Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  Within moments Chief Samons and Erish came shimmying down out of the fog; and they were all together.

  Fine.

  Time to make a surprise attack on the Administration of the Domitt Prison.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Assistant Administrator Merig Belan had finished the furnace cleaning schedule at last. But it was still some time before the morning; and this was the worst time. The tide out in the Tannerbay was turning, down beyond the Iron Gate; and when conditions were right, the trouble of the waters echoed all the way up to Rudistal, eights and eights upriver. The chop on the water had always frightened Belan, for no particular reason.

  Shuddering, Belan took another drink. He was safe here, far from the river, further yet from the Tannerbay. By himself, in his office, all alone. He didn’t want to be alone: he could go and find the night-watchman, solicit a game of guesses or something. He outranked the night-watchman. He could insist.

  And the night-watchman was Sentish, not Pyana, which would be all to the good; except that Sentish had been here when the Domitt Prison had come to Rudistal, and how was he to explain why he should be alive and here while the Nurail who had been part of Rudistal’s life for all of this time were gone?

  And no trace of them.

  No trace except ash from the furnaces, laid down as drainage at the reclamation site and the roads leading from the prison to the work areas. No trace but for what might lie beneath the walls of the great dike that Geltoi was constructing to reclaim the land at the bend of the river from the water. Winter was coming; and after that, spring. How would it be if there was to be flooding when the snowmelt came?

  The pontoon bridges across the river would be torn out, if they weren’t moved in time. Rudistal might lose its land-bridge yet again. And if the reclamation site was flooded, if the river scoured beneath the foundations of the dike, if bone and hair and rotting flesh should surface in the black chop of the river as it fought its way through Rudistal toward the Iron Gate?

  More liquor. Belan shook the bottle in his hand: empty, oh, this could not be allowed to happen. He was getting hysterical. Nothing was amiss. Nothing was wrong. Geltoi’s request for relief of the Inquisitor had gone out on a standard receipt, normal priority. Business as usual.

  No urgency, nothing wrong, simply a parting of the ways between a prison administration — whose documentation was perfectly in order, that had nothing to hide — and one over-young, arrogant Inquisitor with no respect for normal channels of authority or the common expectations of military courtesy. Nothing more.

  So the recall orders would come soon. Administrator Geltoi would call a Fleet escort to see the Inquisitor out of the Domitt Prison. Whatever Koscuisko might say when he returned to Scylla would have to be referred through channels eight layers deep as a procedural complaint.

  That process took weeks — sometimes even months — to reach the Bench level. There would be plenty of time to position themselves to answer any challenges from Koscuisko to the Bench’s satisfaction. Geltoi was confident of his ability to smooth things over and explain any apparent anomalies for the simple misunderstandings that they were.

  Perhaps they’d been a little careless, operating without any oversight for as long as they had done. Things would be different from now on.

  Was Geltoi truly confident that he could survive anything Koscuisko said?

  Or did he simply mean to put whatever blame on Merig Belan, and cry ignorance?

  Geltoi had made him sign the kitchen audit —

  No, Belan told himself firmly. He was not going to get paranoid. And if Geltoi meant to do that, there wasn’t anything Belan could do about it to protect himself anyway; Geltoi was Pyana, and Belan was no match for him. It was better to believe just what the Administrator said.

  The orders would come, Koscuisko would leave. The woman would be returned to the service house, though they would have to question her about potentially compromising information she might have learned from the Inquisitor in bed. The cook would be questioned as well, if somewhat more carefully; they were not in too much danger from the cook, and the cook was to be paid, after all. It would all work out.

  And once the sun but rose across the river he could leave, he could go to his little house and wash and eat and be away from here for a few hours at least. Administrator Geltoi would not be coming in before midmorning, surely, not after having been called back to the prison after supper. He could have five hours between sunup and return. But in order to survive till then he had to drink, because the trouble on the river raised the trouble in the fog, thick and white and murmurous on the south side of the building.

