“That’s the funny part, Mr. Gibb. When the two of you had your little fight, she came right out and used the word to your face. Oh, it’s not exactly the right word, in that you weren‘t selling these women to anybody else, as far as I know. Rapist might have been closer, at least in Fish’s case, but I recognize that charge as even more inexact. We may have to devote some thought, later, to coming up with the right terminology. I’m sure Mercantile has a word that communicates the precise degree of sleaziness involved, and I’m just as sure that it qualifies as a crime.
“In any event, the more resentful Li-Tsan became, the riskier it became to ship her out, because she was more than angry enough to slip up and tell her story to somebody in authority. So you offered her more bonuses to keep her quiet. She accepted them, but became more and more hostile toward you. So you did the only thing you could do, to protect yourself for even a little while. You placed some more barriers between Li-Tsan and any opportunity she might have to communicate with your superiors at New London. And you did this by telling Robin Fish that all further correspondence was going to go through you, an arrangement that would enable you to censor anything Li-Tsan wrote.
“But even so, you had to be feeling a little trapped yourself by now. Because now you were holding on to two people who had no excuse to be here, who you couldn’t release without fear that they’d exercise the prerogative to expose you.
“Then a third person had a height-related breakdown, and this time, you heaved a sigh of relief, because this time the victim was a man, capable of providing you some protective cover. You couldn’t ship him out either, because it would be even more suspicious to ship out unfit men while keeping unfit women, but you could keep him on-station, in the spirit of gender consistency, and even feed him some time-bonuses matching what you’d already given Robin and Li-Tsan, to keep him quiet. The best thing about this plan was that it camouflaged your malfeasance and made him an accomplice, but didn’t even require his active consent. He didn’t have even the slightest idea what was going on until Robin and Li-Tsan told him what was going on. And by then he was as trapped as they were, because he couldn’t expose you without implicating himself and them.”
Gibb trembled. “That’s…a hell of a theory, Counselor.”
“Oh, please,” I said. “Do you really think I’d be confronting you like this if this were just an unsupported assumption? Once I saw the pattern, it wasn’t hard to pick out two or three other indentures whose records I found especially suspicious. They were happy to testify in exchange for immunity and a promise that they’d be able to keep the bonuses earned. I offered the same deal to Fish, Crin, and D’Onofrio, and they gave you up in no time at all. Indeed, once she found out she was immune from any consequences, Li-Tsan was downright relieved. We’re friends now. I’ve already uploaded the depositions, and somehow I don’t think it’ll be hard to get more.” I now moved close enough to smell the acrid fear-sweat popping out on his cheeks. “I know this from grim personal experience, Mr. Gibb. Nobody likes to be owned. Some hate being indentured so much that they’ll do anything to shorten their service. You used that fact to turn an outpost of critical diplomatic importance into your own personal brothel.”
“I never forced anybody—” Gibb began.
I ran over him. “Is it your belief that I intend to charge you with exploiting these people? Please. Be serious. You’re absolutely right. You didn’t force them. They all knew exactly what they were doing, and since I don’t particularly believe prostitution to be a crime I very much respect the industriousness of any woman willing to use all her assets to work off her time-debt as soon as possible. I also appreciate the good taste of any woman who requires regular bribes to get anywhere near you. Had you paid those two in any other form of legal tender, I would shrug and say, well, more power to you, more power to them. Consenting adults, and all that.
“I’m considerably less tolerant about the way you held three people as virtual prisoners, holding their futures hostage. That I recognize as disgusting, and that erases any possibility that I might show you a little understanding.
“Still, sir, that’s not your crime.
“Your crime,” I said, making the word explosive, “was the embezzlement of time-debt owed to the Dip Corps. That belonged to all humanity. You misappropriated it and spent it extravagantly, for your own pleasure, overpaying for the services being provided.”
I held the next thought as long as I could, letting it take shape in the air between us.
His mouth jerked without sound, forming protests that wouldn’t have done him much good.
I said, “Unless I cancel a certain dispatch already in the hytex net, and set to be transmitted to the Dip Corps tomorrow, New London’s going to want all of that time repaid. Now, they could just apply it back to the contracts of all the women involved, but I’ll make sure they realize that this presents a tremendous bookkeeping headache and a source of all sorts of potential legal arguments involving the best way to distinguish your unauthorized little incentives from any legitimate time-bonuses the indentures involved might genuinely deserve. I’ll also point out that going after everybody involved would just create the kind of scandal better off avoided, without providing sufficient deterrent to other administrators capable of selling out their responsibilities to satisfy their hormones.
