“You have committed a Class Two violation. Therefore you may elect to test a Controlled List candidate drug in lieu of other Class Two discipline, if you are offered the alternative by the Administrator. Koscuisko is determined that you have committed a Class One violation. Therefore we will let the Class Two pass with the token ordeal — a talking-drug . . . ”
Stopped in front of where he sat, now, the Tutor fixed his eyes on Robert’s face. For emphasis?
“And you will accept Class One discipline from Student Koscuisko. Your officer.”
He couldn’t be sure, there was too much to think about. He almost thought that he was being offered a way out, a chance, his life; but that was too dangerous to dream on. Hope had confused his mind, making him hear things that never had been implied. That had to be the explanation.
In his confusion he said the first thing that came to his mind, in response to the last thing he’d heard the Tutor say. “The greater fault overrides the lesser fault. Sir. The more severe discipline replaces all the lesser.”
As if he would object on that head, if he could believe that there was any hope at all. As if that would make a difference, between a chance for life and death by torture.
The Tutor smiled. “Yes, of course you’re right,” he said. “At least under normal circumstances. But in this case, the greater punishment is being waived on a technicality, because Koscuisko has got stubborn about it. Do you really mean to challenge the Bench on this issue?”
Mindless panic flooded Robert’s mind at the mere phrase. Challenge the Bench? Challenge the Bench? Of course he could not, dare not, challenge the Class One discipline. To challenge the Bench would be . . . it would be —
“Be at ease.” Tutor Chonis was quite near to him now, speaking low and confidentially in his ear. “It’s just your governor, Robert, running a little hyperactive, probably should be adjusted for stress. Of course no one suggested such a thing. I — regret — my thoughtless use of the phrase.”
There was the strangest note of strained unbelief in Tutor Chonis’s voice, almost as if he did not understand why he was saying the words that he heard himself speak. Believable or not, the words restored Robert’s psychic equilibrium — to a degree — almost as quickly as it had been upset in the first place.
“Sir.” The Tutor moved away, quickly. “No disrespect was intended, if the Tutor please. Spoken for clarification only. Sir.” In fact he was unsure why he had made so ill-advised a remark; but the Tutor, nodding, merely continued in his explanation, as if he had decided to treat it as unobjectionable.
“It is already a rather extreme appeal to Administrative privilege to substitute the trial of such an innocuous drug where the other less benign ones were clearly intended. The Administrator must demonstrate that his decision was based on reason and sound Judicial practice, and the best interest of Fleet. And this has nothing to do with you, St. Clare, we aren’t doing you any favors. It has everything to do with Andrej Koscuisko.”
Now it began to be real, to Robert. He finally started to grasp the actual meaning of what the Tutor was saying to him. That they would offer him reprieve was not within the realm of even the wildest fantasy for a bond-involuntary with a Class Two violation. That they would reprieve him by the way, as a casual gesture designed to ingratiate them with their young torturer, made much more sense.
He remembered Koscuisko’s fingers in his shoulder, the officer’s cold amused tone of voice, commenting on the beating that he was administering. He couldn’t suppress a shudder.
“It might be quicker,” he whispered. “With the Tutor’s permission. To take it all at once, and die of it. Instead of . . . what?” The conflict of emotions warring in his mind unmanned him, leaving him vulnerable to nameless imagined horrors. “What is this Koscuisko, that he wants so much to see me bleed? Again?”
Talking to himself, he did not at first realize that the Tutor was answering his question.
“If he wanted merely to see you bleed, we’d have given you to him for your Class Two violation, and see what he would make of his Advanced Levels. No, I think he’s trading something he very much doesn’t want to do, simply in order to get you off the charge. But it doesn’t matter what either of us thinks.”
The Tutor signaled at the gate, continuing to talk with his back turned as he stepped out into the corridor.
“You’re to be assigned to him, as it happens. Permanently. Get used to the idea.”
Assigned?
To Koscuisko?
