The Administration Series (189 page)

Sedanioni was still there too, of course, and it occurred to him that in some of the cells the restoration of the lights would be a distinctly mixed blessing.

The cell stank worse than Toreth remembered, even though he'd been down in the detention level long enough for the edge to wear off, but he went in anyway. He took the cuffs off Chevril while the Service people organised a trolley to Medical. Chevril had managed to work one boot off; his allegedly broken ankle was unpleasantly swollen and an eye-catching purple. More bruises dappled his body. His skin felt icy, but he was still coherent.

"How are you?" Toreth asked.

"About fifty times worse than the last time I saw you," he croaked. "Or didn't see you. Got any water? Or a bloody big gin and tonic?"

A paper cup lay on its side by the wall. Toreth picked it up, remembering the awkward struggle to drink out of it from Chevril's cuffed hands. The dispenser delivered half a cup before it started hissing air and spurting water, splashing over his hands. He gave up. Too much too quickly and Chevril would only throw it back up anyway.

Didn't bode well for the inmates of the rest of the cells, though.

"Here you are," Toreth said as he knelt beside Chevril.

Chevril struggled into a sitting position, with some help, and leaned against him while he drank. When he'd finished, he nodded weakly towards the door, where Payne stood watching. "What the bloody hell are you doing with
them
?"

Toreth sighed and his ribs twinged. "I'm working for Carnac."

"Carnac? The socioanalyst?" Chevril raised his eyebrows. "
Again
?"

"That's what I said. And if you have any comments about it you'll have to try hard to get an original one."

"No comments at all." Chevril rubbed circulation back into his hands, moving his injured shoulder gingerly. "I'm just bloody grateful to be getting out of here, whoever you're working for. Why's he back here?"

"Didn't you hear the announcement?"

"I heard something. I wasn't really paying attention. Busy freezing to death."

"Carnac's in charge of I&I now."

"Great. A bloody spook. Just what we need."

Toreth lowered his voice. "More or less what I thought. I'm trying to make sure we don't end up too thoroughly screwed at the end of all this."

"Yeah?" Chevril nearly sounded as if he believed that, or at least as if he was too exhausted to care. "Look, Toreth, I'm sure you're busy, but do you think you can find a couple of minutes to tell Elena that I'm okay? Or at least alive."

"Of course, if I can get through. The comms are a mess." Toreth heard the trolley in the corridor. "I'll come down and see you later when I've done it. Don't forget what you said before."

"What?"

"You said that if I got you out of here, you'd fuck me. For free."

"Oh, hey!" Chevril's voice strengthened. "I didn't
mean
it."

Toreth grinned, standing up and moving away as the medics took over. "Don't worry — I'll wait until you're patched up."

He rejoined Payne, and considered whether to catch up with the search party. On reflection, there were probably more urgent things that needed doing.

As they went back up to the office, Payne said, "May I ask a question, sir?"

"Of course."

"Did you know the woman in the cell?"

"You mean the dead woman? Yes. Carla Sedanioni. She was a Grade Five investigator. She worked for Chev — that was the man in the cell with her — not for me. But I've known her for years, ever since she joined, in fact."

"Why was she killed? If she was an investigator, I mean?"

"From what she said, she tried to get between a bunch of your friends and some interrogator they were busy kicking to death." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Payne open his mouth at the phrase 'your friends', then close it again. "She didn't know who he was. All she could recognise was the uniform — they'd been working on him for a while." Toreth shrugged. "She was like that sometimes. Lippy. They finished him off, then started on her."

"It's a shame, sir," Payne said, with apparent sincerity.

"Yes, it is. She was bloody good at her job. I can think of plenty of people we could've stood to lose, but she wasn't one of them. Every one like that who's dead will make it that much harder to get things running again. If Carnac had got here a day or two earlier, we probably could've done something for her. There'll be a lot like that."

The idea bothered him unexpectedly. People were dying in the cells, right now, despite his best efforts. He'd always felt protective towards his own team, and now the feeling seemed to be spreading to encompass his new responsibilities.

