Code of Conduct

by Kristine Smith

  Jani examined the small packet. Nose plugs, menthol-infused. “Thanks,” she said as she inserted them.

  The clerk stopped in front of one of the carrels and handed Jani the key card. “It’s the only one open. Nobody else wants it.” She jerked a thumb toward the door next to Jani’s. “Your neighbor smokes up a storm. It seeps into the shared vent. People swear it screws up their ’packs, but there’s no proof—”

  “Smokes?” Jani stopped in front of her neighbor’s door. “Is this Steve Forell’s carrel?”

  “Oh God, you know him?” The clerk shook her head. “Just yell if you need help. Make sure you open the door, first—these rooms are soundproofed.” She flashed a smile. “If Grandma calls, we’ll let you know,” she said as she left.

  Jani waited until the clerk was out of sight before she knocked on Steve’s door. “Open up. It’s Risa.” She waited. Knocked louder. “Steve. Come on.”

  The door slid open. Steve blocked the entry. “What the hell do you want?” Behind him, Betha sat at a small table, a nicstick dangling from her lips. They both looked exhausted.

  “You two been busy?” Jani stepped past Steve into the carrel. Her nostrils tingled as the clove stink of the nicsticks worked past the menthol. “Smells like you’ve been busy. I’m not surprised. They’ll yank both your ’packs as soon as those fake documents surface unless you can hand them something bigger.”

  “Yeah, well.” Steve flipped his spent nicstick into the trashzap. “We’ve only got your word for that, don’t we?”

  “That’s why you’re both huddled in here smoking your brains out, because you only have my word.”

  “She’s right, Steve,” Betha said. “I looked it up.” Her voice lowered. “The shortest sentence I could find were ten years in Lowell Correctional. That were for only one violation. I jazzed the Lady’s docs—” Shaking fingers ticked off the total. She sagged into her chair when she ran out of digits.

  Steve slumped against the carrel wall and slid to the floor. “Yeah, well if it goes to hell, we can just blow off, can’t we? Hide out in the colonies, with our own. Doing for our own.” He nodded firmly. “Pushing paper on the home world—how bad could that be?”

  “How bad do you want it to be?” Jani pulled the other chair up to the table and set her bags down on the floor. “From that point on, all your work would be non-Registry. You could never use your ’pack again. You could never sign your real name to anything. And you wouldn’t be doing for your own. You won’t even be able to see your own, because any contact with them would be traced.” She sat down carefully. Her stomach ached. Her back hurt. Her anger had ebbed. She felt old.

  It had been fourteen years since she’d last tried to contact her parents. No one had been home, so she’d been transferred to a staffer from CitéMessage. That had struck Jani as odd, since her parents had always subscribed to the standard account with autoservice. She disconnected in the middle of the staffer’s insistent request for her name.

  The Service cruiser bearing the Admiral-General’s seal had docked at Chenonceaux Station eight days later. Jani, who had decided to wait it out at the station before trying another call, had huddled behind a vending machine and watched the uniforms stream into the shuttle bound for her hometown of Ville Acadie. “You will,” she paused to allow the tightening in her chest to ease, “never be able to go home.”

  A year passed before Jani worked up the nerve to touch down at Chenonceaux and try again. She had tapped out the code with a sweaty hand, disconnecting as soon as she heard her father’s voice sing out, “C’est Declan!”

  “If you’re smart,” she continued, “you’ll stay away from paper altogether. But that’s hard to do when it’s all you know. If you’re lucky, you’ll find work in some high-turnover post, like shipping tech. You’ll fill out manifests, track transports. Monitor warehouse inventory.” The words caught in Jani’s throat. She hated warehouse inventory. “If you’re not lucky, which is most of the time, you’ll be at the mercy of every cheap crook who susses out the fact you’re in trouble. So you’ll do what they want, when they want, for whatever they choose to pay you, if anything. Because you’ll both know one anonymous call to any Cabinet annex is all that stands between you and a prison cell. Have I made myself clear?”

  Betha stared at her, round-eyed and blanched. Steve freed another nicstick from his pocket, wrinkled his nose, and shoved it into his mouth without igniting it.

