Emissaries from the Dead

15. ARRESTS

I heard the fight before I saw it.

A pair of angry voices, one male, one female, were both lost in the kind of argument where being heard was no longer as important as making sure the opponent was not. Both participants had passed well beyond the border that separates shouting from screaming, their voices distorted past intelligibility, their words reduced to bursts of concentrated rage.

I didn’t recognize either voice. They were too distorted by volume. But in that instant before my eyes tracked the disturbance to its source, I was able to put faces to some of the other participants. I heard Oskar Levine cursing in disgust, Cif Negelein crying something I couldn’t make out, and Robin Fish screaming for intervention.

Then I spotted the crowd across the hangar and caught the unmistakable sound of somebody’s palm smacking somebody’s face.

Then half a dozen people fell to the ground as two hurtling forms bowled over the line of spectators. A few just stumbled backward, some went to their knees, but two who caught the full brunt of the impact went down hard.

I broke into a run just as the two combatants joined those two unlucky bystanders on the floor.

Li-Tsan Crin had landed on top, screeching hatred and bile as her knees slammed hard into Stuart Gibb’s abdomen. She’d wrapped her hands around his neck and dug both thumbs into the vital soft spot separating Adam’s apple from windpipe. Gibb had grabbed her wrists, first attempting to break her stranglehold and, then, failing that, digging his nails into her tendons in an instinctive attempt to make his murder too painful a job for her to finish.

Before I could reach them, Negelein and Lassiter both seized Li-Tsan by her left arm and two others I didn’t recognize took her right. Their combined efforts succeeded only in lifting Li-Tsan and Gibb off the deck together, in a fused ball of hate. The combined weight proved too much, and Li-Tsan took advantage of that as she once again drove the back of Gibb’s head against the deck.

With Negelein, Lassiter, and the others continuing to hold on to Li-Tsan’s arms, two more indentures, including a woman I’d spoken to briefly and a man I hadn’t encountered at all, went in on their hands and knees to pry Li-Tsan’s thumbs from Gibb’s neck.

The woman yelled, “Don’t make me break them, Li!”

Li-Tsan cried something so incoherent that the only word I recognized was “bastard.”

The crack of bone and the sickened gasps of the crowd fought each other for the title of ugliest sound.

The two indentures responsible for snapping Li-Tsan’s thumbs joined the others in pulling her off Gibb. She called them all bastards and slime-sucking sacks of shit and put all her strength into a single, two-legged, gravity-defying kick that impacted with nothing but air.

Gibb, still purple despite the release of his windpipe, pushed away a woman who had rushed to his aid and stood up, his teeth pink and his lips gleaming with blood.

“I’ll fucking murder you!” Li-Tsan screeched, her fury overwhelming the mob struggling to hold her.

A woman with a shaved head went to restrain Li-Tsan’s legs and was sent flying, with a freshly bruised jaw for her trouble. Another two went in low and wrapped themselves around those legs, weighing them down.

The eight people restraining Li-Tsan now comprised three on each arm and two hugging her legs like koalas clinging to tree trunks. Even rage couldn’t lend Li-Tsan enough strength to overcome that many people. But though effectively helpless, she hadn’t given up; she was still thrashing, still rippling every muscle, still making her captors work for every instant they held her in check. Even as half a dozen voices in the crowd called her name, trying to cut through this moment of insanity with compensating reason, she still pelted Gibb with abuse, passing from the relatively dull epithets available in Mercantile to the more vivid images afforded people who can bare to fit their tongues around the harsh consonants of Grechilissh.

I don’t know much of that second tongue, a minor dialect spoken by the settlers of an industrial world not worth visiting unless you have an overbearing craving for sulfur and soot. But the very harsh and very hard-to-pronounce epithet Li-Tsan had just spat with perfect intonation was a notorious adjective applying to the practitioners of a rare, possibly extinct and most probably apocryphal perversion involving the surgical removal of visual organs to facilitate the sexual exploitation of the empty eye sockets.

You can describe the practice in Mercantile, just as in any other language, and it will always be nasty. But in Grechilissh, the word sounds a lot like what it’s describing. It’s nasty, painful, demeaning, and, worst of all, evocative—the kind of name you don’t apply to another human being unless you really want to risk an immediate fight to the death.

Gibb’s purpled complexion went a shade darker.

He went for her.

Despite the provocation, there was no way to look on what happened next as fair. Li-Tsan was being restrained by all four limbs. Gibb was free to act. Nobody made any special effort to stop him as he leaped forward and delivered a roundhouse punch to her jaw. The onlookers were still gasping from that one as he followed up with a left that shattered her nose.

