Emissaries from the Dead

by Adam-Troy Castro

  It always amazes me just how many people in serious trouble fling my past in my face, expecting me to be devastated. “You’ll notice I’m smiling, bondsman. Go ahead. Ask me why.”

  “No.”

  “I’m smiling because I know perfectly well what I am and I honestly don’t give a damn what you think of me.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I’m smiling because refusing to give me a straight answer is just about the stupidest, most self-destructive thing you can possibly do right now.”

  “Like I said: fuck off. You’ve already made up your mind anyway.”

  It wasn’t my job to beg her. I nodded, deactivated the hiss screen, gave myself another ten seconds or so of meaningless physical business to perform so she’d have to lie there and watch me taking forever to leave, and then, timing it as best I could, paused at the door. “I don’t like you, bondsman. But I hate mysteries even more.”

  She let me go without protest.

  Nobody had wanted to subject Gibb to the same degree of security mandated for Li-Tsan Crin, so they’d contented themselves with just escorting him outside the hangar and staying with him while he endured the long wait for my attention.

  Three men sat cross-legged on the padded deck, their backs against the faintly luminescent wall, the fuming Gibb bracketed by two indentures who seemed to have been chosen for being on good terms with him. I recognized both: a slightly built, callow young indenture named Simon Wells, who had been no help whatsoever in our brief interview earlier in the day, and a hairy-armed, scowling older man named Chasin Burr, whose answers had rarely exceeded two or three words per question. Wells radiated the profound discomfort of an insecure man not happy with having to guard his superior. Burr just radiated general dislike in my direction.

  I sent them back to the hangar, then activated the hiss screen and stood looking down at Gibb.

  “You can sit,” he said, in a voice rendered hoarse by trauma.

  “No, thank you. After Hammocktown, I enjoy the novelty of standing.”

  He began to rise.

  I halted him with a gesture. “Remain seated or I’ll order you restrained.”

  He froze. “Come on, Counselor. I’m not about to attack you.”

  “You’re probably telling the truth. But your actions tonight do indicate a recent propensity for violence. So stay where you are.”

  He looked like he wanted to argue. Instead, he grunted, settled back down, and regarded me with the resigned weariness of a man accustomed to being misunderstood. “This is pointless. Dozens of witnesses just saw that crazy woman threaten my life.”

  “That’s right. They also saw you strike her first.”

  His sigh was weary in both body and spirit. “Yeah, that was a mistake. But she was hysterical. She was hysterical, and she was out of control, and I thought a little shock would bring her out of it.”

  “What would make you think that, Mr. Gibb? Do you hit your people often?”

  He stared at me, bit back a response, and looked away, shaking his head.

  “No?” I said. “Just the women?”

  “That’s an ugly implication, Counselor.”

  “It was an ugly moment, Mr. Gibb.”

  He averted his eyes. “It was the wrong thing to do. But I mean what I say. She was hysterical.”

  I circled to keep myself within his line of sight. “What about?”

  “The same thing she was always going on about. Blame. She was so sure that this debacle was going to be made all about her. I assured her that assigning blame was the very last of my concerns right now, and suggested that she find a better use for her time.”

  “That’s not exactly a natural point for you to slap her. So I presume she got nastier.”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the last thing she said to you before you slapped her?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  I rubbed my eyes, felt a wave of gray dizziness, wished I hadn’t already committed to standing, and said, “Mr. Gibb, she’s already on record as calling you an incompetent, an asshole, a piece of Tchi shit, and a pervert who makes love to eye sockets. You’ve already established yourself as somebody capable of striking a prisoner under restraint. If there’s something worse than any of that, that you’re still too self-conscious to repeat in my presence, it could only be something specific, something of genuine substance that would not normally slip your mind. Your reluctance is calling attention to it. There’s no point in sparing my delicate ears, because sooner or later I will reach somebody who heard and I will find out.”

  He fought a little fruitless battle with himself before giving it up. “She called me a pimp.”

  “A what?”

  “I’m serious. A pimp. You know what that means, right?”

  I did, but couldn’t make sense of it. Procurement was on most developed worlds the most antiquated of all crimes. Even those societies that still criminalized prostitution had too many other ways for sex services to connect with potential clients. I felt an urge to do something, couldn’t figure out what it was, and fought it off long enough to manage, “Why would she call you a pimp?”

  Burr smirked. No: leered. I was sure of it.

  Gibb just asked, “Why would she call me that other thing? Don’t look for sense in it. She was just hurling the worst words she could think of.”

  “This particular one made you slap her.”

  “I slapped her,” he said, his voice rising, “because she was hysterical and I wasn’t going to listen to another twenty minutes of her nonsense. Not because she picked a senseless insult out of a hat.”

  I knelt, meeting his eyes, forcing him to see his evasions as the weak, toothless things they were. “And I can’t quite believe that, because you were yelling too, Mr. Gibb. You were every bit as angry with her as she was with you. You were so very out of control, in fact, that you hit her two more times after she was restrained and no longer a threat. And would have hit her again if I hadn’t stepped in.”

