Malila waited until a harried little man with a meticulous blond mustache burst out.
“Where is that jotting bizzle?” he called over his shoulder.
“She was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. These guys are on the fathering clock!”
He stopped at once and looked up at her. “Are you Lieutenant Shoe?”
“Lieutenant Chiu, Malila E., reporting as ordered!” she recited.
“Yeah … right. Get in here and see Glenda for makeup. Kleo’s running late, so you got a couple minutes.”
Malila found Glenda, a tall, heavy woman sporting peacock-feather implants from her forehead to the base of her neck. She clucked over Malila for a few minutes before releasing her to the attentions of a production underling. Malila was positioned in the wings to be introduced.
A tall, shapely, chocolate-skinned blonde eventually swept onto the stage and arranged herself on the taller of two stools.
Malila heard an off-stage announcer recite, “… most-popular news personality of the early-evening, upper-middle-class demographic in the Nyork district … Kleophirra Banks!”
Simulated applause filled the stage, and Kleophirra started her monologue: no doubt, a witty, sardonic, and knowing summation of the current scene. Rather too soon, however, Kleophirra made the introduction, and Malila pushed out onto the stage to take the shorter and narrower stool. Having no idea what was expected of her, Malila tried to maintain the shavetail’s facial mask.
Kleophirra wended her way through a highly colored and dramatic version of her captivity as Malila stared at the camera’s lens, mesmerized. Smart and savage at times, Kleophirra, despite being classed among the C-list of political analysts on the ’net, was no slouch.
At last, Kleophirra turned to her. “And we have with us today the young DUFS officer whose story should stir us all. Lieutenant Chiu spent over six months in the hands of these barbarians before being rescued. Your entire platoon was murdered, is that right?”
“Yes, Citizen Banks.”
“Just call me Kleophirra, please. Tell us about your captivity, Malila. Were you assaulted?”
Malila was speechless. How much of the colony could she reveal? How much of what she did say now would condemn her in the eyes of the people or her superiors? Her disquiet was sliding to panic when she became aware of the Presence.
The Presence did not identify itself, but she could tell it was Jourdaine. He dropped down into her consciousness with the warm treacle of reassurance.
“Breathe, Malila. This woman needs your words. You do not need hers.”
“I am just so glad I am at home now,” Malila said to the camera. “The outlands are a barbaric place. I am lucky to be alive.”
It was true, she thought.
“Outlanders killed my men after I was already captured. I couldn’t stop them. Then I was marched under guard for six weeks before I was turned over. That nearly killed me.”
Again, she thought, all true. I nearly killed as well.
“Excellent, Malila. More-personal things now: the starvation, the beatings?”
The Presence’s suggested responses to her alternated between humble and noble, funny and grave, witty and nonchalant. He congratulated her after each exchange. Jourdaine added a commentary about the “wounds she could not show on prime time.” It was a brilliant stroke, she thought.
Malila returned to her quarters in time to see her interview. In postproduction, her performance sparkled. Moreover, Kleophirra’s laudatory epilogue swelled Malila with pride, despite herself. She basked in congratulations and Jourdaine’s approval for days until the next interview, The Sofistree DeGeorge Experience.
After DeGeorge came The Tiffanie Breaux Crew. After that, the names and the personalities blurred, coming about every third day. She never got used to it. Some smiled as they set traps for her, and others just sneered. Some used her as text for the host’s current rant. Each time, the Presence would slide next to her, his responses perfectly calculated to throw back each jibe. After every interview, approval and acceptance … almost of love … flooded her senses.
Nevertheless, she slept poorly; odd, mostly unremembered dreams exhausted her.
At times they woke her. In her darkened bedroom, she surrendered to wakefulness, stretching and slipping out of her bed to sit on the edge. She remembered that last dream, seeing herself bronzed, a living statue, unable to move, pigeons sitting on her head and whitewashing her face. Glory had been embossed on the plinth.
Glory was no longer a concept she knew. Power she understood. It had been visited upon her more than once, but glory?
Certainly, the Unity was glorious; vast expanses of city, marvelous technology, and potent armies all spoke to “glory.”
Malila thought back to her winter of captivity. There had been no glory there. The Unity had stories of glory, but it usually meant that someone had died; there was no one left to tell the real story.
Glory … it was not enough.
CHAPTER 55
THE BLOODY SHIRT
North of Citadel Bangor, Main, Unity
23.49.51.local_19_05_AU77
DUFS Captain Lucien Delaheny was irked after being pulled out of a warm, comfortable bed. Collecting some green ensign who had wandered into enemy territory was a job for a lieutenant.
Ensign Samuel Idaban had, contrary to orders, DUFS protocol, and fecking common sense, malingered off into the fog along the river in Bangor and been captured four days ago. Served the kid right. The cease-fire line in Main had been stable since forever. Every shavetail should have known where to walk! The scuttlebutt was that Idaban was lovesick over some failed patronage. Invidious system! Bad for discipline and corrosive of command, but what could you do?
