‘No, of course not – how could you decide something like that as a child?’ Arul looked baffled. ‘I was quite small, I think, when I first thought that is what I want to be, but at the time I was also just as interested in becoming a farmer. My family farms, too. We grow a type of citrus vine, lyar, popular for juice. I spent many hours in the vine gardens, too, learning about the care of the plants, helping with the harvest. So there were just as many days when I would have said ‘I want to be a farmer’. And days when my imagination would run wild at something I had seen that day and I would tell my family excitedly that I was going to be an airship pilot or a doctor or a juggler or an artist… I do remember hacking up a lump of stone, once, in a stonemason’s workyard, so I expect I was saying at the time that I wanted to be a sculptor. That is what childhood is for, to explore and discover many opportunities in order to find the one which is your true, real interest, the one thing you wish to pursue further as you become an adult. And that, for me, was to become a housekeeper. It took a long time,’ he laughed. ‘I started my training when I was…’ he consulted his wristcom, tapping at a converter, ‘seventeen, in your years. The first years are an apprenticeship, you do nothing but study and watch and that is backroom, of course, not in the presence of her grace. The day when you are permitted to follow an attendant into her presence is like a graduation ceremony. And there will be more years then, of following, studying, before the second ceremony where you appear as an attendant yourself. It was…’ another tap at the converter, ‘eleven years, so I was twenty eight when I first appeared as the most junior of attendants. I am sixty two, now and have been senior housekeeper to her grace, now, for five years.’
‘What qualifications do you need for that, Arul?’
Arul chuckled. ‘It has been interesting,’ he said, ‘to investigate your culture and find the kinds of training and qualifications equivalent to ours. Elcom Shion has been most helpful. So I can tell you,’ he said and began.
It took a while. His training had evidently begun in studying history, art and architecture. It had then moved on to curatorship, preservation and estate management. When he said ‘housekeeper’, it turned out, he meant that literally, that he was responsible for the maintenance and management of the royal residences, of the fabric of the buildings themselves and all the priceless treasures within. He was not expected to do any of the necessary work himself but to direct others to the inspections, maintenance and preservation work which was required.
‘On our worlds,’ a member of the audience observed, ‘you’d be a professor!’
Narul nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘That is the level of education and expertise required to be in high attendance on her grace.’
‘And you’ve never felt…’ the next questioner asked, ‘that your abilities might be somewhat under-employed, working in personal service?’ And as several people around him made reproving noises, ‘What?’ Defensively. ‘It’s what we’re all thinking!’
Whether that was the case or not, Narul did not take offence. He just laughed, defusing the awkward moment.
‘Let me ask you a question in return,’ he said. ‘Suppose that when your research expedition reach the Library they find that the treasures stored there are actually some of the Cartash themselves, preserved in those Chambers?’ An electric buzz ran through the audience even at the thought. ‘Suppose they are in suspended animation,’ Narul said. ‘And that your scientists are able to revive them. And there they are, real, living Cartash, the people who created your species. And now suppose that there are treasures in the Chambers, also, works of art which go back a million years. This is the legacy, the Library of Cartasay. How much effort would you go to in order to protect and care for those people, to provide for all their needs, to preserve that ancient culture with all its treasures and its knowledge? And the greatest treasures of all are the Cartash themselves. So will you put a hotel manager in charge of their accommodation, or a professor qualified to manage a precious historical site?’ He smiled and spread his hands in a gesture of finality. ‘We,’ he pointed out, ‘never lost our Library.’
Alex, watching, grinned to himself as he saw attitudes around the audience shifting at that, the slight puzzlement as to why such obviously intelligent and highly educated people should consider it such an honour to carry out what appeared to be really quite menial roles. Now it made sense. Now they got it. And Alex, who had known that somebody would ask that question sooner or later and get just that answer, ticked an item off a mental list… not working, he told himself, absolutely not working. And anyway even Simon couldn’t know what he was thinking…
Simon put him on standdown the following day, the merest flicker of guilt being sufficient to tell him that Alex had not done as he was told and taken the whole evening on down-time without even thinking about work. So, as threatened, he got an enforced day off, locked out of his desk and with everyone else on the ship under promise of dire retribution if they so much as held up a screen for him to read.