At his current rate of attack he might have had time to hit her another two or three times before anybody in the crowd thought of intervening.

Long before any of them had a chance, I stepped forward and tapped my index and middle fingers to the base of his jaw.

The jolt made his muscles spasm, the eyes roll back in his head, and his bladder release. He stumbled backward, conscious but unable to regain his balance. Somewhere along the way his feet tangled up and he began to fall.

Lastogne caught him under the arms.

Everybody else froze, including Li-Tsan, whose bruised and bleeding face joined all the others now staring at me.

Gibb focused, broke from Lastogne’s grip, and managed to stand. “What the hell was that, Counselor?”

I brandished the shiny metal cap I wore over both fingertips, removed it, and replaced it at my collarline, where it turned liquid and became a Dip Corps insignia again. “Insurance.”

He fingered the swelling blister on his jaw. “That’s not exactly standard issue, Counselor. Do you have any idea how many treaties you just broke, carrying a concealed weapon into another government’s territory?”

I raised an eyebrow. “If you can prove that the device I just used has no purpose other than weaponry, quite a few. But everything’s a weapon, sir. Including tools, blunt objects, and, as we’ve just seen, our own arms and legs. Short of amputating our limbs every time we cross a border, and being wheeled around on hand trucks by the natives, we can only assure our hosts that the items we carry with us are not weapons at the moment, and won’t be used as weapons unless we find ourselves forced to improvise with the materials we have at hand.”

Gibb’s blister popped. He glanced at a fingertip now glistening with blood. “That’s a lovely argument, Counselor. Does it ever work for any of the people you prosecute?”

“No. When I prosecute, you’ll have to do a whole lot better than that.”

Give Gibb credit for recognizing the implied threat. His injured jaw may have trembled as he bit back half a dozen angry responses, but he did bite them back. Li-Tsan also calmed; her captors didn’t trust her enough to let her go, but she followed the exchange with a certain dry-eyed, grim-faced fascination. The lower half of her face glistened with blood from her shattered nose.

I turned my attention to the silent figure behind Gibb. “Mr. Lastogne?”

His curled lips flashed his usual amount of sardonic amusement. “Yes, Counselor?”

“Order these two people placed under arrest. Don’t do it yourself, I’ll want to talk to you. Make sure they’re separated from each other and, as much as possible, from anybody who saw the incident from the beginning. Have them restrained if necessary. I’d rather have them isolated and in chains than closely guarded by anybody whose testimony needs to remain free of their influence.” I almost wound down, but then another thought occurred to me. “Skye Porrinyard’s in the transport. She couldn’t have seen anything. Draft her to watch Li-Tsan. And have Oscin help with Gibb, once he gets back.”

“Will do,” Lastogne said.

Gibb’s hands curled into fists. “You don’t have to do this, Counselor. All I did was react to being attacked.”

“A few short hours after an attempt on my own life,” I said. “Forgive me for feeling some academic interest in matters involving violence.”

The stories offered a consistent, if not very helpful, picture.

Gibb had been spot-checking the move, offering the usual pointless managerial suggestions to professionals who didn’t need his help knowing how to erect sleepcubes on a flat surface. Li-Tsan had emerged from the one where she’d been living all these months, spotted Gibb, and intercepted him before he could bother someone else. The two had discussed something, their voices low and their body language reflecting mutual antagonism, for somewhere between thirty seconds and three minutes, with more estimates weighted toward the higher end of that range. Li-Tsan had begun shouting, and Gibb had shouted back, the substance of their argument forgotten as it degenerated into two-way abuse.

Most of the witnesses said they’d missed the actual moment when words gave way to violence.

Of the few witnesses I deemed credible, three out of four agreed that Gibb had initiated the physical stage of the confrontation by slapping Li-Tsan’s face. The fourth, a lithe, orange-haired indenture named Hannah Godel, refused to commit to an opinion, saying that her angle had been bad and that she couldn’t be sure. I asked her if she had any special reason for not taking a stand and she said that she just didn’t want to condemn somebody without being sure.

Her story had the ring of somebody with a definite opinion who didn’t want to make her own situation more difficult by sharing.

Lastogne also claimed to have seen nothing, which seemed too convenient for words. But the facts bore him out. A number of witnesses placed him just outside the hangar, helping with the supply ferries, at the moment the argument began. He had heard the raised voices, rushed in to investigate, and arrived just in time to catch the reeling Gibb.

His inability to testify to the actual event didn’t excuse his failure to be any more forthcoming regarding the backstory. “I think we’ve already covered this, Counselor. We know why they have problems with one another.”

“But isn’t this the first time that’s spilled over into violence?”

