Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  “That’s to work out with Kaydence, sir.” Chief Samons wasn’t offering much reassurance. But she wasn’t blaming. She was right, after all; whatever had happened, it was between Koscuisko and his man. That was the tally of it.

  “Ailynn, what have you got?” the officer asked in wonder. Distracted from his private pain. There was to be nothing he could do about that until he could speak to Kaydence.

  Ailynn folded back the protective layers of cloth to reveal the secret that had been hidden behind the tile in the washroom. A book. Sixteen, twenty-four leaves of paper, not much more than the size of her hand, and rolled back upon itself twice to make a compact cylinder. A book.

  Ailynn stared at it, in horror of what it might reveal.

  The officer laid tableware down on either side to hold the edges flat. It hadn’t been in the wall for all that very long. It couldn’t have been. The Domitt Prison was less than a year old, Standard. The paper was as crisp and square-edged as it had probably been when the book went into the wall. But it hadn’t been very good quality paper to start out with.

  “Standard script,” Chief Samons noted, looking over the officer’s shoulder. “But I’m not sure I can make any sense of it.”

  Ailynn could.

  Standard script, but it was a Nurail dialect.

  The words spoke all too clearly to her Nurail heart.

  “Ailynn?”

  The officer had noticed a change in her expression; or the officer had guessed.

  “ ‘My name is Morse Wab, from the port at Cluse. My mother’s people hold the Time-smoothed Stones.’ ” Ailynn read the cramped script off in dread of each next sentence, translating as she went. “ ‘In order that the weave of our suffering should not be lost. This record I have made. Look for others, we are all dead men.’ ”

  She didn’t want to read any more.

  But she was the only person here who could read it.

  “This prison was built by Nurail work-crews.” The officer’s tone of voice was neutral. Careful. “I remember Belan told me so — ”

  “Slave labor,” Ailynn interrupted, in terror of her own temerity. Dread of the document’s secrets outweighed her natural sense of self-preservation. “Sir, it should be kept close. At least until you know what it says.”

  Nobody was surprised at the suggestion. Ailynn blushed, suddenly, and sat down.

  “There are, how many pages here? Ailynn. Let me to know what the document says. I need for you to translate it, and write it down for me, but do not under any circumstances set the document down and go away. I will set Toska to watch at your back, to see that what you do keeps secret still.”

  She’d been afraid of that.

  There were stories, fragments of stories, rumors, pieces of horrible suggestions whispered in the night . . . some of them probably real. Some just imagined.

  Yet if the officer had not had questions of his own already about what had happened here, would he be as anxious as he seemed to know what this dead Morse Wab had to tell him?

  “According to his Excellency’s good pleasure.”

  Of course.

  Koscuisko put his hand out to her shoulder, in apparent sympathy with her feelings for the task that he had set her to.

  Took up a handful of the crackers, and rose to go complete his morning grooming and set out to work.

  So then would she.

  She didn’t want to know what Wab had seen, but the dead had a right to be heard out.

  ###

  Kaydence’s sleep-shift wasn’t scheduled to end before first-shift, and here it was only a few eights into fourth; but he was awake and rested, looking for something to do.

  He was excused from exercise period because the officer had said he was to rest for at least three days.

  He was excused from having to spend much time on his uniform, as they all were. The housekeepers that the Domitt Prison administration had installed here did laundry, linen, pressing, and a very tidy job they did, too — every pleat perfect, razor sharp, crisp as anything. He tried not to wonder whether prison labor was responsible.

  Being excused from exercise period, and not having boot-stockings to mend or boot-leather to dress, Kaydence Psimas was at loose ends; but he knew what to do about that. If he was at loose ends, there were plenty of other people here strung taut as a reverb string. The best thing to do with his extra time was go and donate it to someone with use for it: so Kaydence went to find who had the night-watch duty with the officer, to send him to supper and early to bed.

  The officer was below in his office.

  Erish stood in the dim corridor outside the door to Koscuisko’s office. Erish was weary; they all were, because the longer they stayed here in the Domitt Prison, the less sleep anyone got for dreaming. Erish was tired.

