In Retrospect

by Ellen Larson

  His shield hovered over the page, then turned to Merit. “That’s odd, isn’t it?”

  Merit fluttered her hands behind her head. “To the victor go the spoils. We Oku have to make do these days.” Being constantly in his presence wasn’t as hard as she’d thought it would be. Just one more faceless Rasakan she was forced to work with. They were both different people now. He would have no more desire to bring up their past acquaintance than she.

  “Yes, but . . . Omari Zane?” he insisted. “Dusting the chandelier and sorting the socks?”

  “He’s been pretty reclusive since last year when he stepped down as Governor Pro Tempore,” said the moonfaced woman.

  “Fine,” said Eric. “But what about the new Prioress? Lena Salim? The position as headmistress of the Prospectives School doesn’t exist anymore, I know. But still, she must be revered by the scientific comm—”

  Merit snorted.

  Eric leaned back and crossed his arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Before Merit could frame a response, the door opened and a metallic blue half-shield appeared.

  “Private meeting!” snapped the elderly man. “Go away!” With one swift move he removed a shoe and threw it at the door.

  The head disappeared and the door slammed shut.

  As the others snickered, Molt retrieved the shoe and returned it to its owner, saying, “Nice one, Artie.”

  “Wasn’t that your orderly?” asked Eric.

  “So they say.” Artie glanced at Merit, who gave a slight shrug. “But we don’t like him.”

  “Why not?” The silver shield conned the room. “Isn’t he Oku?”

  Eyebrows were raised in delicate insinuation, but no one spoke.

  “Fine.” Eric picked up the papers and shuffled through them. “This section of the report covers the activities of the Priory residents during the critical period. You might want to take notes.”

  Reactions, except for those of the auburn-haired girl, who produced pencil and paper from the workbag on her lap, were saturnine.

  Eric carried on. “At seven p.m., Zane had his evening meal on the second floor of the southeast tower. The Prioress and Lazar ate with him. At seven forty-five, Zane went up one floor to his study, and the Prioress went to her study in the northeast tower, all as per usual. After confirming that Zane did not need him, the Steward went to his quarters on the first floor of the southeast tower and spent the rest of the evening writing.” He turned the papers sideways. “There’s a note here that says it’s impossible to get up the stairs to Zane’s rooms without passing through the Steward’s quarters.” He turned a page.

  “According to Lazar, it was Zane’s habit to work on his memoirs each evening till eleven. Sometime after ten forty-five, the Prioress went to say good night to him, using the outdoor walkway between the two eastern towers. She found him nonresponsive in his chair. She tried unsuccessfully to revive him. Lazar arrived at eleven to escort the General to his sleeping chamber. He found the Prioress cradling the dead General in her arms, and thought at first from his blood on her robes that she had been injured too. He immediately called Authority. Questions?”

  No one spoke, no one stirred. They merely waited—with a cool confidence that showed just how good at it they were.

  Eric flipped the binder aside, his irritation plain to see in his body language, and reached into his briefcase. “The Documentation Team took some scans of the crime scene. Perhaps they might interest you professional criminologists?”

  No one moved.

  “No?” asked Eric. “Well, take a look anyway.”

  One by one he held them up, color scans of a green-walled study furnished with bookshelves, a fireplace, and an ornate grandfather clock. And slumped in a chair by a massive desk, a large, white-haired man, broad rivers of blood streaking his gray face and yellow shirt.

  Merit yawned and closed her eyes.

  “Got the picture? Good.” Eric tossed the scans onto the desk and squared his shoulders. “According to the Retrospector’s Compendium, once the Unit is briefed, the Site Team goes to the crime scene to interview all pertinent individuals for the purpose of creating the time sequence. The site techs must select a location for the Vessel and set the anchors. The interv—”

  “Tch,” said Molt. He glanced at Merit, noted the slight shake of her head, and subsided.

  “The interviewer,” continued Eric, “does the sequence interviews. Which of you is the interviewer?”

