Law of Survival

by Kristine Smith

  “Five.” Niall yanked a brown leaf from the branch of a late-blooming rose. “Kill anybody while you were there?”

  Jani studied him for any sign he joked. She’d learned to spot the hints over the months of their acquaintance—the narrowing of his eyes, the working of his jaw as he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. But she couldn’t find them this time. Unfortunately. “No, I didn’t.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “Let’s walk out to the lake, where we can talk in private.” Niall led Jani through the garden, past a triplet of clerks who had intruded in a flurry of giggles and whispers. They exited through the rear gate, which opened out onto the beach.

  Jani shivered as the lake breeze brushed her. It was because of what Lucien referred to as her condition, she told herself. It had advanced to the point that she only felt comfortable in heat most people found oppressive. Her discomfort had nothing to do with Niall’s questions. Nothing.

  She trudged after him across the combed sand to a bench set at the edge of the breakwater. As always, he waited for her to sit first before lowering beside her, an unthreatening arm’s length away.

  They sat in silence. Overhead, seagulls swooped and screamed. On the water, Commerce lakeskimmers glided in silent patrol. Niall reached into the inner pocket of his tunic and pulled out a flat silver metal case. He shook out a nicstick through the slotted opening and bit the bulbed end—the ignition tip flared orange as it contacted the air.

  Jani watched him smoke. He didn’t do it often, she had noted, but he did it at very specific times. When he felt particularly agitated or troubled, or as he tried to screw up the courage to talk about what he called their “shared experiences.”

  “When to the sessions of sweet, silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past.” Niall leaned forward, elbows on knees, and studied the ’stick’s glowing tip. “Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30.” He looked out over the water, his voice so soft that the gulls threatened to drown him out. “I keep meaning to lend you the sonnets.”

  Jani folded her arms and tucked her hands up her sleeves. Her fingers felt like ice chips. “Tsing Tao Station, four and a half years ago. After a run of janitorial gigs, I managed to scrounge a non-Registry clerk’s job for one of those seat-of-the-pants shipping companies. I don’t even remember the name.”

  Niall exhaled smoke. “Mercury Shipping.”

  Jani watched the side of his face and waited for him to explain how he knew that. When he remained silent, she continued. “A brother-sister outfit. One rebuilt shuttle and a time-share lease on a thirty-year-old transport. Constant repair bills, high turnover, and the low-pay, bottom-feeder jobs that the bigger firms never touch.”

  “Sounds like the sort of outfit that might turn to a bit of smuggling to meet the payroll.” Niall had wandered the wild side of the Commonwealth before deciding on the Service straight-and-narrow; his voice held the quiet sureness of someone with experience in the subject.

  “Most of the time, smuggling was the payroll.” Jani flinched when a gull screamed. “One thing led to another, and we got on the wrong side of a Treasury Customs agent. Not an official investigation—he’d just turn up unexpectedly and ask to see our records. Did that a few times. I figured he was trolling for a payoff, but he never got around to asking.”

  “He never got the chance. About the time he started digging into the inner workings of Mercury Shipping, he noted in his personal log that he began receiving threatening messages. He saved the paper ones.” Niall took a deep pull on his ’stick—the dose ring moved halfway up the shaft. “Two station-days after the date on the last message, his body was found in his flat. Throat had been cut. One station-day after that, you upped and disappeared.”

  “I had my reasons, in case you’ve forgotten.” Jani shivered as a bout of chills took hold. “Niall, what’s going on?”

  Niall again reached into his tunic, but instead of his silver box, he removed a folded-over documents slipcase. “I found this waiting for me in my mailbox this morning. After I read it, I figured I’d better pass it along.” He handed her the slipcase, then reached into his tunic and once more pulled out his ’sticks.