  “So.” Jani paused to pat her eyelids. Her films had absorbed the clove smoke and her eyes felt grainy. She pressed lightly, until the tears came. “I’d like to ask you some questions, if you’re agreeable.” She waited. “Betha?”

  The young woman sighed. “What?”

  “Can you still access the paper Lyssa had you work on? Not the Nueva trips—the other stuff. You mentioned older documents.” She knew all she needed concerning the details of Lyssa’s visits to Nueva. They were indeed scheduled take-downs. Surmise confirmed—aren’t we the genius? Ulanova had had her niece followed on her excursions. According to the Court report, Lucien had been quite the busy bee for eighteen months prior to Lyssa’s death. So now she had the means and the opportunity nailed. But I still need the damned motive. And motive meant paper. Jani looked at Steve. “How about you?”

  “I don’t have them anymore, and they’re probably beyond his security clearance,” Betha said softly. “I don’t think he can help you.”

  “You don’t know what my clearance is!” Steve shot back.

  Betha fingered a skirt pleat. “It would have to be at least Orange, possibly even Blue. Only Ridgeway’s immediate staff rates Blue.” She never looked at Steve. “Sepulveda. Zalestek. Wyle. They all rate Blue.”

  “I take meetings with the idomeni ambassador!” Steve shouted. “Anything I need to find, I’ll find. If I care to,” he added hastily.

  Jani looked at Betha, who regarded her in turn, her expression blank except for a faint quivering around the eyes. It could have been a guarded attempt at a wink. Or just a tic.

  “I’m also looking for Consulate papers from our Rauta Shèràa days,” Jani continued, “dating from just before the war to expulsion.” The section of the report dealing with Acton had covered a respectable span of time, but Jani had still found significant gaps. “Duty logs would be good. Communication logs. Anything indicating who talked to whom and when.” She pulled her scanpack from her duffel and set it on the table along with the recently purchased chip. “Think we can meet tomorrow?”

  “We’re not demanding, are we?” Steve worked to his feet. “We can meet here at fourteen-thirty. I’ll be upgrading.” He stretched. “So why can’t you just pull this paper yourself?” he asked. “Why step up the flame under our arses?”

  “Fewer questions this way,” Jani replied as she rose and walked to the carrel’s environmental control panel. “You both have reasons to go where you’ll be going. I make people nervous, apparently, and I don’t have time to muck about laying groundwork.” She touched the lightpad; everything in the room took on a bluish glow as the antiseptic lighting kicked in.

  “What are you doing?” Steve asked.

  Jani increased the ventilation setting—the carrel grew noticeably cooler. “Surgery.”

  “You can’t do that in here till the air flushes out!” Steve stuffed his hands in his pockets and pouted. “People bitch about the smoke.”

  “Hell of a lot cleaner than some places I’ve worked.” Jani returned to the table, pulled her tool kit out of her duffel, and set out instruments. Then she cracked her container of nerve solder and poured a few drops of the thick brown liquid into a heat cup. “Scanpacks are hardier than you think.” Trust me.

  Betha stationed herself at Jani’s shoulder. Steve sat down at the table, fascinated in spite of the circumstances. “What are you loading?”

  “Something that can read what you’re going to find for me.” Jani pressed her hands flat against the sides of her scanpack and squeezed. The cover ID’d her prints an
d sprang open. “A new chip’s been added to those docs over the years. I needed new hardware.” Nestled in its case, the fist-sized mass of brain tissue shuddered beneath its protective pink dura mater.

  “What kind of chip?” Betha asked.

  “Family mark. The kind used in private papers.” Jani felt beneath the scanpack for the master touchswitch. She set the switch to CHILL, then shut down the battery that pumped nutrient through the brain like a miniature heart. The healthy pink color of the dura mater remained, but the brain’s trembling slowed to an occasional shudder.

  “Whose?” Steve asked.

  “Won’t know until I can read the paper.” But I can make a damned good guess, Evan. “What’s the call on that chip?”

  Steve held up the chip’s antistatic pouch and squinted. “Five-eighths, nine to two, bleeds to death, flash activate.”

