Memorys legion, p.34
Memory's Legion, page 34
It was sloppy. And, to her eyes, less likely to get replicable results than Dr. Carmichael’s work. That didn’t mean that there had really been a conspiracy to quash the array translation project. It might just have been a bad decision. She went back to look at the funding committee reports. It took her most of the morning and well into the midday darkness before she found the smoking gun.
Deep in the patent payment agreement that covered any products derived from the microbiota compatibility studies, a new name appeared. Only it wasn’t really new at all.
V. Dietz.
Veronica.
Mona went through all of the present workgroups, and again and again, all through the studies, it appeared. Whatever discoveries Xi-Tamyan made in their facilities on Auberon, Veronica Dietz was contractually entitled to a cut. Each one was small, but taken together, they would be enough to make her fantastically wealthy. People had been murdered for much less money than her liaison made in a month. And that was before her salary.
Mona went through again, this time looking for the justification for the payments. Some service that Veronica did for the researchers that made the payments make sense. There was nothing apart from the inescapable conclusion that if anyone was going to make anything, Veronica Dietz got a slice.
When her system chimed, she flinched. Veronica’s voice came from the speaker, as friendly and casual as ever. It was only the intensity with which Mona listened that made it seem fake as a carnival mask.
“Hey, Dr. Rittenaur. I’m heading down to the commissary. Do you want me to get you anything?”
The steadiness of Mona’s voice surprised her. She would have thought that something would make it tremble: surprise, fear, anger. But she only said, “No, I’m fine,” and let the connection drop.
Biryar had only ever been to two executions. The first time, he had been a child, and Laconia had still been more wilderness than civilization. One of the soldiers who had come with the first fleet had been careless in his driving. Maybe even intoxicated, it was hard to remember the details now. A boy from the original scientific expedition had been struck and killed. Duarte himself had overseen the punishment, and attendance at the death had been mandatory.
Before they killed the man, Duarte had explained that discipline was critical for them all. They were a small force in a single system, with no influx of immigration to draw from. It had seemed a strange argument at the time. If people were so rare and precious, killing one seemed wasteful.
Later he understood that the preciousness was what made the sacrifice profound. The soldier had died quickly, and while it didn’t undo the man’s crime, it showed the members of the civilian scientific expedition that Duarte and his followers valued their lives and the lives of their children. If the driver had lived, bringing the two populations together would have been difficult or impossible.
The second time, it had been a young construction worker in the capital who used the wrong proportions when mixing concrete for the foundations of one of the buildings. No one had died, but the error, if it hadn’t been found, could have led to hundreds of deaths when the structure collapsed. Duarte had held a ceremony—again mandatory—so that everyone could understand the severity of the problem and the sorrow with which the young woman was being sent to the Pens. Biryar hadn’t watched her die, but he still remembered her tear-streaked face as she made her apology to the community.
Laconia had always been the few and the pure against the many and the corrupt. Like the Spartans from whom they took their name, Laconians were severe within their group, both to forge the iron discipline that had led them to victory and to demonstrate to others the sincerity of their beliefs.
It was hard, but it was necessary.
Now the Laconians present in the courtyard stood at attention, representing the empire and its uncompromising resolve. Biryar had his place of honor at the front of the assembly.
“I apologize,” the prisoner said, “for the shame I brought on my companions. And for the wrong I have done to my commander and the High Consul.”
The sunlight hurt Biryar’s eyes, and a thin film of sweat stuck his shirt to his back. The pistol felt heavy, the holster like someone constantly tapping his hip for attention. There were more locals in attendance than he’d expected. Some were employees of the local newsfeeds, but many of them had come as sightseers and tourists drawn by the spectacle of punishment the way they would be to a sporting event.
The prisoner, an ensign assigned to logistics and supply, had given a pharmaceutical printer and two boxes of reagents from the Notus’s medical supplies to a local criminal to produce untaxed recreational drugs. The local buyer was in an Auberon-administered prison and faced two years’ confinement if she was convicted. The trial was apparently a lengthy process. The Laconian side of the theft would be dead before Biryar ate dinner.
The prisoner hung his head. A guard led him up the steps to the little platform. The prisoner knelt. Biryar’s nose had grown mostly insensible to the sewer smell of Auberon, but a particularly strong whiff of it came on the breeze. It felt like a comment. Tradition, such as it was, allowed anyone higher in the chain of command to give the order, but symbolically, Biryar knew it had to be him. The prisoner’s commanding officer, a woman Biryar had known peripherally for almost a decade, stood on the platform with a sidearm at the ready.
Biryar stepped forward to the sound of a single, dry drum, met her gaze, and nodded. He half expected tears to glisten in her eyes, but her expression was blank. After a moment, she nodded in return, pivoted, and fired a single round into the back of the prisoner’s head. The sound was weirdly flat. The drum stopped, and a medic came out to certify the death.
