The Administration Series (30 page)

Toreth laughed. "I'll think of something else."

She patted his leg and began to enter the booking into the computer. "This is just for you, Toreth. I don't want you telling anyone else I'm a soft touch."

"Cross my heart. You're an angel, Ange."

She smiled without looking up. "This dinner had better be good, that's all."

On his way back to I&I to collect Tara, Toreth made a mental note that hinting about a threat to Psychoprogramming's fiercely guarded exclusive rights to mind-fucking was a technique he'd have to remember in future.

Up in the observation gallery, Seiden worked over a screen, grumbling occasionally about the unexpected extension of his shift. Toreth kept the length of the room between them. At the end of a long day, Seiden's body odour could strip paint.

Setting the machine up took forever. Through the window, Toreth studied Tara's pale, elfin face. Lying on the platform in the enclosed room below them, sedated and surrounded by the m-f equipment, she looked horribly fragile.

A level three I&I damage waiver didn't explicitly cover memory scans. The risk from the procedure was small, but if he ended up damaging a technically unwaivered witness, he'd be lucky to get away with a reprimand. SimTech's lawyers would raise hell, no doubt with Warrick encouraging them every step of the way. Tara had signed the consent to the procedure eagerly enough, once he'd explained she'd be released after the scan, but a lawyer could so easily twist it into her signing under duress. Toreth might even be sacked, particularly since he'd deliberately end-run Tillotson's authority to get her here.

"This is safe, isn't it?" Toreth asked.

Seiden didn't look up from the screen. "Yes. As safe as it can be, for someone with a history of mental instability."

"Oh, hell."

"If you don't want to know, don't ask. If she has been tampered with, then it's possible messing around without knowing what was done to her could be unfortunate." He scratched the back of his neck, and then added, "That's why the prisoners we get here have high-level waivers."

"She's a witness, not a prisoner, so be careful."

Seiden looked round, offended. "I'm always careful. Even with the low-life resisters that get passed through for reboring. Of course," he added more thoughtfully, "that's different — we don't need a waiver at all after they're convicted."

"If she breaks down, I'm sunk."

"She won't. She's not even going to get a headache." Seiden flipped a plexiglass cover up from a small panel and pressed a button. "Activating."

The platform slid smoothly into the tunnel, the upper half of Tara's body vanishing into the maw of the machine, and Toreth waited.

After a while, Seiden said, "If there was any justice in the world, you'd need a waiver to do that to music."

It took Toreth a moment to realise Seiden was addressing him. "What?"

"To hum like that. If it's in a key, it's one I don't recognise."

"Sorry." Toreth hadn't noticed he'd been doing it.

"I play the cornet; bet you didn't know that, did you? Jazz. Nearly professional standard." Seiden peered at the screen, then nodded. "Right . . . I've finished the calibrations. First, I'll do the scan. Then I'll take the interviews she gave you and play them back to her, to stimulate her memory. If she has memory blocks, that should show them up."

"Don't forget the DID."

"I told you already, it's in the program."

From the gallery, Toreth could see nothing except the smooth metal casing of the large scanner and the blinking lights of the computer systems. He thought that, compared to the sim, it was a lot of tech to achieve something that was on the surface less impressive. Like the sim, it was dull to watch, but if it produced both a result and an undamaged witness it was time well spent.

His slanted view of Seiden's screen showed samples of the scan results flicking into life and vanishing again. Complex 3D traces like multicoloured tangles of thread, representing the activity of neurons. A light touch, for the m-f.

With more invasive and potentially damaging scanning and a lot of expensive computing power, the results could be processed into fragmentary thoughts and memories. That was the reason that mindfuckers were widely considered to be a threat to I&I territory. More by Interrogation than Investigation, but that was half of Toreth's job.

Psychoprogramming's speciality was brainwashing, not mind-reading, but the m-f still gave a direct link into the brain. At the moment, it made for a ridiculously expensive alternative to real interrogation, but Toreth had to admit, reluctantly, that in some cases it was better.

