testimony needs to remain free of their influence.” I almost wound down, but then another thought occurred to me. “Skye Porrinyard’s in the transport. She couldn’t have seen anything. Draft her to watch Li-Tsan. And have Oscin help with Gibb, once he gets back.”
“Will do,” Lastogne said.
Gibb’s hands curled into fists. “You don’t have to do this, Counselor. All I did was react to being attacked.”
“A few short hours after an attempt on my own life,” I said. “Forgive me for feeling some academic interest in matters involving violence.”
The stories offered a consistent, if not very helpful, picture.
Gibb had been spot-checking the move, offering the usual pointless managerial suggestions to professionals who didn’t need his help knowing how to erect sleepcubes on a flat surface. Li-Tsan had emerged from the one where she’d been living all these months, spotted Gibb, and intercepted him before he could bother someone else. The two had discussed something, their voices low and their body language reflecting mutual antagonism, for somewhere between thirty seconds and three minutes, with more estimates weighted toward the higher end of that range. Li-Tsan had begun shouting, and Gibb had shouted back, the substance of their argument forgotten as it degenerated into two-way abuse.
Most of the witnesses said they’d missed the actual moment when words gave way to violence.
Of the few witnesses I deemed credible, three out of four agreed that Gibb had initiated the physical stage of the confrontation by slapping Li-Tsan’s face. The fourth, a lithe, orange-haired indenture named Hannah Godel, refused to commit to an opinion, saying that her angle had been bad and that she couldn’t be sure. I asked her if she had any special reason for not taking a stand and she said that she just didn’t want to condemn somebody without being sure.
Her story had the ring of somebody with a definite opinion who didn’t want to make her own situation more difficult by sharing.
Lastogne also claimed to have seen nothing, which seemed too convenient for words. But the facts bore him out. A number of witnesses placed him just outside the hangar, helping with the supply ferries, at the moment the argument began. He had heard the raised voices, rushed in to investigate, and arrived just in time to catch the reeling Gibb.
His inability to testify to the actual event didn’t excuse his failure to be any more forthcoming regarding the backstory. “I think we’ve already covered this, Counselor. We know why they have problems with one another.”
“But isn’t this the first time that’s spilled over into violence?”
“Sure it is. At least as far as I know. But when you take two people who can barely contain their dislike for one another, and add a crisis, that’s what you get.”
It was all he had. Or at least all he offered.
I didn’t question either combatant until after I was satisfied that I’d gotten all I could from everybody else. I approached Li-Tsan first for no reason nobler than the opportunity to keep Gibb waiting. Lastogne had ordered her escorted to the ship, where she’d been confined to one of the berths and fitted with a paralytic neural tap as one of the vessel’s AIsource medbots, a whirring little gnat of a thing that seemed to prefer zipping back and forth between her hands and face to finishing each job one at a time, performed a quick patch-and-repair on her injuries. The tap, a routine measure to deaden her pain during the surgery, had been turned to a setting significantly stronger than the procedures warranted. It left her lying on her back, a temporary quadriplegic so infuriated by her imprisonment that I feared for the medbot’s safety every time it buzzed past her mouth on its way to and from the fading injury to her nose. I kept suspecting her of wanting to grind it to foil between her teeth.
Skye Porrinyard, who I found sitting at the command console, a comfortable distance from Li-Tsan’s direct line of sight, was all business as designated guard. She confirmed that Li-Tsan had said nothing of value and reported that Oscin was expected to return within forty-five minutes.
I thanked her, asked her to leave, then activated my hiss screen and turned to Li-Tsan. There was no place to sit except for the bunk itself, and I refused to kneel, so I just stood in the hatchway and regarded her from a height. “Anything you want to say to me?”
The stoniness of Li-Tsan’s expression went well beyond anything that could have been explained away by mere paralysis. “Only that you must be thankful.”
“Why?”
“You wanted a suspect. You needed an excuse for it to be me. I gave you both.”
I was in no mood to defend my impartiality. “That was thoughtful of you.”
“It was selfish. I couldn’t leave this place without throttling that smug son of a bitch at least once.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So you think you’re leaving?”
“Aren’t we all?”
Give her credit for that one. “What were you and Gibb talking about?”
“Just how much I hate his stupid ass.”
“Some of the witnesses said that the two of you were arguing for three full minutes.”
“It wasn’t that long.”
“So let’s compromise,” I said. “Let’s say the argument lasted a minute and a half. Let’s say you bypassed all your actual reasons to be upset with him and just told Gibb you hated his stupid ass. Let’s say he showed the proper degree of supervisory patience and said, that’s fine, bondsman, but I don’t have the time to have my stupid ass hated at this very moment. Let’s go on to concede you came up with the worst insult your little mind could concoct and he slapped you. That’s still accounts for less than thirty seconds. What happened during the rest of the conversation?”
She grimaced. “Does it really matter? He’s still a pig, you’re still letting him set us up as scapegoats, and you’re still what you are. I looked you up, Counselor. And you have no business behaving like you’re morally superior to anybody.”
It always amazes me just how many people in serious trouble fling my past in my face, expecting me to be devastated. “You’ll notice I’m smiling, bondsman. Go ahead. Ask me why.”
“No.”
“I’m smiling because I know perfectly well what I am and I honestly don’t give a damn what you think of me.”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m smiling because refusing to give me a straight answer is just about the stupidest, most self-destructive thing you can possibly do right now.”
“Like I said: fuck off. You’ve already made up your mind anyway.”
It wasn’t my job to beg her. I nodded, deactivated the hiss screen, gave myself another ten seconds or so of meaningless physical business to perform so she’d have to lie there and watch me taking forever to leave, and then, timing it as best I could, paused at the door. “I don’t like you, bondsman. But I hate mysteries even more.”
She let me go without protest.
Nobody had wanted to subject Gibb to the same degree of security mandated for Li-Tsan Crin, so they’d contented themselves with just escorting him outside the hangar and staying with him while he endured the long wait for my attention.
Three men sat cross-legged on the padded deck, their backs against the faintly luminescent wall, the fuming Gibb bracketed by two indentures who seemed to have been chosen for being on good terms with him. I recognized both: a slightly built, callow young indenture named Simon Wells, who had been no help whatsoever in our brief interview earlier in the day, and a hairy-armed, scowling older man named Chasin Burr, whose answers had rarely exceeded two or three words per question. Wells radiated the profound discomfort of an insecure man not happy with having to guard his superior. Burr just radiated general dislike in my direction.
I sent them back to the hangar, then activated the hiss screen and stood looking down at Gibb.
“You can sit,” he said, in a voice rendered hoarse by trauma.
“No, thank you. After Hammocktown, I enjoy the novelty of standing.”
He began to rise.
