Tangled Up in Blue

by Joan D. Vinge

  “Not yet,” Gundhalinu said, glaring at TessraBarde. “I have some questions to ask him first.”

  Tree shrugged wearily, in answer to the others’ dubious stares. “At least the view’s not four walls and a ceiling.” The Med Center took up most of an alley, abutting the storm wall; the lounge had a rare view of the city’s shell-form exterior falling away toward the sea, the sea merging imperceptibly into the fog-bounded sky.

  The others murmured their farewells and started out of the room, forcing Gundhalinu to move aside as they passed. He watched them go, his dark eyes wary, his expression grim.

  “LaisTree.…” Gundhalinu turned back again. His bitter gaze looked Tree up and down as if he was tallying a damage report.

  Tree returned the stare, his eyes empty. There was no mark on Gundhalinu that he could see, no proof that the sergeant had narrowly avoided his own un-ticketed passage with the Boatman. He was still the perfect Tech recruiting-poster-boy: slender, medium height, his brown fine-boned face salted with pale freckles, his uniform impeccably neat—an arrogant, over-educated spoiled brat playacting the role of a Police officer. He’d never have what it took to be a real Blue, even if he rose to the rank of Commander, which he probably would. He’d never be anything but a bureaucrat with a stick up his ass.

  “Have a seat,” Tree said, resigned. He gestured at the couches and chairs around him, glad that there was no one else in the room just then.

  “I’ll stand.” Gundhalinu folded his arms.

  “Then could you stand where you’re not blocking my view?”

  Gundhalinu looked over his shoulder at the window and back again. He didn’t move.

  Tree grunted. “What do you want, Sergeant?”

  Gundhalinu glanced toward the doorway, almost as if he was afraid of being seen, before he said, “I want you to tell me about the warehouse massacre.”

  Tree shifted position, grimacing as a suture pulled in his side. The deep foam of the seat reshaped itself to his body, making him feel trapped. “I already did that today, for Special Investigator Jashari.” Jashari had come to see him every day, as persistent as his pain; another soulless Technician bastard, asking him questions he couldn’t answer, over and over and over, until he felt like screaming. “Like I’ve done it every single day since I woke up here. Watch the damn tapes, why don’t you?”

  Jashari had forced him to watch the tapes. Jashari had forced him to do much worse … His brainwave profile was synched to a full-sensory feed of the virtual record from the crime scene, via a consensus loop he had never consented to. Whenever Jashari decided it was “necessary”, his still-fragile consciousness was dropped through a trapdoor in reality, into the massacre’s aftermath.

  Reborn among the dead, he was forced to wander the reeking, ghastly landscape of shattered bones and charred unrecognizable flesh, enduring the silent accusations of smoking sightless eyes, tongueless mouths … until he waded once again into a river of blood, to stand gazing down at his brother’s mutilated body, tangled with his own like a lover’s.

  Every time, no matter where in Interface Hell he started from, he knew the journey would end that way: that he would find himself once again staring down at his brother’s face, distorted by a death-scream for all eternity.

  It was the only way out. The program’s key would disengage a codestring lock only when he surrendered his last illusory shred of free will … when he kneeled down beside his brother’s corpse and felt his mind go fetal, as his soul bled out of him into the empty husk of his own broken body.…

  And when he opened his eyes again, he would be back in his hospital room, and Jashari would be waiting for him … and still he could only answer questions about the massace with “I don’t know.”

  His memory of that night was gone forever, and his career as a Hegemonic Police officer was gone with it; nothing would bring either one back, now.

  And just ten minutes ago, he had learned that he’d lost his final chance to see Staun’s face at peace, one last time. Now the tortured vision Jashari had seared into his brain would be his final memory of Staun forever, because he would never see his brother, alive or dead, ever again.…

  “What—?” he said thickly, as he realized that Gundhalinu was still speaking to him. “What?”

  “I said I’ve seen all the tapes,” Gundhalinu repeated impatiently. “You just keep saying you don’t know anything. I think you’re a liar. I can’t believe you really don’t remember anything—”

  Tree looked up at him with burning eyes. “I don’t—remember—anything,” he said, dropping each word on Gundhalinu like a stone.