He shrugged the idea away — it wouldn't help him or them to dwell on it.

It was early evening by the time he left Payne in the office next to his, collating the incoming reports, and caught up with Carnac. By then he had the outline of a rough plan. Carnac probably had his own, and it would probably be better, but at least Toreth felt as though he was making a contribution.

Whether that was a good thing was another question. Once he made the suggestion, even though it was something Carnac would have had to have done anyway, it was his idea. His responsibility. And, best of all, his fault if it went wrong. Still, he'd taken the job, ulterior motives or not, so he'd better do it.

It took fifteen minutes of hanging around before he was allowed into Carnac's office, so he didn't waste time on pleasantries.

"Carnac, the tribunal system isn't going to work, not in the current scheme anyway. There are too many prisoners down there and not enough people to do the processing. Plus, the whole system is shot to hell — there isn't even water to all the cells, and the medics are struggling already."

Carnac pursed his lips, looking as though he wanted to disagree. In the end he said, "What do you suggest?"

"Honestly? Open the cell doors and let everyone who can, walk out." He held his hand up, even though Carnac hadn't started to speak. "I know. Impossible. So, at the minimum, we need to release the investigators and all the non-interrogation staff as they're found in the search. Get the injured ones out to hospitals if they're too badly off to go home. Offer them their jobs back, tell them to come in when they feel up to it. Every one of them who does come back will help speed up getting the system running again."

"That won't be popular," Carnac said. Clearly he wasn't going to put up a fight about it.

"They aren't political criminals by any fucked-up definition. All they did was their job, within the letter of the law." Which is all any of us did. "If your friends have a problem with that, they should take it up with the people who defined what the law was."

"Very well." He tilted his head. "You have the authority to make that decision yourself, Toreth. There's no need to involve me."

"I thought it would sound better coming from you." And I'm not getting all the shit shovelled on me, no matter what you think. "For something that important they'd only come up here to double-check it anyway."

Carnac smiled, clearly understanding the real motive. "Very well. Was that all?"

"Yes, thanks." He stood up. "I'll stop taking up your valuable time."

"One moment, please." Toreth stood and waited, and Carnac gestured to his chair. "Sit."

He obeyed what was clearly an order, not a request. Carnac came round the desk and sat on the edge of it, still moving cautiously. Having him so close set Toreth's teeth on edge. He'd never hated someone so physically attractive before — in fact he'd rarely hated anyone to this degree — and it was a peculiar feeling.

"The Service has been invaluable to our cause," Carnac said. "Without their cooperation, the revolution would have failed. Failure is still not out of the question, should they withdraw their support. It is unlikely, but possible. I would prefer not to have them antagonised unnecessarily."

It took him a moment to realise what Carnac was getting at. "You mean by reinstating Bevan as HoS?"

"Quite. A small incident, in itself, but shift enough pebbles and one can create a landslide."

"Is that a socioanalyst saying?"

"It's an observation, and one I am being highly paid indeed to make."

"I'm surprised you didn't let Captain Clueless tell me where to shove my orders, then."

The corner of Carnac's mouth twitched slightly, but his voice remained serious. "Under other circumstances I might've. I backed you because you made it necessary for me to do so. You chose to test the extent of your authority in front of someone whose bad word would destroy your credibility with the entire staff of I&I."

He'd hadn't considered the situation in that light, although once Carnac pointed it out it was obvious. Well, he deserved the occasional piece of luck.

"Bevan is a dangerous man," Carnac continued, "strongly opinionated, set in his ways and impossible to control, which is why I followed Major Bell's recommendation to remove him in the first place."

"Your friends want I&I running again. Bev can do that a lot better than some," know-nothing wanker, "Service officer who isn't familiar with the building or the systems."

Carnac nodded, looking faintly irritated. "I understand your reasoning. Nevertheless, you placed me in a difficult position. Bell has no operational authority in the building, beyond the Service personnel, but she has the ear of several officers in the Service Command and I cannot be seen repeatedly to ignore her opinions."

"I'll try to make sure it doesn't happen too often."

