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Chapter Twenty-Six

In the Cain-and-Abel conflicts of the 21st century, ruthlessness trumps technology.

—Ralph Peters

Hospital Ancon, Cerro Gorgia, Ciudad Balboa, 15/7/461 AC

Mango trees and chirping birds surrounded the long, five-story hospital atop Cerro Gorgia, or Gorgia Hill. They stood, and smelled, in pleasant contract to the unadorned brick walls, antiseptic odor, and continuous business bustle of the "body shop."

 

The hospital had once had a different name. This was when it had been the major medical facility for the FSC forces in Balboa. It was not so major now; not every ward had been reopened. At the very least, though, it was fully staffed and equipped for Jorge Mendoza's needs. Now that they were not so pressed for medical care, and the question had become merely one of money, Campos and the War Department had come through on their promise of equivalent care, restoration and prosthesis for the legion's wounded. In some cases, this meant anything up to millions of drachma for the very latest.

 

His new "legs" were a marvel. Flexible, strong and computer controlled; they'd cost half a million drachma each from the Sachsen company that made them. Jorge would rather have his old ones back. Marvelous these new legs may have been, but they couldn't feel. Worse, he was still not really able to use them naturally and spent most of his time not in bed in a wheelchair.

He took the loss of the legs well enough, if not precisely cheerily; he was that kind of young man. But his eyes . . . 

"Jorge, there is nothing wrong with your eyes that I can find," the doctor had said. "Here, let me show you." The doctor flicked a finger at Jorge's eye. The eye blinked.

"Did you feel that?"

"Feel what?" Jorge asked.

"The blink. I just poked my finger at your eye and you blinked. Your eye blinked because it saw my finger. But your brain won't let vision through."

"I saw nothing," Mendoza insisted. "I just blinked because . . . well . . . people blink."

The doctor poked at the eye again and, again, it dutifully blinked. "Twice in a row is not coincidence, Jorge," the medico said.

 

The orderly at the desk just melted when the tiny . . . well, tiny, yes, that . . . but perfectly symmetrical, charmingly symmetrical, vision of a young girl fluttered her eyelashes and asked if she could please visit Private Jorge Mendoza. She'd said her name was "Marqueli Cordoba."

"Jorge, a Miss Cordoba to see you."

Private Mendoza turned his wheelchair toward the voice, bumping his bed as he did so. Blind, with both legs off below the knee, his reconstructive surgery had only been able to heal the more visible scars. Mendoza's green hospital robe hung down below the point at which his legs ended. The young soldier looked his age, about eighteen years old.

Cousin Lourdes didn't tell me he was so gorgeous, Marqueli thought, no eyes for the legs but only for the face.

It was characteristic of Balboan society that the government didn't do much. Nor had the legion had time and opportunity to set up a large and complex bureaucracy to deal with personal problems. Instead, the extended family took care of things. Thus, naturally, when Lourdes had seen a problem to be dealt with she hadn't thought of anything too very formal as a solution. Instead she'd called a family member, in this case Marqueli, and said, "There's a really nice soldier who was hurt in Sumer. Could you go make sure he's all right?" Lourdes being family, Marqueli had, also naturally, agreed.

As a system it wasn't much. Where it worked it tended to work well. Where it didn't it failed completely. Looking over Jorge Mendoza, Marqueli decided instantly that here, at least, it was going to work.

"Private Mendoza, I'm Marqueli Cordoba. My cousin, Lourdes, suggested I look you up. It's wonderful to meet a hero who's fought in the war."

Mendoza scratched behind his ear. He caught the slightest whiff of perfume. He sensed someone small and somehow soft sitting in the chair next to his bed. "I don't know if I fought. It's more like they fought me."

"It's fine," Marqueli answered. "You're fine." She turned and asked a nurse on the ward, "How is his recovery going?"

"Jorge is doing very well. He has some minor reconstruction still to go. Then we have to get him used to his new legs. That's going to take longer. And then, of course, there's physical therapy, and—"

"But he will be getting mostly better, then," the girl announced, in a voice like a love song. "I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get here, Jorge. Do you mind if I call you 'Jorge'? I was in school. And it took me a while to find out where you were since you started out in the hospital near Hamilton."

She has a nice voice, thought Mendoza. "No, Miss Cordoba, I don't mind."

"Wonderful!" she bubbled and the sweet sound cheered up the entire ward. She reached out to touch a hand. "And, please, I'm Marqueli."

