Jordan shut his eyes.
"Defeat?" Giraud asked.
"I'm sure," Jordan said, looking at him, "you mean to make me a proposition. You've put this together so carefully. Their safety for my silence?"
Giraud smiled without humor. "You know we can take them. You just gave us too many hostages, Jordie, and you can't protect a one of them, except by following orders. You don't want your boy to live with that tape. You don't want him prosecuted, you don't want the Krugers up on charges, and your friend Merild dragged into court, and all your friends in Council tied to it, one string after another. There's just no place an investigation like this ends once you start it moving. You don't want Grant or Paul subject to interrogation after interrogation. You know what that would do. Wedon't want an investigation getting out of bounds and Idon't want scandal touching Reseune. Let me tell you how it'll be. You give us a detailed confession. Nothing's going to happen to you: you know that. You'll even get your dearest wish: a transfer out of here. We'll insist your work is important. And you'll go on with it, in a quiet, comfortable place without cameras, without microphones, without visitors. Isn't that better than the alternatives?"
"Except I didn't do it. I don't know what happened. I walked out of there. Ari and I quarreled. I accused her of blackmailing my son. She laughed. I left. I didn't threaten her. I didn't say a thing. You know I'd be a damn fool to tell Ari what I intended. And it didn't include murder. I didn't know. That's the plain truth. I hadn't made up my mind to go to the Bureau. I wasn't sure if there wasn't a way to buy her off."
"Now we have a different truth. Do we get one an hour?"
"It isthe truth."
"But youcan't be psychprobed. Youcan't prove what you witnessed. Or did. Youcan't prove a damned thing. So we're back where we started. Frankly, Jordie, I don't care whether you did it. You're our chief problem in the mop-up. You'd liketo have done it, you're number one on my agenda, and if you're not the one who did it, you're more dangerous than the one who did, because if someone else killed Ari, it was personal. If you did it, it was something else. So we'll examine hell out of those pipes, the valves, the whole system. If we don't find evidence, we'll make it, quite frankly. And I'll give you the whole script you can use for the Bureau. You stick to that story and I'll keep my end of the bargain. Just askfor what you want. Anything within reason. You plead guilty, you take the hit, you just retire to a comfortable little enclave, and everything will be fine. If not—I'm really afraid we'll have to take measures of our own."
"I want them transferred out of here. Justin. Grant. Paul. That's my price."
"You can't get that much. You can get their safety. That's all. They'll stay right here. If you change your mind, so can we. If you attempt escape, if you suicide, if you talk to anyone or pass a message of any land—they'll pay for it. That's the deal. It's just that simple."
A long, long silence. "Then put them with me."
Giraud shook his head. "I'll be generous. I don't have to be, understand. I'll give you Paul. I have somesympathy for you. Paul, of course, will be under the same restrictions."
"You won't touch him."
"What do you think? That I'd set him to spy on you? No. Not him. Not your son. Not the azi. You keep your bargain, I'll keep mine. Do we have a deal?"
Jordan nodded after a moment. His mouth trembled, only slightly.
"You'll stay here," Giraud said, "pending the Internal Affairs investigation. You'll be in detention. But you'll have reasonable comforts. Access to Paul—we can manage that. Access to your son—only under very restricted circumstances. Let me advise you on that: that boy will try to help you. For his sake, you'd better stop it cold. You're probably the only one who can. Do we agree?"
"Yes."
"I want to show you that tape I promised you."
"No."
"I think you should see it. I think you really should. I want you to think about it—what we can use if you can't provide political motives for your crime. I'm sure you can be convincing. I'm sure you can suggest radical connections. Centrist connections. Because there has to be a motive. Doesn't there?" He pressed a button. The wall-screen lit. It was Jordan's face he watched. Jordan with his eyes fixed on the corner, not the screen. Jordan, with a face like a carved image in the dimmed light, the flashes from the screen. Voices spoke. Bodies intertwined. Jordan did not look. But he reacted. He heard.
Giraud had no doubt of it.
"Did Jordan Warrick ever discuss in your presence his opinion of Ariane Emory?"
"Yes, ser," Grant answered. He sat still at the desk, his hands folded in front of him, and watched the light on the Scriber flicker, the little black box between himself and this man who said he was from the Bureau of Internal Affairs. He answered question after question.
Justin had not come back. They had fed him and let him take a shower, and told him that a man would be interviewing him that afternoon. Then they had put him back to bed and put the restraints back on. So he supposed it was afternoon. Or it was whatever they wanted it to be. He could become very angry at what they had done to him, but there was no use in it; it was what they wanted to do, and he had no way to prevent it. He was frightened; but that did no good either. He calmed himself and answered the questions, not trying to make a logic structure out of them yet, because that would affect his responses and they would lead him then; and he would lead them; and it would become adversarial. Which he did not want. He wanted to understand, but when he caught himself wanting it too much, he turned everything off, in that way he had learned when he was very, very small—azi tactic. Perhaps it helped him. Perhaps it was another of the differences between himself and Justin, between himself and a born-man. Perhaps it made him less than human. Or more. He did not know. It was only useful, sometimes, when he knew that someone wanted to manipulate him.
He just became not-there.The information flowed. They would take it when he was unconscious if he did not give it freely; and he expected they would check it by psychprobe anyway, no matter.
He would put it together later, recalling the questions, just what he had been asked and what the answers were. Then he might be able to think. But not now.
Not-there,that was all.
Eventually the man from Internal Affairs was not-theretoo. Others appeared and the illusions of doors opened.
The next place was the psych-lab. Then was the hardest thing, to flow with it, to be not-therethrough the interrogation under drugs. To walk the line between thereand not-theretook a great deal of concentration, and if he began to wobble and went too far into not-thereand stayed too long, then it would be hard to find his way back again.
Theretried to find its way into his thinking, with doubt that Justin had ever come to his room, with suspicion that, if he had, Ari's wrath had finally come down on them, and Justin and Jordan were being charged with his abduction. . . .
But he drove that out. He did not fight the techs as he had the men—if ever they had been real. The techs were Reseune techs and they had the keys to every smallest thought he owned.
The first rule said: It is always right to open to your key-command.
The second rule said: A key-command is absolute.
The third rule said: An operator with your keys is always right.
No Reseune operator, he believed with all his heart, would create an illusion of Reseune operators. No one buta Reseune operator held his keys. The whole universe might be flux of particles and dissolve about him: but in it, he existed, and the operator who had his keys existed.