For one thing, it was capable of extracting memories which couldn't be deliberately retrieved by their owner. Even when pressed to the point of desperation, most people knew more than they could consciously call to mind. For another, as it worked on unconscious subjects, the m-f couldn't be lied to. Nor was it as susceptible to the anti-interrogation drugs and vaccines which kept I&I locked in a pharmacological arms race with resisters and criminals.

Still, as he'd told Chev, it would be a long time before the equipment below him displaced people like Warner and Parsons. Cost wasn't the only factor. The m-f was a perfect tool, as long as you ignored the failures: the partial and complete amnesiacs, the psychotics, catatonics, and other 'oops, we fucked up' results.

Toreth leaned against the glass of the observation gallery and stared down at his valuable, vulnerable witness. Neural scanning, direct stimulation and manipulation of memories — the basic technology here wasn't so different to the sim. Yet, while Seiden was willing to admit to the dangers of the m-f, Warrick was unshakable on the safety of the sim. On the other hand, if the sim were as dangerous as the m-f, SimTech would be full of highly-paid, expert vegetables. There was no evidence the sim could injure.

Not counting, of course, three corpses.

Time passed slowly, almost an hour and a half. Eventually, Seiden said, "Done."

"Is she all right?"

"Fine, as far as I can tell at this stage." He looked over his shoulder and grinned. "'Course she could be completely fucked when she wakes up."

Probably just trying to wind him up. "Did you get anything?"

"Well . . ." Seiden paged through screens of numbers and complicated 3D mappings that meant nothing to Toreth. "Nothing glaringly obvious. A few anomalies are flagged up here and there."

"What the hell does 'anomalies' mean?"

Seiden shrugged. "It means something odd or irregular. Probably just a glitch in the scanner. Things like that usually go away once the program analyses the data and hammers it into shape. I can't tell you for sure until these results have gone through the program."

The screen went black, and Seiden blew out his cheeks, looking at his watch. "And
that's
going to wait until tomorrow morning. Results by the afternoon — and only because Ange said to be nice to you. The systems are swamped. Send one reformed citizen out of here, we get two bad ones back in."

When the Psychoprogramming medic pronounced her fit to leave, Toreth arranged a taxi to take Tara Scrivin wherever she wanted to go. He already had three messages from SimTech's legal department waiting on his comm. It gave him great satisfaction to send replies, all polite variations on 'You can fuck off, because we don't have her any more'.

He was back in his office, reading through Tara's files again, when a knock on the door attracted his attention. "Yes?"

Sara appeared. "If there's nothing else, I'm off."

"What time is it?"

"Nearly seven."

Toreth blinked. "Really? Okay — fine." As Sara turned to go, Toreth remembered something he ought to have checked already. "One minute. First thing tomorrow, can you get me the surveillance recordings for the SimTech pharmacy? Probably no go, but if there
was
something in that injector it must have come from somewhere."

She paused. "I'm sorry?"

Other people might simply have forgotten about something like that. However, since it was Sara, her blank expression gave him a sinking feeling. "There should've been surveillance equipment installed at SimTech. I told Belqola to arrange it weeks ago."

Sara regarded him in eloquent silence. She hadn't approved of Belqola's appointment in the first place, and remembering that didn't do anything for Toreth's temper.

"Where the fuck is he?" he snapped.

"At SimTech," she said promptly. "Talking to the technical people. Or he was ten minutes ago. He called me and made a point of saying he was still there. Trying to look keen, if you ask me. Do you want me to ask him to come back?"

"No. I'm not hanging around here. I'll find him and then go straight home afterwards. Call him; tell him to wait there for me."

By the time he reached the AERC, Toreth was in a steaming bad temper. Knowing that he should have checked the surveillance was in place himself only made it worse. However, nursemaiding idiot juniors wasn't Toreth's job.

Toreth didn't make many mistakes when selecting for his team, and the failure was another irritation. So much for high fucking training scores. As he slammed the car door, he vowed he'd never again make the mistake again of relying purely on those when picking new team members.

He found Belqola waiting in the entrance, looking apprehensive. Good.

"Where's the surveillance for the pharmacy?" Toreth asked.

