Undercurrents

by Robert Buettner

  I narrowed my eyes at Celline. “Tressia’s nearly four hundred miles from here. If I hike fifty miles a day, it would still take a week. I don’t have that long.”

  Alia shook her head. “Walk? We don’t walk. We can get there and back in two days—”

  “We?” I pointed from Alia to my chest and back. “We? This wouldn’t be a shopping trip with old Pyt. This will be dangerous. No!” I crossed my arms. Then I paused and cocked my head at Celline. “Did she say two days?”

  Thirty-nine

  Polian wrapped his hands around his warm tea mug as he stared from the clinic’s empty visitor’s lounge down the building’s white-walled entry corridor. Three days had passed since he had briefed Gill in the snow-covered arctic pit, and during the entire return trip Polian had rarely even been chilly in his armor. But psychologically he craved the tea mug’s warmth. The human mind convinced itself of things that weren’t true. This morning, Polian was counting on that weakness.

  The door guard unlocked, then opened, one of the translucent entry doors that spanned the corridor’s far end. The door’s hinge creak echoed through air that smelled of disinfectant as daylight flashed in.

  A man dressed in Tressen civvies, tall even for Yavi military, stepped through sideways. The tall man wrestled a metal case with both hands, then set it down in the corridor and flexed his fingers while the guard closed and relocked the door. The man was slender, hawk-faced, and the echoes of his panting breath displaced the sound of the door lock clicking.

  After a full minute, the man picked up the case again, walked down the corridor, and set the case down in front of Polian. “I lugged my equipment nine blocks from that damn boarding house. If you had put me up in a hotel commensurate with my rank I could have gotten a cab.”

  Polian sighed. A Medical Corps major had no rank as far as real officers were concerned. Polian shook his head at the interrogation specialist. “Every hotel desk clerk and cabbie in this city reports to the Interior Police. I don’t want the ferrents to know you’re here.”

  The interrogator pulled out a chair and reached for the teapot on the table.

  A physician, in fact the one who had laughed at the ferrent when Polian had his run-in, passed them on his way toward the clinic’s occupied rooms. He glanced up from a clipboard at them, then looked away.

  Polian stood and grasped the tea pot and two mugs. “We’ll take it with us. The ferrents will get wind of what we’re doing here too soon as it is.”

  Polian led the interrogator down the hallway perpendicular to the entry hall, past rooms that had been emptied at his order, until they arrived at a closed, steel-riveted door, in front of which a Yavi sat at a desk. The man sprang up from his chair, which, like the desk, Polian had insisted be placed in the corridor. The man’s civilian jacket gapped and revealed the pistol he wore in a shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

  The guard nodded at Polian, turned, and unlocked the heavy door.

  Beyond the open door, the woman lay in the bed in the center of the windowless hospital room, eyes closed, breathing regular.

  The interrogator set his case on the room’s floor alongside a plain table and chairs. He glanced around the room, nodded, then circled the woman like a wolf.

  Polian poured tea into two mugs, set the pot on the table, and handed one of the mugs to the interrogator. “We took her into custody forty-six days ago.”

  The interrogator sipped the bitter local tea, puckered his lips, then nodded. “And somehow these witch doctors have managed to keep her alive and repair her since then. I read her file. Grade-four concussion. Skull fracture. Thoracic trauma. Compound fracture of the right radius and ulna. All complicated by hypothermia, after her suit quit. I suspect her survival’s more a function of her toughness than their brilliance.”

  “Is she tough enough to bring up?”

  The interrogator shrugged as he bent, opened his field case, and began removing equipment. “I’ll run some tests here and let you know.”

  “How long?”

  The interrogator shrugged again. “Come back in a couple days.”

  It was, Polian thought, lack of urgency that separated soldiers from professionals who wore the uniform while they plied a civilian trade. Polian dragged out a chair, sat, and poured himself fresh tea. “I’ll wait.”

