Memory's Legion, page 35
“We’re staying alive, Mona,” he snapped. “We are picking our fights, we’re identifying the most immediate threats and addressing them, and we are doing everything possible to give the impression that we could bring overwhelming power to bear and merely choose not to.”
“Because that isn’t true,” Mona said.
“It will be. Given time to establish ourselves, we can dominate any system, but we can’t dominate all of them at once. So this is how we govern. We are present, we exert influence, we exercise power when we have to, and we graciously allow self-rule until another option exists for us.”
“Self-rule?” Mona said, and her voice could cut skin. “Duarte sent us here so we could see the situation firsthand. And react to it. How is the two of us doing nothing self-rule?”
“Self-rule for them,” Biryar said. “Not for us.”
The old man sat on a metal barstool at the edge of the warehouse. Dust floated in the beam of light from holes near the roofline where ratdoves—which were neither rats nor doves—had chewed their way through to shelter. Agnete stood beside him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, a pistol in her hand. The old man was watching and rewatching video from the official government newsfeed. The poor asshole kneeling on the platform, mouthing some words, then the governor nodding like an old Roman emperor giving the thumbs-down, and the executioner putting a bullet through the prisoner’s skull. Every time the gun fired, the old man laughed. It wasn’t mirth. It was derision.
“This man,” the old man said, tapping the frozen image of Governor Rittenaur, “is fucking hilarious.”
“He just killed one of his own men to make a point,” Agnete said.
“Right? You know who does that shit? Theater majors,” he said. Then, seeing her expression, he put the hand terminal in his pocket. “It’s easy to execute your own. Someone that follows your orders, they’re easy to kill. This ‘We hold ourselves to an exacting standard’ thing? I’ve seen it before. It’s showy, because who does that shit? But it’s easy.”
“I don’t know, boss. It made an impression,” she said. In the distance, the whine of an electric motor and the clash of the steel fence rolling open. The old man heard it and rose from his stool.
“Well, it shouldn’t have,” he said, walking toward the loading dock. “We’re sure they were fighting? Him and his wife?”
Agnete shrugged. She didn’t like the way the boss thought about two things at once. It made her feel like he wasn’t concentrating on the business at hand.
“They were yelling at each other,” she said. “Your friend in housekeeping couldn’t make out all of what they were saying.”
“Interesting. Our guy didn’t want money, so maybe he’s not greedy. But if he and the sweetheart aren’t getting along, maybe there’s an itch we can scratch there.”
“Honeypot?”
“There’s a reason the classics are classic.”
“I’m on it,” Agnete said. “But after we’re done here.”
The loading dock door hummed for a second, warming up, then clattered as it rose. Dust and translucent scales came down into the light. The truck was old and rusting. The logo of a grain hauling company that had gone bankrupt four years earlier still peeled on its side. The back of the truck opened and four men came out. All of them carried guns.
The old man sniffed, cleared his throat, sneezed.
“Bless you,” one of the four men said. The leader.
“Thanks,” the old man said. The new men waited, motionless. Agnete tightened her grip on the gun, but didn’t raise it. For a long breath, no one moved.
“If this is the delivery,” the old man said, “maybe you could deliver it. If it’s something else…”
Bless You shook his head. “It’s the delivery, but the price has gone up.”
“Disappointing,” the old man said, but amiably. “How much?”
“Doubled.”
“Nope,” the old man said. “Too greedy. Try again.”
Bless You raised his gun and the old man’s titanium arm moved too quickly for the eye to follow. The deafening report of the gunshot almost drowned out the metallic sound of the bullet impact. The thugs were quiet, as if they’d been stunned by their own violence.
“Boss?” Agnete said.
The old man had his real hand pressed to his chest, pain in his features. His false arm reached out before him and opened its closed fist. The bullet dropped to the warehouse floor with a sharp tick.
“You boys,” the old man said, enunciating each word clearly, “just fucked all the way up.”
