I halted him with a gesture. “Remain seated or I’ll order you restrained.”
He froze. “Come on, Counselor. I’m not about to attack you.”
“You’re probably telling the truth. But your actions tonight do indicate a recent propensity for violence. So stay where you are.”
He looked like he wanted to argue. Instead, he grunted, settled back down, and regarded me with the resigned weariness of a man accustomed to being misunderstood. “This is pointless. Dozens of witnesses just saw that crazy woman threaten my life.”
“That’s right. They also saw you strike her first.”
His sigh was weary in both body and spirit. “Yeah, that was a mistake. But she was hysterical. She was hysterical, and she was out of control, and I thought a little shock would bring her out of it.”
“What would make you think that, Mr. Gibb? Do you hit your people often?”
He stared at me, bit back a response, and looked away, shaking his head.
“No?” I said. “Just the women?”
“That’s an ugly implication, Counselor.”
“It was an ugly moment, Mr. Gibb.”
He averted his eyes. “It was the wrong thing to do. But I mean what I say. She was hysterical.”
I circled to keep myself within his line of sight. “What about?”
“The same thing she was always going on about. Blame. She was so sure that this debacle was going to be made all about her. I assured her that assigning blame was the very last of my concerns right now, and suggested that she find a better use for her time.”
“That’s not exactly a natural point for you to slap her. So I presume she got nastier.”
“Yes.”
“What was the last thing she said to you before you slapped her?”
“I don’t remember.”
I rubbed my eyes, felt a wave of gray dizziness, wished I hadn’t already committed to standing, and said, “Mr. Gibb, she’s already on record as calling you an incompetent, an asshole, a piece of Tchi shit, and a pervert who makes love to eye sockets. You’ve already established yourself as somebody capable of striking a prisoner under restraint. If there’s something worse than any of that, that you’re still too self-conscious to repeat in my presence, it could only be something specific, something of genuine substance that would not normally slip your mind. Your reluctance is calling attention to it. There’s no point in sparing my delicate ears, because sooner or later I will reach somebody who heard and I will find out.”
He fought a little fruitless battle with himself before giving it up. “She called me a pimp.”
“A what?”
“I’m serious. A pimp. You know what that means, right?”
I did, but couldn’t make sense of it. Procurement was on most developed worlds the most antiquated of all crimes. Even those societies that still criminalized prostitution had too many other ways for sex services to connect with potential clients. I felt an urge to do something, couldn’t figure out what it was, and fought it off long enough to manage, “Why would she call you a pimp?”
Burr smirked. No: leered. I was sure of it.
Gibb just asked, “Why would she call me that other thing? Don’t look for sense in it. She was just hurling the worst words she could think of.”
“This particular one made you slap her.”
“I slapped her,” he said, his voice rising, “because she was hysterical and I wasn’t going to listen to another twenty minutes of her nonsense. Not because she picked a senseless insult out of a hat.”
I knelt, meeting his eyes, forcing him to see his evasions as the weak, toothless things they were. “And I can’t quite believe that, because you were yelling too, Mr. Gibb. You were every bit as angry with her as she was with you. You were so very out of control, in fact, that you hit her two more times after she was restrained and no longer a threat. And would have hit her again if I hadn’t stepped in.”
He measured me with a look. “That was another mistake, Counselor. But it had nothing to do with anything she said and everything to do with her wrapping her hands around my throat. I’m like most people, even you, in that I get angry when people try to kill me. You, of all people, must be able to understand that.”
The special emphasis he gave the phrase
What else would a leader under fire discuss with his guards while waiting for the interrogator to arrive? Except why that interrogator was not to be trusted?
The ugly story would be all over the hangar by morning.
The only thing Gibb hadn’t counted on was the fact that I’d been carrying that weight a lot longer than I’d been on One One One, and was used to it.
I stood, pressed my palms against the small of my back, and arced my spine until I heard a creak. “I’m not satisfied, sir. And until I am, you will remain under arrest. I’ll go make arrangements for your confinement, and put Mr. Lastogne in command.”
He bit his cheek. “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Counselor.”
“Then give me something in exchange. Be a little forthcoming for once. I’ll even give you a choice. Either tell me what’s really going on between you and your height-sensitives, or surrender everything you know about Lastogne.”
He looked down, neither surrendering nor backing off, just removing himself from the discussion.
I waited until I was absolutely sure it was all he was willing to offer, then turned my back on him and returned to the hangar, my footsteps soft padding thuds against a deck gentler than some of the human beings walking upon it.
16. WAR
I didn’t want to turn in for the night. I didn’t think I could afford to. But I’d already put off a crash for hours, and sleep deprivation was starting to make me stupid.
Even so, I imagined I’d spend hours flat on my back, staring at darkness, the frayed ends of my investigation refusing to permit me rest. It wouldn’t be the first time an assignment had done that to me. But I enjoyed pure oblivion, broken only by the briefest of dream-flashes: my human mother kissing me on the forehead as I lay in bed pretending to be asleep. It felt so real I woke, blinking my eyes at the disorientation that always comes from sleeping in a strange place.
Much later, I sat up.
I’d assigned myself one of the four berths aboard the Dip Corps ship, feeling safer there than I would have in a sleepcube among my suspect pool. The irony of sharing quarters with one of the two people I’d arrested did not escape me, but I’d endured worse. I used a hand sonic to wash, changed into a fresh black outfit, ate breakfast, and logged on.
The key was a phenomenon Lastogne had alluded to the other day. Indentures sign up for five or ten or twenty years, depending on just how desperate they are and just how much the Corps values their services. They essentially sign their lives away in exchange for a ticket off their homeworlds and a retirement package that includes free passage anywhere they want to go, in perpetuity.
Still, nobody wants to wait that long for gratification, so there’s an incentive system. Those who excel, for one reason or another, earn time bonuses. A hard-working diplomat with twenty years on her contract can complete her obligation in half that time by consistently performing above and beyond the call of duty. Most people don’t quite manage that feat, as most people are not prodigies. Some, like the space-holders and drug-addled who make up too great a percentage of the Dip Corps rolls, just put in their time like automatons, accomplishing only the bare minimum expected of them. But the majority do take advantage of the system to some extent, shaving their time accounts by an hour here or a day there, looking for every advantage as they wait for their clocks to run