"Marqueli," he said, uncertainly, ". . . yes, I was in Warren Branch Hospital in the FSC for a while. They did a lot of the work on me there. Hmmm . . .  Lourdes," he puzzled. "I don't know any . . .  Ohhh, the Legate's . . . wife."

"They're not married," Marqueli laughed, bouncing lightly on her chair. "Wicked, naughty Lourdes. Bad, bad, bad Lourdes. I hope they will be sometime but my cousin told me she was willing to wait."

"She seemed like a nice woman," Mendoza observed neutrally.

"She's wonderful," Marqueli enthused. "Smart and clever and tall and . . . well, she's just slinky. And those eyes! I'd like to be just like her except that she's almost a foot taller than I am and I don't think I'm going to grow."

Mendoza made an estimate of Marqueli's height based on where the voice seemed to be coming from. True, she was sitting in a chair but, even so, just under five feet was his best guess.

God, though, she smells and sounds wonderful. Height? Well, I'm a shorty myself. Otherwise I'd never have ended up in one of those cramped Volgan tanks. Moreover, I am especially short now, he thought. Shorter by a couple of feet . . . and two legs.

 

Camp Balboa, Ninewa, 20/7/461 AC

Whatever she lacked in height, Irene Temujin of Amnesty, Interplanetary (a subsidiary of the Marquisate of Amnesty, Earth) made up for in determination. She barged furiously past the guards on the headquarters gate to force her way in and directly to Carrera's office. How she got onto the compound, how she got into the freaking BZOR, had to wait. She was here and, Carrera supposed, she had to be dealt with.

Just shooting the bitch is right out, I suppose, since she hasn't technically violated any rules. I might have the fucking guards shot, though; that, or make them wish that I had.

"Legate Carrera, I am—"

"I know who you are, Ms. Temujin." Carrera interrupted, sliding onto his desk the report he had been reading. "I read the papers when I can. What I don't know is why you are here."

"I'm here to investigate credible reports that you and your . . . mercenaries," Temujin spat out the word, "are torturing prisoners in your camp."

Carrera's face assumed a highly amused look. "Mercenaries is such a loaded term. Inaccurate, too, since, under Additional Protocol One we are no such thing. My men make about the same pay as in the Civil Force of Balboa, you see, and there's nothing in the rules to suggest one is a mercenary unless one meets every condition. As for torturing people here . . . no . . . no, I'm afraid we're not. Sorry, but your reports are ill-founded."

Temujin sneered, "Then you wouldn't mind if I looked around?"

"Considering your affection for and affiliation with the enemy," Carrera answered, calmly, "I would. But, if you are willing to be confused a bit, so that I know you are not pacing off corrections for the mortar attacks we seem to receive about twice a week, then yes, I'll let you . . . look around. To your heart's content, as a matter of fact. I'll even escort you myself."

Fernandez burst into Carrera's office. "Patricio, I just hea—"

"Ms. Temujin, may I introduce Tribune Omar Fernandez, my intelligence officer? Tribune, this is Ms. Irene Temujin of Amnesty, Interplanetary. I've just told her she could look around the camp . . . 'to her heart's content.' Ms. Temujin seems to think we are torturing people here. And," Carrera sighed deeply, "she doesn't seem to want to take my word for it that we are not."

His face assuming a very somber expression, Fernandez answered, "That is most sad, Legate."

"I'm going to escort her myself. Ms. Temujin, did you bring a camera team with you? Ah, you did not. Fernandez, would you call the PSYOP people to provide a camcorder and operator for Ms. Temujin?"

"I'll see to it, sir," Fernandez answered, as he hurried out of the office.

"Ms. Temujin? Some coffee while we wait for the camcorder team?"

 

The camp was still under construction. Indeed, it would remain under construction for years if things worked out as Carrera planned. While some things were complete, work continued in part to provide better living arrangements for his troops but equally to provide continued work and—at least as important—job training for the Sumeris who worked there. The legion had become the largest single employer in the province, and that wasn't even counting the several hundred Sumeri whores—widows, many of them, with no other recourse—who had been given a small quadrant of the main and each outlying camp.

Well . . . they're going to work at what they do, anyway, had been Carrera's thought. It only makes sense to protect and regularize them. Keep down the incidence of clap among the troops, too.

