An Exchange of Hostages

by Susan R. Matthews

  “Talk to me, then, Davit. Do you know why you are here?” If she was of a Cynergau lineage, Class-Four hominid, then she would carry as much muscle as a man of her race; something to keep in mind. Skin tore differently over muscle.

  She shook her head, turning her face away. One of the Security moved her head back with a hand at the nape of her neck so that she faced him politely.

  “No. Your Excellency.”

  Surely she had some idea. “Really, you can’t guess? What do you imagine that it could be?”

  “Truly, your Excellency, they came and took me away from my shop in the middle of the evening, and I don’t understand.”

  Clearly she’d not been referred due to her intransigent nature. “There was a preliminary inquiry?”

  She made a gesture as though she wanted to turn her face aside again. But she did not turn her face. She was being commendably careful, Andrej thought. “There was. Your Excellency. They said I was accused of harboring, but I didn’t understand. I told them so.”

  And they hadn’t believed her, so much was obvious. Someone else must have given up information already. Andrej wondered what it was, exactly, that interested the Bench so much about this woman.

  “Harboring, what did they mean by that? Did they explain it to you?”

  Was he mistaken, or had she hesitated? “I . . . didn’t understand what they said, your Excellency, they said . . . No, I didn’t understand what they said.”

  “Perhaps if you were to share it with me, we could an interpretation develop, between the two of us.”

  The woman bit her lip and stood silent.

  What she’d been asked wasn’t all that difficult. The prisoner’s brief contained the information: movement of suspected Free Government agents with forged papers through her shop. Andrej didn’t think she hadn’t understood the issue.

  He did think that she was afraid to discuss it.

  If there was no problem, she would not need to be reluctant. It was a simple matter, really, and easy to deny as long as one wasn’t worried about being caught in an embarrassing contradiction of some sort.

  “You are not being candid with me, Davit. What are you hiding?”

  She could be expected to keep shut to protect those dear to her. But it seemed fair to guess from the information in the prisoner’s brief that at least one of the people she was trying to protect had already given her up to Fleet to save himself. Herself. Whomever.

  “Please, your Excellency, there has been a mistake. I don’t understand.”

  He had his work cut out for him, and a driver thirsty for blood. It made him a little restless to be sitting here and talking when he could be at his exercise.

  “I’m sorry. Your response is not acceptable.” Now she made a liar out of him as well. He was not sorry. He was too interested in finding out more about the driver’s capabilities against living flesh. He would do penance for the falsehood later. “Gentlemen, if you would do me the kindness of uncovering this woman. And then you may stand away.”

  Discipline was to be taken with a bare back. It was better so, since Joslire had said the stroke would have to be repeated if it failed to break the skin.

  As if an abstract interest in the skill were the only reason that he wished to use the driver. . .

  The woman cowered away from him, trying to cover up her nakedness with her hands. For a moment Andrej hesitated. Was it not a shameful thing to uncover an honest woman, and force her guilt from her with whips and fire?

  He didn’t care, not now. Not anymore. Or at least he didn’t care enough to lay aside the driver and walk out.

  “Come now, we will discuss.” The whip snaked out, the snapper cracking in the air beside her head. She flinched away from it ungracefully; and Andrej followed up on the backstroke, marking her shoulder with an ugly stripe. “First, if you will, that crime of which you were accused, at your first interview. And so on from there. Am I understood?”

  She would confess to him exactly what it had been that she claimed not to have understood. And then she would confess to him why she had wished she had not understood it; and then they would investigate the depth and the complexity of the understanding that she’d wished to disavow.

  “Excellency, I don’t understand, I don’t know what they were talking about — ”

  He caught her around the ankle and pulled it out from under her, tearing a bright red bracelet around her leg.

  “Harboring, you said. And how were you to have harbored, and whom?”

  It was pleasant to test the whip’s performance and find it so obedient to his desire.

  “No, I have harbored no one, I am an honest woman. You have my documents, check my documents.”

  He checked her lies instead, and made her gasp with it.

  Nor did he feel he would be needing to have a lefrol for his nerves.

  ###

  He broke her feet with the driver; and she crawled away from him toward the wall, wishing him in Hell for his suspicious nature. He broke her hands with the driver, much more delicate work; and she lifted her voice to her goddesses and invited all of Jurisdiction to be damned as well on top of him, as long as he were to be damned most deeply and most dreadfully.

  He had Security lift her to lie on her back on the table with her hands useless at her sides, giving his lefrols — not forgetting the rhyti — over into the keeping of such Security as were not required to hold her to her place. He raped her brutally with the butt end of the driver; and she begged him to consider that she had borne children, and that her womb was consequently worthy of respect, not such ill-treatment.

  The Security set her back down to the floor for him, and he beat her with the doubled lash until he knew from the trouble that she had in breathing that he had compromised her ribs; and she lamented for her children, the children born to her broken body, and the trouble that they were in, the bad and dangerous things they’d gotten involved with.

  And then he stepped away and let the length of the driver out of his fist, and practiced his apprentice-craft upon her until she was decently clothed in a smooth all-concealing garment of her own bright red blood. And she put out her shattered hands to him, and pleaded with him that he leave off his exercise, and asked him what it had been that he had wanted to know.