Delaheny looked out the window at the long lines of pines passing down the edges of the headlights as they plowed forward into the blackness. The problem for the iceheads and for Idaban was that the kid was as dumb as he looked. The Canadian interrogators were good, ruthless, and good. They would wring him dry and then do it again a few times to make sure. He wondered how much of Ensign Idaban would be left.
“Coming up now, Captain. They’re already here.”
Delaheny leaned forward and picked up the reflective strips of the Canadian staff car. He could see two burly men wrestle a smaller hooded figure out of the backseat as an officer looked on.
Later, he would report how the hood came off and how Idaban looked around before staring into the approaching lights … into Delaheny’s own eyes.
Delaheny would not report how he could almost taste the boy’s terror.
He watched in the odd slow motion of doom: the boy breaking loose, his hand coming up with the officer’s sidearm, his backing away, the shot, the officer going down, and the boy’s look of surprise slumping to fear. He watched as Idaban turned and ran from the approaching lights.
He saw how the boy’s head disappeared into a sudden small cloud of pink.
Delaheny reported the death of Idaban, Samuel A., shot while trying to escape. Delaheny was the only one there when Samuel Idaban was cremated.
This should not be a significant event, Jourdaine thought. Foolish young men and women were getting themselves killed for foolish reasons all the time. This fool just happened to have worn a DUFS uniform. Somebody had leaked Idaban’s death to the ’nets. The story had already been cast on a few major outlets.
It was now real. All the other outlets would follow suit. In a week, it would be old news … no longer real.
But for the next cycle, Jourdaine could use it. If he used it well, this immediate insult to the honor and dignity of the Democratic Unity should prompt closer inspection of the entire trajectory of current events. One lost officer was an embarrassment; two was the sign of gross negligence … or worse.
Ensign Idaban, Samuel A., would have immortality, if ever so briefl
y, in the annals of the Democratic Unity.
It was time to move.
Jourdaine contacted his man inside the media. In this case, his man was an E31, S22 transvestite known as Shirley, who personed the human-interest desk of the more-prominent and less-scrupulous of the media conglomerates. The conversation was brief and cryptic. The data package was bundled and flash-transmitted to Shirley’s aliased mail slot. Equally cryptic would be Shirley’s assignment to cover a prestigious film festival, with a generous expense allowance.
The media attacks on Suarez started within the hour. Several of the more-prestigious outlets produced attacks of their own without prompting. Suarez had trodden upon more than her fair share of toes during her long years of service. The owners of the toes were lining up to add their denunciations.
With this much bile already spilled, Jourdaine was correct that Gordon’s active and early support would not be necessary, as long as he did not oppose. His Presence would shepherd Malila Chiu through an interview with Gordon without a hitch.
At the artlessly appropriate time, Jourdaine released his own statement to the comm’nets:
I confirm my unswerving and wholehearted support for Lieutenant General Suarez for her many, many years of dedicated service to the defense forces and to the nation.
I am confident that when all the facts are known, they will exculpate the reports of General Suarez’s apparently reactionary behavior. It is regrettable that such questions are even being raised about one of her stature.
The service and the country are larger than the concerns of any one officer, no matter how talented she or he might be. There could be but one honorable conclusion for anyone justifiably accused of such behavior. No doubt the numerous reports will be found to be fabricated.
As expected, Suarez came out fighting. The first few of her gambits were spectacular but predictable and easily refuted. Her fiery counterattack prompted allegations of her obvious emotional instability.
General Suarez’s real offensive began with her calling in all her markers, her own legion of black capital. While potent, it appeared undisciplined. Her defense, no doubt formidable at one time, had not been kept up to date. Jourdaine had seen to that. She called upon politicians who had been marginalized already and could bring little influence to bear.
Her career, designed around rooting out and preventing faction spies, meant she had no subordinates to throw to the wolves now. Indeed, the number of people who could help her might well have dropped below the effective horizon already, Jourdaine estimated. Suarez’s personal and heartfelt appeals to her few friends were impudently ignored or imprudently accepted by those less adept at the art of politics. At some tipping point, Suarez would merely enlarge the hole into which she fell.
Jourdaine was having the time of his life.
Heather had done that little thing she did that was going to be the death of him. Dalgliesh was almost ten minutes late when he slid into his workstation smelling of her scent, running on ThiZ and hormones.
“Nice of you to join us in the campaign for a better Democratic Unity, Technical Sergeant Dalgliesh! About to send the provost guard out for you.”
“Sorry, Gunny. It won’t happen again.”
“Only if I cut it off, Doggy, and even then I’ll still give it even odds,” he replied. Then he smiled.
“Sorry, you know how it is.”
“I do. That’s why we are having this conversation. Last time I cover for you, understood?”
“Thank you. Last time, I promise.”
“At any rate, Doggy, seems the major wants us to dump all the data from that auto ping we started last fall, the one for … Shoe?”
“Chiu. Didn’t they find her? Doing a dump isn’t going to hide anything! You know that. Every purge just means that the file is closed and flagged for some intelligence S20. Better off just ignoring it and letting the CORE decide it is useless … get rid of it on its own.”
