in0 (16 page)

“Physically no effects, maybe,”
Park argued, “but I recall quite a bit of literature the Twenty-first Century
that demonstrated there could be long-lasting psychological effects.”

“Apparently the Alliance knows
more about it than we do,” Arn shrugged.

“I’ve heard about the technique
before,” Park told him. “It is not legal in most parts of the Alliance,
including Dennsee. I find it hard to believe Dannet advised you to use it.”

“He didn’t,” Arn admitted. “He
just happened to mention it in passing a couple weeks ago.”

“And you somehow scrounged up a
set of semi-legal pleasure inducers just in time for this?” Park asked.

“That was easy,” Arn replied.
“The Mer use a similar sort of thing instead of anesthetics for minor
operations and they have no problem with long-term effects.”

“I still don’t like it,” Park
told him stubbornly.

“You don’t have to watch then,”
Arn replied. “I won’t be able to, though. I’m meeting with the Primes in a
couple hours and we’ll need one ours to observe or even take part in the
interrogation. Would you do it, Iris?”

“Hell, no!” Park answered for
her. “Damn you, Arn. You know neither of us approve of questioning under
torture.”

“It’s not torture,” Arn insisted.

“We don’t know that,” Park
maintained.

“Then find out for yourself,” Arn
told him. “If you think the method is injurious, stop it. I’ll see that you
have the authority.”

“Damn it, Arn,” Park growled.
“This is the last time you’re going to maneuver me into anything. Keep that in
mind next time you need a sewer inspected or someone to organize the dedication
of a new museum.” Arn merely shrugged and tried to look apologetic, but Park
did not believe an unspoken word of it. “You’ve become a real politician, you
know that?” It was not a compliment.

It only irritated Park further
when the interrogation got nowhere. “I thought this was supposed to be
super-effective,” Park grumbled at the Mer medical technician. In the next room
two Mer policemen were interrogating the Premm agent. They had been running the
timeless gambit Park called “Good cop, bad cop,” with the technician varying
the current flow in the Premm’s pleasure center depending on who was talking.
There would have been a reward for
 
answers too, but so far the Premm had only mouthed religious formulae.

“I’ve never done this before
either,” the man replied. “I’m not sure how much current to use. Our anesthetic
uses of the pleasure center involve a very small amount of current, in fact.
It’s possible the Galactic interrogators use much more. All we try to do is
alleviate pain, after all.”

“I know,” Park nodded. “Well, can
you amp up the current a little bit?”

“Not really, no,” the technician
shook his head. “This gear has safety governors built in to keep it from being
abused. Using it can be addictive and the higher the current, the more
addictive it is. There’s very little risk of addiction the way we use it.”

“Much like the use of morphine,”
Park decided. “It’s a powerful pain killer, but you have to use it sparingly
and only when absolutely necessary. Yeah, okay, I get that. Can the governors
be bypassed?”

“Not without destroying the equipment.
It’s all built into a single chip.”

“No doubt to keep anyone from
abusing the device,” Park decided. “So I suppose we’ll have to try something
else. Tell me, does the pleasure help at all, or is it just getting in the
way?”

“Well, the sensors show it has an
effect,” the Technician admitted, “but I guess we’ve been administering it
incorrectly. So far we’ve only been reinforcing his religious convictions,
which as you know…”

“…include the destruction of this
world,” Park finished for him. “I’ve heard. Well, if it’s religious fanaticism
were have to deal with, we’ll have to make it work for us. We need to change
the interrogators, though. He’ll never fall for this if Mers are questioning
him and it’s going to take some time to soften him up before we let a priest
question him.”

“Where are we going to find a
Premm priest who sides with us?” the technician asked.

“Do the Premm have priests?” Park
countered. “Maybe they have shamans instead.”

“What’s the difference?” the
technician asked. “I still don’t know where you expect to find one.”

“We shall have to manufacture
one,” Park told him. “Keep up the questions the way we are doing it now for
another hour or two. Let’s make certain he is really sure of his religious
convictions and then we’ll give him a brief break.”