Alex took it philosophically. He could not deny that he had taken very few rest days over the previous months. Even the commodore was supposed to set a good example, operations permitting, by taking their one day in eight rest day. You still had to take part in drills, of course, but for the rest of the day you were supposed to relax, go to the gym, attend clubs, watch movies on your bunk, whatever, but not work or study.
Alex had played the operational priority card, though, week after week. Even on the odd days when he’d agreed to taking a full day’s rest, something had usually happened to call him back into work. So now that they were settled on their way to Prisos, in what should be a quiet period for Alex, Simon was getting stroppy over his workload.
So Alex spent the day with Silvie on the aquadeck, helping with her garden, playing with the fish, having a spa and generally lazing about. And, as per Simon’s orders, he went off to bed for an early night without so much as calling in to the command deck or picking up on any shipboard news. So it was not until the next morning that he was told that Mister had so injured himself as to need to be taken to sickbay.
‘What?’ Alex was shocked. The E6 maximum security category they had Mister on was extremely restricted. His cabin had been adapted to meet conditions where there was nothing he could harm himself with or turn into a weapon, no fabrics he could twist into a garrotte, no plastics he might sharpen into blades, no furniture that could be broken up to make coshes. The shower had a security grille so that none of its fittings could be accessed and both it and the cabin’s holoscreen could only be controlled by optics or audio, no tactile controls available. Even the walls, given his previous attempt to punch at one of them with a force which would have broken bones, had been fitted with soft-impact forcefields, an unobtrusive but effective padding. He was also on twenty five hour active monitoring, with any excursions from his cabin undertaken under escort and cordon.
And the Fourth had, to Mister’s frustration, turned out to be good at that stuff. They did not post guards helpfully outside their door with their backs turned so that they could be taken out with a blow to the back of the neck. Guards were posted some distance away, covering the door. When they took him out of his cabin, too, as they did three times a day, every day, they had the escort and cordon down pat. An officer would walk with him, with two front-runners out in the lead, two guards behind and a second, armed officer bringing up the rear. At no point, ever, was there the slightest vulnerability in that pattern. Even without their famous mirror-surfaced combat suits, it was apparent that these people were trained for boarding operations. And Mister knew who had trained them, too: Buzz Burroughs.
‘You know he’s been getting increasingly morose,’ Mako told him. Alex had found a note attached to the news that Mister had been treated in sickbay, indicating that Mako Ireson would prefer to give him that report directly, so Alex had messaged and invited him to come to breakfast. There were aspects to this, clearly, that Mako wanted to discuss with him in
private.
‘Yes,’ Alex confirmed. ‘Following a normal process curve, you said?’
Mako gave a quick, flickering grin. ‘Too normal,’ he said. ‘Textbook normal. Even a rookie warder would know that no prisoner ever really follows the textbook curve of posturing, depression and adjustment it says in the training. Generally speaking, yes, it’s fair to say that most prisoners come in with a don’t care attitude, posturing, giving it some lip. And fair to say too that there is often a noticeable change in mood between the second and fourth weeks. It’s usually at that point that the holiday-syndrome thing wears off and people start to realise that this is real and that they’re stuck with it. And we do often see people sliding into depression at that point, becoming lethargic, disassociating themselves. But everyone is different, of course, nobody actually follows the textbook curve to the letter, even to the point of saying and doing things which are key indicators for various phases. Honestly, it’s like he’d read the warder’s training manual on what to expect from the average prisoner and was churning it out for our benefit. I would have let him get on with it, harmless occupation for him, after all, but he did, a few days ago, shift things up a gear and start doing the cuckoo routine… pretending a psychotic break. And that was, well…’ he shook his head. ‘Ludicrous! LIA Fieldcraft Training Manual Section Five, sub-section 14, if captive, how to get your captors to move you to a psych ward, option 3, psychotic break.’ He paused. ‘To…the… letter.’ He said, with emphasis.