  It had been Geltoi’s idea of a joke to put Belan’s office on the south side of the building. Belan was sure of it. That was just the sort of sense of humor Geltoi had. Belan turned on the lights, all of them, he shut the sun-shields to close out the night, but he knew that the fog was out there.

  Waiting for him.

  Wouldn’t it be easier to take his life and go into the fog for once and all?

  Wouldn’t that be better than living in constant fear, fear of the fog, fear of Administrator Geltoi’s ridicule, fear of the resentment the prison staff had for him, one lone Nurail in a nest of venomous Pyana?

  Maybe if he got drunk enough he could find the nerve to do it, without having to think too hard about the irreversibility of the consequences.

  To get drunk he needed liquor.

  He’d finished what he’d had in his office hours ago.

  He knew where he could get some more, though.

  Administrator Geltoi kept several bottles of decent drinkable in his office. He wouldn’t miss one of them. Belan could be sure it was replaced before that could happen. He could go quietly enough; the fog would not know that he was there, and it was nearly morning. The spirits would be losing their night-strength and retreating to their graves anyway. Unquiet; but impotent, or nearly so.

  Right.

  Rising from behind his desk-table, Assistant Administrator Belan went to open the closed door of his office, the door he had closed to shut out the voices in the fog. Someone had left a vent-shutter open, he was sure of it, he would have a search made in the morning; but once the sun had set he didn’t dare get near any such vent that might let the fog in, and the spirits with it. With his door closed they wouldn’t know where he was; there would be no reason for them to come in to look for him.

  Quietly.

  He almost thought he heard the whisper of the fog in the corridor outside, no sound of voices, but a sound of bodies. What bodies they had were rotted away by now, burned up by the poison of the accelerant even as the rest were burned in the furnace-fire. It was the night-watchman, surely. Only the night-watchman. He was drunk, Belan knew that. He was hearing things.

  Taking care to make as little noise as possible, Belan eased the mechanical secures off the door-latch and turned the handle, opening up the door.

  Only to fall back from the opening gap in horror and transcendent fear: because the dead were there.

  Andrej Koscuisko, the demon Inquisitor, and who knew better than Merig Belan what Koscuisko could do with Nurail, when he chose?

  Andrej Koscuisko, standing square in the doorway with the fog on his body and mist in his hair. People behind him, and oh, they might look like Koscuisko’s Security, but Belan knew better. The fog gave them away. The fog surrounded them. They were ghastly and terrible with it, and the woman as well, the bondswoman from the service house, hadn’t Belan guessed it would be a mistake to set her to serve a man who murdered Nurail?

  “Assistant Administrator,” Koscuisko said. Belan heard his voice echoing from a very great distance off, and far deeper than Koscuisko’s voice had ever been. Because it wasn’t Koscuisko’s voice. It was the dead speaking, from beneath that weight of earth, their voices heavy and dark with death and rotting. “I’m glad to find you here, I need your help. Gentlemen, if you will.”

  The fog-policemen came into the room, cam
e forward for him, took him by the arms to raise him up from the floor. The weight of the shackles they latched across his wrists was cold: but it would burn. He had seen the burning in the furnaces. He knew that Koscuisko had guessed, that it was not the first time.

  And now he was just another Nurail prisoner, out of all the Nurail prisoners of the Domitt Prison. Merig Belan wept with hopeless despair as the Security brought him to stand before the Inquisitor.

  “Very good,” Koscuisko said, and he sounded mild-tempered and gentle, but Belan was not fooled. “We were told that you were in the building. I’ve a small chore for you, let’s go upstairs, shall we?”

  The fog-policemen moved him forward, out of his office, toward the lift. He didn’t mind going upstairs, not so long as it was upstairs in the Administration building, not so long as it was only to Geltoi’s office. Geltoi had created this, Geltoi had engineered the crimes that cried for vengeance, but it was Belan who would be punished for them. Poor Belan.

