Rules of Conflict Read online

  Pimentel hung his head. He seemed to grow older with each passing visit. The blond hair, more dull and lank. The eyes, more fatigued. He had to be at least twenty years younger than Sam, no more than thirty-five. What did he do that drained him so? “Irritating? How?”

  Sam struggled to construct an explanation. It seemed such a trivial thing, hardly worth the effort. “It appeared so . . . tentative. I kept waiting for it to make up its mind.”

  Pimentel continued to watch him from his post by the door. Then he walked back to his seat next to Sam’s examining table with the round-shouldered trudge of someone who bore the weight of the world. “Sam.” He always took care to pronounce Sam’s name in proper Bandan fashion—Sahm rhymes with Mom, not Sam rhymes with damn. “I subjected you to that test for a reason. If you were indeed augmented, as you claimed during your last visit, you would not have been able to look into that light for more than a few seconds without it affecting you.”

  Sam thought back to his previous visit. Tried to think back. It had been sunny . . . no, rainy . . . wait, they hadn’t had any rain for over a month. Or had it been two? “Affecting me?”

  The ergoworks in Pimentel’s seat creaked as he leaned forward. “Blink patterns are designed to affect Service augments in very specific ways. You’ve been here often enough in the past few months to have heard the term takedown. That’s when we use blink patterns to halt the progression of an unwanted overdrive state, a situation where the panic-dampening function of the augment asserts itself in a non-conflict situation. We do it both as a semiannual precautionary treatment, and, when necessary, to short-circuit an acute event.”

  “I told you I was augmented?” Sam reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his Service-issued handheld. He kept all his appointments in it. And his little notations. Where the men’s room was, for example. Well, the SIB was a large building—it was an easy thing to forget. What did I tell Pimentel, and when? He’d kept no record of that, unfortunately.

  “Yes, Sam. You did.” Pimentel glanced at the handheld, his tired eyes flaring with curiosity. “The aftereffects of a takedown aren’t pleasant. The patient can feel fatigued and disoriented for as long as a week after treatment. Unfortunately, much milder versions of blink patterns can have a similar, though lesser, effect. For that reason, many augments develop an aversion to the color red, and become highly agitated when exposed to arrays of blinking lights. We take that into account here at Sheridan, where the augmented population stands at twenty-seven percent. Certain types of lighted displays and exhibits are expressly forbidden. Enforcement becomes difficult during the various holiday celebrations, of course.” He grinned weakly. “But it’s different in the world outside the Shenandoah Gate. No holds barred in Chicago, a city you visit three to four times a week.” He grew serious. “Am I right?”

  Sam nodded, resisting the urge to check his handheld again. “I visit the city, yes.”

  “You visit the various Service Archives to research the names for inclusion in the Gate. You travel at night, from what you told me. You find it easier to work when no one else is around. You take the Sheridan Local Line, which passes the Pier exhibits, the Bluffs Zoo, the Commonwealth Gardens. They each have thrill rides. All-night exhibits.” Pimentel’s weary gaze never left Sam’s face. He seemed to be prompting him, reminding him of his life. As though—

  As though he doesn’t think I can remember on my own.

  “I guarantee you, Sam,” the doctor continued, “if you were augmented, you couldn’t look at those exhibits, because every augment I examine mentions having a problem with at least one of them when they visit the city. Some wear special eyefilms to filter out the light. Some wear hearing protection because they’ve developed related sensitivity to any sound resembling emergency sirens or explosions. But every one of them does something, because otherwise, they become very sick very quickly.

  Sam’s chest tightened as his anger grew. “You knew from my encephaloscan that I didn’t have a Service-type augmentation?”

  “Yes, Sam. You’re the one who seemed to require convincing.”

  “My augmentation is different.” Yes, that was it. Pimentel must have only asked him whether he was augmented, not what type of augmentation he had. He hammered Sam with vagueness, then called foul when Sam responded in kind. Don’t ask me what I remember, Doctor, ask me what I know. “It’s not a Service augmentation. It’s something else.”

  “Define something else, Sam.”

