“Then Li-Tsan had her own little breakdown, which was a little harder to deal with. After all, unlike Fish, she’d come from a high-altitude environment and was actually qualified for the job—though, she admitted to me, already suffering from a serious loss of nerve. I don’t know whether you slept with her in the Habitat, but once she broke down, you made the mistake of trying to strike the same deal with her. And that was a mistake. Oh, you probably thought you had to, because transferring somebody like Li-Tsan off-station, while holding on to the even more useless and unstable Fish, would have been so inconsistent that even the dullest of your people would have had to notice. But though Li-Tsan did agree to the deal, it was only because she was a person emotionally invested in her own strength, who must have hated herself for a time for turning out to be so weak. She wasn’t broken, just broken at doing one particular thing. If she ever said yes to you, it was only because she was hoping she’d get over her problem and return to the Habitat before long.
“But when that didn’t happen, a tough, qualified, assertive professional like Li-Tsan, trapped in a position that was utterly beneath her, naturally reacted a little differently to her exile than somebody like Fish. Somebody like Li-Tsan would eventually remember who she was and start resenting you. Oh, she’d try to keep quiet, for a while, because those bonuses were a good deal, and she wouldn’t want all that extra time she’d earned added back to her contract. But sooner or later it would get to her. She’d look at the state of the other woman she’d have to share her exile with, a woman she’d inevitably come to see as a more pathetic version of herself, a woman who was just the convenient receptacle she was in danger of becoming, and start to boil over, the bulk of her rage directed at the man she’d come to despise as a pimp.
“That’s the funny part, Mr. Gibb. When the two of you had your little fight, she came right out and used the word to your face. Oh, it’s not exactly the right word, in that you weren‘t selling these women to anybody else, as far as I know. Rapist might have been closer, at least in Fish’s case, but I recognize that charge as even more inexact. We may have to devote some thought, later, to coming up with the right terminology. I’m sure Mercantile has a word that communicates the precise degree of sleaziness involved, and I’m just as sure that it qualifies as a crime.
“In any event, the more resentful Li-Tsan became, the riskier it became to ship her out, because she was more than angry enough to slip up and tell her story to somebody in authority. So you offered her more bonuses to keep her quiet. She accepted them, but became more and more hostile toward you. So you did the only thing you could do, to protect yourself for even a little while. You placed some more barriers between Li-Tsan and any opportunity she might have to communicate with your superiors at New London. And you did this by telling Robin Fish that all further correspondence was going to go through you, an arrangement that would enable you to censor anything Li-Tsan wrote.
“But even so, you had to be feeling a little trapped yourself by now. Because now you were holding on to two people who had no excuse to be here, who you couldn’t release without fear that they’d exercise the prerogative to expose you.
“Then a third person had a height-related breakdown, and this time, you heaved a sigh of relief, because this time the victim was a man, capable of providing you some protective cover. You couldn’t ship him out either, because it would be even more suspicious to ship out unfit men while keeping unfit women, but you could keep him on-station, in the spirit of gender consistency, and even feed him some time-bonuses matching what you’d already given Robin and Li-Tsan, to keep him quiet. The best thing about this plan was that it camouflaged your malfeasance and made him an accomplice, but didn’t even require his active consent. He didn’t have even the slightest idea what was going on until Robin and Li-Tsan told him what was going on. And by then he was as trapped as they were, because he couldn’t expose you without implicating himself and them.”
Gibb trembled. “That’s…a hell of a theory, Counselor.”
“Oh, please,” I said. “Do you really think I’d be confronting you like this if this were just an unsupported assumption? Once I saw the pattern, it wasn’t hard to pick out two or three other indentures whose records I found especially suspicious. They were happy to testify in exchange for immunity and a promise that they’d be able to keep the bonuses earned. I offered the same deal to Fish, Crin, and D’Onofrio, and they gave you up in no time at all. Indeed, once she found out she was immune from any consequences, Li-Tsan was downright relieved. We’re friends now. I’ve already uploaded the depositions, and somehow I don’t think it’ll be hard to get more.” I now moved close enough to smell the acrid fear-sweat popping out on his cheeks. “I know this from grim personal experience, Mr. Gibb. Nobody likes to be owned. Some hate being indentured so much that they’ll do anything to shorten their service. You used that fact to turn an outpost of critical diplomatic importance into your own personal brothel.”
“I never forced anybody—” Gibb began.
I ran over him. “Is it your belief that I intend to charge you with exploiting these people? Please. Be serious. You’re absolutely right. You didn’t force them. They all knew exactly what they were doing, and since I don’t particularly believe prostitution to be a crime I very much respect the industriousness of any woman willing to use all her assets to work off her time-debt as soon as possible. I also appreciate the good taste of any woman who requires regular bribes to get anywhere near you. Had you paid those two in any other form of legal tender, I would shrug and say, well, more power to you, more power to them. Consenting adults, and all that.
“I’m considerably less tolerant about the way you held three people as virtual prisoners, holding their futures hostage. That I recognize as disgusting, and that erases any possibility that I might show you a little understanding.
“Still, sir, that’s not your crime.
“Your crime,” I said, making the word explosive, “was the embezzlement of time-debt owed to the Dip Corps. That belonged to all humanity. You misappropriated it and spent it extravagantly, for your own pleasure, overpaying for the services being provided.”
I held the next thought as long as I could, letting it take shape in the air between us.
His mouth jerked without sound, forming protests that wouldn’t have done him much good.
I said, “Unless I cancel a certain dispatch already in the hytex net, and set to be transmitted to the Dip Corps tomorrow, New London’s going to want all of that time repaid. Now, they could just apply it back to the contracts of all the women involved, but I’ll make sure they realize that this presents a tremendous bookkeeping headache and a source of all sorts of potential legal arguments involving the best way to distinguish your unauthorized little incentives from any legitimate time-bonuses the indentures involved might genuinely deserve. I’ll also point out that going after everybody involved would just create the kind of scandal better off avoided, without providing sufficient deterrent to other administrators capable of selling out their responsibilities to satisfy their hormones.
“No,” I concluded, “once I’m done presenting the case, they’ll probably just add all that stolen time to your own contract. Years. Probably decades, by the time the punitive fines, and any evidence of similar misbehavior at your prior postings, are properly tallied. Possibly more than you can ever live to pay back with the normal kind of assignment, even with regular rejuvenation. The Dip Corps will want every minute of that value returned, so they’ll select some unpleasant high-risk/low-prestige assignment nobody else wants, someplace much worse than One One One, and force you to pay back as many as those wasted years as you can earning hardship and hazard bonuses. Break your back and your health and you might be able to return to someplace offering the comforts of civilization in as little as ten to twenty years Mercantile. Personally, I don’t think you’re likely to make it that far, unless you’re lucky enough to find yourself working for a horny administrator, male, female, or neut, who finds you attractive enough for extra credit. Depending on the awfulness of the environment where you find yourself working, you might find yourself volunteering for services far removed from your own personal preferences. I don’t think you’ll be finicky.”