  And Kaydence hadn’t had a chance to speak to the officer since he’d disgraced himself, two days gone by now, trying to step into Joslire’s place — and failing to do what Joslire could have done.

  He hadn’t quite understood how deep their loss was.

  Part of him was terrified of Koscuisko, as well.

  Frightened of the officer all of them were, at least in a sense; it couldn’t be helped. A man who was capable of what Koscuisko could do was a force to be feared, quite apart from the pain that he had at command. Frightened of the officer: but trusting him, as well.

  One of the things that happened to bond-involuntaries was that the power their officer had over their lives made them unusually vulnerable to their officers. Now Kaydence realized how much of his self-worth he’d placed in Koscuisko’s hands, serene and confident that Koscuisko would handle his sense of self-definition as gently as possible.

  He wished more than anything he hadn’t said what he thought he remembered saying. He wasn’t going to ask. He could remember the words in his mind all too clearly: if you want to hurt me, it’s up to you, but at least let me know you take pleasure from it. That way I know that it means something to you.

  Passion was extreme, and extremes were dangerous, but he couldn’t stay out of Koscuisko’s way forever. And he didn’t want to.

  Coming up on Erish in the corridor, Kaydence gestured with his head for Erish to leave. Erish looked a little skeptical; Kaydence nodded, to reassure Erish that he meant to relieve him. Once Erish was sure that it was what Kaydence wanted, he didn’t hesitate longer. Sensible man, Erish. It was one of the many reasons Kaydence liked him.

  The officer was at his desk within, concentrating on the document he’d pulled from the wall together with the prose-scan Ailynn had prepared. Kaydence slid smoothly into his post and let his mind blank, standing content on watch.

  There was no sound except for the hushed murmur of the ventilators, the subtle sounds of the beverager on the other side of the door talking to itself, the rustling of papers, the turning of pages. For a long time.

  Then the officer raised his voice and called for his Security.

  “Erish. I want you to go and fetch Kaydence for me.”

  From the sound of it, Koscuisko was speaking as he moved, rising from his desk — to fetch a flask of rhyti from the beverager, perhaps. Kaydence stepped into the doorway, making his salute, glad of the moment to steel himself before he was to look upon the face of his officer.

  “Here, sir.” He heard only a little of his own discomfort in his voice. He wondered how much more Koscuisko was reading; the officer could do that. Joslire had said that Andrej Koscuisko smelled what you were thinking. “In what way. Can I render assistance. Sir.”

  No, he was still calling Koscuisko “sir” rather than the more oblique “the officer,” and he had clearly heard himself refer to one Kaydence Psimas in the first person. As “I,” not as “this troop.” Frightened of Koscuisko he might be; humiliated over what he might have said to Koscuisko in the torture-room. But in some basic way nothing had changed. He still trusted the officer.

  So could he get Koscuisko to believe that?

  Koscuisko blushed, staring at Kay
dence with an expression of surprise.

  “Oh, Kaydence.” It was a cry full of grief and guilt, and yet it was muted. Koscuisko had already convinced himself that there was nothing he could say to make things right between them: That was so like the officer. “I cannot say how ashamed I am, to have caused you to suffer. And at the same time I need information. I want you to try to find some of these Nurail for me.”

  Kaydence couldn’t think about it; his mind shied away from the memory every time. He knew what his governor could be like. He started forward with a confidence he did not feel; pausing at the beverager to draw a flask of rhyti for Koscuisko, as sweet and milky as Koscuisko liked.

  “No man as full of such good drugs as I got could possibly complain, sir. On a buzz for three days still. Can’t be had for money.” The cheerful cover-up sounded almost natural to Kaydence. Almost like normal. “With respect, your Excellency. Which Nurail?”

  Koscuisko looked at him for a moment longer yet, as though suspicious that his blithe demeanor masked residual pain — which in a sense it did. But that was Kaydence’s business. And as long as Koscuisko believed that Kaydence suffered no physical distress, Koscuisko would leave it that way, out of respect for Kaydence’s privacy.