  The auburn-haired girl started and raised a slender hand.

  Eric’s voice frowned. “I thought you were communications.”

  “Doubling up,” she said faintly, showing the whites of the one eye that was visible.

  “Right. Good. What’s your name?”

  The eye widened further. “Celia.”

  “Okay, Celia, you’re on the Site Team.”

  Celia rolled her eye towards Merit (apparently asleep in her chair) then back to Eric.

  “You’d better take charge of this,” continued Eric, holding up a slim paper folder. “There’s only the one copy, and you’re supposed to use it as the foundation for the sequence interviews. Right?”

  “Right,” she echoed.

  “There’s not much here from the main witnesses,” observed Eric. “Apparently the Prioress was too ill and overcome with grief to speak with the Documentation Team. But the Steward assured them that the General had no known enemies.”

  Someone snickered.

  Eric’s head snapped up. “Isn’t that correct?”

  Silence.

  “Will one of you please explain?” His voice rose, his exasperation unmistakable. “If someone was known to want to harm the General, shouldn’t we discuss it?”

  They avoided his shielded glance, looking everywhere but at him.

  Eric’s chest rose and fell. “Of course I’m only a guy brought up on a sheep farm in Rasaka, so what do I know—but the story I heard was that General Zane was revered in Oku City as the man who saved a hundred thousand lives.”

  The Retrospection Unit squirmed en masse.

  “Look, this is my first time in the City. You’re gonna have to help me out here.” He turned his shield. “Select?”

  At the sound of the word, Merit lost her balance. She flung herself forward and her chair came down with a thud. “Sorry. What?”

  “Omari Zane. You know. The man entrusted with guiding Okucha through six years of war? The man who negotiated the Treaty of Byzantion? He is the beloved hero of his people, is he not?”

  Merit removed her feet from the desk and straightened the front of her jacket. It had satisfied her to sit back and watch him flounder, out of his element, trying to gain the cooperation of people who didn’t mind showing how much they despised his very presence. No, it wasn’t so hard, after all.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “Any sane Oku would lay down her life to protect him.”

  His exhaled breath whistled against the rim of his shield. Then he gave a short laugh. “You think the killer is Rasakan, don’t you. That a ‘Ratsky’ did it to avenge some wartime act. No? Oh, come on! You all know that’s what you think. Well, it might interest you to hear that I agree with you.”

  Merit cocked her head. “It might be interesting if you were a criminologist.”

  Time ground to a halt. The junior members of the Retrospection Unit held their collective breaths, their eyes for once riveted on the silver Authority shield. The residents of occupied Oku City might make a habit of being as uncooperative as possible, but they all knew there were lines it was a mistake to cross.

  But when he spoke, it was only to say, “Good point.”

  In the aftermath of this acknowledgment, the tension in the room dissipated.

  “Who does the Vessel assembly?” asked Eric.

  The redheaded youth raised a stubby finger. “Me’n Artie.”

  “You must be Donny.” Eric relaxed back in his chair. “Pleased to meet you. You’n Artie will be on the Site Team wit
h Celia.”

  Celia’s fingers snatched nervously at her workbag.

  “The Select and I will accompany the Site Team and help where needed,” continued Eric. “The VCC team—”

  “Merit . . . !” Molt’s eyes bulged out of his bony face.

  “Okay, okay!” Merit held up her hands. “Look. Molt, here, is our chief engineer. And our chief engineer has a concern. See, it’s been almost seven years since we’ve actually flexed—and none of these good people were around then.”

  “Except for me,” said Artie.

  “Except for Artemis, who retired fourteen years ago, so technically he wasn’t here either. The rest are best known for their fine work in declassifying ten-year-old office memos.” She gestured to the stacks of boxes that filled the back of the room.

  “I’m sure they’ll do fine,” said Eric.