The perimeter was roughly rectangular, but only roughly. A thick berm of earth zigzagged to provide lines along which any attacking enemy would have to bunch up for easy harvesting by the machine guns at the angles and corners. The berm had been formed from a deep ditch excavated out of the soil. It stopped at the river edge, where one corner of the camp continued on the other side. The water purification equipment, four Secordian-built reverse osmosis water purifiers, or ROWPUs, were dug in at the friendly side of the river by that corner. A few small motor launches stood bobbing in the murky water, tied to a short pier. Another, longer pier was being built as it was intended, eventually, to bring in parts of the classis to patrol the river.

Topping the berm were dozens of towers, each standing about fifteen meters high. They were effectively indistinguishable. No one not a long-time denizen of the camp could hope to find their way about by reference to the towers.

On each side there was a complex gate. Like the walls, these were formed of earth. Moveable barbed wire barriers helped to control vehicular access and block off any dismounted enemy that might try to force one of the gates.

From the gates four dirt and gravel roads ran inward to a central parade field fronting the headquarters building. On either side of the roads, and all around the parade field, mixed crews of legionaries and locals worked at putting up adobe buildings. Not every legionary was in adobe, however. Many tents, pink Misrani-manufactured ones, still stood. These were beginning to grow a little ragged.

For the purposes and under the circumstances, adobe was a nearly ideal material. Once the legion had received its long-term contract from the FSC's War Department, it had let a further contract to a machinery company in Hindu-speaking Bharat for a fairly large number of earth-block forming machines. Some of these were automated; still others used muscle power. The blocks, a uniform ten inches by fourteen inches by three and a half, were emplaced by hand without mortar, indentations on each side and at the edges serving to hold them together.

Irene Temujin thought them interesting.

"The block houses are reasonably cool, once we add a double roof," Carrera explained. "Moreover, they're also fairly bullet and shrapnel proof. At the current rate of progress, we should have the camp completed, at least for the number of troops on hand, within a month or so. It's taken longer than we thought it would. For after that, we've formed a building company from the Sumeri workers here who will take possession of the machines and build housing for the locals . . . for profit."

Despite her initial fascination with the machines, the word "profit" drew a sneer from Irene.

"Ahhh," Carrera said, understanding instantly. He smiled broadly. "You're one of those Kosmos who used to be a Marxist, aren't you? Tell you what: I'm putting Sumeris to building decent housing for money. In all the other ZORs every bleeding heart organization in the world is trying to put up housing for free. Let's make a bet . . . any sum you care to name and put in escrow," Carrera smiled wickedly, "any sum, that in six months I'll have a larger portion of the population housed, more decently, than anywhere else in Sumer outside of the capital at Babel."

Temujin merely scowled.

"Up to you," Carrera said, grinning. "But if you decide to take me up on it just let me know. I'll be happy to take your money."

Two uniformed men trotted up, one of them bearing a camcorder. They stopped and the senior saluted, reporting, "Sir, Corporal Santiago and Private Velez, PSYOP, reporting as ordered."

Carrera returned the salute, saying, "Gentlemen, this is Irene Temujin of Amnesty, Interplanetary. She wishes to tour the camp, which request I have approved. You are going to film whatever it is she wants filmed. You will then, when the tour is done, turn the film over to her without altering it in the slightest. Understood?"

"Yessir. Only it's a disc, sir, not film."

"Whatever. Ms. Temujin, will a disc do? Good. As I said earlier, you are the enemy and I can't have you pacing off correction for insurgent mortars. I'm going to blindfold you now, spin you like a top, and drive you someplace where you will not recognize exactly where you are. Then I'm going to spin you like a top, again. After that, and from there, you can remove the blindfold and go wherever you would like."

"I am neutral," Temujin insisted.

"Yes. As I said, you're the enemy. Now, do we blindfold you or do I have you tossed out of the camp? Your choice."

Gritting her teeth, Irene answered, "Blindfold me then."

"Corporal," Carrera ordered.

One of the escorts from Fernandez's section took a black blindfold from his pocket and placed it over the woman's eyes. Then he spun her around several times, in both directions. At Carrera's summons a four wheel drive vehicle pulled up, into which the woman was helped. The vehicle sped off, doing several otherwise unnecessary turns, before stopping at one wall.

Temujin was helped out of the vehicle, spun more, and her blindfold removed.

"From here, go where you like," Carrera said. "We're just along for the ride."

 

After almost two hours of aimless wandering during which Temujin saw nothing, Carrera's attention was caught by Siegel, standing at a camp street corner. Siegel gave the thumbs up.