To be responsible for the life of the man who had shamed him, to die in defense of the man who had put him to torture?
“And he’s the one who wanted it that way.” The Tutor stood on the other side of the gate now, with his hands clasped behind his back and an odd look of amusement and self-satisfaction on his face. “So you’ll have plenty of time to decide how you feel. And twenty-six years is a long time, isn’t it, Rabin? But not so long as thirty.”
Then Chonis nodded — in the face of Robert’s speechless stare — and was gone from his line of sight.
Twenty-six years? Instead of thirty?
Then Megh would not need to suffer the extra term, after all. . .
For the freedom to ransom his sister he could do anything.
He could even submit to Koscuisko, and wait for the Day.
###
Near the second quarter of second-shift, Joslire woke to the sounds of Koscuisko starting to stir. Slipping out into the corridor, he ordered the officer’s meal — a little on the heavy side, Koscuisko hadn’t eaten for nearly five shifts now. Koscuisko was in the wet-shower when Joslire got back, leaning up against the back wall with the water full in his face — trying to clear his head? To wake up? Under other circumstances, Joslire might have grinned, Koscuisko was so obviously struggling with his sleep. But officers were not to be smiled at, no matter how indulgently, not even in the privacy of one’s own thoughts.
Joslire contented himself with setting up the meal tray instead.
Koscuisko took his time in the wet-shower. Joslire got the uniform of the day hung neatly on the rack in the inner room, without hurrying, and was just about to check the depth of steep in the rhyti brewer when the shower shut off. Koscuisko came out of the lavatory dripping and half-naked, toweling his hair; he was beginning to look a little less asleep, but only just, and Joslire stood to attention to greet him without any sort of trepidation about what sort of mood his Student might be in.
“The officer slept well?”
Which only made the shock, and his confusion, the more abrupt and disorienting. He hadn’t been expecting Koscuisko to do or say anything in particular, certainly nothing like this.
“I imagine. What time is it? Good morning, Joslire, would you be so good as to remove your clothing.”
It was a moment before Joslire quite understood what Koscuisko had said, the order coming directly on the heels of Koscuisko’s rather disconnected response. But Koscuisko was clearly waking even as he spoke, and by the time Joslire absorbed the fact that he’d been told to undress Koscuisko had already become a little impatient with the delay. “If you please, Joslire.”
In fact he sounded almost angry, angry at Joslire. Bowing quickly, Joslire moved his hand to the secures at his blouse’s collar almost before he’d well completed his salute. “The officer’s pardon is — ”
“To be used for an improbable anatomical experiment. Did you wear your five-knives, when you were . . . when you played the game?”
The game . . . when he served as prisoner-surrogate, perhaps. There was only one probable reason for Koscuisko’s order, Joslire knew; not as if it would be the first time, no. Bond-involuntaries were expected to accommodate their officers in any manner their officers might choose to specify. But what difference would his five-knives make to Koscuisko, if that was what the officer intended? Why would it matter?
“It was necessary to perform the exercise without, by the officer’s leave.” A bond-involuntary might be permitted
his five-knives. They could be considered to fall under religious exception; and served also as a constant reminder of his shame, to have dishonored his five-knives by wearing them as an enslaved man. But a prisoner would naturally have been stripped of them immediately. For security purposes, quite apart from all the rest.
“Then you will oblige me by taking them off. Now.”
Joslire dropped his head in submission, glad of the opportunity to hide his conflict. “According to the officer’s good pleasure.” Koscuisko’s meal would be getting cold, the rhyti over-steeped. It wouldn’t do to mention that, though he was just as likely to suffer for the fact. No, that wasn’t so — Joslire scowled at himself, stripping off his under-blouse hurriedly. The officer hadn’t seemed the type to make use of a compliant body in quite this way. What had happened to Koscuisko in the Tutor’s office? The Tutor had seemed pleased about something, that was true.
