The Devil and Deep Space (36 page)

“Tell her that.” He could hardly choke out the words; because it could be true, it could be a plot for revenge. It was even possible that Ivers was in on the scheme. “Tell her that the documents she carries are illusory. I’m waiting.”

No. It could not be possible. Not a Bench specialist. If a Bench specialist was in on a plot on Verlaine’s part to hold out false hope of escape and freedom — only to take it all away at the last minute — then there was truly no justice left under Jurisdiction; and the entire galaxy was damned.

“No,
I’m
waiting. How can you deny the evidence of your own senses?” And yet Ivers did not speak. Was she as stunned by the enormity of Verlaine’s betrayal as he was? Or — was it possible —

“I know
that
person,” Zsuzsa said, and her clear voice cut through a fog in Andrej’s mind. “He’s Sarvaw.”

What?

Noycannir’s evidence. It was the crew of the Wolnadi that had been involved in the training accident, yes. Jennet ap Rhiannon had sent these people home with him to keep them from the Bench. The crew on Record were here, alive and well.

“The Serene Proximity is right.” There was more wrong here than any possible joke on Verlaine’s part. “Lek isn’t dead. Nor are Smish or Murat or Taller. Noycannir. What have you done?”

She had brought a Record with her, or at least it looked like a Record to Andrej, and he should know. It carried the counterseals, it showed the codes, it seemed genuine. But if the Record were genuine — then Noycannir had forged evidence.

The rule of Law depended upon the sanctity of evidence.

Oh, this was astounding treachery, and if Chilleau Judiciary were behind it, Chilleau Judiciary had to be destroyed. But if it was just one mad woman, it had to be exposed without mercy and without delay.

Andrej decided. “Mister Stildyne.” This was far beyond any personal considerations; he had to take this Record into custody, and place it in evidence. “Secure the Record, if you please. House–master Jepson. If you would assist my people — ”

He never finished his thought.

He had not been looking at Noycannir; it was a mistake. She was on him like the weight of blind remorse, she stabbed him with a knife that seemed to explode within his flesh into a fireball of anguish. Below his right shoulder, toward his side, missing the upper lobe of his lung if he was lucky, why did it hurt so much?

He was going to die. The sharp blow that his head took when he hit the ground settled his wits back into his consciousness, somehow, and Andrej knew that he had moments at best.

Her attack had taken them all by surprise. The room was full of people. Stildyne had been at the back of the crowd with Security, and prudently so; Stildyne would have moved Andrej’s Security to the back of the room the moment he had realized that Noycannir had brought Fleet Security resources, just in case those troops had come to arrest Andrej’s team. House security was on the other side of his father and his sister Zsuzsa. It would take seconds for any of them to intervene. He did not have seconds to spare.

Neurotoxin. The knife had carried veniwerk poison. The tissue of his body would start to dissolve within moments. Andrej rolled away from Noycannir, onto his left side, avoiding the pressure on his wounded side by instinct — but the move crippled him, because he had only the one good arm with which to defend himself, and now he was lying on top of it.

She swung at him savagely with another knife in her hand, and as Andrej ducked away from the threat he wondered how she had got them past the weapons scan. Glass knife. They would want to revise their search protocols. He rolled away from her and she rolled after him.

Andrej pulled away across the floor as best he could with one half of his body searing with agonizing pain, digging his left elbow against the floor for traction, straining with his neck bent and his head down. Trying to get away. Hoping against hope to win enough time to let his people react, and save him, but it all happened so quickly, and he knew it was only the adrenaline surge of pain and terror that made it seem as long to him.

He heard a sound. Noycannir crouched over him with her weapon raised to strike. The sound had been steel hitting stone. Emandisan steel, he knew it by the ringing of it, the stone of the floor. The mother–knife had slipped its catch and loosed itself and fallen. How could that have happened? He had no time to wonder about it.

The knife had fallen from the gaping neck of his blouse and followed the line of his arm down onto the floor at his elbow. He swept it into his hand with an awkward scraping grab of desperation and sank it into Noycannir’s chest as deeply as he could manage, twisting away from her glasknife — which shattered against the stone floor and spread its poison. Rolling over and on top of Noycannir’s body, using his own weight to press the blade home because he had no strength left with which to stab.