  He measured me with a look. “That was another mistake, Counselor. But it had nothing to do with anything she said and everything to do with her wrapping her hands around my throat. I’m like most people, even you, in that I get angry when people try to kill me. You, of all people, must be able to understand that.”

  The special emphasis he gave the phrase of all people didn’t sit well with me. He wasn’t referencing anything that had happened on One One One. I didn’t know whether he’d looked me up, like Li-Tsan and the Porrinyards, or received my background from Lastogne. But I did remember the look I’d gotten from Burr and Wells, and realized that they’d gotten the word too.

  What else would a leader under fire discuss with his guards while waiting for the interrogator to arrive? Except why that interrogator was not to be trusted?

  The ugly story would be all over the hangar by morning.

  The only thing Gibb hadn’t counted on was the fact that I’d been carrying that weight a lot longer than I’d been on One One One, and was used to it.

  I stood, pressed my palms against the small of my back, and arced my spine until I heard a creak. “I’m not satisfied, sir. And until I am, you will remain under arrest. I’ll go make arrangements for your confinement, and put Mr. Lastogne in command.”

  He bit his cheek. “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Counselor.”

  “Then give me something in exchange. Be a little forthcoming for once. I’ll even give you a choice. Either tell me what’s really going on between you and your height-sensitives, or surrender everything you know about Lastogne.”

  He looked down, neither surrendering nor backing off, just removing himself from the discussion.

  I waited until I was absolutely sure it was all he was willing to offer, then turned my back on him and returned to the hangar, my footsteps soft padding thuds against a deck gentler than some of the human beings walking upon it.

  16

  WAR

  I didn’t want to turn in for the night.
I didn’t think I could afford to. But I’d already put off a crash for hours, and sleep deprivation was starting to make me stupid.

  Even so, I imagined I’d spend hours flat on my back, staring at darkness, the frayed ends of my investigation refusing to permit me rest. It wouldn’t be the first time an assignment had done that to me. But I enjoyed pure oblivion, broken only by the briefest of dream-flashes: my human mother kissing me on the forehead as I lay in bed pretending to be asleep. It felt so real I woke, blinking my eyes at the disorientation that always comes from sleeping in a strange place.

  Much later, I sat up.

  I’d assigned myself one of the four berths aboard the Dip Corps ship, feeling safer there than I would have in a sleepcube among my suspect pool. The irony of sharing quarters with one of the two people I’d arrested did not escape me, but I’d endured worse. I used a hand sonic to wash, changed into a fresh black outfit, ate breakfast, and logged on.

  The key was a phenomenon Lastogne had alluded to the other day. Indentures sign up for five or ten or twenty years, depending on just how desperate they are and just how much the Corps values their services. They essentially sign their lives away in exchange for a ticket off their homeworlds and a retirement package that includes free passage anywhere they want to go, in perpetuity.

  Still, nobody wants to wait that long for gratification, so there’s an incentive system. Those who excel, for one reason or another, earn time bonuses. A hard-working diplomat with twenty years on her contract can complete her obligation in half that time by consistently performing above and beyond the call of duty. Most people don’t quite manage that feat, as most people are not prodigies. Some, like the space-holders and drug-addled who make up too great a percentage of the Dip Corps rolls, just put in their time like automatons, accomplishing only the bare minimum expected of them. But the majority do take advantage of the system to some extent, shaving their time accounts by an hour here or a day there, looking for every advantage as they wait for their clocks to run down.

  The major plus of this is the way it encourages the talented and the dedicated to work harder. The major minus is that it enables them to leave the service earlier, with full benefits, while preserving the jobs of the dull and apathetic.

  The Dip Corp’s middle management is infested with functionaries with all the talent of concrete blocks, who rose to their current positions of power out of sheer longevity but have nothing else to offer.

  It’s never affected my own performance, as my contract is permanent and working at any level beneath my absolute best can only make things worse for me. But I’ve also had to deal with any number of human zeroes who stuck around long enough to become number ones. It’s not fun. It’s also a waste of time to argue about. It’s just the way things are.

  Group records at Dip Corps installations are usually kept secret from the indentures to avoid conflicts and jealousies and second-guessing, but access is one of my privileges as a representative of the Judge Advocate: a good thing, as the pattern of rewards and penalties is an excellent guide for any outsider who needs to track the currents of power at an installation as remote as the human community on One One One.

  I’d already looked up Warmuth and Santiago, the first day. Now I wanted a little closer look at the other people I’d dealt with.

  The most recent award called itself to my attention right away. Entered into the system by Peyrin Lastogne, following the arrest of Mr. Gibb, it had provided one Hannah Godel a small consideration, reducing her contract by some forty minutes for restraining Li-Tsan Crin during the fight. This was a bargain, as she hadn’t been involved at all and had assured me she hadn’t seen anything.

  A hytex search of all such awards granted last night revealed several averaging thirty minutes apiece to a number of others whose testimony had been equally noncommital. There was nothing all that unusual about this. Middle management has always favored underlings friendly to middle management. It’s corruption, all right, but of a minor and probably unavoidable sort.