  He had reviewed Koscuisko’s interrogatories.

  He knew what Koscuisko could do, with Nurail prisoners.

  The dead men in the fog would have their vengeance . . .

  ###

  Andrej put the dose through at Belan’s throat, and the man relaxed at last. Not much. But enough. There was a look of madness to Belan’s eyes, and a peculiar stink to his body that Andrej recognized. They were in the presence of a true psychosis. They would have to be very careful: there was information Belan had that Andrej needed, and he didn’t care to lose it by inattention or accident.

  That was one reason.

  The other reason was that sentient creatures all responded to the near presence of great psychological disturbance by being disturbed themselves. And they were all stressed enough already. For everybody’s sake Belan needed to be calmed and comforted, relaxed and reassured.

  He needed much more than the emergency set of medications that a senior physician always carried with him, divided up amongst his Security. But Andrej would make do until he got access to Infirmary. Belan needed help badly. Andrej meant for him to have it: but Andrej needed Belan’s help first.

  “Merig?” Andrej asked as gently as he could. Ailynn sat and held Belan’s hand, stroking it soothingly. That was very good of her. Belan blinked; then looked up at Andrej, as though he was trying to focus.

  “Koscuisko. Ah, your Excellency. Sorry, sir, how did you get? — Must have dozed off. What time?”

  “Time to call the local Judiciary, I need a transmit. How do I find the direct, from here.”

  Administrator Geltoi’s office was logically where access to the local Judiciary would be found, because only Administrator Geltoi — or his deputy — had business making direct contact with such exalted levels of authority.

  Once Andrej but got to an appropriate transmit, he could cry his plaint, and be secure that it would be heard. He had to let Captain Vopalar know what was happening. But first he had to be sure he could get through to the Bench before anybody realized what was going on, to stop him.

  “Oh, well, that.” Belan struggled to his feet a little clumsily, staring at his shackled wrists in mild confusion. “Now, how did that happen? Oh, well. The Administrator’s direct line here, your Excellency. Only be sure to engage the refer, or else Security won’t get a listen-in. And, oh, the Administrator likes the recorder off, sensitive nature of the discussion. That kind of thing. Why, I remember, one day, I had to call to town for him about arranging for payment for the flour, and I forgot to set the recorder to null, and he was so angry.”

  Andrej nodded to Ailynn, and she drew Belan away with her to sit down on the low couch to one side of the room. Turn the Security refer off, so that nobody here would be on monitor, whether or not they happened to notice the communication going out. Turn the recorder on, to be sure he had evidence if necessary.

  It took some moments for his transmit request to go through, since he was sending it as far as he was. He wanted to be sure to register his claim at the Bench level; there was too much at stake if he should complain only to Chilleau Judiciary. Too much of a temptation would exist to cover up, quiet things, hush it all over.

  He couldn’t risk that.

  This had to be published: not to discountenance Chilleau Judiciary — though it was perhaps unfortunately certain to, whether justly or not — but in order to surface the wider question. Chilleau Judiciary was not corrupt. How could this have been allowed to happen?

  The counter-validation code showed in the communications screen.

  Bench access.

  Personal attention, na Roqua den Tensa, First Judge Presiding at Fontailloe Judiciary. Or her Court; it was all the same in Law for the purposes of crying his plaint. Receipt validation requested from Chilleau Judiciary.

  Still Andrej hesitated.

  He’d never so much as spoken to a Judge at such an exalted level before, and the prospect of standing before the First Judge at Fontailloe to speak his piece was a daunting one.

  “ . . . with sterile ash,” Belan was saying. “Where was the harm in that?” Talking to Ailynn about whatever. Probably not about anything that anyone could even make sense of in his current state of mind, with the drugs Andrej had fed him taken into account.

  The word “ash” caught in Andrej’s mind, and gave him strength.

  He was not standing alone in front of the Bench, to cry a claim like a private citizen.

