Come the Revolution: Chapter Ten

    E-Tomai rose from behind his desk when I entered. His face was slightly flushed and his ears lay flat against the sides of his head, so when he said he was happy to see me again, I didn’t believe him. He offered his hand in a Human handshake, though, and I took it.

    “I hope you will not mind if my superior joins us,” e-Tomai said once we were seated. “He is visiting and is naturally interested in today’s unfortunate events.”

    I didn’t mind, and I realized that was probably why e-Tomai was uneasy. Something to remember when trying to read people: it’s not always about you. The door behind me opened and e-Tomai sprang to his feet. I’m not sure I normally would have risen myself but those massive vault doors made me at least open to the idea of respect for authority.

    The older Varoki standing in the doorway wore a plain black and red uniform, the front adorned only by the silver starburst CSJ badge and two dull metal chest gorgets trimmed in red gold, the rank insignia of a field marshal lieutenant. I felt a little of the blood drain from my own face. E-Tomai had called him his superior. He wasn’t kidding. There was only one field marshal lieutenant in the Provost Corps: its commandant.

    The officer’s face gave nothing away, ears relaxed, skin all but colorless. His head and hands had lost much of their iridescence with age, or perhaps exposure to sun and the elements. He had not acquired the thick midriff common to almost all older Varoki, but he also did not have a lot of muscle mass on his upper body. He had the lean build of an ascetic, not an athlete.

    “You are Mister Naradnyo,” he said. “I am Field Marshal Lieutenant e-Loyolaan. Please proceed, Captain.” He crossed the room and took a chair where e-Tomai and I could both see him. If he really wanted to spook one of us he would have sat where that person couldn’t see him, so that was something.

    “Mister Naradnyo,” Captain e-Tomai began, “as you know, we have a very serious situation developing as a result of the Prahaa-Riz disturbance. It has been only about four hours and we are still trying to assess the cause and extent of the riot. Any light you could shed on the incident would be most appreciated.”

    “Whatever vid you’ve seen on the float, I didn’t have anything to do with starting that,” I said.

    Captain e-Tomai exchanged a glance with his boss, e-Loyolaan, before answering. “We have already reached the same tentative conclusion. We have also studied the audio and video feed from your commlink and that of two other witnesses, so we have a fair idea of the sequence of physical events. We are more interested in your impressions.”

    Impressions? I thought about that for a couple seconds.

    “What, you mean like my gut feeling? Some staffer panicked. Gaant caught everyone by surprise, first with the jammers going down and then when the crowd started in. The staffer over-reacted, and then everything came apart. I don’t think Gaant intended it to play out that way.”

    “You say it caught everyone by surprise,” he said. “Does that include you?”

    I noticed e-Loyolaan studying me pretty hard, probably wishing I had big ears to help him tell if I was nervous.

    “Good question,” I answered. “It sort of did, but in retrospect it shouldn’t have.”

    And then I told them about the whole scene out in the atrium, the creepy mob of Gaant’s followers, and what he’d said to pull me into the meeting, that the guys on the other side of the table would be surprised at what happened. At the time I’d thought his little speech about what a bunch of no-good greedy bastards they were was the surprise he had in mind, but he’d meant the whole business of taking control of the meeting, making it public.

    “And you believe that is all Mister Gaant intended?” he asked. “To simply make the meeting public?”

    I shrugged. “You want impressions and I’ll give them to you, but remember, I hardly knew the guy. I only met him a half-dozen times before today. If I had to guess, I’d say yeah, he just meant to embarrass all those guys, shame them, and maybe stir the public up against them. I think he has this big bunch of followers and he figured to make it even bigger, make some sort of play for political leadership. But what his long-term plans were is anybody’s guess. Now that he’s dead I guess we’ll never know for sure.”

    “Oh, Mister Gaant is not dead,” Field Marshal Lieutenant e-Loyolaan said, his first comment in the interview.

    “Not dead? I saw him . . .” I stopped. What had I seen? He fell, he hit his head, the crowd moved his body back out of the way, and they said he was dead.

    “So, just unconscious?” I asked.

    E-Loyolaan nodded to e-Tomai and the captain continued. “We located him in the South Tower trauma/med facility. The last report was that he was stable but comatose and under guard by the municipal police, charged with incitement to riot. Communication with Prahaa-Riz has been temporarily interrupted.”