  Except that by that time she’d told him more than he had thought to gain from her. Andrej didn’t think there was any point to going over it all again. Without access to medication, she would be gone from him within a matter of hours, since bright pain could overrule the escape that shock provided for only so long. And she would bleed to death, drugs or no drugs, because he’d done his rape so thoroughly, and the driver had been so thirsty for her pain. No, he was the one who had been thirsty for her pain. The driver was a formidable tool, but only that. It had been his lust to hear her cry, his passion for her pain that had so damaged her. And he was sated now, and satisfied, now that she had surrendered herself to him, whether or not he had had her secrets from her earlier.

  He thought about it for a moment, pondering in his mind where the monitors would be.

  Then Andrej raised his head and looked to where he hoped that Tutor Chonis would be watching him.

  “It would seem that the Record is complete,” Andrej said. “It is to be hoped that the Protocols have been appropriately exercised to the Tutor’s satisfaction. In the absence of other topics of interest, I respectfully request the Tutor’s permission to terminate the exercise.”

  He waited. Without a decision one way or the other, he would be expected either to continue to misuse the woman until she died, or go off on his own business and let her last hours drag out in senseless and solitary agony. Neither of which seemed entirely satisfactory to Andrej.

  In a moment he heard the change in the background noise that meant that the Tutor’s communication channel had been engaged. “Very well, Student Koscuisko. You may dispatch your prisoner.”

  She had confessed clear killing offenses as far as Jurisdiction w
as concerned. Once in the field, he would require no such clearance to execute; he knew the Protocols, after all. In Orientation, however, it was up to the Administration to decide officially whether termination was to come sooner or later. Here it was Tutor Chonis’s responsibility to say when the prisoner was to die. Andrej appreciated the support the Tutor was apparently willing to grant to him, and received it with an appreciative salute.

  “Thank you, Tutor Chonis. Mister Haspir, if I may borrow your knife.”

  There were needle-knives provided among the instruments, of course. But they were too narrow for his purpose. He had a clear idea in his mind about what he wanted to do, and how he wanted to do it; for that he needed Haspir’s knife, since Joslire did not yet trust him with knives for his own use.

  Kneeling down at the woman’s back, he covered her eyes with his hand so that she could take her last few breaths in what privacy he could provide for her. First, to cut the connection between the brain and the sub-brain at the top of her spine, so that the mind need not be burdened with the body’s frantic signals that it was dying. And second, to cut the connection between the bundle of nerve fibers at the base of the brain and the spine, so that the body would forget to breathe and death would come of oxygen starvation. The woman was Cynergau, her nervous system built with rather more redundancy than other hominids of her class. Breathing would continue by reflex as long as the connection between the spine and the sub-brain was left intact.

  Andrej severed it.

  Her body stilled, and Andrej waited. Four eighths, and the body went into spasm, the uncoordinated twitches — neural “noise” — of a machine without a governor. Twelve eighths, and she was dead, and Andrej waited until enough time had passed that he could feel certain that her mind was still before he rose and beckoned for his rhyti.

  “Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen.” He could read no reservation, no hesitation in any of their expressions. They had done as he had instructed them, without questions either implicit or explicit, without the slightest indication of reluctance on their parts; and for that he was grateful. It could not be easy duty for them. “Mister Haspir, is there a firepoint here someplace?”

  Lefrols he’d brought; he’d issued them to himself from the range of intoxicants and inhibitors and antidepressants available to Students. Lefrols and alcohol — although he did not trust the cortac brandy, knowing too well what passed for cortac sold from Combine to Jurisdiction, and prudently confined himself to wodac. But a lefrol was no good without a firepoint, no matter how neatly the needle-knife from the table served to trim the end. Andrej felt a little foolish to be asking, but he did want a lefrol now. He was tired and he was hungry, and he didn’t know what time it was, but he rather suspected that it had gotten late, because Haspir seemed a little weary. If as correct as always.

  “According to the officer’s good pleasure.” Haspir bowed, presenting the lit firepoint as he did so. A decent firepoint it was, too, it burned clean and blue, and set a coal to his lefrol quite nicely.

  “Thank you again. Your knife.”

  His chair was still here, although the table had been pushed back against the wall earlier. His Mizucash friend stood by with his rhyti. Andrej let himself sit, surprised at how weary he felt; and the Security did not have the option. Security were expected never to sit in the presence of an officer, even a Student. Well, it was hard, but perhaps they were better at it than he was. What time was it?

  Andrej sat and smoked his lefrol and considered the corpse. He would be a little drunk in less than an eighth. Lefrols were good for that, if only one did not succumb to the temptation to take them too frequently. He wasn’t drunk now, though, so why didn’t he feel more affected, to have murdered the poor woman? Betrayed in her friends, betrayed in her family, betrayed in her goddesses for all that he could tell, and he had killed her. Terminated, concluded, dispatched, removed, the language of the Protocols could not disguise the basic truth of the matter; and the fact of the matter was that he had never killed a woman until now. A hare or two, a brace of game-birds, yes. A woman, never, nor a man nor child, either.

