An Exchange of Hostages (28 page)

Koscuisko straightened in his seat. “It becomes of importance to note — with the Tutor’s permission,” he said, lowering his eyes politely in Chonis’s direction, “ — that the same drug may fall in primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, depending upon the species. Care must be taken to match the drug against the Level, else a mistake may potentially occur.” A tertiary speak-sera might be “accidentally” used in the Preliminary Levels, in other words. Mergau could tell exactly what he was getting at. If she learned the species for which a primary level speak-serum was tertiary in effect, she would be clear to cheat the prisoner.

“Such errors must of course be carefully avoided.” She didn’t bother with whether or not she sounded as if she was making an effort to be sincere. Koscuisko simply lowered his eyes again and made an irritated expression with his mouth. She knew what it was that she recognized about Koscuisko, now. He had been whipped. His face was the face of a beaten man, in the presence of the one who had punished him. She felt a flush of pleasure, of gratitude toward Tutor Chonis for sharing the humbling of Andrej Koscuisko with her in this manner. And she thirsted to know how Chonis had done it, what Chonis had used for a belt. Whatever it was, she wanted one just like it for her own use.

“I am glad that we understand each other so well.” Tutor Chonis’s rather dry comment recalled her to herself; he did not sound entirely approving. She had to watch herself more carefully to avoid alienating the Tutor. But it was sweet to see her fellow Student bend his neck — his proud neck, his rich neck — to do her service in submission to the Tutor. To be below her, at her bidding, even if only in a limited sense.

Her Patron would give her people like Koscuisko, and they would kiss the ground at her feet if she bade them — and thank her for it.

“Student Koscuisko, will you brief Student Noycannir on this speak-serum, please. We’ve scheduled a retrial at the Fourth Level tomorrow morning after fast-meal, Student Noycannir. Proceed.”

And, oh, but she was eager for the work, for the dominion.

She was beginning to have a sense of how it really felt to hold the knout.

###

Having slept less poorly than in recent days, Andrej Koscuisko woke a few eighths before time, feeling better than he had since he’d gotten here. Yes, there would be Noycannir’s Fourth Level today, and Tutor Chonis wanted him to observe and note the effect of the drug. Yes, he was to start work after mid-meal on developing a pain-maintenance drug benign enough in its effect to be cleared at the Intermediate Levels. He would not be asked for nerve agents, psychogens, or wake-keepers until Mergau had completed her Intermediate Levels; and the wake-keepers would present interesting problems whose application to Inquiry might not be obvious enough to be too depressing — as long as he could maintain his concentration. There was a day yet before he had to go to the Sixth Level; and he’d decided he had a positive use even for that, since he needed to learn his whip. And which whip. All in all there were to be no difficult demands today, apart from the fact that he had combat drill scheduled before his supper. Joslire was an excellent instructor, fearlessly inflexible in his demands on the exercise floor. And yet even the workout that he faced had its pleasant aspects, because Joslire would give him a rubdown after Joslire was finished demonstrating his inadequacies — in close-order drill — and Joslire was quite good at massage.

Life was perhaps not good, exactly.

But he felt less morose about it than he could remember, without thinking about it too hard.

The chimer went off and Andrej reset it with a casual wave of his hand. St. Clare would be free enough from pain to wake sometime today. Andrej was not sure what their first interview would be like. He could not imagine that St. Clare would be happy to have been bound over to the man who had tortured him, let alone so clumsily. And still he took comfort from the simple fact that St. Clare healed aggressively and adequately, and was content.

“The officer is respectfully invited to rise at this time.” The sound of Joslire’s calm, admonitory tone from the other side of the partition made Andrej smile. It was an improvement over his old nurse, her scolding so imbedded in his mind that he could almost hear dear Gelsa even now
— Lazy little lords who aren’t washed in time for prayers never come to a good end,
or
If you aren’t out of bed in two Sacred-art-thous may the Holy Mother help me if your feet don’t fall right off.
Yes, it was time to get up and wash, even though he hadn’t said morning prayers — let alone evening ones — since he’d left home. Andrej sat up, putting the cover aside, aware of Joslire’s anxious waiting presence in the room beyond.