    “Yeah, the three officers I talked to in Katammu-Arc said their tacticals were going to clear South Tower. If so, they shut down the comms themselves–standard procedure. But you guys know that, right?”

    They exchanged a look and then e-Tomai nodded.

    I wasn’t sure if Gaant being alive was a good thing or a bad thing. Alive and in police custody he was a living symbol for his followers, and a target for action. Dead he was a martyr, and you can’t negotiate with a dead man. I looked at e-Loyolaan, who was studying me again. He cocked his head slightly to the side.

    “I do not know either, Mister Naradnyo,” he said.

    “Know what?”

    “Whether we are better off with him alive or dead.”

    So this guy was a mind reader too? Or was I just getting that obvious?

    “We received word that the Honorable e-Lotonaa, your wife, and the e-Traak heiress have crossed the uKootrin frontier,” e-Loyolaan said. “Do we have you to thank for that?”

    Here it comes, I thought.

    “Just doing my job,” I answered, and to my surprise he nodded.

    “Yes, your duty. I understand. And it was the only sensible course of action. I want to thank you for saving e-Lotonaa’s life at Prahaa-Riz and in the water afterwards. You call him The’On, I am told, short for The Honorable. I do not imagine he enjoys that, and yet he seems to tolerate it from you.”

    “I didn’t know you two were friends,” I said.

    “Not friends. We are opponents on many matters of policy. But whatever our differences, e-Lotonaa wishes the best for the Cottohazz, as do I, and I respect him for that. I respect and value him, regardless of our disagreements.”

    He said nothing after that, just looked at me. The silence stretched out, but I did not get the sense he was trying to stare me down. He was probably thinking, but I honestly couldn’t say for sure. Most people look away from you while they’re thinking, so they won’t make you uncomfortable, but he was not most people.

    “What was it like to be dead?” he finally asked.

    Not the question I was expecting.

    “I liked it,” I said. “You will too.”

    He leaned back slightly, almost imperceptibly, in his chair and an expression flickered across his face just for an instant, a hint of fear, and then it was gone.

    “Were you disappointed to come back?” he asked.

    “Little bit. But I had somebody worth coming back to. It makes a difference.”

    He nodded thoughtfully. “Many say your soul must have left you while you were dead, and that only your body was reanimated. Are you now a soulless creature, Sasha Naradnyo?”

    “No more so than ever.”

    He actually smiled at that and seemed to relax a little.

    “Will we soon be seeing mass resurrections of long-dead Humans?”

    “No chance. They only managed to get me back because I expired about twenty meters from a starship cold sleep capsule. They deoxygenated and froze me before morbidity set it. Once you start to rot, I guess that’s it. ”

    “That is comforting,” he said, leaning all the way back in his chair and folding his hands in his lap. “Please understand I do not share the distaste for Humans many Varoki seem to feel these days. All loyal members of the Cottohazz are of equal value to me. But given Human propensity for . . . creative forms of interaction with law and government, there are already more than enough of you to keep me busy.”

    “Just think of us as job security,” I said.

    Ten minutes ago I’d never have considered saying anything as flippant as that to the head of the Provost Corps. A lot had changed in ten minutes. Was he my pal? No way. Did I think he was any less dangerous? No, maybe even more so. But I knew that whatever drove him, it wasn’t personal insecurity. He wasn’t the sort of guy to take a joke personally. I wasn’t sure he took anything personally.

    “You should know,” he said, “that the Sakkatto municipal police have issued a material witness summons for you, which will mean your cross-border travel privileges have been suspended.”

    Shit! I was stuck. Marr was going to go crazy.

    “Are you sure?” I said. “I just talked to them a couple hours ago.”

    He tilted his head to the side, the Varoki equivalent of a shrug.

    “So, are you turning me over to them?” I asked.

    “No. The CSJ tries not to interfere in the internal affairs of member polities, so we have no interest in detaining you. Until they are finished with you, however, I do not think you will be able to rejoin your party in Kootrin, and the inquiry into this affair may go on for some time.”

    “But they’ll probably be waiting for me outside,” I said.

    “Possibly. But the public safety situation has deteriorated further in the past hour and I suspect the police have more pressing calls on their manpower. Shortly before this meeting we intercepted an order for all investigative personnel to report for riot control duty. I also understand that over seven hundred such material witness summons were issued at first, and more are expected soon. They may consider you of particular interest and assign a higher priority to locating you, but that suggests a capacity for nuance which I have never known the Sakkatto police to display.”