“Hey, Erich,” Bless You started to say, fear in his voice. An apology? Whatever it was, he never got to finish.
High in the rafters, the turret emplacement had heard the old man give the go phrase. The warehouse went bright with the stutter of its muzzle flash. The four men fell together. The staccato roar of the gun echoed through the warehouse space and then faded, leaving only a high-pitched whine in Agnete’s ears.
“You all right?” she asked. Her voice sounded faint and distant. She opened and closed her jaw a few times to make the ringing in her head go away.
“Yeah, yeah,” the old man said. “I just hate it when the arm does that. Feels like the fucking thing’s about to rip loose every time.”
“One of these days, it will.” She walked to where the men were writhing in the guano and dust on the warehouse floor. Fléchette rounds had ripped bright red holes in their skin. The electrical smell of the shock rounds mixed with charred skin like roasting pig.
This was how the old man worked. Everyone had been looking at Agnete and her pistol, thinking she was the muscle. It had made them overconfident.
“You see,” the old man said, not to the fallen thug but to Agnete, “this is the difference. A buy goes bad, and I need to send a message that that’s not okay. I could go the Laconian way, right? Kill you and send these fuckers home. Would that make any sense?”
“I guess not,” she said.
“Grandstanding,” the old man said, his false hand wrapping fingers around Bless You’s throat. “It’s immature, is what it is.”
Bless You tried to say something. Before he could, the old man used him to send a message.
Self-rule for them. Not for us.
Mona knew enough about psychology to put her feelings in context. As Veronica sat across the table from Mona, shifting the display between the reports, breaking down the datasets into digestible summaries and giving an overview of where the labs stood with the active experiments, Mona knew intellectually that the woman’s voice wasn’t really all that grating. Veronica’s habit of interrupting herself and never quite getting back to the first sentence wasn’t all that rare a quirk. Her haircut didn’t really make her look like she was wearing a “respectable administrator” costume. Those were all artifacts of Mona’s own state of mind.
The knowledge didn’t help.
“We’re expecting to see some data from the photosynthesis study at North Field by the end of the week,” Veronica said. “The preliminary report is, as you can tell, looking pretty good.”
She had to know, Mona thought. There was no way that the tension and antipathy were going under Veronica’s radar. The smile was just the same as it had always been, the solicitous manner, the ready facts and reports. The woman had to know that Mona loathed her, but there was no sign of it. So either Mona was very good at hiding her emotions or Veronica was.
“What about the microbiota compatibility studies?” Mona asked.
Veronica shook her head as she spoke. “Those aren’t in North Field. Balakrishnan’s workgroup is all in the old facility. I mean, nothing’s really old around here, right? We’ve only been on the planet for a couple decades.”
You’re changing the subject, Mona thought. Making Veronica Dietz uncomfortable was one of the few real pleasures in her day.
“When do we expect results from Balakrishnan’s study?” she asked.
“I think the next assay starts in about a month, but I’m not a hundred percent on that,” Veronica said. “I can check if you want.”
And tell me whatever is most convenient for you, Mona thought. If Balakrishnan’s results needed to be a failure to keep Veronica’s skimming unnoticed, Mona had no doubt that the study would mysteriously fail. Just the way Dr. Carmichael’s array translation study had become less promising when this woman—this snake, this parasite—didn’t get a piece of it.
“Take a look for me,” Mona said, standing up. “We can go over it in… five?”
“All right,” Veronica said, as if the request were perfectly reasonable. Prepare a report in the time it takes to brew a cup of tea. Mona waited as Veronica walked out—she wouldn’t leave the woman in her office alone—and then locked the office door behind her and headed right along the pale-green hall and then right again into the commissary.
She poured herself a cup of green tea and picked up a sugar cookie from the dessert table before sitting down alone at a table by the window. Tall white clouds rose on the horizon, glowing gold and red in the sunlight. She scowled at them. Someone had cracked the window open, and the breeze actually smelled fresh. She’d become so desensitized to the local environment that the fecal smell of the planet’s biology didn’t even register to her anymore.