  “It was supposed to make me hear things. See things. Feel things, deep in my body.”

  “That’s an odd function for an augmentation. Why was it made that way?”

  “Because they wanted to study my reactions. Because they wanted to see what I’d do.”

  “They?” Pimentel glanced down at his recording board, then back at Sam. “Who’s they?”

  “The ones—” Sam blinked away images that flashed in his eyes like the patterns. Faces. Gold. White. The gold ones spoke. He couldn’t understand the words. “The ones who put it there.”

  Pimentel continued to write, the scratch of his stylus filling the small room. “Were you implanted against your will?”

  “Yes.”

  “You felt paralyzed? Not in control?”

  “Ye—” Sam could feel it again. The clench of anger that told him he was being maneuvered “Have I told you this before?”

  Pimentel shook his head. “No, this is new. For the past few months, you’ve been insisting you’re a xenogeologist. You showed me papers you’d written, books you’d had published.” He pocketed his stylus and rocked back in his seat. “You had taken those papers and books from the SIB Archives, Sam. They weren’t yours.”

  “No, I—”

  “Sam, the e-scan didn’t reveal a Service augmentation. It only confirmed what we’ve known for months. You have a tumor, in your thalamus, that’s affecting your memory. It causes you to forget events that really happened, and to substitute fabrications to fill in the gaps.”

  “A tumor?” Sam poked the back of his head, then let his hand fall back into his lap. Silly. It wasn’t as though he could feel the thing if he probed long enough.

  Pimentel nodded. “It hasn’t increased in size over time, but we need to remove it.”

  “I’ll die.”

  “If we take the tumor out, why would you die?”

  “They—they told me I’d die, if anyone took it out.”

  “No, you won’t, Sam.”

  “Yes, I will!” I know. “This . . . tumor—it’s not hurting me, it’s not affecting my life, my work.”

  “Sam, it is starting to interfere with your ability to do your job.” Pimentel stood and walked to his desk. “You’ve built a reputation over the years as a first-class archivist. But now you’re losing papers, forgetting where you filed them, making up stories that they were stolen.” He leaned against the desk as though he needed the support. “You need treatment.”

  Sam stared down at the floor. Dull grey lyno, flecked with white. He recalled seeing a stone that resembled it. Holding it in his hand. The where escaped him, however. The when.

  “Sam, you don’t state the names of any family or friends in the Emergency Notification block in your chart.”

  “There is no one.”

  “No one you can talk to? No one you feel you can trust?”

  “No.”

  Pimentel returned to his seat. “Do you know what a ward of the Commonwealth is?”

  The clench returned, stronger this time. “It means I’m supposed to trust a member of the government to take care of me.”

  “No, to help you take care of yourself. And it isn’t just one person. It’s a committee. In your case, it would consist of an impartial civilian official, a Service adjudicator, and a medical representative.” Pimentel smiled. “Most likely me, as your attending physician.”

  “No.” Sam slid off the examining table. His feet struck the lyno that reminded him of stone. “I’ve trusted members of the gover
nment to take care of me before. That proved a mistake.”

  “When, Sam?”

  “I don’t remember.” Don’t ask me what I remember. Ask me what I know.

  He waited until after midnight to return to the SIB. Odergaard had left a note requesting Sam stop by to see him before start of shift later that day. That didn’t bode well. If previous events repeated, that meant another document had turned up missing.

  Sam sat at his desk, head in hands. Pimentel had made him promise to consider the wardship, and he had said he would. Anything to get out of that place.

  No one cuts into my head. Ever. He left the cubicle maze of the doc tech bullpen and walked down the hall to the vend alcove. He bought a cup of tea, striking the beverage dispenser with a timed series of thumps the techs had discovered made it disgorge an extra mouthful into the cup. Since he was the alcove’s only visitor, he had his pick of tables. He chose one in the corner, farthest from the entry.

  He activated his handheld and pulled up the file he had unfortunately found many reasons to update over the past weeks. In one column, he had listed all the documents that had gone missing, in the other, the ones that had eventually turned up. He sorted, ran a discard, and examined the few items that still remained outstanding.

