collected their passport and went to the world of their choice. Many found it necessary to recount details of the worlds they had come from. As was all too often the case when indentures swapped life stories, there turned out to be a depressing number of stories about military dictatorships, theocracies, places where one family had seized power and delighted in raping the ecosystem everybody needed to survive, and worlds so screwed up by internal conflicts that volunteering for the Dip Corps emerged as the only way to avoid having your head shot off in some stupid war against civilians.
You want to know why humanity’s never been involved in a serious interspecies conflict? Because it’s like going out to eat when you have a pantry full of food at home. Why bother sampling the buffets elsewhere when we haven’t worked out all the great ways to kill each other yet?
I found, out of all Gibb’s staff, maybe half a dozen people who professed deep affection for Warmuth and many more who had a grim, jaw-grinding respect for Santiago. As could only be expected from a small insular community of indentures, working in a dangerous environment under difficult conditions, the web of sexual relationships was almost as tangled as the substructure of Hammocktown. My interviews rang with excited gossip over who’d been with Warmuth (I counted a dozen assignations, all fleeting, before losing track), Li-Tsan (almost as many, but over a much longer period of time), Gibb (“Guess who the boss is doing!”), Lastogne (“Who
Only a few of the interviewees stood out from the crowd.
Oskar Levine was a sad-eyed, thin-faced, sallow-cheeked young man wearing the insignia of the Riirgaan Republic. He didn’t have much new to say about either Warmuth or Santiago, but his own legal status was such a knot it made mine look simple. Once an indenture in our own Dip Corps, he’d been scapegoated for his actions during a major diplomatic incident he said I could look up for myself, and would have been tried and imprisoned for treason had he not defected to the Riirgaans before prosecution.
Now he sat high up the curve of the communal hammock, his hands performing somersaults in a ballet of nervous overemphasis.
“I look human. I feel human. I even smell human, some days more than others. Any medical examination would confirm that I’m human. But I’m legally nonhuman. No government within the Confederacy is permitted to provide me human status. My Riirgaan diplomatic immunity keeps me safe from any genuinely dangerous consequences, but there have been some unpleasant ones.”
“Such as?”
He rubbed the corner of his eyes. “Well, some worlds enforce very strict residency limitations on nonhumans; I’ve been expelled from a couple of those. And a few years ago I ran into trouble on another world where I served the local Riirgaan ambassador as liaison to the human locals. When the community found out about my relationship with a local girl, they accused me of rape and her of practicing bestiality. I was expelled. The girl was fined, forced to publicly apologize to the community, and prohibited from ever contacting me again.”
Levine told the story without any noticeable self-pity. Instead, he seemed to feel a peculiar pride in his one poor claim to fame.
I said, “It must be lonely.”
“It’s not as bad as you think, Counselor. In fact, I’m married to a woman who defected to Riirgaan in order to make it legal. There’s a community of about forty of us, based on one of their worlds; mostly political refugees, of one kind or another, all as human as I could ask for. We’re just not recognized as human under Confederate Law.”
“Where’s your wife now?”
A smile tugged at his lips. “Back home. I’ll see her again when I’m cycled out in a few months.”
“Do you miss her?”
His smile made his face redden. “Of course.”
“Then, if you don’t mind me asking, what the hell are you doing here?”
That made him laugh without any self-consciousness at all. “Doesn’t make sense, does it? After all, I hate the Dip Corps and the Dip Corps hates me. We shouldn’t have anything to do with one another.”
It hadn’t worked that way, in my case. The Dip Corps and I hated each other, too, but were so integrally connected I’d be wearing its yoke for the rest of my life. But I said, “So?”
“The truth is, I’m here to function as living loophole. The AIsource running One One One only agreed to a small installation of observers, administered by one government and one government alone, required by treaty to share its findings with all the others monitoring the situation here. Humanity got elected. ‘My’ people, the Riirgaans, wanted their own eyes and ears aboard anyway, so they pulled some strings, finagled a separate deal with the Confederacy, and negotiated my presence as independent consultant. The AIsource know my legal status, but either they don’t value citizenship over biology the way the Confederacy does, or they’re not willing to argue the point. So I’m a human without being human.”
“I’m surprised you would want to go along with it. After all, the Corps shafted you twice. You should tell them to go to hell.”
“That’s right in both cases. They did, and I should. And for what it’s worth, they’re not much kinder to me now; some of the careerists, including Mr. Gibb, like to let me know as often as possible what a despicable race- traitor I am. But the Riirgaans gave me a home when I needed one, so I don’t mind taking a little crap for their sake. Besides, my bosses among the Riirgaans say that completing this assignment might give them enough leverage to negotiate a Confederate pardon for me and my friends. Even possible repatriation.”
I decided to give him some free legal advice. “Dual citizenship of some kind would be fine, but it would have to be dual. Confederate and Riirgaan. Don’t ever give up your Riirgaan ties, even for a moment.”
Levine frowned. “I wasn’t planning to, but why?”
“Because it would be just like the Confederacy to return your citizenship in some deal that comes with immunity from prosecution for crimes already charged, welcome you home, and then nail you with another charge they’ve been holding in reserve all along. They’re vindictive bastards, Mr. Levine. I know.”
He saw the conviction in my eyes, thought to question it, then stopped, the awful truth dawning. “Damn. You really think they’d do that?”
I gave him the full force of my certainty. “I’d be astonished if they didn’t.”
“Damn,” he said again, this time rolling the word with special emphasis. He was quiet for a moment, as he weighed the epiphany. Then he looked at me again and said, simply, “Thank you. I appreciate your honesty. Would you be upset with me if I asked you a personal question?”
I didn’t like personal questions in general, but I’d opened the door. And, besides, Levine gave me a feeling I rarely had for my fellow human beings: the sense that he could have been a friend, had I been in the market for friends. “Go ahead.”
“It’s a bad one. I don’t mean any offense.”
“I said go ahead.”
“I’ve known your name for a couple of years now. I know your background, and I know your legal status. It comes up a lot when researching my own. Don’t worry, I haven’t mentioned it to anybody here, but—”
My ears burned. “Just ask your question.”
“I was wondering…if I could defect to get out of a bad legal situation, why can’t you? I mean, I’m not advocating it, or saying that you should. But it’s not like the Dip Corps is an ideal place for you. You’re practically their slave. Haven’t you ever thought of getting some alien government, like mine, to give you sanctuary on its own soil?”
The question’s rudeness was not nearly as breathtaking as its honesty. I decided against going off on him and gave him an answer, even if I could only afford a less than candid one. “I don’t know of any alien governments who wouldn’t hand me over to the Bocaians.”
“Oh,” he said, deflating. “Just a thought.”
And a good one. But his adopted people, the Riirgaans, had been among the loudest raising challenges to my immunity. There were voices among the Tchi who hate me more than you can imagine. The Bursteeni agreed that I was functioning under diminished capacity, but thought that I should establish it once and for all in a Bocaian court, a course of action I considered tantamount to suicide. The K’cenhowten didn’t offer refugees sanctuary. The Cid