  “Maybe you don’t want to. Who are you protecting? Your partner? He’s dead; they’re all dead, for gods’ sakes! More than a dozen officers are dead. You’re the only witness. If you don’t cooperate, if you don’t help us, we’ll never get the ones who—”

  “I can’t remember, damn you!” Tree shouted. He pushed to his feet; fell back as the pain blindsided him. “I nearly got my fucking head blown off—” by a uniform, a Kharemoughi, with a gun targeting his face—He sucked in a ragged breath. No … He hunched over, hugging his chest. No.… he couldn’t, not ever.… “LaisTree?” Gundhalinu murmured uncertainly.

  No.…

  “No, damn it!” he said hoarsely, struggling back into the light. “You caught that blast too, Gundhalinu. How the hell much do you remember?”

  Gundhalinu made a sound too painful to be a laugh. “I remember everything,” he said bleakly. “I don’t want to. But I can’t stop seeing it.…”

  Tree stared at him.

  Gundhalinu looked away, down at the reliquary box on the table. He reached out to pick it up.

  Tree caught his hand, bent it back hard. “Don’t touch that,” he said, his voice raw. “Get the hell away from me, you fucking prick!”

  Gundhalinu backed up, blinking too much, as Tree let him go. He looked toward the window, out at the sky, his stunned expression hardening into spite. “Enjoy the view,” he said at last, rubbing his hand as he started out of the room. “You won’t have one much longer.”

  * * *

  Gundhalinu forced himself to slow down, to take shorter strides, longer breaths; getting his emotions under control before he finished walking the distance down the hall to Jerusha PalaThion’s hospital room. His heartbeat had almost dropped back to normal by the time he knocked on the frame of her open door.

  “By the Boatman, Gundhalinu, you’re late!” PalaThion was fully dressed and pacing the floor—a feat she did with considerable difficulty, because of the cast still encasing her left leg nearly to the hip. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Gundhalinu hid his guilty start by looking down at his watch. “I’m here exactly when you told me to be, Inspector.”

  She stopped pacing to look at him. “You’re always early, BZ. Always. Do you have any idea of how much I want to get out of this place?”

  “Yes, Inspector. Believe me—” He nodded with heartfelt empathy. “I already have you signed out and the patroller waiting. I can take you straight home from here.” He offered his arm for support.

  She shook her head, and he knew better than to insist. “You can carry those.” She gestured at a headset, a tape reader and an assortment of documents on the bedside table. “At least I got caught up on my backlog.”

  He gathered them together and dropped them into a carryall. When he looked up again, she had already left the room, and was making her way down the hall toward the lift. He hurried to catch up with her, then slowed his pace to match hers.

  “So why were you late?” PalaThion asked.

  He took a deep breath. “I saw LaisTree.” He pointed ahead toward the sunroom, directly across from the lift at the hall’s end. “I stopped to ask him about the … the massacre.”

  She glanced at him. “I thought you told me the Chief Inspector—”

  “I know. I know.…” Gundhalinu looked down. “But I can’t believe LaisTree hasn’t remembered somethin
g, with all the memory drugs, and the interrogation he’s been through.”

  “He probably has, on some level. But I’ve seen the tapes. He’s not faking.” PalaThion’s face pinched, and she shook her head.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’ve seen a lot of trauma victims,” she said sharply. She looked away. “That Internal Affairs investigator the Judiciate assigned to the case has his head so far up his own ass he could kiss himself goodnight.”

  Gundhalinu stared at her. “Did you say that simply because he’s from Internal Affairs?”

  “No, I didn’t.” She met his stare, expressionless. “Assumption is the mother of screwups, Gundhalinu; stereotyping is bad procedure, and also damned dangerous. But Jashari uses his IA privilege like a blunt instrument. His interrogation methods are inappropriate to LaisTree’s condition—he’s only reinforcing the trauma. It doesn’t matter whether LaisTree’s one of us or not, or even if he’s guilty of breaking the law or not. Jashari needs to back off and give him room to breathe. Then I think his memories would start to surface.”