    E-Loyolaan rose to his feet and e-Tomai jumped up as well.

    “I have other work, Mister Naradnyo, but it was very informative to finally meet and speak with you. Carry on, Captain.”

    But there wasn’t much left to carry on about. E-Tomai went on for a while, but it was all pretty routine stuff and soon I was on my way out, wondering what the hell had just happened. What did they get from me of value? Nothing I could see. Why had they even wanted to talk to me if they didn’t have any tough questions to ask?

    An answer came to me, although it seemed highly improbable: that the commandant of the CSJ wanted to sit down and talk to me face to face, to size me up. Why I would even show up on that guy’s radar was a different question, and that led to other questions about where his radar was pointed and why.

    Then another thought came to me: that the interview wasn’t about me at all. Maybe it was really about The’On. My friend was a roving ambassador or executive, depending on what was needed when and where, part of the Cottohazz Corps of Counselors. From the way he talked in unguarded moments, his outfit locked horns with the CSJ over policy fairly frequently. Maybe this was e-Loyolaan’s way of trying to open a back door to someone in the opposition.

    And maybe it wasn’t just one thing. Maybe e-Loyolaan had more than one ball in the air at the same time. He struck me as someone who usually did.

    At the main entrance of the CSJ complex I looked around outside and didn’t see anyone waiting to snag me. I did see five uniformed Munies packing assault rifles race by at a dead run, people scrambling to get out of their way. I needed to find a cash station and load up, so I could move quickly and stay off the grid if I had to. Cash made that easier. But first I needed to comm. Marr.

    “How’s The’On?” I asked as soon as she opened the connection.

    He’s conscious and responsive. The doctor says he should recover completely. Where are you?

    “The CSJ lobby. They cut me loose but I wanted to call as soon as I got past their jammers.”

    When will you be able to get here?

    “Yeah, there’s a problem with that.”

    She was silent for a moment and if electromagnetic radiation can get cold, it would have.

    What do you mean, a problem?

    “Municipal cops have lifted my cross-border privileges.”

    They said they were done with you!

    “Well, now it looks as if they’re done being done with me.”

    We should have waited for you.

    “No, you –”

    We should have waited! Damn you, Sasha, you knew this was going to happen!

    I hadn’t known, but for the moment arguing was pointless. I could tell her I was going to do everything I could to find a way to duck the border crossing guards, but saying that over an open channel was an invitation to a conspiracy charge for both of us. Once she calmed down maybe she’d figure that out.

    If you get killed, I will never forgive you. Do you understand me?

    “Yes.”

    She broke the connection and so I commed Iris Tenryu.

    Hey, Boss, I was wondering when you were going to shake loose.

    “I’m not loose. Munies need some testimony or something. What’s the setup like there?”

    It’ll hold for a couple days, until the bad guys think through where we are and what to do about it. Then we’ll probably have to get creative. Local cops and military are cooperating. None of them can find their asses with both hands, but they mean well. I’m trying to get the rest of our people across the border. We’re going to bunker up at The’On’s estate and wait for this shit storm to blow itself out.

    I had no idea where Iris got her mouth — maybe too many Hong Kong gangster holovids dubbed into English. Marr said she talked just like me, but I don’t think Marr had a very discriminating ear in matters of the criminal argot. That’s actually what Marr called it, “the criminal argot,” which was unfair to Iris, who to the best of my knowledge never broke the law, at least before she came to work for us.

    “Okay,” I said. “You’re in the driver’s seat. Try to stay low, but if they find you, make ’em sorry they did.”

    I’ll make ’em cry, Boss.

    I powered my commlink all the way down to where it couldn’t be tracked and I started to work through whether or not to go underground.

    I leaned against a wall, temporarily dizzy and weak in the knees. The sun blasting through the windows at a flat angle made it late afternoon. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, I’d fallen three or four stories into a river where I’d almost drowned, my right arm was crippled, and I was pumped full of pain killers. My leg muscles told me they’d given up their last reserves of energy and from here on out I was on my own. I needed to get a room in a hostel, get something to eat, rest. Otherwise I’d be in no shape to do anything. I looked up at the big rotating CSJ starburst symbol with its three letters in the center:

    Knowledge, Resolve, Obedience.

    Not Justice, I noticed.

    Or Truth, for that matter.