“Thank you, Joslire. I am coming.” Joslire had gotten a little shy of him in recent days — since he had shamed the man by looking at his scars. There seemed to be an extra layer of distance there somewhere, though as far as Andrej could tell, Joslire had forgiven him for his lapse. Nodding to Joslire as he passed on the way to the washroom, Andrej pondered the change, wondering whether there was a problem. As if there would be anything that he could hope to do about it if there was a problem. On the other hand, Joslire was the one who had told him that his lab space was not monitored. Should he wait until he was in his lab to try to tickle Joslire out of his reservation of spirit?

Andrej shut the shower stream off with an exasperated snap. There must have been something in his supper that had made him abnormally thickheaded about things. Of course he couldn’t tickle Joslire. He’d only humiliate the man by trying. It would be asking too much of life — Andrej concluded, in his morning’s meditations, rinsing out his mouth — to expect to feel content about all aspects of it.

He ate his fast-meal and read his briefings, his mood of slightly manic gaiety still on him. He was even pleased with his uniform this morning, and his boots fit with very little difficulty. A psychological pressure valve of sorts? he asked himself. Some kind of an adjustment to the stresses of the Term?

Joslire was to see him to the exercise observation area, where he would meet Tutor Chonis. As they left quarters, Joslire asked the same question he asked nearly every morning, in exactly the same tone as usual, at exactly the same moment as usual, as soon as the door had closed behind them in the corridor — but before Andrej had taken three steps forward.

“What suits the officer’s preference for the mid-meal, if the officer please?”

He simply couldn’t concentrate, and he was too busy enjoying his feeling of euphoria to care. “Whichever has the darkest eyes, I think.” Hearing Joslire miss a pace behind him, he slowed his step so as not to lose his guide. He’d never been to the exercise observation area. He had no idea where he was going.

“If the officer would care to elaborate, at the officer’s pleasure?”

“I said dark eyes, Joslire, Dark hair, dark eyes, very exotic. Twins, perhaps.” Marana had dark eyes, nearly as dark as a good cup of rhyti, with the same bronzed cast to them. He hadn’t thought much about Marana since he’d been here, and it suddenly occurred to him to wonder how she was making out. Marana could take care of herself; he had always admired that about Marana. The problem being, of course, that he was not supposed to have admired anything in particular about Marana, no matter how long they had been friends, no matter that they had played together as children. Once he was married, he would be able to return to admiring Marana without fear of disapproval. Once he had bred children to his sacred wife, he could ride his favorite mare from saints to sinners; and no one would fault him except perhaps the woman he was married to, who should know better. Lise Semyonevna Ichogetrisa — the bride to whom his father had pledged him, when he’d reached the age — was no good at toleration from what Andrej had seen of her so far. He hoped she wasn’t making herself unpleasant.

“Among the Emandisan, it is the officer’s coloring that is exotic. If the officer permits.”

Joslire sounded amused, and had clearly caught the way in which Andrej’s mind was running this morning. A gratuitously offered comment. There was hope in the world.

“And tall, yes, you know? Aznir women are not tall. Nor do they tend to assert themselves, not in an obvious manner. I tell you, Joslire, there is a peculiar fascination to women as unlike those in and of my father’s Household as possible.”

He was telling secrets on himself, but what harm could it do? Perhaps it would even the balance out in some obscure way. He had taken Joslire’s secrets, the secrets of Joslire’s scarred body, and he hadn’t even asked.

If the Holy Mother was gracious, Joslire would accept this confidence as a grant of intimacy, and be healed of the shame to which Andrej had put him.

Collecting his thoughts with an effort, Andrej stepped through to the exercise observation area to subordinate his attention to his Tutor.

###

“You had better make up your mind to it; the Bench requires your response. What is your name?”

Student Noycannir’s voice was a little muted in the observation area, and Joslire knew without looking that Lop Hanbor would click the sound levels up a notch. There was only one screen to watch today, and no real reason for him to have to watch at all, since he would not be needed to relay special insight on his Student’s performance.

His Student sat with the Tutor, watching Noycannir bully her prisoner. The prisoner wasn’t anybody Joslire recognized. Either a new arrival — and generally there were circumstances unusual enough to call attention to themselves when new Security were assigned mid-Term — or an actual criminal. Well, an actual un-Bonded criminal.