"Ms. Temujin, you really want to see our POW compound, don't you?" Carrera asked. His finger pointed down one street. "It's just down that way, about a quarter of a mile."

"You mean now that you've had to chance to hide the evidence," she growled.

"We've hidden absolutely nothing," Carrera assured her.

Gathering her soiled dignity about her—representatives of major cosmopolitan progressive organizations like Amnesty were used to more respect!—she walked in the direction indicated.

Irene Temujin first heard the screams when she reached a point about one hundred meters from the separately walled compound. She began to hurry. The guards at the gate attempted to bar her way until Carrera signaled that it was all right for her to enter. Once past that inside gate, the screaming grew oppressively loud.

A row of five gallows, wire nooses hanging empty, stood just inside the gate. They were low structures, each with a stool underneath, obviously intended to let their victims strangle rather than to mercifully break their necks. Temujin almost retched at seeing them.

Worse was the stink. As soon as Temujin entered the adobe building nearest the gate her nostrils were assailed with the mixed smell of feces, piss, blood, and burnt pork. Once again, a guard made as if to bar her way until Carrera signaled that she was to be allowed in.

Once inside, she saw four men, their arms bound behind them, hanging by those arms from meat hooks attached to the wooden beams of the ceiling. The men's heads hung low, the very picture of abject misery, while their toes barely touched the floor.

"Would you like to record their faces?" Carrera asked genially. When she didn't answer immediately he walked up to the nearest of the hanging men and, grabbing him by the hair, lifted his face for the camera.

Temujin was so shocked she didn't even wonder at Carrera's arrogance in showing her all this horror. Doesn't realize I'm from Amnesty? Or that I have pull around the globe?

"Be sure to get this, gentlemen," he told the camera team. "Ms. Temujin will want it all recorded." He did the same with each of the others.

"Irene, would you like to see the rest?"

Normally tawny face gone white with horror, the woman gulped and answered, "Yes."

In the next cell, a small room showed a half naked man bound to a metal chair. Wires led from a field telephone to the floor where they were lost in a mass of wires. Wires also were attached directly to the prisoner's genitals. A Sumeri, in the uniform of Sada's brigade, asked questions of the bound prisoner. When answers were not forthcoming, another Sumeri sitting at the table began to turn the crank on the field phone. The bound prisoner screamed and writhed piteously. There was a puddle of urine on the floor. A smell of overripe shit escaped the cell's small window.

The next cell showed a man on a wooden table. Another interrogator asked questions while an assistant played a blowtorch over the far side of the prisoner's leg, farthest away from the door. The screaming was absolutely hideous and nauseating. There was an overwhelming smell of burnt pork.

Temujin turned and began to storm out. Before she made it she bent over suddenly, adding the smell of her own vomit to the sickening stench that pervaded the facility.

 

Babel, Hotel Ishtar, 21/7/461 AC

Carrera had provided an escort for Irene all the way to Babel. "It would never do," he explained, "for you to be killed in my ZOR." At least once we've accepted you in and assumed a sort of tacit responsibility. The escort had consisted of two light wheel vehicles and a heavier truck with a tarp pulled over it. Fernandez had volunteered to serve as escort officer.

 

Once back at her hotel, Temujin had wasted no time in calling for a press conference. At that, she had made her statement and shown her video of the horrors being perpetrated near Ninewa. She called, forcefully and sincerely, for, "This illegal occupation to end."

At about that time, Fernandez walked into the back of the large press room containing hundreds of reporters. He had a fairly large armed escort with him. Temujin, closing her prepared statement, wondered for a moment if they were here to arrest her. She pointed and started to say, "There's one of the torturers—" when she recognized the face of one of the armed men standing by Fernandez's side.

Oh, shit, she thought. The bastards.

She didn't need to say it. As one the assembled media types turned around and saw for themselves.

The man to whom Irene had pointed had appeared on the film she had just shown. He appeared on the film not as one of the guards or interrogators, but as one of the "victims," the very first one hanging with his arms behind him, as a matter of fact. (For, unnoticed by Irene, another rope had run from the bound hands to encircle his waist under his clothing.) Despite the current highly amused smile, the face was completely recognizable. So were the faces of every other man in Fernandez's escort, every man who had ridden to Babel in the back of a tarp-covered truck, every man who had been seen under "torture."

Yet here he was, here they were, free and armed. That meant . . . 