And it was over. Biryar turned to the cameras of the local newsfeeds, careful to present his better profile. The crowd looked shocked. That was good. State violence was meant to be shocking. It was done to prove a point, and it would have been a pity for the sacrifice not to have its effect. He paused long enough to be sure that they’d all gotten a good image of him for the feeds, then turned toward the Laconian contingent. He wanted to go back to his office, get a cold gin and tonic, and close his eyes until his head stopped aching.
Most of the people in Laconian blue had come with him on the Notus, but Suyet Klinger, the local representative of the Association of Worlds, and her staff had also chosen clothes that echoed Biryar’s uniform. Blue almost the right shade and tailored in a similar cut. Not Laconian uniforms, but something that rhymed with them. Her face, as he stepped to her, was grave.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” she said. “I’m sure that was very difficult for you.”
He knew what he was supposed to say. Discipline is the policy of the High Consul. It should have been easy, but the words that came to his mind were Why are you sure?
Klinger knew nothing about him but what she’d been told by Laconia. She would have been just as solicitous to anyone who had come in his position. And if someone else had been in her role, he would have treated them the same way he did her. They weren’t people to each other. They were roles. This was etiquette, and the inauthenticity of the situation oppressed him.
He nodded to her. “Discipline is the policy of the High Consul,” he said, and she averted her gaze in respect. The forms were there to be followed.
He moved through the grim crowd, acknowledging each of them and being acknowledged. Form. It was all just keeping form. The shadows shifted around them as the sun raced for the horizon and left him feeling like he’d been there for hours, but there were more nods to exchange, more words to mouth. The dead man was hauled away to the recyclers, and the medics retreated.
It was strange and in a way unfair that the local thief would live and might even go free. Being Laconian meant being held to a higher standard, and so transgression against that standard required a higher response, but it still bothered him. Or at least it did for the moment. If he could get some rest and a decent meal, it might not. The faces in the group began to blend together, one following another following another until he didn’t know or care who he was speaking to.
He came to a man he hadn’t met in person before, with brown hair, a serious expression, and a mole on his cheek like a dot of paving tar. Biryar almost pulled away, shocked by the sudden visceral image of how the fleck of tar had gotten there, and then felt amused and even strangely pleased.
“Deputy Balecheck,” Biryar said. “Good to finally meet you.”
Balecheck’s eyes widened a fraction. The surprise at being recognized melted quickly into a smile as they shook hands, and then Biryar moved on. From the other man’s point of view, it had been a gratifying moment that showed his importance to the new governor. Functionally, it was an example of building the kind of good relations with the local authority that would cement Laconian rule on Auberon. It was also a smutty joke with his wife, but that was a fact Biryar would keep entirely private. At least until he was alone with Mona.
It works better when you commit to the process, she’d said. He had to commit to the process of governing Auberon, even the parts that he found difficult. Especially to those parts.
A car waited for him at the edge of the courtyard, ready to take him back to his offices. When he ducked into it, Major Overstreet followed and sat across from him. His pale, bald face shone with sweat.
“How are you doing, sir?”
“Fine,” Biryar said. “A bit of a headache.”
“The stutter,” Overstreet said.
“The what?”
The car pulled away, and cool air, as fresh as if it came from the Notus’s recyclers, touched his face and filled his nose. He noticed the absence of Auberon’s stench and dreaded the end of the ride when he’d step back into it. It made more sense to keep exposing himself to the foul air. Breaks from it like this could only prolong his acclimation.
“They call it the stutter, sir. It’s common among new arrivals. The four-hour cycles don’t sync well with normal circadian cues. Irritability, headache. Some people get vertigo after about a month that clears in a few days. It’s just our brains learning the new environment.”
“Good to know,” Biryar said. “Is it bothering you?”
“Yes, sir, it is,” Overstreet said. “I’m looking forward to it being over.”
The growing twilight in the streets was the real one. The end of the day and the beginning of evening. If he did it right, Biryar hoped to be asleep before the nighttime dawn. If he could just sleep through and give his body the impression of a full twelve hours of darkness… The longing for rest surprised him. Maybe he was more tired than he knew.
“What progress have you made on that other investigation?” Biryar asked.
“The man with the metal arm,” Overstreet said, making the words like the heading on a report. Neither a question nor a statement, but a tag that identified the content to follow. “He is a known figure in the local criminal demimonde. He goes by several names, but he has no entry in the law enforcement systems. He has no accounts on the exchanges, though given the token he tried to bribe you with, it’s safe to assume he has significant access to untraceable funds.”
“Where did he come from?”
“There aren’t any records of his arrival in the databases.”
“So he grew out of the dirt?” Biryar said, more sharply than he’d meant to.
Overstreet shrugged. “I’m moving forward with the assumption that the local databases are at least inaccurate and more likely suffering ongoing compromises.”
Biryar leaned back in the seat. A group of young men were playing football in the street, and the security detail was yelling at them to move off and let the cars through. Biryar watched them. Long-limbed, lanky young men. Maybe Belters. Maybe just adolescents. Any of them could be a separatist terrorist. All of them could be. For a moment, it felt like madness to be on the planetary surface at all. There was no safety here. There couldn’t be.