The situation with Veronica was becoming a problem, and not just because Veronica was a problem. Mona was meant to be reporting back to Laconia. There was a whole team of soil researchers and agricultural biologists waiting for her to share the insights of Xi-Tamyan and Auberon. There had even been queries from Dr. Cortázar, which was one step short of attention from Winston Duarte himself. She should have had a preliminary report ready to go, outlining the state of play not only for research here but across the colony worlds that Auberon partnered with. Instead, she had notes on a criminal conspiracy, and a solemn injunction from Biryar that she should leave any action to the same regulatory bodies that had let it happen in the first place. The frustration was a restless energy in her spine. It was keeping her from focusing on her work. She had to get past it.
She couldn’t get past it.
She kept remembering Dr. Carmichael at the reception her first night on Auberon. Her own excitement she’d felt when she heard about the array translation, the possibilities that a comprehensive mapping plan would give, not just here but across all the colony systems. And the disbelief that anyone would intentionally undermine something with so much potential. It had been so recent, and yet that past version of herself already seemed so naive. Auberon was changing her, and she wasn’t sure she liked what it was changing her into.
She finished her cookie in a bite, gulped down the last of her tea, and headed back to her office. Not that she wanted to be there. Just that the commissary was annoying her now too. Or rather that she was still annoyed, and nothing she’d found gave her any respite.
Veronica hadn’t returned with the report. Mona sat at her desk, looking sourly out her window. Same world, different view. Barradan spread out to her right: streets and houses and domes. The local wilderness was on her left, exotic and untamed and almost unimaginable in its diversity and richness and strangeness. This should have been everything she’d hoped for. All the pieces were there.
Self-rule for them, her husband said in her memory. Not for us. But…
Something shifted in the back of her mind. The thought came to her fully formed, like she had already planned everything and had only been waiting for the right moment to be conscious of it.
Point one: Either the administration of Xi-Tamyan was aware of Veronica’s scheme or their eyes were so thoroughly off the ball that it had been permitted by default. Two: as the spouse of the governor, she was more valuable to Xi-Tamyan than Veronica Dietz would ever be. Three: What was good for the goose might very well be quite excellent for the gander.
She turned to her desk, a frown etching itself into her forehead almost hard enough to ache. She pulled up the financial records and tried to reallocate funds, just to make sure she couldn’t. That was fine. Her breathing was shallow and fast, but when she made the connection request, her voice sounded calm.
“Dr. Rittenaur?” an older man said from the screen. He had thin, gray hair and a little beard that didn’t disguise his double chin. “How can I help you?”
“I’m having trouble with accounting. I need to allocate funds for a Laconian state project, but it gives me an error code.”
The man with the double chin looked chagrined. “I’m not… I’m not sure that…”
“It should be under Special Projects with the code for the Laconian science directorate? What would that be?”
“I don’t think we have a code set up for that, ma’am.”
“We’ll have to find something temporary, then. There is something for cooperative governmental programs, isn’t there? We can use that for now.”
“I… um… I guess you could,” the man said.
“Not perfect, but…” She shrugged and laughed. “If you clear the access problem, I’ll take care of it that way.”
She smiled patiently. She’d done nothing wrong. Not yet. If he pushed back, everything could be explained away. But she was the face of Laconia at Xi-Tamyan. And Laconia had just destroyed the largest navy in history and conquered the human race. She let the silence stretch. The man’s face flushed a shade darker as he decided whether he was going to tell her she couldn’t.
He tapped something into his console. “There you go, ma’am,” he said. “It gives you any more trouble, just let me know.”
Mona’s smile widened by just a few millimeters. “Thank you,” she said, and dropped the connection.
