He made the word
“Anything but. My duties at the moment seem limited to cheerleading. I have enjoyed watching that steady stream of people, going in and out of that transport, and trying to guess just what you’ve determined.”
The three indentures at the table all joined him in waiting expectantly for my answer.
“Would you like to discuss it?” I asked.
“Alone?”
“Of course.”
“All right.” He stood, deactivated the game, apologized to the others, and escorted me to a sleepcube a short distance away. The practically narcoleptic Cartsac was already sleeping in there, but when he saw who needed the space he pulled himself upright and shuffled out the door, wearing the expression of a man who only wanted another place to lie down. Lastogne sealed the flap, sat on one of the cube’s two cots, gestured at the other, and said, “I know what you’re thinking. Is all this intoxication wise?”
I didn’t sit. “I was about to say.”
He shrugged. “Trust me, they’ve recovered from worse. They’ll hop to attention if we need them to.”
I just nodded. “It is all about down-time, isn’t it?”
The silence that followed was not broken when I activated the hiss screen.
Every external indication marked Lastogne as a calm, measured professional, determined to avoid the appearance of any reaction, either good or bad. But on this one point, at least, there were no secrets between us. “It’s a little outside the stated goals of your investigation, isn’t it, Counselor? I wouldn’t have considered you the type to indulge in that kind of silly witch-hunt.”
“It’s not silly,” I said, “but you’re right. It is beneath my notice.”
“Then why go so far out of your way to ruin a man?”
“Why risk your own career by protecting him?” When he failed to answer, I lowered my voice in pretend- conspiracy. “I know it’s not respect. You’ve already indicated what you think of him. So what is it? What hold does he have on you?”
He surprised me by laughing out loud: a rich, hearty laugh filled with affection for both Gibb and myself. “Is that what you think, Counselor? That he pulls my strings? I’m sorry, but you’re way off. I could leave this station tomorrow and forget his name by the middle of next week.”
“Then why protect him?”
“Because he’s a mediocrity. And I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for mediocrities.”
Li-Tsan had intimated as much, just yesterday. “Come on—”
“No, no, no, I’m serious. Do you have any idea how unbearable life would be if everybody excelled? If everybody was noble, perceptive, courageous, and selfless? If everybody had open eyes and saw the forces that really ran things? It would be a madhouse. You need a few empty-calorie people like Gibb just to dilute the mix.”
The man actually seemed to be serious. “In my experience, mediocrity in life-or-death situations gets people killed.”
He looked knowing. “Read your history. Greatness kills more.”
There was nothing I could say to that.
He shrugged. “So I take care of Gibb, like a pet. As long as the work gets done, or as close to done as the circumstances here allow him to accomplish, and nobody gets hurt by any moments of actual incompetence, I see no harm in just letting him have his way.”
“Except that’s the whole point,” I said. “People have been hurt.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, come now. You can’t seriously blame what happened to Warmuth and Santiago on Gibb’s stupidity.”
“I’m not. His actions may have contributed, but I wasn’t referring to them.”
“Who, then?”
“To start with: Robin Fish.”
For the first time he averted his eyes from me, focusing instead on his hands, which closed into fists before opening again, just as empty as they’d been before: “She’s a little bit below mediocre, isn’t she? And the worst kind of below-par personality at that: the kind who believes herself destined for great things. Give the Dip Corps credit for knowing what she was. They wanted to tuck her away in a cozy little nowhere post, where she could serve out her time without ever being subjected to any challenges beyond her capabilities. She could have stayed there and been just as unhappy as she is now, but at least then she would have been able to comfort herself by blaming everybody else for not giving her a chance. Here, she has no such illusions.”
“And the others? Li-Tsan? D’Onofrio? Anybody else, hurt in ways that just don’t happen to show yet?”
He emitted a bitter laugh. “Do you honestly feel sorry for Li-Tsan?”
“My own soft spot is for people who have good reason to be angry.”
He nodded, accepting that, and examined his hands again, his demeanor not so much sad or afraid as simply expressively silent.
I leaned in close. “Here’s the thing, Peyrin. I have no sympathy for Gibb at all. Not as a mediocrity, or as anything else. Not after what he’s done. But I can’t afford to continue wasting my time with issues outside the scope of my investigation. I need these less pressing matters out of the way. So if you have any regard for him at all, you’ll stop withholding information. Tell me who you are. Because, otherwise, I will be forced to go through him, which might entail ruining more lives than just his.”
For a heartbeat I thought I’d gotten to him. He lowered his head, opened his mouth, seemed about to give secrets voice, and then slumped, the lines on his forehead mapping more genuine pain than his eyes had ever communicated. “I’m sorry. But I can’t.”
There was no point in further discussion. I stood up, and stared at him for several heartbeats, discerning arrogance, regret, damnation, and a peculiar form of triumph among the ingredients of the emotional stew brewing behind his dark, penetrating eyes.
The bastard was going to let this happen.
I turned to leave, but he stopped me before I could. “He’s not here.”
My spine rippled with a certain undefined dread. “Where is he?”
“He flew back to Hammocktown an hour ago.”
The words might as well have been nonsense syllabification, for all the sense that made. “What?”
Lastogne went back to looking at his hands. “He insisted. He said that people look to him to set an example, and that he wasn’t going to sit around like a symbol of failure when he could go back and in that way show everybody that we’re not defeated yet. He said he knew he was supposed to be under arrest, but that if we left him there without a means of transportation back he would be just as much a prisoner there as he could be here. He said that as long as he was prisoner anywhere he might as well make himself a living reminder that we still have a job to do.” He looked up, his eyes uncharacteristically pained, and his grin uncharacteristically apolgetic. “You should have heard him, Counselor. He was inspiring. As inspiring as a nonentity can be.”
I still couldn’t believe it. “You let him go? Alone?”
“I repeat: he was inspiring.”
“Goddamn you,” I said.
Lastogne moved faster than anybody I’ve ever seen. Faster than the Porrinyards leaping to my rescue, faster than any acrobat or assassin, faster than any unenhanced human being has the right to move. I had just enough time to register the blur of motion, and flinch, certain that all my reconstructions were in error, and that he was the murderer come to finish what the Porrinyards had managed to stop. Then he was before me, his hand on my arm, his eyes still sad, but his lips curled once again into his trademark wry grimace. “Counselor—”
My mouth was dry. “What?”
“Before you do what you have to do to him, I just want you to think about this gesture of his. And remember the one thing worth admiring about mediocrities.”
His eyes were so black with knowledge now that I had to look away. “What?”
“Every once in a while,” he said, “they’re not.”
I was looking at Peyrin Lastogne, but I saw Artis Bringen’s face.
That made up my mind.
I told Lastogne, “There are two documents in my hytex folder, both coded. I need you to free both for
