Sword of the Lamb (39 page)

“Good morning, Erica.” Ben Venturi paused at the office door, a cup of coffee gripped in one hand, and looked back into the empty work room, then crossed to her desk and perched on the edge. “Your guest still sleeping?”

“No.” Erica Radek frowned. She’d be relieved if her “guest” were asleep at 08:00 in the morning. “I sent him to the infirmary for a physical examination.”

“A physical? What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing, really. The Woolfs are great believers in physical fitness.” A brief sigh escaped her. “Grief, Ben. That’s what’s wrong with Alex Ransom.”

“Oh.” He frowned down at the floor. “Rich?”

And Adrien Eliseer, she added to herself, but that was one problem she didn’t intend to discuss with Ben.

“Yes. Of course the infirmary can only treat some of the side effects, such as loss of appetite and insomnia. Dr. Calder probably won’t have any more luck on the latter than I did.”

Ben was silent, thinking of Rich, she knew, the sadness in his eyes out of character in that tough face that usually epitomized so fully the SSB major, even when he was out of uniform, as he was now. He took time to finish his coffee, and when he tossed the cup into the syntegrator by the desk, he was in character again.

He asked, “What about Predis?”

“That’s a vague and very broad question.”

“I thought you might know the specific questions to ask. Like, what’s he going to do about Alex Ransom?”

“Nothing, probably, for the time being.” She paused, frowning. “But when Alex is free to leave HS 1, you might keep him under protective surveillance until we’re sure of Predis’s reaction.”

“It’s already set up. What do you mean about Predis doing nothing?”

“He’s under no immediate threat; he’s had time to think it through, and no doubt he’s even considering how useful Alex might be to him. Inadvertently, of course. Emeric Garris has been talking about retiring from Fleet Operations for years. His problem has been finding a competent successor. Curious, isn’t it, we seem to be able to attract or produce such excellent spies, but so few really good soldiers.”

“What about Emeric? Do you see Alex as his successor in FO? That leaves Jan Barret out of the running, and Predis won’t be happy about that. The Council seat goes with command of FO, and Predis wants Jan on the Council.”

She nodded. “Of course, but Jan won’t be out of the running; he’ll probably end up as Alex’s second-in-command. Meanwhile, Alex is a Confleet Academy graduate—who tested out in the top five percent of his class, incidentally—and Predis will realize that he can bring our military program to optimum level for Phase I far sooner than Jan could. That’s what I mean by Predis considering Alex useful, and he’ll tolerate him until he ceases to be useful or becomes an imminent threat.”

Ben rose and propped his fists on his hips, his mouth tightening irritably.

“Well, we can’t go to the bargaining table without the long-range MT, no matter what shape FO’s in.”

“I know, and I don’t think we have to worry about Alex until Andreas gets a breakthrough on the MT.”

“So why are you asking me to keep an eye on him?”

She shrugged. “For the same reason you’d already set it up. Predis can be unpredictable.”

Ben sighed and glanced at his watch. “True. I have to go now. But, Erica, we’ve got to get through to Andreas about Predis and this whole damned situation.”

“I’m working on it. I’ve set up a series of extrapolation sequences. Andreas will accept it more easily in the form of data-based potentials.”

“Good luck.” He turned and started for the door. “I’m on duty at the Cliff in an hour. I’ll talk to you when I get back.”

“Take care, Ben.”

“I always do. Later.”

PERSONAL FILE: E. RADEK CASE NOTES: 24 JULY 3253

SUBJECT: ALEX RANSOM

I’ve assumed personal supervision of Alex’s screening with Val Severin assisting on the objective tests. We’ve completed the Tchekov Sensory Apperception series, the Aptitude-Motivation correlations, and the Barzoni Modal Intelligence tests. We also recorded for voice print analyses today using the Luxe Connotative list, but I’ll take more VP samples during analytic screening with the Comodo series.

1 began the initial analytic screening today, and Alex is consciously cooperative, but has set up strong preconscious inhibitory systems. They seem to be directed against expression of normal grief reactions. He has refused sedatives; possibly fears losing emotional control. He obviously suffers nightmares, which isn’t unexpected or unusual. He’s also reluctant to take inhibition-reducing drugs. I’ve limited the use of drugs to allay his anxiety about them and will work through conditioning techniques. He’s highly resistant, even in consent, but that’s consistent with his ego-function indices.