  Jani slid aside the closure and removed several pages of weighty, brilliant white Cabinet-grade parchment. “A joint ministry effort,” she said as she searched the gold-bordered documents for a ministry ID code and didn’t find it. She flipped back to the face page and read the summary header. “Commonwealth White Paper. Security Risk Evaluation—Jani Moragh Kil—” She fell silent as she found herself looking at a list of dates and page numbers arranged like a table of contents. Next to each date was the name of a city, or a settlement, or a station. The first page contained years one through five of her eighteen years on the run; the second page, years six through twelve; the third, years thirteen to the present.

  “There’s a data wafer tucked into a pocket inside the slipcase,” Niall said. “It contains the full report. Names of companies you worked for, in what capacity, what sorts of…business you engaged in. Interviews with coworkers, acquaintances. Ex-lovers.”

  “I—” Jani swallowed a curse as her stomach cramped. She’d been doing so well on her new enzyme therapy—it hadn’t ached for weeks. “I guess I should have expected this. I just didn’t think it would turn up so soon.” She tucked the papers back in the slipcase. “When do you need it back?”

  Niall shook his head. “Keep it. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  Jani tucked the slipcase in the pocket of her jacket. “It’s in general circulation?”

  “In the various upper reaches, from what I could gather. PM got a copy. All the Ministers and their deputies. Security chiefs. It’s been out for a week or so. Took a while to filter down to me, seeing as I’m on the second team.”

  “So the Admiral-General’s office got one?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Mako have anything to say?”

  “About what you’d expect.”

  Jani watched the dapple of sun on water. It calmed her enough to make her feel that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Almost. “I ran because I couldn’t afford to be interviewed, not by trained criminal investigators. You know the drill. First would have come the encephaloscan, which would have revealed my Service augmentation. That would have given them just cause to call in a physician to perform a phys exam. After they’d found my animandroid arm and leg and all my other unique identifiers, they’d have assumed ‘deserter’ and moved on from there. Before I could whistle the first verse of The Commonwealth Anthem, they would have uncovered the Service warrant for my arrest.”

  “You could have stalled them.”

  “You think so? I don’t know if you recall the last time we both met with Mako, but I don’t interview particularly well.”

  “Really?” Despite the mood, Niall grinned. “Bit of a smart aleck, are you?” The expression wavered when Jani didn’t respond. “Well, like you said, you expected it. How do you plan to counter?”

  “Depends how bad it gets, and it could get pretty bad. I falsified shipping and receiving records. Stole scanpack parts. Reset credit chits. An entire host of Level A Registry offenses, any one of which could get me deregistered. Then there’s my bioemotional restriction. If some psychotherapeutician decides my past behavior is an indication of future problems, they’ll try to stick me in some type of permanent wardship. At the very least, they’ll maintain the operational restriction—I won’t be able to carry a shooter or drive a skimmer for the rest of my life.” Jani stood and stepped to the edge of the breakwater. It was a short drop into the cold churn, only a couple of meters. The drops were always shorter than you thought.

  “Maybe it’s not as gruesome as you think.” Niall’s voice sounded rough comfort. “Read it first, then figure out what you need to do.” Service tietops scraped on scancrete as he joined her at the edge. “I’ll help in any way I can.”

  “Yeah.” Jani gasped as her right calf cramped—her muscles tightened
when she sat for too long. “I need to walk.”

  They strode along the breakwater until it ended, then followed the slope of sand down to the manicured shore. Gulls scuttered ahead of them, waiting until the last moment before taking to the air. In the distance, Commerce employees on break played a game of three-cornered catch.

  Jani relaxed. She always felt better when she moved. Her limbs, both the real right and the animandroid left, adjusted readily to the shift and slide of the sand. “I wonder who drove it. The investigation.”

  “I hate to say it, but I’m betting it was someone on my team.” Niall passed her and walked a little farther up the beach. “They probably started out gathering the evidence for your court-martial. When we medical’d you out instead, they wrote the report anyway. One thing Intelligence spooks hate is to let good garbage go unused.” He kicked at a pile of pebbles, then picked one up and flung it into the water. “You’ve got your enemies at Sheridan, you know. They thought you should have been tried for Neumann’s death, no matter what led up to it.”