“M-my name?” Nurail, by the accent: the flattened vowels. He’d noticed an accent of the same sort in Robert St. Clare’s speech, at any rate. “A’don’t understand, you know my name, it’s in the detention order — ”

Noycannir struck the man across the face with the ribbed stick; not because she needed to, but because that was what the paradigm tape had shown. Joslire sensed Koscuisko shifting uneasily in his seat; and Tutor Chonis must have sensed the same thing, because Tutor Chonis followed up on it.

“Something the matter?”

“She . . . ” Koscuisko gestured at the screen, at an apparent loss for the words he wanted. “It would seem the drug’s working, Tutor Chonis. The prisoner speaks his mind without engaging in self-censorship. She is only delaying the process if she won’t let him speak.”

“None of your insolence,” Noycannir was saying smugly, with a knowing glance at the screen. Almost as if she’d heard Koscuisko’s criticism. “You’re to answer the question that I asked, no more, no less, no argument. Understood?”

Chonis pointed his finger at the screen, tilting his head toward Koscuisko conspiratorially. “That technique can be effectively used at the lower Levels especially. Consider that the usual strategy is to hit the man until he’s ready to answer the question.”

Koscuisko nodded. “It would seem to be the point of the exercise. By your leave, Tutor Chonis.”

There were Students who simply refused to play the game; Joslire had had one. Her attitude had been that there was no sense in making any more of a mess out of a confession than strictly necessary, because there would certainly be enough of a mess as soon as confession had been Recorded. Such Students made perfectly adequate Inquisitors; but Joslire wasn’t sure Koscuisko was oriented on precisely that track.

“Yes, of course, Student Koscuisko.” In the exercise theater Noycannir was continuing to play through a paradigmatic exercise, but neither the Tutor nor Koscuisko was paying very much attention to her now. “Noycannir’s approach is one that has demonstrated effectiveness. Not all Students can be expected to be capable of improvising.” Unlike Koscuisko, whose Fourth and Fifth Levels had been clear improvisations made up of bits of several paradigms, and at least one invention of his own.

Joslire rather wished Tutor Chonis would pay more attention to Student Noycannir. She was having a great deal of fun with her prisoner, if in a different way than Koscuisko enjoyed himself. They all knew there was a speak-serum in effect — one that certainly appeared to be functioning perfectly. Students who had too much fun with their prisoners frequently ruined them before time.

“She selects too hard a course, Tutor Chonis,” Koscuisko protested. “Listen to him; he is quite willing to answer the right question. She could have her Evidence and be done by now.”

Tutor Chonis turned in his chair, clicking the viewer to gray screen. “Yes, it could be better done. Do you resent the fact that it’s not your prisoner? Because there are enough to go around.”

As obvious as the question seemed to Joslire, it appeared to be the furthest thing from Koscuisko’s mind. Half-rising in his seat, Koscuisko stared at Tutor Chonis with astonishment and horror. “Tutor Chonis. I do not know what to say. Surely I have not . . . I’m not . . . ”

Tutor Chonis raised an eyebrow at the vehemence of Koscuisko’s response, and Koscuisko mastered himself with a fierce effort whose stern intensity was clearly communicated in his voice. “That is to say, I ask for pardon, to have spoken unadvisedly. I have not been troubled by such a thing as that, Tutor Chonis. And still I cannot say I like to see the thing ill-done.”

It bothered Joslire in some obscure fashion to see his Student so anxious to conform, when he knew how ruthlessly Fleet would use that meek submissiveness. Tutor Chonis restored the visuals on-screen. Student Noycannir was crouched over her prisoner, and appeared to be taking a statement. At last. “Your performance is all you’re responsible for, Student Koscuisko.”

Robert St. Clare would be sent to
Scylla
with Koscuisko, but Robert was virgin Security yet. First assignment was usually brutal for newly commissioned Inquisitors. What Koscuisko really needed was a seasoned hand to help him over the rough spots. Robert didn’t have the experience to do it.

His eyes on the viewer, assessing Noycannir’s performance, Tutor Chonis almost sounded as though he was talking to himself. “We’ll let her run with this one; she’s not violated the Protocols, and she is taking confession now — so you need have no further cause for concern on that head. I’ll talk to her about it during debriefing.”