“Sure it is. At least as far as I know. But when you take two people who can barely contain their dislike for one another, and add a crisis, that’s what you get.”

It was all he had. Or at least all he offered.

I didn’t question either combatant until after I was satisfied that I’d gotten all I could from everybody else. I approached Li-Tsan first for no reason nobler than the opportunity to keep Gibb waiting. Lastogne had ordered her escorted to the ship, where she’d been confined to one of the berths and fitted with a paralytic neural tap as one of the vessel’s AIsource medbots, a whirring little gnat of a thing that seemed to prefer zipping back and forth between her hands and face to finishing each job one at a time, performed a quick patch-and-repair on her injuries. The tap, a routine measure to deaden her pain during the surgery, had been turned to a setting significantly stronger than the procedures warranted. It left her lying on her back, a temporary quadriplegic so infuriated by her imprisonment that I feared for the medbot’s safety every time it buzzed past her mouth on its way to and from the fading injury to her nose. I kept suspecting her of wanting to grind it to foil between her teeth.

Skye Porrinyard, who I found sitting at the command console, a comfortable distance from Li-Tsan’s direct line of sight, was all business as designated guard. She confirmed that Li-Tsan had said nothing of value and reported that Oscin was expected to return within forty-five minutes.

I thanked her, asked her to leave, then activated my hiss screen and turned to Li-Tsan. There was no place to sit except for the bunk itself, and I refused to kneel, so I just stood in the hatchway and regarded her from a height. “Anything you want to say to me?”

The stoniness of Li-Tsan’s expression went well beyond anything that could have been explained away by mere paralysis. “Only that you must be thankful.”

“Why?”

“You wanted a suspect. You needed an excuse for it to be me. I gave you both.”

I was in no mood to defend my impartiality. “That was thoughtful of you.”

“It was selfish. I couldn’t leave this place without throttling that smug son of a bitch at least once.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So you think you’re leaving?”

“Aren’t we all?”

Give her credit for that one. “What were you and Gibb talking about?”

“Just how much I hate his stupid ass.”

“Some of the witnesses said that the two of you were arguing for three full minutes.”

“It wasn’t that long.”

“So let’s compromise,” I said. “Let’s say the argument lasted a minute and a half. Let’s say you bypassed all your actual reasons to be upset with him and just told Gibb you hated his stupid ass. Let’s say he showed the proper degree of supervisory patience and said, that’s fine, bondsman, but I don’t have the time to have my stupid ass hated at this very moment. Let’s go on to concede you came up with the worst insult your little mind could concoct and he slapped you. That’s still accounts for less than thirty seconds. What happened during the rest of the conversation?”

She grimaced. “Does it really matter? He’s still a pig, you’re still letting him set us up as scapegoats, and you’re still what you are. I looked you up, Counselor. And you have no business behaving like you’re morally superior to anybody.”

It always amazes me just how many people in serious trouble fling my past in my face, expecting me to be devastated. “You’ll notice I’m smiling, bondsman. Go ahead. Ask me why.”

“No.”

“I’m smiling because I know perfectly well what I am and I honestly don’t give a damn what you think of me.”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m smiling because refusing to give me a straight answer is just about the stupidest, most self-destructive thing you can possibly do right now.”

“Like I said: fuck off. You’ve already made up your mind anyway.”

It wasn’t my job to beg her. I nodded, deactivated the hiss screen, gave myself another ten seconds or so of meaningless physical business to perform so she’d have to lie there and watch me taking forever to leave, and then, timing it as best I could, paused at the door. “I don’t like you, bondsman. But I hate mysteries even more.”

She let me go without protest.

Nobody had wanted to subject Gibb to the same degree of security mandated for Li-Tsan Crin, so they’d contented themselves with just escorting him outside the hangar and staying with him while he endured the long wait for my attention.

Three men sat cross-legged on the padded deck, their backs against the faintly luminescent wall, the fuming Gibb bracketed by two indentures who seemed to have been chosen for being on good terms with him. I recognized both: a slightly built, callow young indenture named Simon Wells, who had been no help whatsoever in our brief interview earlier in the day, and a hairy-armed, scowling older man named Chasin Burr, whose answers had rarely exceeded two or three words per question. Wells radiated the profound discomfort of an insecure man not happy with having to guard his superior. Burr just radiated general dislike in my direction.

I sent them back to the hangar, then activated the hiss screen and stood looking down at Gibb.

“You can sit,” he said, in a voice rendered hoarse by trauma.

“No, thank you. After Hammocktown, I enjoy the novelty of standing.”

He began to rise.

I halted him with a gesture. “Remain seated or I’ll order you restrained.”

He froze. “Come on, Counselor. I’m not about to attack you.”