  Jani clamped the oxy feed lines to the fifth octant region of the brain, then closed the nutrient web. The shuddering ceased. Using microforceps, she peeled back the dura mater and anchored it to one side with a butterfly clamp, revealing a raised freckled line of chips and nerve bundles. She activated her laser knife, cut away the old two-nerve chip, and drew a thread of nerve solder from the ninth nerve lead to the second, forming an eight-nerve circuit that would drive the newer, more powerful chip.

  “Family chip, eh? You be diggin’ where you shouldn’t, Ris?” Steve asked, his stare fixed on the table.

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” Jani replied. The fried-meat smell of nerve solder worked past the nose plugs. Tiny puffs of smoke streamed upward as she picked single pinholes in the tissue. Using her forceps, Jani set the chip in place. The hair-thin anchors fit perfectly into the pattern of holes she had cut. She attached the ends of the solder thread to the chip, baking them into place with touches of the knife.

  “Not bad,” Betha said.

  “Don’t know why in hell they make an edition chip a ‘bleeds to death.’ Every time a new version comes out, you risk killing your ’pack on fire-up.” Jani reactivated the battery, then touched the knife to the chip, breaking the seal. The chip activated with an emerald flash, then faded to the pink-tinged grey of the surrounding tissue. Slowly, Jani reopened the oxy lines, then set the master touchswitch back to NORMAL. The octant revived with a rippling shiver.

  Betha exhaled slowly and massaged the back of her neck. “You think there’s something in this House got to do with the Lady’s death?”

  “I know there is,” Jani replied.

  “Not an accident?”

  “No.”

  “You think she were augmented.” Betha smiled at Jani’s look of surprise. “I remember your reaction when I told you about her ‘surfin’.’ Asked an ex-Service friend what it meant. He told me. You think all her trips to Nueva Madrid had something to do with the augmentation, that she died because something happened to it.” She grew serious. “Because somebody did something to it.”

  “It’s possible,” Jani finally said.

  Betha walked to the door. “You mean yes. Why don’t you say what you mean.” She turned to Steve. “See you later.”

  “Where you going?” he asked.

  “Work. I’ll be in one of the spare offices if you need to talk.” Betha smiled weakly. “’Bye.”

  “She’s smarter than she looks,” Jani said as the door closed.

  Steve drew close. “Weirdo ’pack you’ve got there,” he said. “Dull-lookin’, like a lump of mud. Tsecha’s got somethin’ looks just like it. His thing’s like a dictionary. Got a couple human languages in it.”

  “Coincidence,” Jani said as she swept her gear back into her duffel.

  “Don’t tell me that! I seen it! I’ve sat in meetings with him. Watched him tap at the damned thing.”

  Jani stuffed the yellow sack containing the Court of Inquiry report into her duffel. “Have you talked to Angevin today?”

  Steve’s eyes widened. He stood up, rocked uncertainly from one foot to the other. “Nah,” he finally muttered. “Don’t have time for her crap. It’s all over. It’s done.”

  Jani rose, then closed in on Steve until she stood toe to toe with him. “You don’t want her linked with you in case you get arrested.”

  Steve tensed. “Won’t get arrested. Be gone long before then.” He chewed his unactivated ’stick. “That story. That were just a story, weren’t it? ’Bout what it’s like. I mean, you’re just a posh little Cabinet cracker—what do you know about rough?” He offered her a hide ’n’ seek smile—now you see it, now you don’t. “Were just a story, weren’t it?”

  “Oh yes.” Jani focused on the floor. “You found me out. Blatant exaggeration, just to scare you.” She walked to the door. “Tomorrow,” she said. She glanced at her timepiece as she headed for the lift. She’d be late for dinner with Evan. After he heard what she had to say, he’d wish she’d stood him up.

  CHAPTER 19

  Jani ignored a staffer’s efforts to announce her arrival and brushed past him into the Private House dining room. Evan, who had been sitting with his back to the door, stood up unsteadily as she cut across the room to the portable bar.

  “Jesus, you do bang around, don’t you?” He smiled tentatively, swirling the contents of his glass. “There was no need for you to rush. First chance I’ve had to be by myself all day. Gave me a chance to catch my breath.”