  “Of course they will,” she said quickly. She felt her face flush, for it stung that he should be the one sticking up for her crew. “That’s not the problem. You’re new in town, so maybe you bought the Marshall’s speech about Rasakan-Okuchan cooperation. The ugly fact is we Oku JCPers are not even allowed into the Vessel Control Center—or anywhere else where we might actually do anything meaningful. We have no idea what equipment is in there or what shape it’s in. And that’s important, cuz, y’know, despite what the mystics say, without the Artifice and the Vessel, it’s mighty hard to flex.”

  “Don’t worry about the technical aspects,” said Eric. “I’ve been running service and safety checks in the VCC since I arrived last week. The Artifice is functional and the Continuum is stable.”

  The moonfaced woman ran a pair of skeptical brown eyes over Eric’s ramrod frame. “So you’re in charge, huh?”

  “The Select and I are in charge, yes.”

  “Except, like I just said, we can’t actually do anything,” reiterated Merit.

  “Authority has given you level-one security clearance.” Eric rummaged in his briefcase. “You are authorized to enter all JCP premises, including those normally closed to Oku officers. The VCC is specifically mentioned.”

  The group exchanged glances.

  “ ‘You’?” choked Molt. “ ‘You’ who?”

  “You—all of you,” said Eric.

  Like a magician fanning a deck of cards, he displayed six plastic IDs.

  For the first time, the Retro Unit showed more than token signs of life. Molt scrambled to his feet and took the ID that Eric handed him.

  “It’s got my scan on it,” he said.

  “Whadja think, Dolt?” said Donny, coming up behind him. “It’d have my scan on it?”

  “Shut up, ya great cow.” Molt tried to cuff the back of Donny’s head, failed, and ended up in the husky man’s embrace, arms pinned to his sides.

  Donny snatched the ID from his grasp. “You look about twelve.”

  “It’s an old scan,” said Molt, struggling.

  Donny hooted and rubbed his knuckles across the top of Molt’s head.

  “Sarah?” said Eric, holding out the next ID.

  The moonfaced woman rose to claim her card. As she walked past the entwined Donny and Molt, she said, “Leave him be, honey.”

  Donny grinned and released Molt, who jumped away, cursing under his breath.

  Eric handed Artie his ID, then looked at the next one. On it was a scan of a sweet-faced girl with green eyes and rippling hair swept back from a broad forehead. “Celia?”

  The girl jumped at the sound of her name and spun toward him.

  The right side of her face was covered with burn scars, brown and gnarled, stretching from eyebrow to neck. Her right eye, a dull white, peeped out from between folds of scar tissue.

  She sidled forward to retrieve her ID, then returned to her seat. The others also sat.

  “Okay people,” said Eric, and this time the five of them looked at him, shield and all. “We have about two days to be up and running, if we’re going to aim for a Monday noon flex.”

  “When do we go to the Vessel Control Center?” asked Molt.

  “You’re the chief engineer,” said Eric, “what’s your recommendation?”

  Molt took a moment to work it out, then burst out, “Now?”

  “I think ‘now’ is appropriate.”

  “Tantalicious.” The kid’s eyes sparkled.

  “Then we have our assignments.” Eric rose from his chair and closed the briefcase. “Where can I stow my gear?”

  “There’s lockers in the back,” said Donny. “I’ll show you.”

  “Okay, hold on a minute,” said Sarah. “Are you cowboys serious? You’re really gonna do this?”

  “Certainly,” said Eric.

  The look of disbelief on Sarah’s face turned to amusement. “Whoa.” She held up both hands. “You do get it that this Unit is not in synchronicity with the same century as ready-to-take-this-on? We’ve barely got a skeleton crew, and, not to pick on you, Molt, but having a father who was chief engineer does not you a chief engineer make. You haven’t even finished college.”

  “I would if I could afford it,” muttered Molt.

  Artie cleared his throat. “You ain’t ezackly class valedictorian, Sarah.”