Jasun replied, almost as if he were talking to a trainee, “I told him so, face-to-face. So he knows it, I know it, and you know it. I am following orders, just like you had better.”
“Yes, of course. Right now!”
This was something his handler needed to know at once. The factions were at it again.
The technical sergeant was about to wet himself, Jourdaine noted. That might give Jourdaine an edge in the interrogation.
The belt station was deserted at this time of night. No surveillance camera recorded the little corner of the platform now occupied by the two men.
“Don’t turn around, Sergeant Dalgliesh. Shirley called me. Let’s just call me Mr. Smith, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, start from the beginning. Tell me everything you remember about Major Khama since last … October, shall we?”
Jourdaine listened impassively. It was all there. Khama’s order for the auto ping on Chiu, his diversion of the data to a CORE locus, and then, surprisingly, his actual visitation to Ciszek, or rather a report of his actual visitation. The tech sergeant, Dalgliesh, was exceptionally well trained, observant … even meticulous.
“Excellent work, Sergeant. This is extremely valuable. You will be well rewarded for your effort.”
“Thank you, sir. Can I go now?”
“Of course. In the future, we will not use this meeting site again. Use the next drop site on the list if you see the flag go up, understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jourdaine watched the man walk hurriedly away down the belt platform and disappear into a toilet.
He had underestimated Suarez. He was sure now. His own hoard of black capital had been massive, but it had not been enough. His major debtors had done what they could and been denounced in turn.
Jourdaine reached the street and signaled for his skimmer. Waiting, he eased back away from the curb and into the shadows.
Khama, one of his oldest allies, was a Suarez plant. That was now certain. Khama had had excellent protection for the auto ping and had then thrown it away by ordering a data dump. Jourdaine’s carefully concealed rescue of Chiu would look like a cover-up. How much did Khama really know, or was he just throwing wrenches into the works?
Jourdaine’s skimmer arrived, and he slid into the passenger compartment with a sigh of relief. He quested his destination, and the vehicle moved off without signaling.
Years of waiting had brought Jourdaine to this point. He would not fail for lack of audacity or energy. Now was the time to strike. He had one more weapon.
The Unity needed to meet young Lieutenant Miramundo Morales, Suarez’s natural brother and proof of her nepotism. They needed to meet Morales now before Suarez could use Khama as a weapon against him.
It would mean unmasking himself. It would mean Suarez must be seen as the sole author of all the Unity’s disasters of late: the loss of Sunprairie, Idaban’s death, drops in production, Morales, Chiu’s capture, and even the debacle in Main. They all needed to fit into a cohesive story, sealing Suarez’s fate.
Jourdaine arrived at his headquarters and walked up to his office. Gordon was supposed to interview Malila Chiu, and she expected his Presence.
Sacrifices had to be made.
CHAPTER 56
HOUSE OF GORDON
Malila could see the signs clear enough. Junior officers walked with their heads down so as not to be engaged in idle chatter. Senior officers made brief visits and smiled a lot, showing the flag. Groups clustered around the drug kiosks but scattered if a door opened unexpectedly. Her O-A was ominously quiet.
The factions had been going after each other for a week now. They were always jostling, but they usually kept their rivalries from spilling out into public. Since yesterday, cadres had been marching in full battle uniform, their only identifier their armbands and the clouds of color they threw at spectators. More ominously, the Reds, the current “vanguard of t
he cadres,” had blocked off the access to the belts around her own battalion headquarters. When reopened, the belts had borne the faction’s color; the walls had borne advertisements, all jackboots and patriotism; and, no doubt, unseen, the station had borne additional surveillance devices. Yesterday, as she’d been going to work out of uniform, overly enthusiastic faction members had popped her with the metallic green of the Unity Home faction and the fluorescent orange of the Forward Unity faction, both minor players. She’d changed and showered once she had arrived.
Other guilds did not play in the DUFS factional contests. Faction wars were all-DUFS affairs. It was complicated. Any individual other than the senior staff could hardly ever tell when a battle started or stopped. Unannounced, one faction or another started propaganda campaigns and denounced a few low-level leaders of another faction. A crisis would come … and eventually pass. At the end, the self-congratulatory puffery would gradually decline. The comm’nets would show more real news. The mind-numbing five-hour-long classic of revolutionary Unity cinema, Birth of the Cadre, would be shown less often. At the very end there would be a rash of denunciations and suicides.
I am glad I’m not in anyone’s crosshairs, Edie. I have been gone too long to know who is after whom.
Enjoy it while you may, Malila. You do know that Suarez is a Red, don’t you?
Thank you, Edie, I pretty much had that worked out already.
Jourdaine as her adjutant is also a Red, then. Correct? And you are not a Red?
You know that a protégé is not required to be of the same faction as her patron, silly. It is already too complicated. For now I am trying to avoid being labeled. It helps advancement … for now.
Would you believe me if I said that while Jourdaine has publically come out in Suarez’s favor, he is actually working for the Blues?
Outland Exile: Book One of Old Men and Infidels Page 30