  Gundhalinu frowned. “I got the feeling that LaisTree might not admit he remembered, even if he did.”

  “Why not?” PalaThion looked back at him. “What possible motive could he have for not wanting us to catch the killers?”

  Gundhalinu hesitated. “When I spoke with him, there was a point when I could almost have sworn he was … afraid.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Of what?”

  “I don’t know … That doesn’t really make sense, does it?” Gundhalinu sighed. “Unless maybe it’s the vigilantism charges.”

  “He confessed to those the first time Jashari questioned him. I don’t see how admitting the details could get him in any deeper trouble.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to further dishonor the reputation of his partner and his friends.”

  She was silent for a few steps. “You could have a point.”

  “Damn it!” Gundhalinu said angrily. “If he’d cooperate, he’d probably get off with just a reprimand. If he helped to break the case, he’d restore the dead men’s honor, as well as get back on the force. He’s ruining his own life, and for what?” They reached the lift; he hit the call plate with his fist. “Can he really be that blind?”

  “No, he’s not.” PalaThion leaned against the wall. “That kind of loyalty’s not logical, or even rational.” She glanced away into the sunroom. “But it’s human.…”

  He followed her glance. LaisTree was still in the same spot, sitting with his head in his hands. He didn’t seem to be enjoying the view. Gundhalinu turned back to the blank face of the lift doors. PalaThion went on looking into the sunroom, until a chime announced the lift’s arrival.

  They descended to the main floor. “By the way,” PalaThion said as they crossed the lobby, “LaisNion wasn’t just LaisTree’s partner, BZ. He was also his brother.”

  Gundhalinu looked over at her in disbelief. “What? He couldn’t have been.”

  “It’s against regs … I know,” she said. “They shouldn’t have been stationed together. I guess they got away with it because they’re half-brothers—that’s why their last names aren’t identical. But any Newhavener could have told you they were related.”

  “So everyone knew it. And no one reported them.” Not even you.

  She looked at him.

  “Loyalty,” he muttered.

  “Gundhalinu, plug ‘honor’ and ‘Technician’ into the same equation, and see what answer you come up with.”

  “It’s not the same! If you knew anyth—” He broke off, barely remembering in time that he was speaking to his superior officer. “It’s not the same.”

  “So you’re saying that if you suspected another Kharemoughi Tech was corrupt, or even just guilty of some infraction, you wouldn’t hesitate to report him?”

  “Of course I’d report him,” he said shortly. “If I ever meet one who is.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Sergeant, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but a clear conscience is generally the result of a faulty memory, not a faultless life.”

  Gundhalinu glared at her.

  “Does that mean I’ve given you the same look, too many times?” She laughed unexpectedly, and shook her head. “We grow up on the day we have our first real laugh, at ourselves,” she said. “And we grow—or we die, BZ.”

  His frown only deepened.

  “…‘And tomorrow’s not looking so good, either’.…” she muttered under her breath. Her mouth formed something that only faintly resembled a smile. “Sorry if I’ve offended you, Sergeant,” she said. She didn’t say anything more, as they went out of the Medical Center and into the street.

  * * *

  “Yes,” Mundilfoere repeated, to the amorphous mass of deeper blackness she could just make out, within the darkness of the hidden room. “I am certain that Arienrhod still holds some part of the artifact. But she has hidden it—quite effectively, I might add.” The words carried the ironic weight of her smile, even though she was equally certain that her companion could see her face clearly. “The warehouse debacle has made her doubt us in more ways than one.”

  “The Queen is a provincial, superstitious woman,” the Source muttered. “Even after a century and a half of experience in dealing with offworlders.”

  “You continue to underestimate her—which explains why she has never trusted you,” Mundilfoere said acidly. “I will see to it that she regains her full trust in me, at least. But it will take time.”

  “What about the rest of it?”

