanshaa High City and its extravagant lifestyle. The bribes on Terra had been generous indeed.

  Sula put the Guraware on the desk. “I would like to make a withdrawal, if I may,” she said. “A hundred and one zeniths.”

  “Very good, Lady Sula.” Lady Oso brushed at the feathery hair at the side of her head and gave the commands. She reached for a fingerprint reader on the desk and turned it around for Sula’s use. “You’ll need to give me a fingerprint.”

  Sula reached for the fingerprint reader and pressed her left thumb to the scanner. Symbols flashed on the displays.

  “Let me clear the screen,” Lady Oso said. “Then you’ll have to try it again.”

  Sula gave her thumbprint again. The same symbols flashed.

  Lady Oso’s orange eyes gleamed in sudden inspiration. “You should use your right thumb, Lady Sula.”

  Sula was so pleased with herself that she wanted to purr. “I can’t,” she said. She held up her right thumb with its pad of scar tissue. “I severely burned my thumb just after the First Battle of Magaria, and my fingerprint was largely destroyed. So, I use my left thumbprint for identification.” She pointed at the display. “Whoever set up this account didn’t know that. They found a record of my right thumbprint somewhere and used that.”

  Lady Oso’s muzzle gaped. Lady Gudrun sat up straight and began to look very interested.

  “What are you suggesting?” she asked.

  “Someone has been impersonating me on Terra for weeks now. She’s been soliciting bribes for contracts related to the dockyard, and had the money delivered to this account.” Sula looked at Lady Gudrun. “If you trace the origins of this money,” she said, “you’ll be able to discover some people trying to corrupt an officer of the Fleet.”

  The commissioner turned to Lady Oso. “I shall require you to freeze this account immediately.”

  “Of course, my lady!”

  Sula retrieved her tea and sipped it while the other two expressed their outrage to each other.

  She hadn’t walked into this blind. Before she’d called the commissioner, she’d gone to one of the bank’s remote locations and attempted and failed to access the account. She’d known beforehand that her fingerprint wouldn’t work.

  “You were meant to find the account, Lady Gudrun,” she said. “I’m sure that after the assassination attempt, you were quite rightly investigating my background, and my finances would have been of obvious interest to you. And if you hadn’t found the account, there would probably have been an anonymous denunciation.”

  The commissioner frowned. “Have you any idea who’s responsible?”

  “I’ve no idea. But the scheme seems to have been hatched on Zanshaa.” She remembered ambushing Naxids with guns and bombs, hurling high-ranking Naxids off the cliffs of the High City, Naxid Peers without their heads staggering around in a blood-spattered room and dying slowly from shock. . . .

  “I suppose,” she said, “I might have made some enemies there, during the war.”

  Lady Gudrun pursed her lips. “Zanshaa. A little out of my jurisdiction.”

  “Best to find the impersonator here, then follow the trail back to the capital.” She raised the display on her left sleeve. “I have information about the impersonator, and pictures. I’ve had researchers out looking for her, and she hasn’t exactly been hiding.”

  In fact, Jack Danitz had delivered even more information that morning before her meeting, more appearances and sightings by the false Sula. Sula sent the data to Lady Gudrun, who paged through it with interest, then looked up.

  “Whoever did this is not without resources,” she said. “It’s an elaborate and costly scheme, and it first required corrupting some secure source to acquire your fingerprint, and then the technical knowledge to duplicate it well enough to spoof a fingerprint reader.”

  “There are special films you can put over your thumb,” Sula said. “Or so I learned from the Doctor An-ku Mysteries.”

  “True enough,” said Lady Gudrun. “But it’s beyond the skill level of the average criminal.” She looked thoughtful. “As is everything else in this setup.”

  “Except the assassin.”

  “Except the assassin,” Lady Gudrun repeated. She turned to Lady Oso. “I’m sorry, my lady, but Lady Sula and I should really continue this in private. Is there a room we could use?”

  “You can use my office.” Lady Oso rose. “Is there anything I can get you before I leave?”

  “I think we have everything we need,” Lady Gudrun said, and as Lady Oso made her way out, added, “Tēnā rawa atu koe.”

  “Noho ora mai,” Lady Oso said, and closed the door behind her.

  Is everyone a Maori here? Sula wondered. Even the nonhumans?

  Lady Gudrun turned to Sula. “What do you suppose the conspirators are after?” she asked.

  “They want me disgraced and possibly executed,” Sula said.

  “Disgraced,” Lady Gudrun said. “That’s the main point. If they merely wanted you dea
d, they’d have just sent the assassin, possibly more than one. Who hates you so much they’re willing to spend a lot of money to destroy your reputation?”