  Jani poured herself a glass of water and watched Evan sample his drink. She had always known him as a steady drinker. The official term was maintenance alcoholic, according to the Court of Inquiry report. He was on a regimen of alcohol dehydrogenase boosters and nutritional supplements and had a replacement liver waiting for him in Neoclona-Chicago’s organ storage bank. Every year, he had a battery of tests to monitor for signs of incipient alcoholic psychoses. He was on record as saying he had no intention of curbing his drinking. He would do as he pleased; it was up to his cadre of highly paid physicians to keep him functional.

  He looked Jani up and down. His grin dimmed. “I thought you’d dress like you did on the Arapaho. I was looking forward to it.” He had certainly gone the full formal route. Black evening suit. Gleaming white shirt with onyx fasteners. The only thing missing was the red rose in his crossover lapel.

  “You don’t give a damn what happened to Lyssa. For the last two years of her life, you and she barely spoke.” Jani walked over to a serving cart. Too much time had passed since her last meal. Her stomach ached as though she’d been punched. “You found out the Court had initiated an investigation of your father’s conduct during the idomeni civil war. The van Reuter reputation was at stake. You needed someone with experience in Rauta Shèràa paper to do a minesweep, help you bury incriminating Service documents Acton recoded as private paper. Enter yours truly.” She snagged a warm roll from one of the baskets and bit into it. “You thought I’d help you cover for him to save my ass. Need I remind you that your Uncle Rik made the same mistake?”

  “Who have you been talking to?” Evan shrugged off Jani’s answering glare. “Anais has tried to engineer my father’s ruin many times. She’s always come out looking the fool.”

  “My transport crash was no crash at all. Anais has proof Acton arranged to have a bomb placed on board. He was involved with Neumann in the illegal acquisition of augmentation technology from the Laum at Knevçet Shèràa. They tried to pull me into the mix. I said no. When Rikart pushed, I pushed back harder.” Jani closed her eyes. She could smell it again, the singed-leather stink of shooter gloves. “Acton pushed back hardest of all.”

  “Wishful thinking on Anais’s part.”

  “I was there, Evan, remember?”

  “My father was many things. But he believed in Lady Commonwealth. He would never have slaughtered her soldiers.”

  “Knowing what happened to Martin, how can you stand there and say that to me?”

  “Knowing what happened to Martin gives me every right. The van Reuter men were always ripe for sacrifice, Jan. That’s our job—it’s an honor reserved for
us alone. Dad would never have deigned to share the glory.” He walked to the bar and refilled his glass. Four fingers of bourbon—no water or ice. “I’m not denying what happened to you. I certainly can’t deny Rikart’s involvement. But nothing my father did is anyone’s concern but mine. He did not become aware of the Laum technology until after the war. Martin paid the first installment on that bargain. Serena and Jerrold paid the second, Lyssa, the third. I’m responsible for the balance, to be repaid in my own currency.” He took a large swallow. “Anais has come up empty with this search of hers for years. Now, all of a sudden, she thinks she’s gotten lucky.”

  Jani perched on the edge of a dining-room chair. Took a bite of bread. A gulp of water. She’d eaten this way too many times. Mechanical, tasteless refueling, choked down just prior to getting the hell out of town. “Yes, but this time she had Lyssa acting as Interior mole. Your wife had good reason to hate Acton. She wanted the entire Commonwealth to know what he’d done to Martin.”

  “It never occurred to her that she could damage her own reputation in the process. People would ask how she could have allowed it to happen. I tried to explain that to her, but she wouldn’t listen to reason. I’m a magnet for women who refuse to listen to reason.” Evan walked slowly toward Jani, stopping when he came within arm’s reach. “Durian told me about your forced excursion this afternoon. Don’t you see what Anais is trying to do? She’s trying to drive a wedge between us, convince you it’s safe to throw in with her.”

  “She may have a point.” Jani brushed crumbs from her fingers. The bread rested like ballast in her stomach. “The Court will be releasing its findings one week from today. The final summation contains a demand for your resignation.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I read the report.”

  A host of emotions played across Evan’s face as Jani’s words sank in. Surprise. Elation. Anger. Fear. “Aren’t you the enterprising one,” he finally said, his words strung out like beads on a wire. “How did you manage to obtain it?”