  And he had had no passion for the work, aside from gratitude that Tutor Chonis would permit him to make a clean end of her, instead of condemning that close-to-finished life to bleed out slowly in pain and in confusion. It was no excuse; but he was fairly certain that he had not enjoyed her death as he had enjoyed the long slow killing of her, and therefore it was possible that his murder of her had been cleanly done, uncontaminated by the passion that he was learning how to manage and maintain. Learning to use, since he had no hope of denying its existence to himself.

  The cleaning team came to take the body away, and here was Joslire coming on their heels to take him to his bed. What did Joslire think about the murders that his Students did?

  Andrej rose from his place, giving his rhyti glass to one of the cleaning team, and left the exercise theater with Joslire in his wake. Stumbling only slightly, which was good. It was enough of a shame to be smoking lefrols without requiring that Joslire carry him to quarters while he was at it. Lefrols were an acquired taste. Andrej knew from experience that people who didn’t smoke lefrols tended to feel rather violently about their odor.

  By the time he’d reached his quarters, he was light-headed, as he had expected to be — pleasantly euphoric, lazy and blissful in a mildly drunken sort of way. He didn’t want his supper, he wanted to have a wash, even if the time-keeper claimed that it was only second-shift. Andrej squinted at the time-keeper with confusion, trying to focus on its readout while the rest of the room swam slowly about him. No, not fourteen. Twenty-four. Not second-shift, but the end of third-shift. Had it really been so long? He certainly hadn’t noticed it getting late, and he’d not released Security for mid-meal. He was going to have to discuss this problem with Tutor Chonis. It could hardly endear him to his Security if he was to keep them on their feet for three shifts run together without so much as a short break for mid-meal.

  He gave his lefrol over into Joslire’s keeping and went into the washroom, stripping as he went. His uniform was dirty, soiled through to his under-blouse with blood; and the gloves were simply disgusting. Blood on his hands even through the gloves, blood under his fingernails — a rusty stain with a metallic smell that somehow seemed more natural than unpleasant. Blood in the waste-stream of the wet-shower, the dried smudges blooming pink as the warm moisture rinsed them from his body. He had not remembered it being quite so messy a business as this before. On the other hand, she had been his Seventh Level.

  By the time that the waste-stream ran clear, by the time that he felt clean enough to face himself in the mirror once again, Joslire had taken his soiled clothing away and set his sleep-shirt out to wait for him. Padding damp and barefoot into the main room, Andrej cast about him for his lefrol, and found it in a dish on the study set, alongside his meal. He didn’t want his meal. There was a glass of wodac there as well; he’d made a practice of taking quite a bit of wodac with his suppers after exercise. He didn’t want the wodac, either. He was drunk on the powerful intoxicant of the lefrol and full sated with the sweet sound of his prisoner’s pain. There was no room in all his body for an appetite, the exercise had satisfied so completely. He took the lefrol and its leavings-dish into the little closet where he had his bed and lay down to finish his smoke, content to not be thinking about much of anything.

  Joslire was at the door, but Joslire would not come in. Perhaps Joslire was worried about smoking in one’s bed, which was of course a nasty habit, and too likely to result in fire-suppression systems going off in the middle of a dream to be indulged in with any frequency.

  Well, if Joslire was worried, Andrej could afford to be done with lefrols for the evening. He was certainly drunk enough. And he had been hard at work all day; it was probable that he was tired, even if he was too euphoric to notice.

  He set the lefrol down into its leavings-dish and decided to go to sleep.

  ###

&nbs
p; Clellelan turned the record-cube over in his fingers, clearly musing over the conversation it contained — the scheduled review, First Secretary Verlaine, Mergau Noycannir. Tutor Chonis. “So, Adifer, you think that we might have a problem here?”

  “Two problems. Or one problem, two lock-links.” He’d spoken to the Administrator on Joslire Curran’s behalf earlier, when Clellelan had surprised him by offering the Safe. So at least the Administrator was already prepared for that one. “I’d have come to you sooner, but Koscuisko ran his Seventh Level a little richer than usual.”

  Clellelan frowned at his time-keeper. Middle of the first-shift, the second day of Koscuisko’s Seventh Level. The Administrator knew what the general schedule was — there were eighteen other Students in the Seventh Level exercises here, after all, and it would have been nineteen except for that unfortunate accident that one of Tutor Heson’s Students had had with a twisted sleep-shirt. Noycannir’s prisoner had died during the night, but no blame attached to her — at least no official blame. Although with Koscuisko’s drugs, there had been no real reason why the prisoner should not have lived to talk for three days yet. In Chonis’s professional estimation.

  “Talk to me, Adifer.”

  What, had Clellelan developed expectations where Koscuisko was concerned? “Didn’t stop for mid-meal, didn’t stop for third-meal. Noycannir’d been in quarters for five eights before Koscuisko decided he was finished. Asked me for permission to terminate.”

  Clellelan knew as well as he did how unusual that was. “Got lost in the exercise? What? Did you let him?”