Note: Try HF modulated light conditioning; he is apparently more sensitive to visual than to aural stimuli. Also, investigate associations with the word “locks.” Unusual theta pattern on VPs.

Alex has shown a strong interest in public reaction to his “death” that is in no way obsessive, and I consider it positive. We discussed newscasts relating to his accusation against Karlis Selasis today. A special Directorate Investigative Board has been assigned to look into Lord Alexand’s death, and negative reaction to the Selasids is strong on both Elite and Fesh levels. Karlis was transferred to Concordia and is being kept under “protective guard.”

I’m gratified at Alex’s reactions to his father. I’ll investigate it further, but there seems to be little deep-seated hostility. He’ll have difficulty resolving his guilt responses toward his mother, but he’s capable of recognizing them and has already begun a process of channelization independently and will need little outside direction.

There is no indication of perception warp or disruption resulting from his brother’s death, but repressive systems are strong. This and one other factor may require Level 3 conditioning if I can achieve it: the extreme repressive systems associated with Adrien Eliseer. This may still be a negative factor.

Erica Radek put her coffee cup down and switched off the table vidicom when she heard the click of the guest room doorscreens, then turned her chair and smiled up at Alex Ransom, noting the comfortable fit of the name. Alex in a brown slacsuit, showing already on his second morning in Fina a remarkable capacity for blending into his milieu. On the surface, at least. He was still pale, his eyes ringed with dark shadows, but his smile was warm and seemed to come without too much effort.

“Good morning, Erica.”

“Good morning.” She rose and crossed to the ’spenser. “What would you like for breakfast?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

“Alex, must I start making doctorly noises again?”

He laughed at that. “All right, just don’t ask me to make any decisions about it.”

“Well, we don’t have that much choice, anyway.” She touched out a number sequence and waited for the covered tray to slide from the slot. When she carried it to the table, he took it from her and put it on the table himself. She sat down, watching him as he gingerly removed the cover from the tray.

“It’s as close as we can come to steak. Very high in protein and all that.” Her gray eyes glinted with amusement as he tasted it and made a polite effort at appreciation.

“It’s a . . . close approximation.” He glanced at the vidicom. “You were watching a newscast.”

“Yes.” She picked up her cup. “Selasis is still squirming. Of course, your father is making sure your dying accusation against Karlis gets a good vidicom play.”

“One of the advantages of the PubliCom System franchises. Anything new from the Directorate?”

“Robek and Honoria Ivanoi are spearheading a movement to unseat Selasis, which will undoubtedly fail, but Lord Orin hasn’t had time to take advantage of Woolf’s temporary weakness.”

He nodded, then still staring down at his tray, “Was anything said today about my mother?”

“Yes, of course, and no reporter can resist waxing maudlin in a situation like this, but your mother is the Lady Woolf and a daughter of Galinin. Don’t underestimate her strength or resilience.”

“I don’t, Erica. And my father?”

“Ben had a report from Fenn Lacroy last night. Your father is dealing with his grief very well, and as you’d expect him to, by channeling the emotional charge into protecting the House. Alex, this isn’t easy for either of them, but they’ll survive it, and so will DeKoven Woolf.”

She saw the ambivalent light in his eyes resolve into something close to resignation as he turned his attention to cutting his steak.

“They’ll survive and the House will survive. I had no doubt of that.” And the subject was closed.

Erica leaned back, waiting for him to ask about Adrien Eliseer. But he didn’t, and she wasn’t surprised.

He worked at his breakfast, pausing at length to ask lightly, “Well, Erica, what black machinations have you in store for me today?”

“More of the same, with variations, but I’ll give you a few minutes to finish your breakfast.”

“For that I’m grateful, and perhaps you’ll humor me by answering a few more questions.”

She smiled faintly.She’d given him few opportunities for questions yesterday, but he had taken advantage of every opening.

“I’ll answer any I’m free to at this point.”

“The Society’s ultimate aim for the Concord is a representational form of government. Do you practice what you propose?”

“No. We’re not in a position to enjoy the ideal we hope to make possible. For an organization officially classified as subversive, representational government is far too unwieldy. Still, we have vestiges of it in our Code of Law. For instance, we’ve provided for the removal of any councilor by a majority vote of the total membership. That rule has never been invoked, however.”

He studied her a moment, then, apparently having reached his limit of protein-enriched approximation, crossed his knife and fork on his tray and pushed it aside. “In all your half century of existence, there have been no major disagreements?”