  “I did shoot him, Niall.”

  “You had your reasons.”

  They headed back up the beach toward the Ministry. Jani slowed to give Niall a chance to catch her up. “Mako giving you a hard time about being seen with me?”

  “A couple of closed-door talks. Reminders of ‘the current conservative climate.’” Niall shrugged. “I remind him that you’ve got more experience dealing with the idomeni than anyone in Diplo, and that some of your recommendations over the past few months have saved us from some godawful blunders. He understands.” His voice held quiet conviction, but he had followed where Admiral-General Hiroshi Mako led for over twenty years, and felt that the sun rose and set by order of the great man.

  Jani didn’t. “Niall, I’d bet my scanpack that Mako helped set this up.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Niall’s voice lowered to a warning growl. “It’s the Base Command desk jockeys that are causing the trouble. The same ones that want to nail you for Neumann.”

  “Have they been reminding you of the current conservative climate, too?”

  “Yeah. I hand them a little Milton, a little Shakespeare, tell them in my Master of Literature way to butt out. I don’t interview particularly well, either.”

  Jani slowed more as Niall labored to keep his footing on the loose sand. “Don’t screw yourself over on my account.”

  “You’d do the same for me if I got into trouble. I’ve seen you in action, remember?” He pulled up, removed one of his shoes, and tapped out sand that had leaked in. “I’m going to dig into this when I get back to Sheridan. See if I can find out who signed off on the expense reports.” He brushed an invisible smudge from the black tietop’s glassy finish, then slipped it back on. “You’ve got enough going on right now without dealing with this.”

  They walked in silence. Jani grew conscious of Niall’s examination—he tried to hide it, but he never succeeded for long. “If you want to say something, I wish you’d go ahead and say it.”

  Niall drew closer until they walked shoulder to shoulder. “Earlier this summer, I was a shade taller than you. You’re taller than me now. When are you going to stop?”

  “No one knows. The average Vynshàrau grows one-nine to two-oh. I’m one-eight-two.” Jani held her hand a handspan above her head to indicate how much she could still grow. “John says I might not get as tall as that, being a mixed breed. But even he’s ready to give up on the predictions.” She heard her voice grow tight. The anger built on its own now, no matter how she tried to suppress it.

  “Your eyes look different.” Niall leaned in for a closer look. “You’ve filmed them green! They were always so dark before.”

  “Neoclona’s developed a new color-dispersive film just for me. What’s underneath has darkened to green marble. I have nightmares about a film fissuring when I’m out in public.”

  “They look nice now, though. Stuff seems to work.” Niall hurried ahead of Jani as they mounted the breakwater and cut through the rear yard of the Ministry. “I thought they were looking into the possibility of making you all-human again?” He held open the back gate leading into the garden and waved Jani through ahead of him.

  “John did call in Eamon DeVries last month.” Jani fielded Niall’s look of confusion. “Eamon’s the third member of the Neoclona Big Three. He’s distanced himself from the company in recent years. You don’t hear much about him.”

  Niall’s brow arched—he’d detected the sharpness in her voice. “You don’t seem sorry.”

  Jani shrugged. “I despise him. He despises me. He did his best to persuade John to declare me dead at the site of the transport crash. He’d heard that the Service had begun investigating Neumann’s murder, and he knew they’d be looking for me. Because of the hybridization research he and John and Val had gotten up to in the basement of the Rauta Shèràa enclave clinic, he knew they couldn’t afford to attract attention.” And she had attracted attention. Many were the hours she had spent huddled in utilities chases while Val persuaded the Service investigators that Jani Kilian no longer existed. “Almost twenty years had passed since Eamon had seen me.” Jani paced a circuit of the small garden. “First thing he says as he walks into the examining room is, ‘Why aren’t you dead yet?’”

  Niall braced against a tree, removed his shoes one at a time, and tapped out more sand. “Bet he didn’t say it in front of Shroud—ol’ John would’ve killed him.”