The reporters turned their questioning faces back toward Temujin who sat there, dumbly.

"If she'd seen nothing," Fernandez shouted over the hubbub, "she'd still have reported the same thing. It's her business to find torture in the world. It's so much her business that she didn't even think to question the show we put on for her. I've got to ask you people, how stupid are you that you would assume accurate reporting from a woman as gullible as that?

"Now, if any of you would like to talk to the 'victims,' they're at your disposal."

 

Camp Balboa, Ninewa, 22/7/461 AC

"Patricio, that was just mean!" Lourdes chided as they watched the television in the three-bedroom adobe bungalow the troops had put up for them. The party, Carrera and Lourdes plus Sada and his wife, sat on the floor on cushions. Ruqaya, Sada's wife, had shown Lourdes how to make a first class kibsa, which sat mostly eaten (with fingers) on a tray in the middle.

Carrera couldn't answer at first; he was laughing too hard.

"He was perfectly correct to do this, Miss Lourdes," Sada insisted. "Prestige drives these people, that and their perks. Humiliation is what they fear the most. That woman is personally crushed, probably forever. Her entire organization is humiliated. Patricio has pulled the incisors of a major enemy."

"It was really Fernandez's idea," Carrera submitted humbly, though it was a hard statement to get out through his laughter. "Frankly, I couldn't believe that she'd be stupid enough to fall for it, that anyone would be stupid enough to fall for it. The tricky part was collecting the special effects, the blood and shit and such, to make it seem real. Fortunately, one of the mess halls had some pork we could burn up with a blowtorch. And the 'victims' and 'interrogators' had already been rehearsed."

"Those were important, Legate Patricio, but she saw what she expected to see," Sada explained. "She made herself fall for it."

"It was still mean," Lourdes insisted.

"But it was clever," Sada's wife, Ruqaya, answered, sipping at her tea.

 

Hospital Cerro Ancon, 23/7/461 AC

If I were truly clever, thought the doctor, I'd have thought of this myself. It's just amazing what a young girl looking on or helping can do to move progress along. The doctor smiled indulgently as young Private Mendoza walked—with difficulty, true, but he walked—with one arm over the shoulder of the lovely young girl who came to see him every day. Her arm was about his waist.

 

"This is so hard, 'Queli," the boy said, "and I'm too heavy for you."

"Nonsense, Jorge. Did you forget I'm a farm girl, not some soft, city-bred wilting flower?"

Mendoza had wondered what she looked like. At some level he knew it could not matter to him so long as he couldn't see. On the other hand, looks or not she was shaped right. That, he could tell from the press of her tiny body against him and the times they walked with only his arm around her waist for support. God, is she shaped right!

The pair reached as far as they could in the physical therapy and prosthetics area. Marqueli guided Jorge in a half-stumbling turn and they began the return promenade.

"I heard Legate Carrera and Duce Parilla have decreed a beca"—an educational scholarship—"for all seriously wounded or decorated veterans," Marqueli said.

"Something to think on," Mendoza agreed. "But I've only got a high school education. And then there's the farm to think about."

"Well, as to the farm," the girl answered, "you really don't need to worry about it. Your mother told me over the phone that she's found someone to work it for her."

"I know . . . but that land's been in our family for over four hundred years. It doesn't feel right having someone else work it."

Marqueli understood that call of the land. Her family, too, had been ranching the same patch for as long as Mendoza's. Indeed, she'd checked the local histories and birth records and discovered that they'd both had ancestors who'd ridden with the semilegendary Belisario Carrera in his war against Earth. The reason she'd checked, though, had been to find out degree of consanguinity. They were, it seemed, roughly seventh cousins . . . though it was more complicated than that as there was more than one link. The reason she'd checked that . . . well . . . that was for later.

In the interim, there was the torture of Jorge learning to walk to see to.

 

SS Hildegard Mises, Yithrabi Coast, 23/7/461 AC

Relatively few people were actually tortured on the ship. For most, a tour of what was available was generally sufficient. While Jorge and Marqueli worked out his new legs, and Irene Temujin wallowed alone in the abject misery of worldwide embarrassment, other people arrived at a ship registered to Balboa and currently coasting off of Yithrab. The ship was unremarkable, a freighter with nothing much to distinguish it on the outside except for what appeared to be a helicopter platform. An IM-71 helicopter sat on the pad, but only for so long as it took to disgorge five tightly bound men and a woman.