‘Hmmn,’ Alex said, looking at the civilian thoughtfully. ‘I don’t suppose I should ask how you got a copy of that manual?’
‘Rather you didn’t, skipper.’ Mako grinned back. ‘Friend of a friend, kind of thing. Anyway…’ he moved on quickly, ‘I knew he was faking, but I went through procedure of course and got Rangi up to do a psych test. Mister made all the right noises, quite a good act, really – in a normal prison he would probably have got away with it. But not here, obviously, medicals here routinely include tests which would only be ordered by the courts groundside and he signed up to those when he came aboard. So Rangi tested his neurochems and showed him the results, which proved that he was faking. Rangi told him to stop wasting his time and ours and you’d have thought, really, that would have been enough to tell him that the game was over. But instead he upped his game, started shuffling and muttering to himself. We were watching him closely, skipper, really were, couldn’t have had any tighter monitoring, but yesterday he just went for it, serious self-harm, inflicted with his own fingernails.’
‘What did he do?’ Alex asked, noting that Mako was apparently avoiding telling him that.
‘You probably don’t want to know the details, skipper,’ Mako said. ‘Not while you’re eating your breakfast.’
Alex winced. ‘Not his eyes?’ He asked, revealing his own hierarchy of horror.
‘No,’ Mako said and seeing that Alex was going to insist on knowing, ‘his genitals.’
Alex pondered this for a moment and moved his breakfast tray away, carefully avoiding looking at the sliced salami on his protein platter.
‘Ah,’ he said.
Mako nodded. ‘It was not,’ he said, ‘a pretty sight. And it got him to sickbay, obviously. Still not quite sure why he thought that would be worth it. As a captive in an unknown location of course it would be a valuable recon, but he already knows our sickbay and our medics, so he has to know there’s no way he could get hold of any drugs or anything he could use as a weapon there. The only thing we can think is that he really thought that it would convince us to move him onto psych category.’
‘Ah,’ Alex said. ‘The plan being, I suppose, to convince us he’s crazy, accept psych treatment, ‘respond’ to it, apologise for his previous obviously delusional behaviour and gain his liberty, or at least a lowering of his security level.’
‘I think so, yes,’ Mako agreed. ‘Which is so dumb, with so many psych tests on record and yet another one proving that his brain chemistry is absolutely normal. How can he think that we’d just ignore all those tests and treat him on the basis of behaviour alone?’
‘Fundamentally stupid,’ said Alex, drily. ‘Stupidity often thinks it’s being incredibly cunning, when intelligence can see that it’s really just being silly.’
‘Yes, he certainly thinks he’s being cunning, trying to out-smart us,’ Mako said. ‘But I do find myself getting drawn in to that paranoid second-guessing thing of wondering whether the apparently stupid plan is actually a cover in itself for something far more devious we can’t even see coming.’
‘Hmmn,’ Alex said. ‘You have been spending too much time reading LIA manuals, Mako.’