  “There is first a person called Shopes Ban whom I wish to see in the morning, if he can be located. But then the man who has written this narrative, this Morse Wab. I want to know what happened to him, and to the people he calls out by name. Something is not right here, Kaydence, we all know it, and yet I cannot yet grasp how wrong it may be.”

  The narrative would certainly so indicate. Kaydence had helped Ailynn with parsing her translation out, so he had read the translation — in a sense.

  Allegations of murder by overwork and underfeeding and neglect were serious even by the Judicial standard. Prisoners could expect to suffer privation, without people like the officer to insist on their welfare. But prisoners were not supposed to be put to death prior to the processing of specific charges; let alone by torture.

  Offering the rhyti to his officer with a bow, Kaydence went past Koscuisko where he stood to sit at the com-access on the officer’s desk-table. It felt very odd to be sitting in the officer’s chair. But the sense of being out of place faded fast as Kaydence concentrated on his task.

  Shopes Ban was first; no difficulty. Kaydence tagged the officer’s referral for the morning and went on.

  Morse Wab was a Nurail name, and Ailynn had given it translated flat without any hints about its Standard spelling. He didn’t need to have worried, though; he found his man within moments.

  Morse Wab was in the system, on remand.

  According to the prison records, Morse Wab had arrived at the prison six months ago; and was still here, prisoner pending development of Charges. Assigned to a work-crew on the land reclamation project.

  “Not dead?” the officer asked, surprised, looking over Kaydence’s shoulder. Kaydence surfaced out of his concentration.

  “Not according to this, sir.” Kaydence pointed out the status blocks confidently. “In pretty good health, actually. On the work detail.”

  “Because a person has to be fit to do heavy labor, yes, of course,” Koscuisko agreed, thoughtfully.

  Koscuisko standing at his shoulder; Koscuisko at his back. There was a token Kaydence wanted: suddenly he wanted it more than anything. And he could not ask. “The other names, sir?”

  “Here, I have a list for myself made. What status can you find for them?”

  It was a simple thing with ties as deeply braided into the fabric of Koscuisko’s being and ancestry as the rest of his genetic structure was. Time-honored. Traditional. Something that belonged to a quite different sort of relationship than that in which the Fleet had bound them over to Andrej Koscuisko. The words were not very different in plain Standard: Fleet saw officer and bond-slave; Koscuisko thought of it as master and man, in a context in which both terms meant something quite particular to him.

  “Skein in braid, sir. There’s Mannie Bellose. Also alive. Also on work-crew.”

  Kaydence read the names off from Koscuisko’s list, keying as he went. Several names. The spelling betrayed them on some, the prison would yield no record. But they got good hits on more than half of them, and all of the hits they got were listed as on the prison rolls and working.

  “What is a man to make of it,” Koscuisko mused, leaning forward over Kaydence’s shoulder. Kaydence tried hard not to tense.

  “Four possibilities, sir. On the off chance that the officer was asking.”

  “H’mm.” Koscuisko was focused on the stats Kaydence had called up for him, his attention apparently absorbed by the problem. “I will speculate, and you will correct me in my recitation, Kay.”

  Koscuisko would only touch people at all if he liked them. Bond-involuntaries only if he trusted them to interpret the intimacy as affection, not as any of the other things it could be to a bond-involuntary — starting with casual violation of personal space, and ending all too often in physical bullying or demands for sexual services.

  Did Koscuisko trust him still?

  “One, that the name is wrong, simply like enough to another. But you have checked twice eight names, Kaydence, and here are ten replies. And no prisoner so named is found here dead.”

  Kaydence nodded. Happy to be working on developing this problem with the officer, one on one, and on an equal footing. Miserable with longing for a sign.

  “Two, that these living prisoners simply share the name by coincidence. They’re different people. But we should see multiple hits on single names if that happened. One dead, one living.”