She shrugged. “Of course there have, but none serious enough to force a confrontation. The harmony derives from the nature of the membership in part—generally upper-class, well educated Fesh, and all of us are here because we share certain convictions and believe in them strongly enough to make the necessary sacrifices. And all of us have survived the screening process, which eliminates any radical elements we might attract. Beyond that, we’re forced into harmony to a great degree. We’re outlaws in the eyes of the Concord, and totally dependent on good organization and tight security. We depend on one another for our very lives.”

He nodded, frowning slightly, then rose, and she’d learned by now that no discourtesy was intended in this tendency to leave a conversation to begin pacing the room.

“Haven’t you other HQs comparable to this one?”

“Only small comcenters. Our outside chapters are rather loosely knit.”

His pacing took him to the orchids; he stopped to study them as he asked, “Over half your membership is in the outside chapters, isn’t it—the double idents?” He looked around to catch her nod, then, “I can see why representational government would be so unwieldy with the members so scattered.”

Back to the original question. She smiled to herself. “Our government, Alex, is similar to that of a House hierarchy. Our chain of command works down from the major department chiefs to unit and subunit heads. For instance, I’m Chief of Human Sciences; I have jurisdiction over several units, including History, Sociology, Medicine, and Psychoscience—which happens to be my specialty. I have ten unit chiefs responsible to me, and each of them has three to twelve subunit heads responsible to them.”

He walked back to his chair but didn’t sit down, instead resting his elbows on the back.

“The Council is at the top of this chain of command.”

“Yes. All major decisions come from the Council. It’s analogous to the Directorate, except Andreas doesn’t wield as much power as Galinin.”

“Is he precluded from that by your Code of Law?”

“No, only by his nature. Andreas guides the Phoenix as he has from its birth by consent, and by virtue of the profound respect he commands among the members.”

He nodded acceptance of that, but there was a brief narrowing of his eyes at the word “guides.” He straightened and began pacing again.

“Can you tell me more about the Council? I mean, is that one of the questions you’re free to answer now?”

He also meant, can you tell me about the
councilors
, but that unasked question she chose to ignore.

“Yes. The Council is made up of the chiefs of the seven major departments, and by custom the successor to a major department head also assumes the Council seat. The original Council was elected by majority vote of the charter members. There were about fifteen hundred of them; around four hundred are still with us, and three of our present councilors were on the original Council.” She paused, then added, “New members usually don’t meet the Council until they’ve completed GT, but you’re a special case.”

He seemed to consider that, and she wondered if it displeased him; his oblique smile offered no revelation.

He asked, “Is that why you’ve taken personal charge of my screening?”

“Partly, yes, but I often take personal charge of at least part of the screening of new members. We seldom accept more than twenty applicants a year. We’re a very exclusive organization. We have to be. Our survival depends on it, and a great deal depends on our survival.” She smiled wistfully. “Perhaps even the survival of the Concord.”

He returned to his chair, and his scrutiny took on a cast of curiosity ameliorated by a solicitude that was unexpectedly personal.

“Erica, how did you become one of the chosen few?”

She smiled. “Well, that’s a long story, but I think I can make it fairly succinct. But I should warn you that in Fina—or in the outside chapters, for that matter—a tradition has developed over the years that makes it . . . well, a breach of etiquette to inquire about a member’s past before the Phoenix.”

He hesitated, then, “Thank you for the warning, and you needn’t answer my inquiry about
your
past.”

“I don’t share most members’ reticence on that, perhaps because my pre-Phoenix past is so many years behind me; the wounds have long ago healed.” She sipped at her coffee, noting the transient veiling of his eyes. “To begin at the beginning, I was born in Na’saki, allieged to the House of Matsune, although I wasn’t much aware of that allegiance in my childhood. My parents were teachers in the University on indefinite allegiance grants to the Concord. In other words, Independent Fesh. Mother was a psychosociologist, Academicians Guild third degree; Father was an anthropologist and a GuildMaster. After Basic School I entered the University, of course—my parents spoiled me, really; they were in a position to open almost any academic door for me—and I dabbled in sociology, anthropology, history, even theology, which explains why I’m so useful here in what we so cavalierly lump under the heading of ‘Human Sciences.’ I think I was about twenty when I decided I’d found my life’s work in medicine. I stayed with that exclusively for four years, and my error was in not stopping there and going into Conmed.”

“Why your error?”