The hilt of the knife was hot now in his hand, and slippery. It seemed to resonate. Was it the sound of his own screaming? Was he maybe dead?

Not dead enough.

The rest of the world had caught up with him at last, but it was too late. They took him by the shoulders to move him from where he lay, and Andrej shrieked in agony, and passed out.

###

Coming to himself again after some unknown while Andrej opened his eyes, which declined to focus. He couldn’t raise his head to shield his eyes from the bright lights that surrounded him; someone held a big broken gnarl–knuckled hand up carefully between him and the direct glare of the floodlights, and Andrej recognized Stildyne.

After a moment Andrej raised his left hand — inefficiently, but a man could only do as much as he could do — and gestured for Stildyne to come down to him. He wasn’t quite sure where he was, on a gurney or on the floor, but he knew by the dazed fog in his mind that he was doped to the lips before and the dorsal fins behind, and he could guess that they were flushing the wound in which Noycannir’s glasknife had shattered for all they were worth.

“Record,” Andrej croaked. It didn’t come out very promisingly, but this was Stildyne. Stildyne was accustomed to making sense out of the muttered and incoherent ravings of drunken Dolgorukij — how different could this be?

Stildyne dripped a little stream of fluid into Andrej’s mouth and waited. Andrej tried again. “Record.”

This time it came out almost normally. Stildyne nodded solemnly, with what looked like a smile of grim amusement on his face — though it was a little difficult to tell, against the brilliant halo of the emergency lights behind Stildyne’s head.

“Secured,” Stildyne said. “On lawful authority directly received. Not a problem, sir. Next.”

Good. Stildyne apparently grasped the importance of keeping the Record out of Specialist Ivers’s hands. Not because Ivers was in on any double–dealing; but because Ivers’s duty to the Bench could well be in conflict with what Andrej knew he had to do to see justice done — or more precisely, to avoid an injustice. “Noycannir?”

It took him longer to get the longer word out, and Stildyne wasn’t so familiar with this one. But Stildyne caught it and shook his head this time, rather than nodding. “Dead as dead, your Excellency. I’ve never seen that catch to slip on you. But it’s a good thing that it did.”

These things always happened so fast. They were still happening too fast for Andrej; the drugs were clouding over in his mind, moment by moment. He had to concentrate.

“Thula.” He needed to get back to the
Ragnarok
as quickly as possible. There might be other elements to Noycannir’s plot of which he was still unaware, elements that could continue to work themselves out on their own momentum even after Noycannir herself was dead.

That was the way of it with poisonous reptiles, or so Andrej had heard. Had Noycannir been behind the Bench warrant for his death? “Stoshik. Cousin. Stanoczk.”

Stildyne moved his head to look around him, and Andrej winced at the sudden assault of the light. He needed Stildyne back to block the glare.

“Ferinc’s gone for him.” It was odd to hear Stildyne call Girag by that name; but perhaps it was only fair, after all. Regardless of who the man had been, he was Cousin Ferinc now. And Andrej was going to have to count on him to comfort his son for a little while, until Andrej could get home again.

There was just one more thing, then, and Stildyne would make the connection, Stildyne wouldn’t need to hear it all spelled out for him. Stildyne would know.

“Uniform.” He had to get the Record back to the
Ragnarok
. So he had to travel in uniform; very few people under Jurisdiction were legally permitted to transfer a Record. But once Ivers logged her documentation and his codes were revoked, he would no longer be technically entitled to wear the uniform of a Ship’s Prime officer on board of the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship
Ragnarok
, let alone that of a Ship’s Inquisitor.

Therefore Ivers could not be permitted to transmit the documentation that Andrej had endorsed until he had brought Noycannir’s forged Record safely to the
Ragnarok
and placed it into evidence in due form, legally, lawfully, uncontrovertibly.

Maybe they should offer Ivers a ride back to Pesadie Training Command, Andrej thought; and closed his eyes. It was a mistake. He had only enough time to realize the error before he was unconscious once again.

###

Andrej lay with his mind adrift for what seemed to be a long time, half–conscious of what was happening around him, thinking.