  “Did you hear me excluding myself? Boys! We have monumental limitations here that nobody’s talking about. Field interviews, okay, we can do that. Set up an M-wave comm link, sure. And Donny, here, he can measure twice, cut once with the best of them. But we don’t have anybody who knows cold oatmeal about tethering the Vessel to the Artifice, or verifying that Merit’s attunement has held up. And maybe I can keep the Artifice from blowing a hole through the roof when I synch the time-frame, but I can’t do that and lace the security net in two days.”

  “I’ll do the tether and check the attunement,” said Eric. “And I’ll string the net, with the Marshall supervising.”

  “That figures,” said Merit. But she said it to herself, for the faces around her were flushed with an excitement she had not previously seen and which she could not bring herself to quash.

  “Did you say something?” asked Eric.

  She nodded at the ID left in his hand. “That mine?”

  He crossed to where she sat and handed it to her.

  “Excuse me,” said Sarah. “I’m not done yet. You did say you’ve only been here a week, right? You think you can just walk in from that sheep farm you mentioned and operate a time machine?”

  They couldn’t see his face, but they could hear his annoyed exhalation. He turned to Merit, and despite the shield his demand for her validation was clear.

  Merit hesitated. Somehow, he had managed to get his feet under him and hit his stride. And what had she expected? That he would fail and go home, letting her off the hook?

  “He’s a wave-aspect physicist,” she said grudgingly. “Or at least, he was when I knew him.”

  Donny ogled her without reference to tact or ceremony. “You knew this glass-head?”

  Merit sighed and closed her eyes. Why had he come? Why now? Making her remember that other Merit. “In a former life,” she said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  * * *

  Eight years earlier

  Eric’s flat was a large, featureless set of rooms in a large, ugly block of flats. But the view from the balcony was far from mundane: a bright vista of yellow fields framed by rolling green hills upon which cattle grazed and acacia trees grew.

  “Face it,” said Merit, flopping down beside Eric. “You just don’t like it when people underestimate you.”

  “That’s not true.” There was indignation in Eric’s voice, and a little resentment, too.

  “Yep, it is. Be generous. Just because the guy who steals your spotlight is a newcomer who likes to shock people doesn’t make him a poor scientist.” That settled, she turned her attention to the bowl of dried blue and red berries in her lap, and the thread upon which she was stringing them.

  But Eric had not finished. “It makes him disrespectful.”

  “Exactly. You’re
feeling unappreciated.”

  “Not of me! Not disrespectful of me! Tch. Of you! Of all Okuchans.”

  “Habibi, what are you talking about?”

  “He ‘shocked people’ by calling for the removal of the Okuchan consultants and wearing an ostentatious shield.”

  “Eric. Seriously. Half the people in Oku City wear shields symbolic of their social status. Elected officials, respected seniors, youngsters trying to look sophisticated. It’s an important tradition. Everyone in what was left of Balkan Europe after the Annihilation had to wear a shield for a hundred years as protection from the radia—”

  “I understand that!” He threw up his hands. “What you don’t seem to understand is that the Rasakans have always hated it! Our people never wore them. The shield is a symbol of privilege and domination—a form of intimidation. He wore it to antagonize you.”

  Merit threaded a red berry. “Well, I remain unantagonized—so why are you?”

  Eric gazed out across the fields, a troubled look on his face. “Everything is changing. When I was a kid we called the Oku administrators glass-heads and vowed we’d never be caught dead in a shield. Now half the people I know wear them. Since you were here at Yule, it’s gotten worse. People whisper about taking action. When the Oku Council rejected Rasakan Authority’s request for open reciprocal travel, the people didn’t even bother to hide their resentment.”

  Merit slipped a copper spacer onto the string. “Which resentment is that?”

  “The one that gnaws at every Rasakan, because even though the Oku say we are equal, they also say they won’t share all the technologies they have retained from before the Annihilation until we’re ‘ready.’ ”

  “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

  “I know. Why should you? You think of Rasaka as a quaint farming community full of humorous country cousins you are oh so generously trying to raise to your social level.”