  The Supreme Commander, for one, Sula thought, but she decided not to speak the thought out loud. Besides, Lord Tork was far too conventional and stuffy to engage in a complex revenge plot, not when he’d already won simply by sending Sula to a remote station.

  “Naxids, I suppose,” Sula said. “I can’t imagine anyone else.”

  “Do you still think the Manado Company is involved? Or have we eliminated them?”

  This thought hadn’t occurred to Sula, and it took her a moment to formulate a response. “Lord Peltrot’s threats shouldn’t be forgotten,” she decided. “He may have played a part in this somewhere. Maybe he bribed the imposter, then tried to kill me when I didn’t fulfill her half of the bargain.”

  “We’ll continue to look at him, then,” said Lady Gudrun. “But right now, I’d like to institute a search for this imposter.” Her mouth tightened in a self-satisfied little smile. “If she’s on the planet, we’ll find her.”

  Now, that was the sort of thing Sula liked to hear.

  * * *

  The rest of the morning was spent coping with the matter of Goojie’s servants, who up to that point had been completely forgotten. There had been the female valet in Otautahi, but there was also a whole gang of domestics and secretaries sent to staff Goojie’s lodgings in Quito. None of them wanted to stay on Terra, and while Sula felt a certain degree of responsibility to them, she didn’t feel responsible to the point of buying passage home for the entire group. Fortunately, she remembered that the Vaswanis were clients of the Toi-an clan, and a brief search turned up an elderly Toi-an Peer who had preceded Goojie as director of the Kan-fra Company, and who had retired to a Caribbean island. He agreed to assume responsibility for the servants, and to either send them home or find employment for them.

  Which led Sula’s thoughts to Goojie. Caro’s cousin wasn’t a conspirator. She hadn’t come to Terra to destroy Sula; she had been a victim, not a mastermind, of the plot to disgrace Sula—more of a victim than Sula, in fact.

  And apparently, she’d been Sula’s friend. Sula felt a pang of relief at this realization, at the knowledge that someone had been her friend, that friendship was even possible in her world, filled as it was with shifting identities, violence, military action, treachery, and conspiracy. . . .

  Sula could have friends. Somehow, Goojie had given her permission.

  Of course, that still meant she’d have to find some.

  These pleasant thoughts were interrupted by a call from Lady Gudrun Bjorge. “Kia ora!” she said in triumph. “We’ve found her!”

  “Where?”

  “Three hours ago, she got off a train from Manado to Tambu, in Sulawesi. She’s traveling under the name Tamlin Sage, which sounds like a pseudonym to me.”

  “She’s heading for the elevator, then,” Sula said. “We can arrest her at the terminal.”

  “I’ve already given the order, but she may not turn up. Traffic to the ring has been halted on account of anticipated volcanic activity. All the cars have been sent up to the ring to prevent them from being damaged.”

  Damn, Sula thought; she kept forgetting about the Karangetang volcano. But she seized the important point at once. “She’s trapped,” Sula said.

  “Yes.” There was satisfaction in the commissioner’s voice. “I believe she is.” There was a pause, and she added, “It may take some time to locate her. The town is flooded with refugees from Manado, and there may not be rooms available for her. If she’s in a refugee center, they may not be checking ID.”

  “I need to get to Tambu,” Sula said. “What’s the fastest way?”

  Lady Gudrun gave her an amused look. “You wish to meet yourself?”

  “I damned well do. I need to find out who employed her.”

  “The police commissioner is entitled to a small aircraft,” Lady Gudrun said. “You’re welcome to use it. But it can’t stay for you; all aircraft and ships are being routed away.”

  “Thank you,” said Sula, “for your generous offer.”

  * * *

  Lady Gudrun’s plane wasn’t as swank as Goojie’s Kan-fra craft, but it had a polite uniformed attendant who provided a wonderful fragrant tea from the highlands of Washington State, wherever that was. Once airborne, Sula called Lieutenant-Captain Koridun in Tambu and told her she was coming.

  “You’re going to take command, my lady?” Sula sensed calculation behind Koridun’s eyes. On the one hand, she might resent being superseded after she’d made preparations for the emergency on her own. And on the other, there would be a chance to have her readiness and efficiency appreciated directly by a superior officer.

  “If the emergency is bad, we may need every officer we can find,” Sula said. “Do we have a probability of the eruption?”

  “Specialists have stated there will be an eruption, Lady Sula,” said Koridun. “Any time within the next thirty-six Terran hours. The Lord Governor has just declared martial law.”

  “All your people are in place?”