 

They were prisoners. They'd had all the due process anyone might expect, however, and been found guilty of numerous war crimes to include failure to meet the requirements for legal combatancy. They were illegal combatants, in other words.

Identified as outsiders by the men of his brigade that Sada had spread out as "watchers," four of the men had been grabbed from a safe house set up by Sumer's dictator in the days before the invasion for just such a purpose. The other two were the homeowner and his wife. All six had been captured in a raid by the Cazador Cohort, aided by some Sumeri guides from Sada's brigade.

The prisoners had been taken, in secret, to another safe house, this one controlled by Sada's men. There all six had been court-martialed, separately, in camera and sentenced to hang. A mullah—Carrera had asked Sada for, "An honest mullah, one who will stay bought."—and two of his associates had approved the penalty as fitting under Islamic law. Fernandez had given the mullah six gold drachmae as a reward, to be divided as the mullah, Hassim, thought fit.

The executions had been duly announced, along with the notice that the bodies had been cremated and the ashes scattered against the Day of Judgment when Allah could rejoin their atoms or not, as he saw fit. Instead of having been executed, however, the six were taken at night in a sealed vehicle to the airfield inside the camp and loaded aboard the helicopter. This had then flown them, also in secret, to the ship, the helicopter skimming the waves and even venturing into Farsian airspace to confuse radar.

Gagged with duct tape, none had been given a chance to talk with each other since their capture.

On the ship they were separated and carried individually to separate containers that had been soundproofed. There they were chained to the walls while the program for each was worked out by the Sumeri interrogators on Fernandez's Black Budget.

Looking over the files on each, the chief interrogator, Warrant Officer Achmed al Mahamda, tapped his fingers on first one picture, then another. These are either brothers or close cousins, Mahamda thought. What one knows the other will know as well. He placed the files together on his desk and wrote on a slip of paper, "Interrogation Course M."

This meant that the cousins, or brothers, would be used as a check on each other. If their stories failed to match in any particular, pain would be first threatened and, if that failed, applied until they did match.

It's funny, thought Mahamda, well, funny for certain values of funny, that for all that relatives and comrades try to concoct a story beforehand, they can never get all the details right. They might agree on, "We were just minding our own business going to the goat auction," but they never think of "What's Khalid's mother's maiden name?" They never remember to work out and commit to memory a purely spurious route or set of connections and events. Even if they did, they wouldn't remember to update it daily and couldn't commit it to memory even if they tried. And once we get them screaming and talking, once they lose confidence in each other and the story, there's no stopping point and they'll spill everything.

The others were more problematic. At this stage, the insurgency wasn't really well developed enough—even the bi-weekly mortaring of Camp Balboa had grown somewhat listless—for there to have been much intelligence to gather. Sada's watchers watched, of course, even so.

The first course of the treatment, for each of the prisoners, was to give them a guided tour of the ship. This was usually enough to loosen even very fixed tongues.

Muhammad al Kahlayleh was the first of the newcomers to be given the tour. His interrogator introduced himself genially. "I'm Warrant Officer Achmed al Mahamda, and you are going to tell me everything I want to know."

Al Kahlayleh told Mahamda, a very genial seeming and somewhat overweight former member of the dictator's Mukhabarat, or secret police, "I'll tell you nothing."

Al Mahamda just kept the genial smile and answered, very confidently, "Yes, you will. Trust me on this. I've been at this business a long time. It's just a job to me but it's a job I do very well."

With al Kahlayleh's hands cuffed to a chain about his waist, and accompanied by two stout escorts, al Mahamda led the prisoner to the first chamber. This contained a dental chair, with all the usual appurtenances and some extra features for holding the "patient" firmly in place.

"We usually begin here, my friend," al Mahamda began. "The teeth are not strictly necessary for life, can be repaired almost indefinitely, and are extremely painful to have drilled without anesthesia."

A smiling Sumeri in a white coat bobbed his head, also genially, agreeing, "Oh, yes, it is truly awful what we can do here, more or less indefinitely." Al Kahlayleh's tawny face blanched, as much at the present geniality as at the future prospect.

"Of course, there are other methods," al Mahamda continued, still smiling. "This way, please."

The next chamber held another chair, not unlike the dental chair in the first, but without any of the instruments.

"This is worse," the warrant officer said. "Here, we do more or less permanent damage. The chair is to hold you still for it."

"Permanent damage?" the prisoner asked.