  Forty

  A day after Celline told me about the Tressens’ suspicious prisoner, I crouched in the deepening darkness of Tressel moonset, alongside Pyt and Alia, barely breathing. We hid in the underbrush at the forested edge of the Iridian Corridor. Six hundred yards to our front, a dozen Tressen infantry, rifles held across their bodies at port arms, walked in two lines, one on each side of the Corridor’s parallel rail lines, one for southbound trains, one for northbound.

  Pyt leaned toward me and whispered, “They make one pass down this section every night. Then they tuck in to the strongpoint beyond the rise until dawn. They rarely send out patrols after moonset, because it’s too easy for us to ambush them.”

  I glanced at Alia. She, like me, wore the rough vest and trousers of a fisherman ashore. I said to Pyt, “I still don’t like using the girl.”

  “You need someone with you who can do the talking. Any adult would trigger suspicion. Jazen, we all owe a debt to something greater than ourselves. Fate chooses some of us to repay that debt earlier than others.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ve already had one partner who thought she was born to save the universe. I hope you didn’t choose me another one.”

  “Only Celline chooses for Alia.”

  I supposed that, technically, Celline chose for all Iridians. But it seemed a stupid way to put it.

  The moon disappeared below the horizon, and the night blackened.

  Alia pointed at the tracks. “Patrol’s gone.”

  Alia and I gathered our battered fisherman’s rucksacks, Pyt grabbed up two shovels, and the three of us sprinted out of the treeline and ran, crouched, to the tracks.

  We picked a spot five yards to the side of the northbound track. While Alia kept watch in the direction of the strongpoint, Pyt and I carved two shallow trenches in the roadbed gravel. I grimaced as every spade stroke rasped metal against rock and echoed through the night. I also held my breath as we raked up rotting fish bits that had fallen off into the roadbed.

  Finally, Alia and I lay down, face up, in the trenches, rucksacks at our sides. Pyt raked rock and soil back over us in a thin layer. He left openings for our eyes, protected by goggles, and mouths, which we covered with scarves. Then he redistributed the rest of the spoil. By morning, the dirt would dry to the same tone as the undisturbed roadbed, and we would be invisible. At least, that was what they told me, and the rebels had hopped freights here before without incident.

  Pyt knelt beside us. “Are you both alright?”

  Alia said, “I hate this part.”

  I started to speak, got a mouthful of sand that leaked past my scarf, spat it out. “Who wouldn’t love being buried alive in fish guts?”

  Pyt, outside my narrow range of vision, patted the soil piled on my belly. “Godspeed, both of you.”

  I heard his footsteps fade. Then there was no sound but the breeze humming across the unobstructed ground.

  “Jazen?”

  “I didn’t go anywhere. God, the smell is awful.”

  “You’ll get used to it. But not the cold. And having to pee.”

  “What’s the best thing to do now?”

  “Sleep. The sun will wake us before the patrol train arrives.”

  Forty-one

  “Major?”

  Polian awoke on the cot that the staff had wheeled into the woman’s room when the interrogator laid a hand on his shoulder.

  Polian sat up, rubbed his face, then smoothed two days of wrinkles from his Tressen civvies. He glanced toward the room’s closed door. Last night’s evening dishes still teetered, unremoved, on a stand by the door. He stared at the interrogator, who needed a shave, rubbed the stubble on his own ch
in, then glanced at his ’puter. “It’s three a.m.!”

  “Best time to bring a subject up. Circadian rhythm’s at low ebb. Her resistance is at its daily low point.”

  Polian sat up straight. “Now? She’s healthy enough?”

  “Most of the impact trauma has either healed or been repaired. Her immune system’s functioning normally. Brain activity’s as vigorous as a comatose patient’s can be.”

  Polian swung his legs over the cot’s side and pulled on his shoes. He stretched, then yawned. “So?”

  “So I’ve looked at everything I can. I think I can bring her up. Very slowly. Very short duration, but I think she’ll respond. And survive it without regressing.”

  The woman’s bed was now surrounded by equipment, from which insulated wire leads slithered across the sheets and attached to her forehead and chest.