  He was a Bench officer, whose Fleet rank only betokened his Judicial function. And he was not alone. It was not his complaint. It was the cry of the murdered prisoners of the Domitt Prison that he made before the First Judge. It was the burned victims of the furnaces who put out their hands for justice, and not him.

  “I am Andrej Ulexeievitch Koscuisko.” It was to be spoken, because the Bench validated his identity on his voice as well as on the codes that had been assigned to him for his use when he had taken up his Writ. “I hold the Writ to Inquire at the Domitt Prison. Due to the existence of multiple and systematic improprieties having to do with prisoner processing and documentation it has become necessary to cry failure of Writ at the Domitt Prison.”

  He had no legal formula to declare failure of Writ. They hadn’t really studied it at Fleet Orientation Station Medical, where he had received his training in jurisprudence and torture.

  “The immediate assignment of a Bench audit team is respectfully solicited. I have made this Brief, and I will stand on the justice of the decision, and hazard what consequences may accrue should the Bench invalidate my finding.”

  He waited.

  If the Bench reversed his finding, they would be clear to interpret his withdrawal of his Writ as an act of mutiny; and for mutiny even an Inquisitor was vulnerable to the most extreme penalty in the inventory.

  There was no help for it.

  He could not go quietly back to Scylla and let those furnaces continue to burn, not to save his life.

  Was his cry to be intercepted, refused, declined by some Clerk of Court at Fontailloe Judiciary, too radical a plea to be admitted?

  Failure of Writ.

  It had not been cried against a Judicial institution that Andrej could remember in his life.

  There was a clattering of sound in the com-access, and Andrej knew by the way in which the com-access fought to recalibrate itself that it was processing a clear-signal at the extreme limits of its tolerance.

  Koscuisko. This is the duty. Officer, Fontailloe Judiciary. Stand by for the. First Judge.

  But it was weeks and weeks between Rudistal and Fontailloe Judiciary . . .

  Every booster station between here and the Gollipse vector had to be on maximum override.

  Andrej sat down, frightened of his own temerity, awed by the immensity of what he had done; and the voice that sounded next — and it was a voice, garbled and indistinct though it was — chilled him through to bones he hadn’t realized he even had.

  “What do you claim to have. Been done, young man. Be sure of what you say to me
.”

  The First Judge.

  Na Roqua den Tensa, Fontailloe Judiciary.

  The First Judge Presiding on the Jurisdiction’s Bench.

  She had maintained the Judicial order all of Andrej’s life: and her law was legend.

  “Murder has been done, your Honor, to the great shame and disgrace of the Judicial order.” He was so ashamed, to have come before her in such cause. This was the First Judge. And yet he knew that he was right. “Nurail are under Jurisdiction, they are not to be tortured and killed absent due and adequate process. The Writ has failed horribly at the Domitt Prison, your Honor, and we cannot in Law tolerate it.”

  How could he say such a thing to the First Judge?

  He could hardly believe he was really speaking to her.

  “What does Chilleau Judiciary say. Why take so drastic a step.”

  How could he challenge the First Judge, over a handful of Nurail lives?

  Even if that handful should run to thousands, how could it compare to the greater good of all under Jurisdiction?

  “I have cried direct, your Honor. I fear for loss of evidence.”

  Please.

  He to whom so many useless pleas for mercy, pity, understanding had been addressed, he could not plead for mercy or understanding. He would stand or fail on the Judicial merit of his plaint.

  “Do you know who I am, young Koscuisko?”

  Was it his imagination, or was there amusement in that multiply transmitted and retransmitted voice?

  “You are the First Judge.” Before whom he could only bend his neck in humility. “Den Tensa, of good Precedent and grave ruling. Fontailloe Judiciary.”

  She was offended at him.

  His cause was trivial, in the greater scheme of things.

  He could not believe that the murder of guiltless parties was trivial, no matter how few. It was not an issue of relative importance. The rule of Law was absolute: or else it was not the rule of Law.