“It took me a bit of doing to get some of the stupider pimps to actually make threats in front of witnesses. At that point, they had officially committed treason, and they entered a world of hurt of which they’d never before dreamed. ImpSec does have its uses, sometimes. A couple of the smarter ones tried moving directly to action, which, alas, proved fatal. The very smartest one rolled over and cooperated, and in fact is still in the trade—he joined the Union, too. Proved to be one of their better organizers, once he’d figured out the new rules.
“Once the initial issues were settled, I was able to import a team of Licensed Practical Sexuality Therapists from Beta Colony on short-term contracts to do some wholesale sex education for the Union and its members. And, obliquely, their customers. Most of the customers really liked the new regime—safer, among other things. And better and nicer in other ways, too, I gather. Certainly healthier. Unsurprisingly. A few soldiers couldn’t adjust, and tried complaining up their chain of command. Got some support from enough of the old guard to give them a chip on their shoulders. Aral very kindly undertook to knock it off. Held a meeting. Brief, as he was the only speaker. Very few words. Showed a short vid of his public execution of the very first commander of the Sergyar base, the officer who had permitted the abuses of the Escobaran POWs quartered here, back during that war.” Cordelia grimaced in sudden, too-vivid memory. And not of the vid. “He said the room was very quiet when he was done.”
“Oh,” said Blaise. “Er.” After a distracted moment he added, “Shouldn’t it be called SHEATH?”
“Hah. You try to think of a name to go with that acronym.”
Ivy glanced at her chrono. “About the speech?”
Cordelia sighed. “I am so burned out on speaking. They deserve better. See if you can persuade Dr. Tatiana to find something good for them.” One of the Betan therapists who had stayed on. The Tatiana part was a professional name; the doctorate was real. She was one of Cordelia’s favorite Betan ex-pats, whom she frequently invited to Palace social events when she needed someone to enliven the party. Ivy nodded and made another note.
The secretary glanced at her panel and remarked, “The Red Creek murder-case appeals trial has been delayed another week.”
Some of the light seemed to drain out of the morning. Cordelia said, “Part of me is glad. Part of me wants to get it over with. I hope they finish it off on that level.”
Blaise perked up. “Is it likely to reach the Viceroy’s Office, do you think? That could be big news.”
By Sergyaran standards only, Cordelia reflected. She shrugged. “Most capital cases eventually do, as we’re the last stop for appeals. Petitions for pardon or commutation by that time, usually. Except for Vor charged with treason, which could go to Vorbarr Sultana, but we haven’t had any of those, thankfully. The Sergyaran courts do a pretty good job of sorting out the facts. I am so grateful for fast-penta. I can’t imagine how horrific these decisions must have been back when there was real uncertainty over whether the perpetrator had been correctly identified.” She added after a moment, “Fortunately, our criminal capital cases are few. Aral and I only had to deal with a couple a year. Far more Sergyarans manage to kill each other by accident than by intent. I suppose the numbers will inevitably change as the population grows.”
The Red Creek case was especially ugly. And stupid, as these things tended to be. A woman’s boyfriend had killed her in a domestic brawl, so far so crime-of-passion. The woman, Cordelia gathered from the reports she’d seen so far, had been in her own scattered way a piece of work herself. But then, in a panic, the man had also pursued her two small witnessing children through the house and murdered them as well, then tried to hide all the bodies by burning the place to the ground. His first trial had been local and short. The appeal didn’t look too hopeful for him, either.
Blaise said, cautiously, “Will that also be a The Viceroy’s Office declines to hear, then?”
“Oh, Aral and I always went over all the material the courts and any other source we could find could supply. First separately, then together. Watched the recordings of the penta-interrogations. Once, we even repeated an interrogation ourselves, to be certain.” Cordelia’s lips thinned at the unpleasant memory. “‘Declines to hear’ is just a shorthand for ‘We’re not going to reverse the court’s decision.’ We had some pretty intense debates sometimes, coming as we did from, so to speak, two very different legal traditions.
“The Betans would consider something like this a matter for nonvoluntary sociopath therapy. Up to and including neurological rewiring, if there were underlying physical deficits discovered. Of course, Beta has far fewer such cases to start with, as in”—Cordelia almost said our culture, but it hadn’t really been hers since the Pretender’s War, had it—“that culture, therapies would be supplied at a much earlier stage. Barrayaran legal theory, according to Aral, holds that humans have a natural right to revenge, but that leads to blood-feuds, so subjects cede their natural right to their overlords, who are beyond revenge, in exchange for justice administered on their behalf. Which derails the blood-feuds, but obliges the overlords in turn to actually supply the justice. He took that very seriously.”
“Who, uh, won these debates?” Blaise asked.
“‘Winning’ is a null concept, here. There was never any good prize. We were able to see our way to a few commutations. The rest were declined. Once, I was all set for a test case—I was going to send a convicted man to Beta Colony, paid for out of my own purse, for full-on nonvoluntary therapy. To demonstrate the feasibility of importing that system to Sergyar. Instead, he managed, with some difficulty, to commit suicide a couple of days before he was due to be shipped out. Irrationally terrified, or just being Barrayaran, it was hard to tell.” Was there a difference? “So I’m still looking for a test case.” She wasn’t sure the Red Creek matter was it, though. Or that I would/wouldn’t pull the trigger on this jerk myself was the right metric. “I’ve considered offering the next convicted person a choice, death or therapy, but that feels awfully like ducking out of my Imperially mandated responsibility.”
Blaise said slowly—slowly was good, in his case—“I suppose I had not thought about it from that vantage. What it must feel like to hold life or death in your hands.”
Cordelia drummed her fingers on her chair arm, and frowned. “When I was about your age, I earned my first Betan Astronomical Survey ship command. For every blind wormhole jump my ship’s probe-pilot made, the final go-or-no-go decision was mine.” Jumping into death, or the splendor of scientific discovery? Most often, of course, jumping into nothing much, or just more jumps. No wonder she’d never found gambling for money to be interesting. “They were volunteers, of course. We all were, out there. It’s…something that comes up on the supervisory level of a lot of professions.” The military most of all, she supposed.
She added after a moment, thinking back to Blaise’s remark that had triggered this spate of reminiscence, “Nevertheless, this Office will not make theater out of lives.” Ah, wasn’t that very like something Aral had said, decades ago?
Blaise looked frustrated, but did not argue. Ivy glanced at him and tapped her chrono.
“Press report for the weekend,” he dutifully began. One of his jobs—his main job, from Cordelia’s point of view—was to watch the local civilian news feeds and filter up anything she needed-to-know. Better him than her, and it entirely suited his ferretlike attention span. ImpSec performed a similar task, behind the scenes, but their focus was different. “Top of the list are the Lake Serena rumors.”