  Polian stepped alongside the bed and peered down into the woman’s slack face. He was a field officer, accustomed to more basic methods. He had read plenty of enhanced-interrogation transcripts, but he’d never actually seen how they were developed.

  The hawk-faced interrogator held an injection gun in a surgical gloved hand. “Well? It’s your call.”

  “We could lose her?”

  “Doubt it. But anything’s possible. How bad do you want to know what she knows?”

  Polian nodded. “We need to know what the Trueborns know, and we need to know it last week. Do it.”

  The interrogator lifted the woman’s arm out from under her bedsheet and laid it flat. He squeezed her limp arm until he found a vein, then pressed the gun’s mushroom-shaped tip against the spot.

  Zee.

  The interrogator removed the gun’s flat muzzle from the woman’s forearm, stood back, and squinted at the digits on the screen nearest to the woman’s blonde head. They had been frozen on zero since the interrogator hooked the screen to his subject. Now they flickered and increased with each second that passed as the drugs stimulated her system.

  Polian asked, “How long until we know if she’s going to respond?”

  The interrogator tapped a finger on the tiny intravenous spigot that connected the woman to whatever they chose to fill her with, then waved his arm at the displays that surrounded the woman. “I could quote you numbers that you could watch for on the screens. Heart rate. Respiration. Brain function. But generally the subject comes up when they come up. I can tell you what to expect when she does. She’ll be articulate and lucid, and apparently aware of her surroundings. But she’ll answer any question put to her as readily as if you asked her the time. No resistance whatsoever.”

  “Any chance she’ll spoof us?”

  The interrogator shook his head. “On the old cocktails, maybe that happened one time in two hundred. The juice I’ve shot her up with’s the best we got. Spoof us on this stuff? Maybe one chance in three hundred thousand. As to how long she can stay up—”

  “Haaahhhh!”

  Polian’s own heart skipped as the woman sucked in a massive breath. The sheet rose as she arched her back, and her arms, one still immobilized in a flexicast, flailed.

  Her eyes flew wide open.

  Polian touched the interrogator’s arm. “Should I get somebody else to—?”

  She tried to sit up, but the interrogator laid a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t want to sit up.”

  “I don’t want to sit up.” It was a croak. She pointed at her throat. “I’m thirsty.”

  The interrogator moistened the woman’s dry lips with gloved fingertips, then let her sip water from a squeeze bag. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I got hit by a train.”

  Which she had, approximately.

  “My arm hurts. My head hurts. My boobs hurt. I have to pee.”

  “You have a catheter. Just relax.”

  Polian shook his head as he watched, entranced. Most of the interrogator’s craft had actually been developed for civil work with Yavet’s citizens. Polian knew from his father, though, that most day-to-day Yavi police work, like most military interrogation, relied on simpler physical “persuasion” and mental coercion. Somehow Polian had expected this format to be more foggy and adversarial. But it was like a doctor-patient consultation, or a civil deposition.

  “What’s your name?”

  The woman stared at the ceiling. “Catherine Trentin Born.”

  “They call you the whole thing?”

  “They call me Kit.”

  “Kit, do you have a job?”

  “I’m a colonel in the United States Army, seconded to the Peacekeeping Forces of the Human Union.”

  “That sounds interesting. Kit, are you a particular kind of colonel?”

  “You bet your ass. Senior special-operations case officer.”

  Polian’s jaw dropped, and he turned to the holocams and eyed their red lights to be sure this was being recorded.

  He stepped alongside the interrogator and whispered, “I knew it!”

  “You don’t have to whisper. Once she’s engaged, she’s only stimulated by questions directed to her. The rest is background noise. Ask her something yourself.”

  Polian stepped alongside the hospital bed and cleared his throat. “Kit, why did you come to Tressel?”

  “To find out what the Yavi are up to.”

  “Kit, why did you think they were up to something?”

  She lay there, but shrugged. “That’s what the baby-killers do.”

  Polian ignored the slur. “Kit, did you have specific information, though?”

  “Abnormal amount of covert military traffic directed to Tressel.”