"Oh, yes. Here fingernails are removed. Gonads are crushed. Also we can attach an electrode to your penis and stick one up your ass." Al Mahamda shook his head. "If you think a dental drill is painful, well . . ." Mahamda shuddered delicately. "Come on, only fair to show you the rest."

The next chamber held a similar chair. Along one wall was a bench on which were neatly laid out a series of obscure instruments.

"This one is particularly fascinating," al Mahamda said, picking up a complex metal assembly with places for neck, knees and wrists, plus a rack and pinion method for closing the entire apparatus. "It's called the 'Scavenger'—I haven't a clue why—and it does everything the old rack used to do, but in a fraction of the space. It will break your bones, deform your spine, dislocate your joints. It's pretty awful, but very little effort for us which, as you may imagine, we appreciate."

The prisoner gulped.

"And then there's this," the warrant continued, holding up what looked like an outsized wooden shoe with handles and screws. "We put this on one of your feet and simply crush that foot a millimeter at a time. You know," he said, with a trace of wonder in his voice, "as I said, I've been at this business a long time and I've never seen anyone resist this for long. I think it must be the idea that they'll be crippled for life that gets to them. What do you think?"

"I think I'll tell you whatever you want to know," answered al Kahlayleh, shivering. "Just keep that shit away from me."

So much for "I'll tell you nothing," thought al Mahamda.

"You sure you wouldn't like just one little demonstration?" al Mahamda asked. "Just so you know we're sincere."

"No, no," the would-be insurgent answered. "That won't be necessary. No, not at all necessary. I'll cooperate."

"You're sure you wouldn't like a demonstration?" al Mahamda asked again, pleasantly. "Just as a show of our good faith."

"Please, no," the prisoner whimpered.

"Very well, then." Al Mahamda put the boot down, as if reluctantly. "You do realize, don't you, that if we catch you in a lie, now or later, you will get the treatment before I deign to talk to you again."

"I said I'll talk," al Kahlayleh shouted. "Just get me out of here."

"Very well. In light of your cooperative attitude, I think we can dispense with the rest of the tour. Come with me."

The four men began walking toward the bow of the ship when they passed an area marked, in Arabic, "Surgical Ward."

"Is that for if someone has a heart attack while being questioned?" the prisoner asked.

"Oh, no," the interrogator answered. "Well, that, too. But mostly this is for the really hard cases. See, we give them sex change operations before we strangle them so that they go to Allah as women."

Kahlayleh's eyes rolled up in his head as he moaned and crumpled to the deck.

Mahamda couldn't help but laugh. "You know, boys, it's amazing how often we get that reaction. That infidel, Fernandez, was a pure genius for thinking of this trick."

Not that it was actually a trick, of course.

 

First Landing, Hudson, 33/7/461 AC

Matthias Esterhazy, representing the firm of Chatham, Hennessey, and Schmied had no trouble securing an appointment with Irene Temujin. Indeed, since it seemed as if the entire world had turned their backs on her, unwilling to be contaminated by her apparent gullibility, she was positively eager to see anyone who might contribute to the organization and so help her expiate her shame. She had been thinking of resigning her post and going to work for the World League, where even idiocy could be, and generally was, rewarded. But before she took that cut in pay and prestige, perhaps Esterhazy would offer her the means to regain her lost status.

 

Esterhazy ignored the woman's voluble gratitude. He wasn't here to dispense money, but rather to show the power and influence money could buy. Taking his seat he opened an expensive looking leather briefcase and took from it a folder, which he opened. He slid a picture onto Temujin's desk.

"A photo of my son at school? I don't understand."

Matthias didn't answer. Instead, he slid another across, this one of her family in Kashmir, which was her home. This was followed by another of her daughter in finishing school in Helvetia. The last was of her husband, taken apparently as he left his place of employment with the World League in First Landing.

"Let me be blunt," Esterhazy said, Sachsen accent coming through strongly. "You are now shown to ze verld, fittingly or not, as an hysteric und a fool. Very little you say is likely to be believed by anyvun who matters. Ever. Again."

Irene began to blanch.

"Zus, ze rest of vat I haff to say, you could repeat to no good effect. Zat is, if you were shtupid enough to repeat it. If, even zo, you do repeat it, everyone you care for in zis verld vill disappear." His hand pointed toward the photos now littering Irene's desk. "Moreover, if you do not call your organization's dogs away from the Legio del Cid, eferyvun you care about in life vill disappear. Let me add to zat, zat zey are all being vatched and ze disappearance of any vun of zem vill cause all ze rest to disappear. Phones, too, are being monitored as is zeir mail.