"I've arranged for it to go in now, Para."

Sara had obviously taken pity on the idiot, for what little good that would do him. "Using your time machine, are you?"

"I — I'm sorry, Para."

"Sorry is no fucking good to me. And no fucking good to Pearl Nissim, either." Toreth stepped closer. "Why the hell wasn't it in place a month ago?"

The junior shifted his feet, but didn't back away. "I forgot to arrange it, Para."

That won him one point for not coming up with an excuse, but only one. "You can tell that to the disciplinary board. I'm sure Tillotson'll be sympathetic."

He waited, but Belqola had decided that silence was the best approach.

"Do you know what?" Toreth said. "I can't be fucking bothered with disciplinary reports and turning up to hearings when I should be running my cases. I don't need to waste any more of my time on you." Belqola brightened very slightly, before Toreth continued. "Because tomorrow morning, you're out of my team. And I promise you that with the reference I'll put in your file, no senior will touch you with a fucking shock stick. You'll be doing investigative grunt work and level one interrogations 'til you fucking retire."

Belqola's stricken expression provided at least some satisfaction.

"Please — one more chance." Belqola's gaze dropped, and then he looked up again, taking a deep breath. "I'll do whatever it takes, Para.
Anything
."

With the metaphorical axe about to fall, Toreth paused. Was that an offer? It was hard to tell from Belqola's expression — he'd looked desperate since the beginning of the conversation.

Not that Toreth intended to change his mind about throwing the man out. His team was worth far more to him than a quick fuck. However, it might be entertaining to see how far the junior would go for the sake of his career. He could postpone the reassignment for a little while. Until the end of the investigation, say.

Toreth smiled slowly, watching the hope kindle in Belqola's eyes. "Okay. Come out for a drink, and we can discuss your future performance."

Toreth picked a nearby bar at random, and let Belqola buy him a drink. Then he listened with a fragment of his attention as Belqola talked, explaining how much his job meant to him, how proud his parents were of his career, and a lot of other probably fictional crap Toreth wasn't interested in. The underlying message was clear enough.

After they'd finished their drinks, Belqola checked his watch. "I ought to get home. My — my wife was expecting me an hour ago."

First time he'd mentioned his wife. Asking permission not to get into trouble — it was quite clear he'd stay if required to do so. Toreth smiled indulgently. "All right. But first — " He looked over towards the toilets. After a moment's hesitation, Belqola stood and led the way.

The toilets were fortunately empty, and equipped with sufficiently spacious cubicles to make things, if not comfortable, then at least not too awkward.

Toreth leaned against the wall of the cubicle, hands behind his back, and said, "Well?"

Belqola started to kneel, then obviously thought better of the state of the floor and settled for squatting. Once there, he hesitated; Toreth wondered if it was second thoughts or a desire to set the deal out in more concrete terms. No chance of that.

"Done this before?" Toreth asked.

Belqola nodded.

"Good. So I won't need to give directions."

Resting his head against the wall, Toreth closed his eyes and waited as Belqola unfastened his clothes and freed his cock, already hard with anticipation.

Another pause, then Toreth heard one deep breath before Belqola took him in.

Toreth was willing to concede that, with the decision made, the man wasn't bad. Seven out of ten, he'd give him. Nice and deep, not rushing things, despite the uncomfortable position. Putting enough effort into it that Toreth could feel him gagging from time to time.

Not Toreth's problem, nor Belqola's for much longer. He clenched his fists, toes curling, pressing himself back against the wall as, for long, delicious seconds, his orgasm wiped out the irritations and stresses of the case and everything else in his life.

Belqola spat into the toilet, the sound nudging Toreth out of the pleasant post-orgasm haze. As usual, Toreth enjoyed the soothing flood of endorphins. And, as usual, he felt an urge to get away from the person responsible for it as soon as was practical.

He zipped himself up, and then opened the door without offering the junior a hand up. The toilets were still deserted, making an uncomplicated end to a very satisfactory ten minutes.

Back at the table, Toreth sat. Belqola hovered by his chair for a moment, then said, "I'll see you tomorrow, Para."