  The roster. Shipping records. Death certificates. The roster and records belonged to the CSS Kensington, the flagship of the group that executed the evacuation of Rauta Shèràa Base.

  And the death certificates? Ebben. Unser. Fitzhugh. Caldor. Three officers and a Spacer First Class, who died during the evacuation.

  Sam stared at the small display and tried to divine a pattern from the list of documents. Like flecks in stone, they seemed anarchic, unconnected. But he sensed history, just as he would if he studied the stone. If he subjected the stone to elemental analysis and investigated the site at which he’d found it, he would know how it formed, and why. So, too, with these documents—they could be broken down, as well. Every entry had another piece of paper to back it up, and when he had uncovered those pieces, well, then he’d know, wouldn’t he? He never liked to conclude ahead of his data. At the beginning, it was enough to know that sufficient reason existed for the data to be collected.

  He sipped his tea, heavily creamed and sugared to obscure the bitterness. Not like at his old stomping grounds on Banda. The university. There, they knew how to make tea.

  “And I knew how to drink it.” He recalled overhearing a shopkeeper brag to another customer one day as he made his purchases. No one in Halmahera knows tea like Simyam Baru—

  Sam paused, then checked the nameplate on his handheld. Duong. First name Sam, rhymes with Mom.

  “My name is Sam Duong.” But pictures formed in his imagination again. He saw himself encased in ice, then heard the hissing crackles as fissures formed in the block. Water dripped as the melting progressed, revealing who he truly was. Another man, who hated hospitals, too.

  Again, not something he remembered. Something he knew.

  Chapter 5

  Evan stood before his shallow bank of roses and inventoried the status of each bush in turn. “The Crème Caramel’s looking good.” He dictated the observation into his handheld as he hefted a branch laden with butterscotch blooms. “Tell your Dr. Banquo she knows her fertilizer.”

  Banquo . . . Banquo. Evan paused, his finger pressed against the handheld touchpad, as the names cascaded in his head. Banquo . . . Mako. Mako . . . Pierce. “It’s been over two weeks, Quino. I just wondered if you’d scrounged anything about Colonel Pierce. The more I think about that name, the more familiar it sounds.” That was a lie, but he’d had lots of time to ponder the colonel’s snub, and the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. Information flitted throughout military bases at speed—he wondered if Pierce knew something, something that made him feel he didn’t need to hide his dislike for his fallen minister. Perhaps the Service had reopened its investigation of Jani’s transport explosion. Perhaps it had found a witness, someone who had stumbled past the comroom just as Evan had contacted the fuel depot where the transport was hangared. Saw him enter the comcode. Heard him say the words.

  Do it.

  He grunted in pain, and looked down to find he had gripped the Crème’s branch too hard, driving the thorns into his hand. He hunted through his pockets for a clean dispo, dabbed at the welling beads of blood, and moved on to the next shrub. “I’m not sure about this Wolfshead Westminster. It’s still washed-out rust instead of bright orange, but I don’t know what you expect. It’s a cold-weather hybrid that thrives by waterside, and we’re only in the middle of the hottest, driest summer in thirty years.” He flicked off the device and shoved it in his pocket. “Report’s over for the day, Quino. You want to see how your goddamn roses are doing, drive up here and check them yourself.”

  His knee ached less than it had for weeks—a walk seemed in order. He strode to the end of the garden, then turned and paced alongside the two-meter-tall hedge that defined his boundary with the neighbor who he’d been told worked for Commerce Purchasing. Then he made a balance beam of the edge of his patio and finished the traverse by walking along the latticed polywood fence that formed the barrier between him and the neighbor who he’d been told slaved for the Commonwealth Mint. He knew better, of course. Prime Minister’s Intelligence, both of them. He’d have bet his last bottle.

  When he cut by the garden and stood again at the spot at which he had started, he checked his timepiece. “Elapsed time for inspection of the van Reuter fences—seventy-two seconds.” And he had even walked slowly this time.