‘I know it,’ Mako admitted. ‘I thought it would be helpful to understand what’s going on with him, but it messes with your head, that stuff. I’ve stopped reading it now. But it did kind of show me the kind of thing that’s going on in his head, always suspecting and imagining double-cross, triple-cross, mind-games upon mind-games. Anyway, the thing is, skipper, his physical injuries were serious enough to need surgery, which is a serious prisoner self-harming incident which will need a full enquiry in itself, not just here, but with Internal Affairs and the LPA, too, when we get back. And Simon, well, he has fitted Mister with what he calls mitts.’ He gave Alex a speaking look. ‘They are for use with psych or delirious patients whose behaviour is not being adequately controlled with drugs,’ he said. ‘That’s the only circumstances where they’re supposed to be used. But he’s using them on a prisoner in custody as a means of preventing further self-harm. I do understand why, obviously I do, all he’s interested in is ensuring Mister’s safety. But the thing is, skipper, those mitts come under the heading of unlawful restraint. It may not look like much but the effect of it is just the same as forcing a prisoner to wear boxing gloves, day and night. I have discussed it with Hetty, obviously, and she says that Simon is within his rights under Fleet regs. Which I understand, I do, Fleet regs are pretty draconian for what you can do on a ship in deep space because it is such a vulnerable situation. But at the same time, skipper, I have to tell you that when we go into port the LPA will be on that like stink – allowed by the Fleet but forbidden in League prisons and Mister is a civilian in our custody. That’s a combination that has ‘high level official enquiry’ written all over it. That and potential action being brought against us by Mister himself or the LIA for treating their agent like that. So if you could review that situation yourself and determine whether the mitts really are essential or whether we can find some more LPA-acceptable solution, I’d really appreciate it.’
Alex nodded. ‘Understood.’
He was anticipating a stormy encounter with Simon and got one. Simon had already told Mako, Hetty and Eldovan, each of whom had approached him in turn, that he would not be budged on the mitts. Yes, he agreed, Mister was sane, but for reasons which no doubt seemed good to him he was pretending to be psychotic and delusional. Since there was no medication Simon could give him to treat a fake condition, the only thing he could do was to respond pragmatically to the apparently psychotic behaviour even though he knew it was faked. Finding Alex coming to ask him about it, too, Simon gave vent to a lengthy tirade on the subject of people who felt they knew better than he did about medicine, patient care and indeed about anything at all.
Feeling somewhat battered after half an hour of this, Alex went to see Hetty Leavam.
‘I recognise the concerns, of course,’ she said. ‘And it isn’t a method I would recommend, myself – my report states that, that whilst I recognise the regulatory validity of the order I feel that human rights issues may be material.’ She gave him a steady look. ‘Not,’ she said, ‘a decent way to treat a prisoner.’
Alex nodded.
‘And if we take the mitts off,’ he said, ‘and he claws at his eyes, or his throat…’
‘Then we treat those injuries,’ Hetty said crisply, ‘as and when they occur. We can show that we are taking every legal and regulatory precaution with the hig
hest standards of practice, so we have no concerns there about the outcome of an enquiry. The use of mitts is also permitted as an extraordinary measure under regulations, of course, and Professor Penarth is certainly of the view that the criteria for their deployment has been met. An attempt on my part to discuss potential civil-rights objections with him was not well received. But that would be my recommendation, skipper, that it is better to take the risk of him self-harming than to continue with what I suspect may be genuinely civil-rights abusing practice.’
Alex nodded. Liberty League would never have believed in a million years that the Fourth’s Internal Affairs officer had been a member of their organisation way back in high school and college days. She had given that up, of course, on joining the Fleet, as membership of any kind of political organisation was one of the rights you gave up in joining military service. But she had always been someone wholly dedicated to the principles of standing up for justice, for fairness. If Hetty Leavam had concerns that this was rights-abusive that was good enough for Alex.
‘I’ll sort it out,’ he said and after a passing word with Eldovan established that she was no happier about what was happening, either, he went to evaluate Mister himself.
It was past 0950 by then, so Mister should have been out of his cabin. His routine was set on a schedule arranged by Mako to meet and exceed the minimum requirements laid down by the LPA.
So Mister was woken at 0750 by the lights in his cabin brightening. Breakfast was served at 0800, for which he was moved through an internal connecting door to the cabin next door, thus fulfilling the requirement that prisoners should not be required to eat their meals in the same cell they slept in. It also meant that they could have his meals set out on the table before he went in there, with the safe, chained-down cutlery he was allowed to use. So no chance, ever, of being able to grab a tray and use it as a weapon.
Then after half an hour for breakfast and a further half hour back in his cabin, he would be taken out for the first of his three excursions, meeting the requirements for prisoners to have the opportunity for purposeful activity, for exercise and for socialising.
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