“I don’t get it,” the technician
admitted.

“You will,” Park promised. “Just
tell the interrogators to keep up the good work. I’ll be back soon.”

By the time Park returned with a
bundle of cloth under one arm, the interrogators were just finishing their
second round of questions. He put the cloth down on a table and waited for the
questioners to join him and the technician. By the time the
 
questioners had entered the monitor room, The
Premm agent was kneeling on the floor of the interrogation room.

“This one is tough,” one of the
cops noted. He had been taking the lead in the interview.

“He may have cracked more easily
if we hadn’t used the happy juice,” Park told them.

“Then why did you want us to use
it?”

“I didn’t,” Park shook his head.
“It didn’t sound right to me. It’s like using drugs to extract a confession or
to get intelligence from an enemy agent. Yes, it’s done, but I don’t have to
like it and I especially do not support it. But you guys had your orders and
had already started without me. I got thrown into this assignment, the same way
you were. So how would you normally tried to get a statement out of this guy?”

“Well, we’re almost never use as
crude a questioning method as we did in there,” the lead cop replied, “but more
subtle techniques weren’t working with the anesthetizer on.”

“Felt like we were trying to
drive a screw in with a hammer,” the second cop added.

“I was wondering about that,”
Park commented. “I didn’t think anyone used that sort of questioning outside of
a movie. It makes for good theater, but there are better ways to get what you
want out of a suspect.”

“Right,” the lead cop nodded.
“Normally we start by asking a subject about what interests him; hobbies, a
favorite bar – anything to try to establish some sort of rapport. Frequently we
pretend to have something in common. This not only puts the subject at ease, if
that is possible, but allows us to get an idea of how he acts when telling the
truth.”

“Yeah,” the second cop added. “I
saw a movie once where the detective character claimed a guilty party always
looked down and to the left when lying. That’s just not the case, not with
everyone. Most people have mannerisms that come out when not telling the truth,
but it’s not as easy and just watching where their eyes go. If it were, we’d
get the truth in minutes every time.”

“Well,” the first cop cut in,
“eye movement can be an important clue, but you have to know the subject first
to get a correct interpretation.”

“I would have thought the happy
juice would help you establish that rapport all the more quickly,” Park
commented.

“We thought so too,” the lead cop
agreed. “Maybe we did something wrong, or maybe this guy has had some sort of
training we haven’t encountered. It’s possible to train someone to lie
convincingly, even to instruments meant to detect lies, but you have to realize
we do not normally have to deal with that sort of subject. We’re police. Most
of the time we’re just trying to sweat a confession out of some jerk we suspect
of breaking into another’s house. Guys like that might be pathological liars,
you see that from time to time, but they don’t have any special training in it.
In any case this one does not behave like the average criminal. Maybe it’s
training, maybe it’s that freaky religion of the Premm, but whatever it is, the
happy juice, as you call it, only strengthened his resistance to us.”

“That’s a problem,” Park nodded,
“but one I might have a solution to,” He looked over at the
 
large monitor on the wall. It showed the
interrogation room across the hall. The arrangement of the monitoring room in
respect to the interrogation room had surprised Park at first. He had expected
there would be a one-way mirror between two rooms that stood side-by-side, but
he realized that with the current video technology, the monitor could actually
be miles away. This was better than looking through a piece of half-mirrored
glass and it was not necessary to keep the monitor room darkened.

The Premm agent in the
interrogation room was still on his knees, praying. “Now that gives me a lot of
hope,” Park commented and told the technician, “Make him feel good.”

“Won’t that strengthen his
religious resolve even more?” the cop asked.

“I sure hope so,” Park replied.
“But let’s get back to your more usual techniques. So you try to make the
subject feel you have something in common and also try to see if he has any
tells when he is lying. Sounds pretty much like the average Poker game. Is that
it?”