“No,” I concluded, “once I’m done presenting the case, they’ll probably just add all that stolen time to your own contract. Years. Probably decades, by the time the punitive fines, and any evidence of similar misbehavior at your prior postings, are properly tallied. Possibly more than you can ever live to pay back with the normal kind of assignment, even with regular rejuvenation. The Dip Corps will want every minute of that value returned, so they’ll select some unpleasant high-risk/low-prestige assignment nobody else wants, someplace much worse than One One One, and force you to pay back as many as those wasted years as you can earning hardship and hazard bonuses. Break your back and your health and you might be able to return to someplace offering the comforts of civilization in as little as ten to twenty years Mercantile. Personally, I don’t think you’re likely to make it that far, unless you’re lucky enough to find yourself working for a horny administrator, male, female, or neut, who finds you attractive enough for extra credit. Depending on the awfulness of the environment where you find yourself working, you might find yourself volunteering for services far removed from your own personal preferences. I don’t think you’ll be finicky.”
Gibb had become dangerously calm. “You’re a vindictive little bitch, aren’t you?”
“I’m surprised you have to ask.”
The non-ambassador was now just a vessel holding a massive potential explosion, held inside him by the thinnest layers of skin and civilization. A little more prodding and he might have assaulted me, even tried to throw me off the bridge. But he was a diplomat, well versed in the science of subtle nuance; and he’d caught the escape route I’d mentioned in passing. “You said ‘Unless.’”
“Correct. Your career’s over in any event, but I’m still willing to contain this. You can forgo the disgrace and move on to a nice quiet retirement on the world of your choice.”
He growled. “What do you want?”
“You can start with everything you know about Peyrin Lastogne.”
He stared at me for the longest time, as if hoping for a more difficult assignment. And then he slumped. “Long before you got here, I tried to figure him out and failed.”
“He’s no legal advocate. If he was he’d be listed in the Dip Corps files.”
Gibb didn’t look at me again. “That’s right. He would be. But there’s no background for him at all. I can’t even find anybody who’ll confess to cutting his orders.”
“What is he, then?”
There was no bitterness in his laugh, but no joy, either—just contempt at my pretense of naïvetè.
“Come on, Counselor. This can’t be your first embassy.”
I left him there, the
sole remaining inhabitant of the installation he had commanded, surrounded by nothing but darkness and uncertainty and the vain hope that I’d reward his cooperation with mercy. He didn’t call after me as I descended the net, or as I made my way alone across the network of bridges.
Leaving Gibb alone with the possible wreckage of his career, his reputation, and his life, could be seen as the moral equivalent of murder. After all, the vast abyss below Hammocktown had always offered the easiest of all possible exits. Between now and dawn it wouldn’t take much more than a single dark impulse to drive him toward the easy out. It would take a lot more to make him reject that option in favor of an unpromising dawn.
Some might say I’d acted irresponsibly, by leaving him here to face the consequences alone. But I had left him with that ounce of hope, and a man capable of doing the things he had done was a man too full of himself to believe he could be betrayed by that ounce of hope. In the next few hours he’d plot exit strategies, denials, defenses, and deals he could broker with everybody capable of testifying against him. He’d persuade himself a thousand times that he had it all in hand and he’d tell himself a thousand and one times that he did not.
His long night journeying between hope and despair would not be an easy one. He’d spend it with nothing but recriminations and rationalizations for company.
I didn’t believe he’d jump.
But he did deserve to come damn close.
A voice called up out of the darkness. “Ready, Andrea?”
“Whenever you are,” I said.
A telescoping ladder emerged from the darkness down below, entering the empty space that had been my tent, and offering me an escape from the empty nets of Hammocktown. I grabbed a rung with both hands and, planting a heel against each riser, slid down to the skimmer’s cargo platform.
Gibb had been right about one thing: I was getting better at this kind of maneuver. Not that I found it any more fun. Though my gait remained steady as I climbed over the rail and joined the Porrinyards forward, my hands were still shaking.
They said, “He didn’t take that at all well.”
“No, he didn’t.”
I’d asked them to monitor the questioning. On the off-chance Gibb had turned violent, or my friend the Heckler had made another attempt on my life, they would have been near enough to intercede. I can’t claim that having them down below, looking out for me, had made me feel any more secure. I had no problem believing them capable of protecting me against Gibb. I wasn’t nearly as complacent about their chances against the Heckler. But returning to their side came as a relief anyway. I was beginning to need them.
“Where to?” they asked.
“Circle. I’ll figure out where we’re going in a minute.”
I don’t know how long we wandered in darkness. It could not have been more than a few minutes. But my mind pored over the same ground from so many different angles that I would not have been surprised to open my eyes on a new world, millennia hence, where all my problems had entered the realm of history.
In the meantime I thought of Lastogne.
I was pretty sure I knew what he was. That, I’d suspected for some time. I’d dealt with people like him many times before. They were spawned by the very nature of the human animal. And Gibb’s grudging testimony had only confirmed my own educated guesses. But what kind of spy advertises his place in the order of things? A saboteur from some faction inside the Confederacy would have equipped himself with an exhaustively forged identity or risked being expelled back to New London by now. Was he some kind of political officer? Or had the sabotage itself been part of his assignment?
Gibb had provided me with what little he could. New London keeps telling me he’s authorized to be here, but they refuse to give me any particulars. The only thing I know for sure is that he’s dangerous.