“He’s not a criminal mastermind,” Overstreet said as the car started forward again. “He’s just got a head start. We will track him down.”
“Don’t turn this one over to the local police. He should be our guest until we can fully understand how he got past our security arrangements.”
“I understand,” Overstreet said. “No formal arrest, then?”
“Once he’s helped with our security review, we can revisit the issue,” Biryar said. And then, a moment later, “He was talking with my wife.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
The compound was well guarded now. Laconian marines in powered armor stood like sentries at the approaches and on the roofs. He lost something by having them there. Duarte’s rule through him should have been inevitable and confident. A standing guard made him seem concerned, and concern made him look weak, but he couldn’t bring himself to dismiss them or release them to other duty.
As he stepped into the private rooms, he unbuttoned his collar. In the time since they’d arrived, Biryar had made some changes to the governor’s compound. He hadn’t brought many things from their old home on Laconia, but what there was had pride of place. The picture of Mona receiving her Laconian distinguished service award, framed on the front wall where the light caught it. The clay sculpture she’d given him as a wedding gift. A calligraphic print of one of High Consul Duarte’s sayings—Effort in Discipline. Effortless in Virtue—in gold leaf.
Everything else in the rooms was foreign. The fluted wall sconces with different spectrums of light for daytime darkness and night. The grain of the false wood paneling, made from the treelike organisms of Auberon to mimic the trees of Earth. Neither one was his home. It felt like the room itself was telling him that he didn’t belong. Like it was pushing him away. He was sure that, with time, the sensation would pass.
He stretched. The knot between his shoulders appeared to be there permanently now, like the grit in his eyelids. The door behind him opened with a click, and Mona’s footsteps—as familiar and unmistakable as her voice—followed. He looked over at her, and his heart sank to his gut.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She dropped into a cushioned chair and shook her head. A small, tight, unconscious gesture he’d seen before. Anger, then. Well, better that than fear. He went to sit near her, but didn’t touch her. Her rage didn’t respond well to physical comfort.
“This place is rotten,” she said. “Xi-Tamyan has a scam going on in it that has profoundly compromised its research priorities for years. Years. Maybe since they came here.”
“Tell me,” Biryar said.
She did. Not only the way her liaison had added herself to the patent agreements, but that she was married to the union comptroller, that she had gotten the placement in Mona’s office over several other more qualified applicants, that her reported income didn’t remotely match the payments made to her. With every sentence, Mona’s voice grew harder, the outrage rising the more she thought about it. Biryar listened, leaning forward with his hands clasped and his gaze on her. Every new detail felt like a weight on his chest. Corruption layered on corruption layered on corruption until it seemed like there was more disease than health.
“And,” Mona said, reaching her crescendo, “either management and the union didn’t know, in which case they’re incompetent, or they did, and they’re complicit.”
Biryar lowered his head, letting it all settle. Mona’s gaze was fixed on nothing, her head shaking a fraction of a centimeter back and forth, like she was scolding someone in her imagination. She probably was.
There was a soft knock at the door. One of the housekeepers hoping to sweep or change their bedding. Biryar told them to come back later and got a muttered apology in return. Mona hadn’t even noticed. He risked taking her hand.
“That is disappointing,” he said.
“We have to fix it,” she said. “This can’t be permitted. This scam has cost years. Veronica has to be arrested and removed. The union has to be investigated and purged. I don’t know how deep this goes.”
“I will bring this to the attention of the local magistrates,” Biryar said. “We’ll address it.”
“Magistrates? No, we need to go now and arrest her. Ourselves. She’s undermining the most important colony world that there is. You’re the governor.”
“I understand that. I do. But if what she’s done is illegal under Auberon’s law, then it’s a matter for the local courts. If I step in, I have to step very carefully.”
Mona drew back her hand. The weight in Biryar’s gut grew heavier, the knot in his back ached. He pressed his lips thin, and went on.
“I am building on fear and hope,” he said. “Fear of the Tempest and the Typhoon, and hope that they won’t come. Our best path is to be seen as all-powerful but benevolent. Even indulgent. When we have a larger fleet, more experience, loyalty among the local police and military forces? Then we can enforce our ways here. We’re still in our first days. I have to be careful not to overreach.”
Disappointment changed the shape of Mona’s eyes. It softened her mouth. He felt the apology at the back of his throat, but it would have sounded like he was sorry for not giving her what she wanted, and he would mean he was sorry that the situation was what it was.
“If the payments to her don’t really go to her…” Mona said. “What if her income report is accurate? She could be part of a crime syndicate. That man who was here? With the arm? She could be working for him.”
“And I will have our people look into that. If she is, we’ll take action.”
“We should be taking action anyway,” Mona said. “I’m Laconia’s eyes on the most significant agricultural research that there is. You’re the governor of the planet. If we aren’t doing something, why are we here?”
“Please lower your voice.”
“Don’t patronize me, Biryar. It’s a real question.”