  Jani smiled. “I never figured you for a John Shroud fan.”

  “I’m not.” Niall brushed off his socks and slipped on his shoes. “Val Parini’s all right. The doctor you see most of the time—Montoya—he seems sound. I know Roger Pimentel likes him.”

  “How is Roger?”

  “Fine. Still Chief of Neuro, but the workload is wearing him down. He made vague noises about retirement when I saw him last week. Asked how you were.” Niall shook his head. “We could spend all day talking about our doctors, couldn’t we?” He watched Jani walk with the sharp eye of the experienced medical amateur. “So?”

  “So, after Eamon examined me, he hunkered down with John and Val. They concluded that any attempt at retooling would most likely kill me.” Jani stopped in front of a bird feeder and unplugged a stopped dispenser with her finger, sending a thin stream of birdseed spilling to the ground. “Sometimes that doesn’t sound like such a bad risk.”

  “You can say things like that to me—I understand. But remarks like that tend to make psychotherapeuticians nervous.” Niall gathered up a handful of the spilled seed and tossed it to some squirrels that foraged in the grass. “Trust me—I know what I’m talking about.”

  Jani gripped the feeder post and swung around to face him. “How did your last check-up go?”

  “About as you’d expect.” Niall flung more seed with such force that the squirrels scattered. “Get your augmentation removed—the risks of depression and psychosis outweigh the benefits. Yes, we know it could save your life in case of severe injury, but if the injury resulted from the fact that you just slashed your wrists, define the benefit please, Colonel. Cut back on the workload, take a vacation, transfer to another area. At least no one suggested retirement this time.” He brushed off his hands and cut across the garden to the front gate. “Need a ride home?”

  Jani tagged after him. “No, I’ll take public. I’ve got to go to the embassy later. Sitting in a people-mover and watching the city float by helps me think.”

  “More fun with diplomacy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If I don’t hear from you in a week, I’ll send in an assault team.” Niall once more cut ahead of her as they came to the gate so he could hold it open for her. “The Cup semifinals are set for next week. Acadia Central United’s playing Gruppo in the first match.”

  “United got Desjarlais back just in time.” Jani shivered as her body once more decided it was cold, and closed her jacket fasteners up to her neck. “The government will go nuts if a colonial team wins t
he Cup. They’re afraid that’s all it would take for some of the more rebellious colonies to attempt to secede from the Commonwealth.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You’re a colony boy, Niall. You know better than that. It’s all about politics, even when it’s not.”

  Niall sensed that she didn’t feel like talking football. “Heard from your folks?”

  “Yeah.” The ’mover that would take Jani back to the walkway drifted up to the stand. “They’ve gone to stay with Oncle Shamus at his lodge near Faeroe Outpost. I guess he needs help with his systems again.”

  “You guess?”

  “They’re not being real forthcoming. I’m wondering if times are bad in Ville Acadie, and they needed to sell the business.”

  “Times are never bad for systems installers.”

  “Well, something’s wrong.” Jani stepped aboard the open-topped ’mover and took a seat near the rear. “I don’t think they’re comfortable talking to me. Maybe they don’t think it’s any of my business.”

  Niall shot her a “let’s have none of that” look. “Or maybe Shamus did need help. Sometimes the answers really are as simple as they seem.” He stepped back as the ’mover pulled away. “I’ll look into that report.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Take it easy.” Niall smiled his crooked smile and again touched his forehead. “Captain.”

  “Colonel.” As Jani returned the salute, she felt the slipcase jostle in her jacket pocket, and tried to forget it was there.

  Jani changed people-movers three times on her way home. As she had told Niall, sitting and watching Chicago drift past her window helped her think. Unfortunately, she couldn’t control what she thought about.

  They got me. She felt the slipcase every time she moved, saw the gleam of the white parchment sheets, heard their crackle as she had unfolded them under Niall’s concerned eye. I wonder how long it took them to uncover it all? When did they start? Last winter, when they realized that I lived? Or did they wait until the summer, when they had me in hand?