  A closer look at Godel’s records reflected a steady if not overly impressive stream of such bonuses, establishing a time depletion rate some 7 percent faster than the calendar. A nice, solid, uninspired, but dependable, rating—nothing to engage any particular suspicions. But I might want to spend a little time with her today.

  So now I went back a little further. Same day. A month taken off the contracts of Oscin and Skye Porrinyard, for their decisive heroism in saving my life. Also authorized by Mr. Lastogne, at Gibb’s express urging. I was a little disappointed that I was only worth a month, but what the hell. Gibb didn’t like me. Their overall depletion was a steady 20 percent faster than the calendar: a gifted rating.

  The next three or four names I checked out also received bonuses at a rate that seemed just about fair; maybe or little bit more or less than equitable, but the differences, plus or minus, were well within the limits of managerial preference. After all, as I have reason to know, you can do an exemplary job and still have an enemy for a boss. You can also be a total fuckup and still get invited to his house on holidays. Those few points, one way or another, were no doubt at least partly attributable to things like willingness to laugh at Mr. Gibb’s jokes.

  This wasn’t fair either, but it was well within the realm of the human.

  I didn’t find an actual anomaly until I expected to: in the records of poor, height-sensitive Robin Fish.

  She’d exceeded the calendar by 35 percent her first year, an odd statistic granted that she’d spent most of that time alone in the hangar. Her exemplary performance doing next to nothing seemed to have fallen down in the second year, leveling off at about 9 percent over calendar, but was still pretty high for an indenture who spent most of her time recovering from the metabolic aftershock of too much manna juice.

  The record of her fellow height-sensitive Li-Tsan Crin was even stranger. She’d earned 20 percent over calendar in the Habitat, and continued to earn 20 percent over calendar sitting on her ass in the hangar.

  Nils D’Onofrio had earned only 12 percent over calendar in the Habitat, sunken to zero percent over calendar in the first month of his exile, and then rocketed to a consistent 20 percent over calendar afterward.

  In short, the three people most useless inside the Habitat, and most vocal about wanting to be transferred off-station, were at the same time the three highest paid.

  I didn’t consider Burr and Wells more than bit players in this affair, but on a whim I looked them up anyway. I found two indentures midway through their respective contracts, each earning at a rate 20 percent higher than calendar. ’Twas not always so. Burr and Wells had both been discharged from previous posts for “discipline problems,” with one past superior writing of Burr, “He’s not especially well suited to working on a team, but would be a well-valued member of any out-of-control mob.” Another wrote of Wells, “Tends to look for people weaker than himself, to impress with his superior will.” Wells struck me as a low-level thug, and Burr as something worse. Prior to Burr’s posting here, he’d served his time at 20 percent below calendar due to penalties for small infractions, most of them having to do with intimidation of fellow indentures. And yet, Burr seemed to be earning phenomenal times, versus the calendar, on One One One. And he was the one who’d leered, when Gibb was confronted with the characterization of himself as “Pimp.” It hadn’t been Lastogne’s leer, which always seemed to make Gibb the target of a joke. It was something else. Burr thought something was being put over on me, and it pleased him mightily.

  Interesting. Disgusting, but interesting.

  I left the berth and found Oscin, this morning’s designated Porrinyard, sitting with his feet up on the command console. He had changed into a baggy set of work tights, and looked as weary as I’d ever seen him, which is to say fully alert with gray half-moons under his eyes. He looked up as the hatch opened and offered me a little half-wave. “Good morning, Counselor.”

  I suppressed a yawn. “Is it morning?�
��

  “Early afternoon, by the Habitat clock. But you’ve had a full eight hours.”

  More than I usually got outside of Intersleep. “Where’s Li-Tsan?”

  He gestured at the sealed hatch next to mine. “Gave her lunch a little while ago. She asked for privacy, so I locked her in. But don’t worry, I’m monitoring her vitals.”

  “And your other half?”

  He indicated another of the sealed doors. “In there. Sleeping.”

  I found that hard to believe. “You can do that? I mean, not at the same time?”

  “Why not? Bodies tire at different rates, even when they’re driven by the same engines. And we haven’t always been assigned to simultaneous work shifts; there have been times, here and elsewhere, when my components didn’t lay eyes on our respective other halves for days on end. So I just catch some sleep when I can.”

  The more I spoke to this people, this person, the more the implications of their shared condition dizzied me. “What’s it like for you, one being awake when the other one is sleeping?”

  “Not very satisfactory, I’m afraid. The waking one doesn’t become a single again, but the gestalt does lose much of its combined cognitive function, making me feel a little stupid until the sleeping half wakes up. And the sleeping one can’t sustain dream-sleep alone, which means that I have to schedule simultaneous sleep sooner or later, or invite serious psychological repercussions. The trade-off is that when I do dream, I’m able to remember that I’m dreaming, and shape the experience any way that amuses me until I have to wake up again. It helps keep me centered.”

  I thought of all the nights I’d spent reliving the terror of a little girl on Bocai. “No nightmares, then?”

  “They try to get a foothold, from time to time, but intangible monsters can’t frighten me when I retain enough analytical capacity to laugh in their faces. Sometimes I let them come just so I can entertain myself squishing them like bugs. Why? Are you susceptible?”