  “Yes, Lady Sula.”

  “Are there any problems I can help you with?”

  “Not unless you can bring a few thousand more police and aid workers. Tambu is overrun with refugees, and because the elevator terminus is one of the largest and most stable buildings, it’s completely full except for a few offices and the armory. No one is being disorderly on purpose, but there’s a lot of confusion, the sanitary facilities are overtaxed, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to feed everyone, or for how long.”

  “Call for refugee volunteers to help maintain order, cook, and keep things clean. The refugees will be bored, so you’ll have plenty of recruits who just want to be given something to do.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Sula considered the problem. “The public areas have video monitors, yes? Reporting on the cars coming down from the ring, times of boarding, and so on?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “There are no cars coming down, so there’s no point in showing them a screen without information. See if you can switch them to a news feed of the volcano. When it blows, they’re going to be riveted to the screens, and there will be that much less chaos.”

  Koridun seemed impressed. “Very good, my lady.”

  “I’ll be dropping in about fifty minutes. Please have a pair of guards waiting for me at the pier, with a vehicle.”

  “Yes, my lady. At once.”

  No sooner had the orange end-stamp appeared on Sula’s display than a chime announced another call, this time from the police commissioner. Sula triggered her display.

  “Kia ora, Lady Gudrun. Is there more news?”

  “Kia ora, yes. The imposter’s been shown checking into the UnderSea Hotel in the Gulf of Tomini.”

  “Under the rectenna field?”

  “Yes.”

  Sula was surprised. “Can ordinary persons go down there? It’s underwater and we’re on the cusp of a natural disaster. I would have thought the place would be evacuated.”

  Lady Gudrun gave a tight-lipped smile. “She used your identity, Lady Sula.”

  “Ah. Hah.”

  “They’re not about to keep out an officer of your distinction, especially as during emergencies, the Power Authority is under the control of the Fleet.”

  “I’ll give her credit for being resourceful,” Sula said. “But in impersonating me now, she’s just condemned herself. Can you arrange with your opposite number in Tambu to have her arrested?”

  “I’ll ask. But the police may be a bit . . . overcommitted . . . right now.”

  “I understand.”

  Nevertheless, the imposter was arrested before Sula’s plane landed: there was a skeleton police force patrolling the underwater resort, and it took mere moments for them to detour to the hotel and the imposter’s room. The prisoner was locked in the resort’s small jail and awaited either Sula or a m
agistrate, whoever arrived first.

  The aircraft dropped through low cloud to a landing in Tambu’s bay, white water rising high as the plane skipped along the wavetops. When the sea sluiced off the windows, Sula could see the city glowing red with the setting sun, with the monumental structure of the elevator terminal rising from the heights behind the town. The craft motored to the government pier, where a pair of large, fully manned rescue craft were prepared for departure. A gantry swung toward the aircraft, and the hatch opened, letting in a gust of sultry equatorial air scented with the sea. Sula felt herself sag in the sudden heat.

  Her vehicle—a boxy van—and her escort awaited her on the pier, two Fleet constables, both Terran, in armor and carrying sidearms. They hastened to snatch up the baggage from Spence and Macnamara, and nearly hurled it into the back of the vehicle. Sula was about to embark when she suddenly felt her knees tremble, and she reached out a hand to the vehicle to steady herself only to find that the van itself was bouncing on its suspension. The surface of the ocean leaped as if in an invisible downpour. Macnamara, carrying a trunk, was suddenly unbalanced and staggered over the pier. One of the escort reached out a hand to stop him from going in the drink.

  The tremor faded. Sula’s head spun. Her heart was in her throat.

  “We’ve been feeling those the last two days, my lady,” said one of the escort. “I’d like to drive out of the tsunami zone as soon as possible. The whole lower town’s been evacuated.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Sula said, and, as soon as she felt steady enough, climbed into the seat. The rear hatch rattled down on the baggage, everyone climbed in and found their seats, and the vehicle sped away down deserted streets. Sula looked over her shoulder at the sunset—all lurid Earth color, nothing like any sunset seen on Zanshaa—and then the van was climbing.

  “We’re going to the terminal, my lady?” said the driver.

  “No. We’re going over to the east side of the island to pick up a prisoner, in Tinombala.”

  The two escorts looked at each other, and the van accelerated on silent electric motors.

  * * *

  The tropical darkness fell quickly, and the van raced along a highway deserted but for emergency vehicles awaiting the inevitable destruction. The road passed through suburbs and villages where only the schools and other public buildings were lit, to accommodate all the locals as refugees. “The whole island’s on battery power,” the driver said. “The rectenna’s been shut down.”