  “Kit, how many case officers are here with you?”

  “None.”

  “Kit, you’re a senior case officer. Don’t case officers work in pairs, a senior and a junior?”

  “None alive. The junior I inserted with died in the Arctic.”

  Polian stared down at her and tugged his lip. He was already convinced that she wasn’t holding back or lying. But he also knew the puzzle pieces he held, and they didn’t fit. She couldn’t be the only Trueborn spy alive on Tressel. “Kit, there wasn’t anyone else?”

  She blinked. “There was. Before.”

  Ping. Her heart-rate monitor warning light flashed red.

  Ping. A light on the brain-scan screen winked red.

  The interrogator laid a hand on Polian’s forearm. “I have to put her back down.”

  Polian shrugged the hand away. “Not now! Just a few more—”

  Tears welled in the woman’s eyes as she lay there. She clenched her fists.

  “Now! This line of inquiry’s too stressful for her.”

  Polian set his jaw. “Stressful? All I asked her was—”

  “Major, overstress triggers a biochemical reaction to the cocktail. If we go on, I may have to reset the mix. That can take days. Or—I’ve lost subjects altogether. Keep this up and I won’t be responsible if she winds up vegetative.”

  Polian paused. Then he stepped back and slapped his palm against the table so hard that the interrogator’s instruments jingled.

  The interrogator stepped alongside the woman—the spy, Polian corrected himself—and injected her.

  Thirty seconds later, her fists unclenched and her tears stopped. She lay back, closed her eyes, and slipped into a deep-breathing sleep.

  Polian watched the interrogator reset the alarms of the monitors wired to the woman, then asked him, “How long?”

  “Until what? She’ll be eating solids by noon, walking tomorrow. The day after that, she’ll have given us ninety percent of what she knows.”

  “Why won’t she give the last ten percent?”

  “Oh, she would. But her body wouldn’t tolerate the cocktail. She’d die before she talked. The last ten percent we get the old-fashioned way.”

  “I’m going to bring Gill down here to see her.”

  The interrogator raised one finger. “If you do, don’t mention the last ten percent.”

  Polian’s forehead crease
d. “Why not?”

  “I’ve worked with him before. Old-school rules of war. Bond of shared soldierly duty. That stuff.” The interrogator stepped to the table, lifted the lid on the empty teapot, peered in, and frowned.

  “You disagree?”

  The interrogator set the teapot on the table, then shook his head. “Why split hairs about torturing an assassin whom you’d shoot on sight if you encountered her in the field? I’m a perfectionist, not a moralist. I just figure if you pour out a jug and leave ten percent inside, your job’s only half done. When I’m done, the subject’s empty.”

  “Empty? Does that mean dead?”

  The interrogator shrugged. “Only if I do it right.”

  Forty-two

  Whooo—whooo.

  The distant train whistle woke me as I lay under the cobbled blanket that Pyt had piled on me the night before. Cold, numb, and with a full bladder, all I could see was clouds overhead. All I could hear was the wind, and all I could smell was rotten fish. “Alia?”

  “Good. You’re awake.”

  My nose itched. The sole of my left foot itched. My back, between my shoulder blades, itched. “Does the patrol train ever stop here?”

  “They might have today if you didn’t wake up. You snore loud.”

  “Mean girls don’t grow breasts, you know.”

  “Very funny. Obviously mean boys still grow whiskers. Because you have too many.”

  I stared at the overcast sky through dusty goggles and sighed. Now my stubble itched, too. “Any more fashion tips?”

  “Those stripes on your arm look stupid. You should wash them off.”

  I smiled under my bandana. My Legion graves-registration bar code.

  “Can’t. They’re burned in clear down to the bone.”

  “Eeew! Why?”

  “Identification. In my old job, the bones might be all that was left.”

  “Who would take a job like that?”

  “I took the job to get away from the place where I grew up. The people in charge there killed children like me just for being born.”

  “Oh.” Silence. Then she said, “Just like here. Except I can’t get away.”