After that it was easy. She copied Dr. Carmichael’s old funding structure and put it in a new branch under joint governmental projects, updated the contact information so that any issues or questions routed directly to her. She was expecting the funding level to refer back to some pool of money, but it was just a text field. She could put in any value she liked, and the money was summoned from nothing. She put in the value that Veronica’s unspecified powers that be had refused. Then she doubled it, and closed the file.
Just like that, she’d funded the project that should have been going for months. She’d wait for a few days. Make sure that no red flags came up, and then she’d tell Dr. Carmichael to start renting lab space and equipment.
She sat back in her chair, folded her hands, and let out a long, satisfied sigh. There was a warmth in her chest, spreading slowly out toward her limbs like she’d just had a shot of gin. Her back relaxed, her heart felt like she was dropping from orbit for the first time. Pleasure and risk. On impulse, she kicked her shoes off and ran her bare feet through the office carpet, feeling the texture of it against her skin.
The soft knock came, and Veronica stepped in. “Sorry that took a little longer than I’d thought. Interruptions all the time. You know how it is.”
“Yes, I do,” Mona said.
Biryar didn’t know what changed in Mona, only that something had, and he was glad of it. He saw it in small things. She slept more deeply now, and woke without being prodded. She ate better, and explored more of the local foods—fish and onion and a spicy red sauce the locals called sarkansmirch. He’d sampled it himself, but found a metallic aftertaste he didn’t care for. She was laughing more than she had, and there was an ease in the way she held herself.
Her work with Xi-Tamyan might have been part of it. She had started sending reports out to the researchers on Laconia, and the responses from home had been positive and encouraging. She’d begun negotiations for Laconia to get full datasets directly from the company and integrate some of its high-level researchers into the staff on Laconia proper. It was part of Duarte’s long-term plan that coming to the capital should be a reward. A mark of favor. The soft power of culture and status would do more to stabilize Laconia’s central position in the grand human project than any number of warships. It was good that Mona’s position let her advance that.
Biryar’s own job wasn’t going quite as smoothly.
He hadn’t found the trick yet of sleeping through the Auberon nights. Most nights, he woke as the midnight sun fell, lying awake in their bed for half of the dark hours until morning. He’d considered talking to the physician about it. If it continued, he might. The local food also unsettled him, and he found himself eating the same diet he had on the Notus: mushroom curries and yeast-based cheeses. Even those didn’t quite taste the way they should. He might not register the stink of the planet as often these days, but it had affected his senses all the same. And the pervasive sensation of unease, as vague as it was profound, wasn’t helped by Overstreet’s security briefings.
In the weeks since Laconia had officially taken over governance of the system, Overstreet had uncovered a dozen examples of embezzlement, theft, extortion, and financial misconduct just in the mechanisms of government that Biryar had inherited from the former head of state. Only two had involved Laconians. One had been the execution in the square, the other had killed himself when Overstreet’s military police had come to arrest him. Everyone else had been turned over to local authorities, but Overstreet suspected that the judicial system was as flawed as the executive government. As the security audit broadened to the major businesses—the Transport Union, Xi-Tamyan, Oesterling Biotics, and half a dozen more—Biryar expected more rot to come to light.
The only good news Overstreet had to offer was the disappearance of the one-armed man. He hadn’t appeared in any monitored public spaces. He hadn’t shown up in any financial scans. If it hadn’t been for the footage from the reception, he might only have been an unpleasant dream. Overstreet’s analysis was that a local criminal had tried to come on strong, overplayed his hand, and fled when he understood the magnitude of his miscalculation.
The reports coming in from other systems showed that the separatists were still very much at work. The governor of Nova Catalunya, a man Biryar had trained with, had died in a shuttle accident that was being investigated for sabotage. Governor Song, on Medina Station, found another discrepancy in the station map that hid a service corridor, abandoned now, that the terrorists had used as they planned their missions. Drive plumes had been sighted in half a dozen systems that couldn’t be tracked back to known ships.