Mergau Noycannir had forged the Record. That was shocking enough on its own, but there was more. She had registered confessed guilt on the part of three of his Security, three people who were not dead and had not confessed. The Record had no tolerance that Andrej knew of for reversing receipt of a confession. Once the identity codes were cross–validated, the confession had legal status; it became its own object in law.

It would be all too easy for Chilleau Judiciary to turn its back on the forgery of the Record. The woman who was responsible for the crime was dead. It would be simple prudence on the part of the Bench not to introduce the shocking fact that evidence and confession could be so egregiously forged; the Bench had stability concerns enough already.

And yet Ivers had said that Verlaine questioned the usefulness of torture in upholding the rule of Law. Couldn’t he use this instance as a shocking example of the fact that the Inquisitorial system was no longer entirely in the Bench’s best interest?

If Andrej did not challenge the legitimacy of the forged Record, he could not reject the confessions it recorded. Smish, Murat, Taller, Lek, they were legally dead in that forged Record; how long would it take for someone to make them really and truly dead, out of the way, silenced, no longer a potential embarrassment and reproach to Jurisdiction?

People held his body, moved his body, and Andrej paid almost no attention to what they were doing. They’d flushed the wound. Yes. And were restoring fluid, swiftly, to minimize the strain on his circulatory system. Andrej could hear them talking, but the words made no sense, and he had issues of his own to ponder.

In order to protect his Security he had to get the forged Record into evidence as a forgery, and have its so–called evidence purged. He had no way of telling whether the information had been transmitted to any other Record, as for instance at some local Court.

He had been hearing the familiar sound of the pumps, but they shut down now. The flush was complete. How much damage had he sustained? How much of it was permanent? Had the neurotoxin destroyed lung tissue or merely muscle? He could open his eyes and find out, but for that he would have to open his eyes, and he wasn’t done thinking.

He had to get the Record back to the
Ragnarok
, and that meant as an officer, a Ship’s Inquisitor with possession of a Writ to Inquire. He had to ensure that his people would be safe. And if anyone should somehow force the issue and refer one of them to torture —

He would not. So long as he was the Ship’s Inquisitor, he was the officer who would perform the interrogation of any assigned resources. And he would not. Drug assist, speak-sera, that he might consent to; but no more, Writ or no Writ.

The Bench could remove him only by accusing him of treason. Failure to obey lawful and received instruction was mutiny. That would compromise the son of the Koscuisko prince in an environment in which the political stability of the Dolgorukij Combine was needed to stand as a balance against civil unrest during the coming transition of power; maybe that would work in his favor, if it came to that.

But it didn’t matter any more. They couldn’t make him. He was the only one who could do that. Jils Ivers had offered him freedom, relief of Writ. A chance to come home and be father and husband, to enjoy the power that entailed to the inheriting son of the Koscuisko prince. He had so wanted to come home and meet his son. The offer of escape from Inquiry had been a huge and staggering opportunity, but he could not trade the lives of his people away for wealth and power.

And it didn’t take relief of Writ to free him from the horrors of Inquiry. It only took a decision on his part. That was all. He had for so long told himself that he had no choice. He had for so long bathed in blood and torture, and done atrocious and obscene violence to helpless souls to rob them even of their last secrets before they died. He had believed that he had had no choice. He had been wrong about that. All of this time he had been wrong. Of course he had a choice.

It was so simple. He could do as he was bidden, or he could die. Yes, it was rational to be afraid of that death; he knew better than any man alive under Jurisdiction what a Tenth Level Command Termination could mean. But by the same token, he knew what it was not; nobody could do what he could do with pain at such a level. He knew that. It was not vanity. It was only fact.

Not very long ago he had faced in himself the fact that he had played Captain Lowden’s game and tortured souls in Inquiry beyond the limits of their crime to placate his commanding officer, so that Lowden would leave the bond–involuntaries alone. Not beyond the limits of their guilt — all of Inquiry was beyond the limits of any guilt — that had been part of the problem from the beginning. But beyond even the limits of the Bench’s ferocious list of torments to be invoked per the seriousness of the crime suspected.