Koscuisko had gone back to the washroom to leave the towel and frown at the mirror. Joslire couldn’t afford to steal more than a glance, he’d been told twice now, he didn’t dare keep the officer waiting. Fumbling with the catches, he loosed the sheathing that bound his five-knives to him, so close — so much a part of him — that the simple requirement to remove them had been almost as much of the torment of the game, as Koscuisko had termed it, as any of the rest. Did Koscuisko know that? Did Koscuisko care? Why should Koscuisko care, except that Joslire had imagined that Koscuisko had been serious about his Bond, except that Koscuisko had seemed genuinely distraught to think that St. Clare would have to stand discipline for a Class Two violation, and likely die of it . . .
Koscuisko stood in the washroom’s doorway, watching him. Joslire laid his five-knives down on his sleep-rack as reverently as he dared, and pulled his boots off clumsily. Moving into the center of the room Koscuisko contemplated his meal tray, and for one moment Joslire cherished a forlorn hope that the officer would permit himself to be distracted. Would change his mind and decide that the satisfaction of one appetite would serve as well as that of another.
He should have known better, he told himself, and laid his trousers neatly to one side of his folded blouse and his five-knives. It was better not to indulge in such fantasies. The more quickly the officer’s appetite could be satisfied, the more quickly he could get on with the rest of his job, and the Tutor would receive the report on Koscuisko’s sexual activity as a positive sign of a healthy libido functioning in more or less traditional ways. Joslire reached for the drawstring of his hip-wrap, anxious — if not eager — to be on the other side of the next few eighths; but Koscuisko’s cold voice stopped him a scant sixteenths short of total nudity.
“That’s quite all right, Joslire, I should like you to turn to the wall, if you would. I understand that the posture is a familiar one?”
Familiar, perhaps, but not because of frequent and fond practice. Joslire turned to the wall and set his hands flat against the unforgiving steel, his arms stretched well out, turning his face to the floor. “At the officer’s discretion.” At least his voice was neutral, level, betraying no hint of his inner turmoil. It was a little unusual, still. He had been more frequently flogged against the wall like this than . . . than what the officer would seem to have in mind.
He could sense Koscuisko behind him, his skin prickling unpleasantly from the heat of Koscuisko’s own newly showered nakedness. Koscuisko was reaching his hands out, touching his back, touching his shoulders — perhaps it would be over quickly.
Koscuisko’s touch was light and clinical, considering, touching with the tips of his fingers, not his whole hand. Settling gently against Joslire’s skin before stroking his back, as if he was being careful not to startle him — as if Koscuisko could startle him, Joslire thought, and knew the bitterness of the betrayal that he felt in the helplessness of that necessarily passive resentment. He should have known better than to have imagined that Koscuisko was different than any of the others. He should have known better than to have thirsted after the respect Koscuisko had seemed to show him, as grateful as a starving man for any casual gesture Koscuisko made that could be taken as an acknowledgment of Joslire’s personal dignity. He was a bond-involuntary. He had no dignity. No title to his name, no title to his person, no title to his body. Nothing.
Koscuisko hadn’t said anything, still touching Joslire’s back, lingering for a moment from time to time over a particular spot, always moving his hands slowly enough to keep the skin from crawling in reflex trepidation. What was going on in his mind? There did seem to be a pattern, perhaps . . . Koscuisko seemed to be working his way from Joslire’s spine toward his sides, from the small of his back up to the back of his neck and across his shoulders. Almost Joslire had an idea, but no, it couldn’t be. It was too far-fetched. Just more wishful thinking, and why wouldn’t Koscuisko have just asked?
Koscuisko put his left hand out to Joslire’s hand, splayed as it was stubbornly against the wall. “I’m sorry, Joslire,” Koscuisko said. “But I require a more extreme angle. Move your arms out a bit, if you would please.”
What was Koscuisko after?
And why was waiting so much harder than being put to it, as brutal as that could be?
Koscuisko had both hands at the back of Joslire’s shoulder, and Joslire could feel those questing fingers traveling along the line of the muscle stretched taut by Joslire’s constrained posture, lingering — briefly but perceptibly — over a knot that Joslire knew was there.