"Thank you."

Carnac returned to his chair, and Toreth wondered if this was a glimpse into his real plans for I&I. When he'd told Bevan that Carnac intended to hand I&I over to be swallowed up by the Service, he'd been spinning a worse-case scenario. Had he been closer to the truth than he'd imagined?

As he was leaving, Carnac's voice stopped him in the doorway.

"Just a point regarding the investigators: the reinstatements can only be probationary."

"What?" He turned back, wondering what the hell Carnac was up to now.

"Without the authority of a tribunal, an offer of re-employment can only be probationary. I'm sorry." He shrugged. "It's out of my hands. It was the decision of the Administrative Council when they approved the plan for I&I."

Fuck. "I'll do my best with that, then."

Back in his office, he sat and worried at the problem for a while, then gave up. Clearly there was to be no way round it, even if Carnac was lying through his teeth about whose decision it was. Toreth would just have to live with it, and so would the investigators. Since it was long past curfew, there was no point starting the releases today anyway. Maybe they'd be so glad to be free that they wouldn't notice the wording.

Yeah, right.

By the time Toreth left I&I, it was past nine. He should have stayed longer, but after the third time he found himself staring at the screen, with his eyes open but asleep for all practical purposes, he decided he had to call it a day. His ribs ached, his head ached, and hunger had begun to give way to nausea. Time to go, while he could still manage the walk out of the building.

He was stopped five times on the way back, but the curfew pass worked like a charm. He passed the guards in Warrick's building on autopilot — fortunately building security recognised him without his being required to string together a coherent explanation of who he was. When he opened the door to the flat, wondering whether he could manage to eat anything before he fell asleep, the first thing he noticed was the cold draft blowing down the hall. The second thing was Sara peering anxiously round the living room door.

"Oh, thank God, it's you," she said.

"Could be." He closed the door and mildly impressed himself by managing to reset the security. "What's going on?"

"Jesus, Warrick is going to kill me." Then she disappeared back into the room.

Tempted to head for the kitchen, he went to see what was wrong. He found Sara standing over McLean, who was on his hands and knees, scrubbing the carpet and the side of the larger sofa. All the windows were open, which explained the cold. There was a sharp smell in the air — disinfectant and something else it took him a few moments to identify.

"Ah, you found Bastard, then?"

Sara nodded and McLean looked up. He had a beautiful set of scratches that ran from the corner of his right eye to the angle of his jaw. If Toreth hadn't been so thoroughly exhausted, he might have laughed.

"Can you still smell it?" Sara bit her lip. "It wasn't Bastard's fault. He's upset, that's all. I made him a litter tray, and it's in my room, and I was going to keep him in there but I thought I'd let him out for a bit of run around. Who on Earth buys cream-coloured carpets anyway? Even oatmeal would be —"

The cold draft was stirring a headache behind Toreth's eyes. "Sara . . . tell me tomorrow. When there is a tiny chance that I will give a fuck."

"God, I'm sorry." She came back over and took his arm. "You look like shit. Can I get you anything?"

He stood for a moment, letting himself lean on her shoulder, trying to focus. "Is there any food going?"

Sara nodded. "Rob made something. Things from the fridge with tomatoes and rice, but it's a lot better than I could manage."

The absence finally registered. "Where the hell is Warrick?"

"Still at SimTech. He called to say he had to stay until after the curfew, so he wouldn't be back. When you arrived I thought he'd found a way to get a pass."

"Fuck." Or rather not. Not that he had the energy anyway but God, he'd been looking forwards to seeing him. Suddenly he couldn't face the idea of food. "I'm going to bed."

"Did you have anything to eat earlier?"

"I'm not sure." It felt like an unnecessarily complicated question. Earlier than when? "I had breakfast."

"Then you're eating now. For Christ's sake, you were in that bloody cell with nothing to eat for however long. You'll kill yourself. Sit down."

Sit down where? Looking round, he found they had somehow made it into the kitchen. He sat and ate whatever it was that Sara put in front of him, because it was easier than trying to argue with her, and then let her put him to bed.