There was something else that bothered me. One of the little personal credos I’d shared with Gibb: Do you know what murder investigators call a man like you who upon questioning fails to mention his sexual relationship with a murder victim? The most likely suspect.
Gibb had thrown it back in my face, with that bombshell about a relationship between Warmuth and Lastogne.
Lastogne hadn’t said a damned thing. He’d criticized Warmuth’s idealism, said she’d had an excessive hunger for novelty, even expressed dismay when told of her relationship with D’Onofrio…but when asked what he felt about her personally, he’d said it wasn’t a matter of personal like or dislike. He’d managed to give the impression he was answering the question while in fact he was doing nothing of the kind.
He’d played me very well. He’d sensed my misanthropy and played up that aspect of his own personality. He’d even accused the Porrinyards of the same failing. But was that just the typical gamesmanship of a habitual manipulator, or the obfuscation of a sociopath?
The sense of something undone, that had bothered me for days now, flared yet again. My fingers trembled. I looked down at my hand, covered as it was by Skye’s own, and saw the cords in my wrist twitching, as if urging immediate action but unable to relate exactly what they had in mind.
I pulled my hand out from under Skye’s, and studied it the way I’d study an alien form of life. The lined palm, the thin hairline scar at the wrist, and the abused fingertips, complete with raw skin where I chewed the skin at moments of deep concentration.
It was remarkable how much the chewed places were healing.
What had that Brachiator I’d spoken to called the AIsource?
The Hand-in-Ghosts.
The Porrinyards said, “Are you all right?”
I wasn’t sure. The blood was pounding in my ears so hard that I could barely hear anything else. But then I managed, “Lastogne’s going to have to wait.”
They said, “What?”
“I need to become a Half-Ghost.”
20
SUSPENSION
In the indirect light of our skimmer, the eyes of the Brachiators seemed saturated with that ineffable quality that leads human beings to label other beings as wise.
It helped me not at all to know that this was a totally subjective quality, which had no bearing to actual, measurable wisdom, to know, in fact, that human beings, have been known to perceive that quality shining from the eyes of terrestrial creatures as varied as owls, orangutans, and even dogs. Much as I tried, I couldn’t resist my own involuntary reaction to a Brachiator face that rang the appropriate cues.
The Porrinyards had described Friend to Half-Ghosts as an old acquaintance, taking pains to stress that this was not the individual of the same name who lived near Hammocktown. I could have guessed that much. Hammocktown was many kilometers port and spinward, far too distant for even the speediest Brachiator to travel in these past two days. This Brach also looked different, its fur bearing a mottled, grayish pattern that may have been inborn or the effects of advanced age, and its face marked by the scars of several past battles, including one that intersected an eye opaque from time or trauma. “We are surprised at this visit.”
Skye spoke alone: “Why?”
“Because we have been told that all the Ghosts have left the world.”
That would be a reference to the evacuation of Hammocktown. Skye said, “That’s very recent news.”
“It is old news,” the Brachiator said. “It happened the night before this. We have known since before the suns came on, the next morning.”
“How did you get the news?”
“The creators wanted us to know, so we knew.”
This made sense. Considering the Brachiator rate of travel, the news couldn’t have been passed along by word of mouth. But which AIsource had told them, the majority or the ones I knew as the rogue intelligences? Would Brachiators even be able to tell the difference?
I whispered a question to Oscin, which emerged from Skye’s mouth. “Do your creators often bestow knowledge?”
The answer came at once. “They bestow knowledge every day.”
Another qu
estion whispered to Oscin and asked aloud by Skye. “Did they let you know what happened to Warmuth and Santiago?”
A pause. “We were told of one who seized Life and another joined by Death.”
“Does this make you sorry?”
“You are Ghosts. You drift between Life and Death. It is nothing new for you.”
I thought about that longer than I had to, reflecting on a next step that could not be avoided.
At a whispered request, we descended.
A thousand meters below the Uppergrowth, the darkness swallowed everything in the world the AIsource had made. Everything above us, below us, and to either side of us was an identical shade of black. Even the storms that so often lit up the clouds had quieted, leaving us adrift in what was, for the moment, a cocoon of penetrating darkness.
The Porrinyards sat opposite me, watching me tremble. Neither offered a comforting touch. Given how much they’d offered already, any time I showed even the slightest need, this seemed well out of character until I realized they probably realized how little I wanted their sympathy right now.
Somehow, they could see even that.
They allowed me several minutes of measured breath before they shifted position, in a way that preserved the nature of the space between them. “You don’t have to do this.”
I studied my hands. “I do if I want to feel it.”
“And how necessary is that? Can’t you understand it from a distance? Put what you know up against what you can figure out?”
“Not if I want to be sure.”
Skye moved from the seat beside Oscin to the seat beside me, the transition so graceful and so smooth that it was done before I could even register what was happening. Her eyes, dark in the uncertain glow of the instruments, glistened more than Oscin’s, seeming close to tears in a way that his did not. But when her lips moved, the voice that emerged was still mostly his. “Watching your back against Gibb was one thing. But this is another thing entirely. This is just taking risks for no good reason.”
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