  “There are no new leads on the whereabouts of the missing piece. One would almost think that Vanamoinen is avoiding us—”

  The Source made a gutteral noise of disgust. She saw his dim, misshapen bulk change position. “The dead do not walk of their own free will, Black Rose.” His voice was like a dead man’s, if the dead could be forced to speak. “Not even if they live on in their creations.…”

  Vanamoinen, like his collaborator Ilmarinen, had been dead for millennia. Those legendary geniuses of the Pangalactic Interface’s final days had created the sibyl net—a galaxy-spanning artificial intelligence network with living human beings as its ports, meant to preserve the collected knowledge of humankind for future generations.

  Their selfless work had helped the former worlds of the Interface survive and rebuild, in the millennia since its collapse severed the lifelines of interstellar trade and communication. The Founders had also bioengineered the virus that the so-called sibyls passed blood to blood, which allowed them to access the AI’s hidden databank.

  Vanamoinen and Ilmarinen were the Founders of Survey, as well: Not simply the tedious social club known to most of the Hegemony’s citizens, but the secret network of influence its star-and-compass facade disguised.

  Originally its members had been responsible only for preserving the databank and protecting the sibyls. But knowledge—especially secret knowledge—was power; and the nature of power being what it was, by now Survey’s reach extended much further, and their influence ran much deeper, than the Founders had originally intended. All of Survey’s members still followed the same road—but often to very different ends.

  The Brotherhood, the cabal that Mundilfoere and the Source both served, was just one of the many splinter groups within Survey, all of them vying to influence the future of the Hegemony, or some other isolated remnant of the Old Empire. Kharemoughis dominated the other faction operating on Tiamat—called, with typical hubris, the Golden Mean.

  The fact that the prize they competed for, here in Carbuncle’s convoluted heart, still existed and was viable after so long could only be due to its having been left on Tiamat, a world nobody but the Tiamatans really wanted. Such an occurrence must have been intentional, and it only fed Mundilfoere’s hunger to know what other secrets Carbuncle, the city where time stood still, was keeping to itself.

  If she had been on any other world, she might have asked a sibyl—although whether
even a sibyl could answer that question was anyone’s guess.

  Here in Carbuncle, the question was simply moot. The only sibyls on Tiamat lived virtually at the other end of the world, far out among the scattered islands inhabited by the primitive Summer clans, who still believed that sibyls spoke with the voice of the Sea, the Goddess Mother for whom this world was named.

  Not even the Hegemony would dare to eliminate sibyls from an inhabited world. But with relentless propaganda and subtler, more ruthless forms of suppression, it kept the technology-hungry Winters of Carbuncle convinced that sibyls were lunatics, victims of an infectious, incurable disease; thereby guaranteeing the Tiamatans’ ignorance of their true value, generation after generation.

  Even Arienrhod did not suspect the truth—and she could never be permitted to learn it. The cultural chaos such a discovery would bring about would have repercussions throughout the Hegemony. Even the Brotherhood, which thrived on chaos, was not prepared to deal with that … at least, not yet.

  Not until the prize was safely in their possession. The faction that got its hands on the artifact might be able to discover why, more and more often, the sibyl network’s answers to their questions were hopelessly cryptic, or almost willfully incomplete.

  Perhaps they still had not learned how to ask the right questions in the right way. But the sibyl net was also completely, maddeningly, silent on certain vital subjects: there were no star maps of the former Galactic Interface’s member worlds; there was no data at all describing the production of smartmatter, the nanotechnology that had underlain the Interface’s greatest achievements.

  Not even Survey knew why those omissions, which could not possibly be oversights, existed. But if the artifact was all that Mundilfoere believed it to be, they might finally have the key to unlock all those answers. And if she had her way, it would soon be firmly in the closed fist of the Brotherhood.…

  She had come here for one reason, to obtain that seed of the Interface’s potential rebirth for the Brotherhood—at any cost. But after all these ages, and all of Survey’s best-laid plans, it seemed that whether anyone ever saw the artifact complete again came down to whether one ordinary, all-too-human street Blue regained his memory of a single hour on a single night.…“LaisTree still doesn’t remember what happened at the warehouse,” she said. “I’m absolutely certain of it.”