"My principal in zis matter is someone you don't want to fuck viz, Ms. Temujin. He has no scruples, not anymore. If you get in his vay you vill be crushed. Going after him or his organization, or trying to, is even more silly zan it vould have been for you to go after ze olt Volgan Empire in zeir days of power. Ze Volgans, at least, vere slightly sensitive to public opinion vile my principle is not in ze least."

Esterhazy further explained, "Ze problem, you see, Ms. Temujin, is zat you and zose like you are aesthetically razer zan morally focused. You object to what you can see razer zan to vat is true. Zus, you can see what you like to zink of as torture because the civilized East lets you see it. You cannot see ze harm that ze torture seeks to prevent und zo you ignore it. Frankly, since it does not fit your verld view, you ignore ze harm even ven you can see it. In ze old days, you made a show of being "neutral" with regard to the Volgan Empire. Never mind zat, morally speaking, ze Volgan Empire vas as evil a political construct as man has efer known and should have been ze focus of all of your efforts. Ze Volgans did not let you see ze evil zey did and so, zey vere not truly evil to you. Ze democratic world did let you see zeir much lesser degree of evil and so zey were ultimate evil to you.

"You are like ze drunk who lost ze keys to his vehicle on vun side of ze road, but insists on looking for zem on ze ozer where zere is more light.

"Zat will be all, zank you, madam."

Without another word Esterhazy stood, took the photos, returned them to his briefcase, and left.

Interlude

Earth Date 27 March, 2102, Island of Atlantis,
UNENT (United Nations Enclave, New Terra)

"Ungovernable, untaxable, unsupervisable, and uncivil, High Admiral," the outgoing governor, a short and slight, sandy-haired bureaucrat named Lubbing informed Annan. "Our staff here is too small to really supervise or govern. Nor is the population density high enough for them to pay enough in tax to justify a larger staff. The land mass is extensive and the people just move around as they see fit. It's hopeless, at least until their population grows."

 

It was a feature of UN policy with regard to the new world that, while countries and groups on Earth were awarded settlement rights, most of those countries didn't really care about, or have the clout to interfere with, the UN's attempt at governing those colonies. Most especially did the UN's heavy hand fall, as it did on Earth, upon the poor and weak.

"Govern through the Terra Novans?" Kotek asked.

"They won't cooperate. The people who came here wanted to escape taxation and supervision. That, or they're just dirt-scrabble subsistence farmers forced to leave. And those have nothing to give."

Annan shrugged his shoulders eloquently. "It doesn't matter. The point of this exercise is to get them off Earth, both the useless and inefficient and the extremely efficient but unenlightened and ungovernable. I had just hoped to make this trip worth the time away from Earth. As a practical matter, when my tour here is done I'm allowed to return with as much as I can carry."

"I know," the bureaucrat agreed. " And that, High Admiral, you can do. There are some nice things available here, including some things you can't find on Earth at any price."

"Like what?"

The outgoing governor's eyes lit up. He already had a rather large haul that would accompany him back to Earth at UN expense. "Gold, jewels, rare woods, other precious metals can be obtained quite cheaply. I am taking back two dozen Smilodon rugs and several score bales of other furs. Mastodon tusks sell well back home, too, especially since the great herds here are already disappearing. You did bring trading materials with you from home, yes?"

"Yes," Annan confirmed. "Mostly medical and electronic. Some primitive firearms."

"I made that mistake too," admitted Lubbing. "Forget the flintlocks; they're making their own now. If you had something modern perhaps . . ."

"No. That particular ban I thought it wise to keep. Tell me, what are the chances of picking up slaves for concubinage at a fair price?" Annan asked. "Female slaves, of course. Oh, yes, I know I couldn't keep them in Europe; appearances and all. But in Kumasi? No problem."

"Very small," Ludding said. "Oh, there are some, particularly among the Salafis of Yithrab. But the prices are high and the quality comparatively low. And don't try raiding. The locals will fight. In any event, you can get better deals in the Balkans, Africa, or the Arabian Peninsula back home. If you are willing to pay well, then you could find a girl or two among the Salafis, something you could make do with, at least, here. But I really don't see the point. The entire female staff of the mission here on Atlantis—to say nothing of the fleet as it grows—would, I am sure, be happy to be at your disposal."

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