  “Three,” Koscuisko said eagerly, as though enjoying their shared understanding of the problem. “They are the named prisoners. Morse Wab, or someone representing himself as Morse Wab, simply lied, to cause embarrassment to the prison. There are speak-sera. A man could ask.”

  Especially his Excellency could ask. Only his Excellency could lawfully ask, with a speak-serum. Koscuisko held the Writ.

  “Or there have been prisoners who have died without a record made, and the question of how they died and why it was not recorded is something the officer will want to investigate.”

  Those were the four ideas Kaydence had in mind, at any rate.

  After a moment Koscuisko decided. “Order me up these people, Kaydence, we need not tell anyone why we wish to speak to them. Let the Administration believe they were named in Inquiry as collaterals. We cannot ignore the narrative. But it will be prudent to keep quiet about it.”

  Because there were only two out of those four ideas that seemed likely to be true; and if Morse Wab had not been lying, it meant that the Administration was committing systematic murder in full knowledge that its conduct was criminal. And under a Bench authorization, at that.

  “Directly. Your Excellency.”

  He knew what to do.

  But as he moved to invoke the prisoner calls, Koscuisko leaned over Kaydence’s shoulder to peer at the com-access, putting his hand to the back of Kaydence’s neck so that his thumb lay at the base of Kaydence’s skull and his fingers rested naturally and comfortably around the side of Kaydence’s throat.

  “How could such a thing be managed?” Koscuisko seemed to be talking to himself, puzzling out a problem. “But there is money to be made, and the staff is Pyana. I do not know what to think of it. I tremble, that it could go further than this prison alone.”

  The muscles of Kaydence’s neck, the muscles of his shoulders, the muscles of his upper back surrendered up their tension gratefully at the touch of Koscuisko’s hand. The officer was not going to stand off from him. He was still Andrej Koscuisko’s man, though he was a bond-involuntary.

  Relief and gratitude betrayed Kaydence to himself. He had always suffered the embarrassment of having a sentimental nature. Kaydence caught his breath and bowed his head; Koscuisko, startled, started to move, started to take his hand away. Kaydence didn’t want Koscuisko to take his hand away. He couldn’t a
sk. He couldn’t explain. Had he been able to explain, he wasn’t sure but that misplaced pride might have prevented him from speaking anyway.

  Kaydence raised his right hand to cover Koscuisko’s hand instead and hold it to him, claiming his status without words in terms Koscuisko himself had taught him meaning to.

  Turning the chair on its seat-pivot, Koscuisko folded his arms around Kaydence where he sat, and held him close. Kaydence wept. There was no way in which to make Koscuisko understand. The thing about Andrej Koscuisko was that it had never been necessary for him to understand in order to be able to understand, nonsensical as that was.

  After a while Koscuisko offered Kaydence his white-square.

  Kaydence grinned, though his eyes ached. It was a joke of sorts. Chief Samons had put him on extra duty for being out of uniform more often than any of Koscuisko’s other Bonds. Boot-stockings not mended. A bit of seam come undone and not sewn back. A frayed under-collar not made right. Failure to carry a clean white-square at all times.

  He had a perfectly good white-square in his blouse-plaquet.

  He’d use Koscuisko’s.

  Tradition.

  “Pyana, sir?” Kaydence asked, just to show that he’d been listening.

  Koscuisko seemed to shrug, fractionally, uncomfortably. “Nurail are to Pyana as Sarvaw have been to Dolgorukij, which is to say cattle. Also, like Dolgorukij and Sarvaw, Pyana and Nurail are more alike than not so, deny it though they will.”

  Ethnicity and prejudice, then. Of course. Koscuisko spoke on. “In the history of the Dolgorukij Combine the most savage atrocities have been most constantly committed against precisely those people who are most like Aznir Dolgorukij. I do not mention Chuvishka Kospodar, Kaydence. But he was my great-great-grandfather.”

  Well, if the officer said so. “His Excellency would be interested in a staff profile, then.” In order to be able to judge with more precision the extent to which Pyana held the majority of the influential positions in the prison. Affecting their potential willingness to commit murder in the full expectation of getting away with it, accordingly.