No, it couldn’t be . .
Down along Joslire’s flank, now, tracing the thin line of unresponsive skin — the scar tissue that shielded the insulted flesh from pain by refusing to admit all further sensation. Joslire caught his breath in a sudden sobbing gasp, startled out of all his discipline by the shock of his realization — and the paradoxical shame he felt. His scars. That was what Koscuisko wanted, his scars, Koscuisko was reading his body with his hands, feeling and finding the scars that did not show on the surface: the little dead knots where the uttermost tip of the lash had bitten deeply, the long lines down his side where the Student Interrogator had tested his silence with hot metal. The cry escaped his tightly clenched teeth in something like a cough, and Koscuisko flattened his damned hands against Joslire’s back and stilled them there, waiting.
“It is very difficult?”
Koscuisko spoke gently, quietly, leaving plenty of space for Joslire to respond.
“Would it be easier for you if I consulted the record, instead? Is there a record that will tell me what I want to know?”
How could he respond? He could be honest, or he could do his duty. And his governor would not permit him to commit a violation, not if it noticed one coming.
“The officer holds the Bond.” He sounded half-strangled, even to himself. “The officer is to be provided whatever the officer wishes. The information is on Record.” Usually restricted, because of the secrecy of the program, but Tutor Chonis would surely release it to Koscuisko if Koscuisko asked, now that there was no further sense in trying to keep anything from him. “The instructional tape. Is on file. To be viewed at the officer’s pleasure, in the Tutor’s library.” As if he wanted to even think about that, when it was all he could do to keep his voice from breaking . . .
“I should not have asked it of you,” Koscuisko murmured, as if to himself. “You will forgive me, Joslire, please. I hope.”
Joslire could sense Koscuisko turning away, stepping away, moving toward the inner room.
“On the other hand . . . ”
It was forlorn, that note in Koscuisko’s voice; forlorn, and utterly desolate.
“On the other hand, after all, you are obliged to.”
He did not trust himself to move; nor had he been given leave to, come to that.
“Dress yourself, Joslire. I do not wish to examine your medical records, or your . . . the tapes. There is word from Tutor Chonis for me? Never mind, I will be out in a moment; tell me then.”
There was the sound of the privacy barrier
sliding to, and Joslire was alone in the outer room, alone and shaken all out of proportion with what little had actually happened to him.
Koscuisko had been so careful, in his touch . . .
Pushing himself away from the wall, he willed the rock-hard tension that ran through his body to subside. There had been no threat. There had been no assault, no intent to assail. And he would not have been permitted to do other than submit, had there been any.
He wiped his face and dressed himself as quickly as he could, and hoped that the officer’s meal might still be judged acceptable.
It was humiliating to be so grateful to Koscuisko for the simple fact that Koscuisko hadn’t used him.
But well-brewed rhyti was the only way he had to show that he was grateful, humiliating or not.
###
Oh, Mother of this man, Mother of us all, look upon his suffering, and may it be enough. May honor be satisfied, may you find it full punishment, and condescend to shield him from his sins in your sweet favor. Mother, so we pray, accept his suffering in atonement, and grant it be sufficient; frown no longer upon him . . .
But the Holy Mother cared only for the Aznir, her children, and Joslire was Emandisan. What could the litanies of his childhood avail him here? When he sought to do his duty, there was suffering. If he sought to relieve suffering, he made it worse. There was no getting away from it; it had been torture for Joslire to suffer his touch, and so much more torture was attested to by the mute but damning evidence of all of that subdermal scar tissue. He had no right to reach for Joslire’s private heart, and expose him to his own shame. There was victim guilt to consider, Andrej reminded himself. The more one’s servants were beaten, the more completely they became convinced that they deserved even stricter discipline yet — a folk truism authenticated by the common psychology of sentient species, a defensive trick played by the order-greedy mind to make sense of an arbitrary world.
An Exchange of Hostages Page 19