“You’re probably telling the truth. But your actions tonight do indicate a recent propensity for violence. So stay where you are.”

He looked like he wanted to argue. Instead, he grunted, settled back down, and regarded me with the resigned weariness of a man accustomed to being misunderstood. “This is pointless. Dozens of witnesses just saw that crazy woman threaten my life.”

“That’s right. They also saw you strike her first.”

His sigh was weary in both body and spirit. “Yeah, that was a mistake. But she was hysterical. She was hysterical, and she was out of control, and I thought a little shock would bring her out of it.”

“What would make you think that, Mr. Gibb? Do you hit your people often?”

He stared at me, bit back a response, and looked away, shaking his head.

“No?” I said. “Just the women?”

“That’s an ugly implication, Counselor.”

“It was an ugly moment, Mr. Gibb.”

He averted his eyes. “It was the wrong thing to do. But I mean what I say. She was hysterical.”

I circled to keep myself within his line of sight. “What about?”

“The same thing she was always going on about. Blame. She was so sure that this debacle was going to be made all about her. I assured her that assigning blame was the very last of my concerns right now, and suggested that she find a better use for her time.”

“That’s not exactly a natural point for you to slap her. So I presume she got nastier.”

“Yes.”

“What was the last thing she said to you before you slapped her?”

“I don’t remember.”

I rubbed my eyes, felt a wave of gray dizziness, wished I hadn’t already committed to standing, and said, “Mr. Gibb, she’s already on record as calling you an incompetent, an asshole, a piece of Tchi shit, and a pervert who makes love to eye sockets. You’ve already established yourself as somebody capable of striking a prisoner under restraint. If there’s something worse than any of that, that you’re still too self-conscious to repeat in my presence, it could only be something specific, something of genuine substance that would not normally slip your mind. Your reluctance is calling attention to it. There’s no point in sparing my delicate ears, because sooner or later I will reach somebody who heard and I will find out.”

He fought a little fruitless battle with himself before giving it up. “She called me a pimp.”

“A what?”

“I’m serious. A pimp. You know what that means, right?”

I did, but couldn’t make sense of it. Procurement was on most developed worlds the most antiquated of all crimes. Even those societies that still criminalized prostitution had too many other ways for sex services to connect with potential clients. I felt an urge to do something, couldn’t figure out what it was, and fought it off long enough to manage, “Why would she call you a pimp?”

Burr smirked. No: leered. I was sure of it.

Gibb just asked, “Why would she call me that other thing? Don’t look for sense in it. She was just hurling the worst words she could think of.”

“This particular one made you slap her.”

“I slapped her,” he said, his voice rising, “because she was hysterical and I wasn’t going to listen to another twenty minutes of her nonsense. Not because she picked a senseless insult out of a hat.”

I knelt, meeting his eyes, forcing him to see his evasions as the weak, toothless things they were. “And I can’t quite believe that, because you were yelling too, Mr. Gibb. You were every bit as angry with her as she was with you. You were so very out of control, in fact, that you hit her two more times after she was restrained and no longer a threat. And would have hit her again if I hadn’t stepped in.”

He measured me with a look. “That was another mistake, Counselor. But it had nothing to do with anything she said and everything to do with her wrapping her hands around my throat. I’m like most people, even you, in that I get angry when people try to kill me. You, of all people, must be able to understand that.”

The special emphasis he gave the phrase of all people didn’t sit well with me. He wasn’t referencing anything that had happened on One One One. I didn’t know whether he’d looked me up, like Li-Tsan and the Porrinyards, or received my background from Lastogne. But I did remember the look I’d gotten from Burr and Wells, and realized that they’d gotten the word too.

What else would a leader under fire discuss with his guards while waiting for the interrogator to arrive? Except why that interrogator was not to be trusted?

The ugly story would be all over the hangar by morning.

The only thing Gibb hadn’t counted on was the fact that I’d been carrying that weight a lot longer than I’d been on One One One, and was used to it.

I stood, pressed my palms against the small of my back, and arced my spine until I heard a creak. “I’m not satisfied, sir. And until I am, you will remain under arrest. I’ll go make arrangements for your confinement, and put Mr. Lastogne in command.”

He bit his cheek. “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Counselor.”

“Then give me something in exchange. Be a little forthcoming for once. I’ll even give you a choice. Either tell me what’s really going on between you and your height-sensitives, or surrender everything you know about Lastogne.”

He looked down, neither surrendering nor backing off, just removing himself from the discussion.

I waited until I was absolutely sure it was all he was willing to offer, then turned my back on him and returned to the hangar, my footsteps soft padding thuds against a deck gentler than some of the human beings walking upon it.