“Because I became fascinated with psychology, and my doting father managed to get me a continued studies leave so I could enroll for an advanced degree in psychohygiene research. Within a year, a call went out from Conpol for psychocontrollers and, with my training and aptitude quotients, I became valuable to Lord Henri Matsune. In fact, worth ten conscript Fesh in that year’s tax levy. That’s when I learned the real meaning of independence as applied to
Independent
Fesh, and that’s when I was inducted into the training program for SSB psychocontrollers.”

His breath came out in a long sigh with the words, “Holy God . . .”

She nodded, feeling the old tension in her stomach; perhaps the wounds healed, but some scars, however old, never seemed to lose their capacity to ache.

She said lightly, “My story is rather typical, really. Many of our members were driven into our fold by conscription. Ben Venturi is another conscript recruit, by the way.”

He raised an eyebrow, but refrained from questioning her. She answered this unasked question because Alex Ransom and Ben Venturi must of necessity come to terms with each other in the future; it was important that Alex have some insight into Ben.

“Twenty years ago,” she said, “Ben was just beginning a promising career as an executech in the Neeth Cameroodo estate in Leda when he was conscripted into Conpol. Like me, he was well educated, with equally well educated parents, although they were strictly House Fesh. A year after his conscription, Ben saw his father arrested on charges of treason simply because he was a friend of a man who went berserk one day and nearly killed Lord James’s younger brother, Luther. The man’s grievance, incidentally, was that Luther had raped his daughter, which the ever moral Cameroodo refused to believe. He called it a revolutionary conspiracy. Ben’s father died of a heart attack the day after his arrest, and his mother was taken in by the Sisters of Solace—as a patient. And here’s the long arm of coincidence for you: one of the nuns on her ward is Andreas’s sister.”

Alex frowned at that, but after a moment his surprise gave way to a brief laugh. “Strange, I hadn’t thought about Dr. Riis having a family.”

“I know. I always find it hard to believe he wasn’t simply created whole in Fina. His sister is the only other member of his family who survived the Fall. She was a charter member of the Phoenix, but after Elor Peladeen’s defeat, she opted for the Sisters of Solace. But Amelia Riis is another story. To go on with Ben’s story, a short time after his father’s death, he was offered a promotion into the SSB by Conpol, and an alternative by the Phoenix. He took both. He’s one of the few members who were double idents from the beginning. Now he’s ranked a major in the SSB and is in charge of the comcenter at the Cliff in Leda.”

Alex’s eyebrows went up. “In Leda?”

No doubt he was considering not only the difficulty of maintaining two demanding jobs, but the practical problem of commuting on a regular basis across half a world from Fina to Leda.

But she didn’t give him a chance to ask about that.

“I don’t know how much longer Ben can keep up both identities, but he has a high energy quotient and excellent organizational capacities.” She added with a sigh, “He also has ulcers, but we manage to keep that under control. Anyway, one thing Ben and I have in common is that we were both offered the alternative of the Phoenix at crisis points precipitated by conscription. My alternative was presented by a friend from the University. I’d known him for several years, and knew we agreed on certain basic social concepts, but of course he’d never said a word about the Phoenix. Even after he offered it, I tried to find another alternative, another way out of my Bondage to the SSB, and my vain efforts to escape into Conmed, into the University, into my comfortable
independent
past, finally brought everything into focus in my mind.” She was looking at Alex, but for the moment she was seeing the face of a man, a young man then, who waited patiently and in faith for her to come to the most important decision of her life; a man who was dead now, who stayed too long in his double ident assignment.

Then she roused herself, finding a similar patience in Alex’s eyes as he waited for her to go on.

“It certainly wasn’t the plight of the Bonds that drove me into the Phoenix. It was
my
plight as an educated, sensitive human being forced to turn my talents and training to refined techniques of torture for a secret police that is in itself a symptom of the internal decay of the social system. I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t been offered the alternative of the Phoenix, but I do know I was seriously contemplating suicide. And in that I wasn’t unique. I’ve done some stat correlations on Fesh suicides. A large percentage occur soon after conscription into Conpol and Confleet, and the percentage has risen in the last twenty years in direct ratio to the increasing incidence of Bond uprisings. Both are red-alarm indices, but I doubt the Concord is even aware of the first, and it refuses to recognize the significance of the second.” She stopped, then lifted her cup to finish her coffee, adding matter of factly, “But that’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here.”