“No,” the first cop replied.
“That’s the easy part. I mean, it’s easy if you have any real experience with
it. It’s the next part where you need to balance toughness with fairness. Once
you’ve sized up your subject, the idea is to barrage him with rapid-fire
questions. It both keeps him off his toes and doesn’t give him any more time to
invent alibis or excuses. It does have its problems, however. It makes the
subject increasingly uncomfortable, which is almost always necessary to extract
a confession, if you’re going to get one, but we’ve found that it is not all
that uncommon to be able to press even an innocent party into confessing; if
the pressure is too great for a guy, he will confess just to relieve the
pressure on himself.”

“So a good interrogator has to know
exactly how hard to press without going too far,” Park noted.

“Not that we don’t make mistakes
sometimes,” the cop admitted. “Some guys, women too, really, come in feeling
guilty about something and scared we’re going to find out and sometimes it has
nothing to do with the crime we’re investigating. Sometimes their guilty feelings
aren’t related to a crime at all, but we don’t know that. It’s easy to get a
false confession out of that sort and we don’t look good if the wrong guy gets
convicted, but we try our best to get it right.”

“But there must be some sort of
emotional disconnect from the people you interrogate,” Park commented. “If
there weren’t this sort of work would drive you crazy.”

“No fooling,” the second cop
nodded. “The thing is, while a lot of crimes are never resolved, most of the
people we arrest are the guilty parties. It doesn’t matter if it is breaking
and entry or driving illegally, if we arrest a suspect, we are generally
correct, but there are mistakes sometimes. We’re not perfect
 
and those are the ones we hear about for
years after.”

“Well, it’s not fair to the poor
guy who gets convicted for a crime he didn’t commit,” The first cop commented,
“and if we could be right all the time we would be, but we aren’t the ones who
convict the criminals. We arrest suspects and try to gather evidence. So how do
you plan to get anything out of this guy, especially now that he’s morally
certain he’s in the right.”

“By bringing the wrath of God
down on him,” Park replied. He picked up the
 
bundle of cloth to reveal it was really a dark red robe. “I don’t know
if this looks anything like the priestly vestments of the Premm religious
leaders, but if the room over there is dark enough, maybe it won’t matter.”

Park pulled the robe on with the
hood over his head. “I wanted this in black because that seemed like a good
serious color, but this was all I could find.”

“It’s depends on the temple,” the
second cop explained. “My local priest always wears black vestments, well
except during the spring Offering Season, of course. It always seems strange to
see him in light green.”

“The priests at my temple wear
deep sea blue most of the time,” the first cop noted.

“You attend Our Lady of the
Deep?” the second asked. “That’s a gorgeous temple, but it’s on the far side of
town for me. I’ve been there for a few weddings and funerals, though.”

“Gentlemen,” Park stopped them.
“Normally, I would be fascinated to learn more about your religion and how it
is practiced, but at the moment, I’m more concerned with fitting in with
whatever the Premm’s notion of the priesthood is.” There were still some items
on the table. “Park picked up a gold-trimmed blue sash-like item and asked,
“What do you think?”

“I think that’s called a stole,”
the technician told him. “You drape it over your shoulders, but the stole is
from the autumnal vestments of a second rank priest and the robe is that of an
upper priest.”

“I’m not too worried about
getting the costume right to be mistaken for a Mer priest,” Park told them. “I
just want to look impressive enough. Now the hood, I couldn’t get one that
matched the robe, but figured this black and gold embroidered thing might do.”

“I think the priesthood would
laugh itself silly at you,” the leading interrogator chuckled. “I don’t think
you have a single matching item in the pile, but if I think of this get-up as
some sort of foreign thing, I suppose it’s impressive enough. The thing is,
what will that guy see you as?”

“Hopefully, as a high priest,”
Park replied and then added, “or a clown. I suppose I can always make balloon
animals. “Okay I want you to fiddle with the joy juice a bit. Turn it off
 
for a minute but then turn it back on when I
first enter the room. However, turn it off when I start speaking and leave it
off until he starts telling us what we want to know.”