  How do people live like this? Cheek by jowl. Sounds of their lives commingled into one vast blare. Everyone knowing their business and them knowing everyone else’s, without one minute’s privacy or peace. They all must have developed a zoo-animal mentality, he decided, living their lives as their instincts compelled them without caring who saw what.

  “Sir!”

  Evan turned. Halvor, his aide, stood on the patio, looking befuddled as usual. “Yes?”

  The young man hesitated. “You have . . . a visitor, sir.”

  Evan trudged up the shallow incline toward the house he thought of as his Elba. “Quino isn’t supposed to stop by until tomorrow.”

  Halvor’s face, smooth and rounded as an overgrown baby’s, flushed pink. “It’s not Mr. Loiaza, sir.”

  “Well, who is it?”

  Halvor told him.

  Evan took care to follow his aide at a carefully calculated distance. Too close, and he’d seem anxious. Too far, and he’d seem apprehensive. Stay calm . . . stay calm.

  After the glaring brightness of the outdoors, it took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light of the sitting room. He didn’t register the figure standing in front of the curtained window until it spoke.

  “Hello, Evan.” John Shroud stood with his back to him, his attention focused on the view of the rear yard. “You’re due for a medical checkup. Compassionate visitation, the Jo’burg Convention calls it. Guess who drew the short straw?”

  Evan motioned for the flustered Halvor to leave the room. He sank into his favorite lounge chair and waited for the hushed click that indicated the door had closed. “You expect me to believe you flew in from Seattle just to check my vitals?”

  “You’re an ex-Cabinet Minister, Evan. You rate Big Three attention.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Shroud turned slowly. “As you wish.” He had employed his albinism like a fashion accessory, as usual. Today, he resembled a polished marble of a medieval monk. He’d brushed his stark white hair forward and had dressed in ivory from head to toe, the collar of his jacket draping like a cowl. His height, thinness, and long face reinforced the image, as did his blanched skin, drawn tight across cheekbone and brow. Disturbing, no matter how often you’d seen him. The ambassador from the Other Side.

  I should have expected this. Evan wished he’d had the sense to prepare, but except for a quick swig prior to tending his roses, he’d
had nothing to drink that morning. As ever, abstinence proved a mistake. He always felt more in control with a half liter of bourbon warming his insides. “What really brings you to Chicago, John?” As if he couldn’t guess.

  “It’s been raining for two solid weeks back home.” Shroud’s bass voice rumbled like a knell. “I need sunshine, even if all I can do is look.” He strolled to the sofa and sat down. “Besides, I don’t often get the chance to visit the capital.” He stretched out his long, thin legs and crossed them at the ankles, then looked around the room, sharp eyes taking in the cramped dimensions, the shabby furniture, before coming to rest on Evan. “Cozy,” he said, with a ghost of a smile.

  Evan responded in kind. “I think so.”

  “Quite a change from the old Family estate.”

  “Quite.”

  “Smaller.”

  “Yes.”

  “A woman’s presence, of course, is what makes a home.” Shroud’s smile withered. “I never had the opportunity to offer my condolences. Lyssa’s death came as a shock to us all.”

  Evan tensed at the sound of his dead wife’s name. “Thank you.”

  “I spoke with Anais last evening, at one of Vandy’s interminable dinner parties. Milla’s staying with her for the summer. Lyssa’s aunt and mother together again, after so many years. Sad how it takes such tragedy to reunite sisters.” Shroud shook his head. “Anais had a great deal to say about Lyssa’s death. I think she used it as a shield to avoid discussing that idiotic food-transport screwup she helped engineer that upset the idomeni so, but then Family gossip has always been more riveting than idomeni food philosophies.”

  “Transporting foodstuffs in sight of their embassy was incredibly stupid.” Evan leapt at the chance to dismantle Anais’s diplomatic blunder. He was starved for news from the capital. Besides, he didn’t want to discuss Lyssa’s death. “I understand the idomeni almost packed up and returned home?”

  “Not as long as Nema draws breath.” Shroud’s air of mild interest never altered. “Tell me, was Lyssa’s skimmer crash really an accident or did you arrange matters, as Anais claims?”