The jump boat spoke up. “Person detected on board. No intrusion detected beforehand.”
“I’m wearing my screen,” she said, her eyes staying focused on me. “Guess I called attention to myself as soon as I spoke.”
“Unidentified person please name self.” When the woman didn’t speak her name, the jump boat spoke again, this time urgently. “Mr. Peripart please answer are you being held prisoner?”
“Not so far,” I said, keeping a wary eye on the woman who stood over me. I wasn’t sure whether to try to get out of the pilot’s chair or not. “Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Billie Beard, and if you’re going to make any jokes about the bearded lady I’ve heard ’em all. Did you get my note this morning?”
“The one in my newspaper? Yes.” I was irritated more than alarmed; I remembered what Iphwin had told me about her. I hated traitors in general—I’d been nervous enough about dealing with someone who even operated in the Twelve Reichs, as Iphwin did—and the thought of an expat working for Nazi police made me sick. But I kept my voice carefully level, keeping in mind that the jump boat would be recording the conversation, and said, “So what is it you would like from me, Billie Beard?”
“Just call me ma’am. Jump boat local legal ordinance requires you shut down now.” I heard the jump boat agreeing and saw the control panel go blank, but before I had an instant to protest, Billie Beard grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me out of my chair; even without the heels she was a good four inches taller than me, and easily strong enough to lift me right off the ground—which she did.
“What?” I squeaked.
“There’s a great deal we want to know. Starting with all the questions that Iphwin asked you when he interviewed you for your new job.”
I was hoping for ConTech company guards to burst in, any second, but Mort had said they wouldn’t have anyone covering me until I got to Saigon. They probably thought I’d already left, anyway, unless they were monitoring harbor traffic control. “I— I really don’t remember all of them,” I said.
“You want to make this difficult?” She shook me the way a cat kills a baby bird between its paws. “I could pull out all sorts of official authority, you know. I could just arrest you and throw you into the local tank and let your girl Helen figure out that you aren’t coming. I could do a lot of shit and I feel like doing all of it. You know I’m Gestapo, I bet, because that little chunk of jewshit, Geoffrey Iphwin, probably told you that, but he might not have told you that I’m with the Political Offenses Section and I don’t have to tell you what that means.”
She didn’t. The Twelve Reichs are mostly independent—they even have their own Gestapos—but within the Gestapos of each of the Reichs, the Political Offenses Section is not local. It collects whatever money it wants from the local government, but it has its own courts and judges and penal facilities—and it answers only to Party Headquarters, in Berlin. Each Reich sets its own course in domestic policy, and even to some extent in defense, but no Reich chooses how much dissent to tolerate. That decision is always made for it. Which is part of why most expats, like me, aren’t willing to live in one.
I gulped and said, “I will answer questions as much as I can but I don’t think I know anything.”
“You have no way of knowing whether you know anything. Let me be the judge of whether you know anything.” She slammed me down into the pilot’s chair, way off balance, so hard that the back of the chair bruised my back. “Now answer the questions. What are all the questions you can remember Iphwin asking you?”
I rattled off as many as I could remember, but there had been too many and I was getting confused. She slapped me on the face, clearly restraining herself, but still more than hard enough to make sure that I knew she could take out some teeth if she wanted to, then grabbed my hair and raised my head, staring directly into my eyes. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
“No!”
“No you don’t remember, or no you’re refusing to tell me?” Her voice was now quiet and gentle, almost as if she were about to get a warm washcloth and clean my face, or sit down and ask me about my feelings.
“I don’t remember.”
“That’s a good answer. Now we’re getting somewhere. Next question: what can you tell me about a man named Roger Sykes?”
“I don’t think I know anyone named Roger Sykes.”
Billie Beard hit me again, a straight down punch into one of my shoulders that made it ring with numb pain. “The man you talk to in the virtual reality bar, almost every night. The one you probably call the Colonel.”
That cleared that up; of course I knew him. “And his street name is Roger Sykes?”
“That’s right. Now what can you tell me about him?”
“Well, I call him the Colonel. We talk about all kinds of things every night. He’s retired and he lives in some little town on the Pacific coast of Mexico. We talk about fishing and boating a lot, and about flying, and ... I don’t know, male hobby stuff I guess you’d say.”
“Do you ever talk about how the American League pennant race is going, during the season?”
“I don’t know what the question means!” I was sniveling, now. The pain and fear had gotten to me. I was terrified that she would hit me again.
She stared at me, her expression blank, slowly becoming more puzzled. “Neither do I. I don’t know what that question means either,” she said. Then with a sudden, brutal slap with the side of her foot, she swept my feet from under me, causing the pilot’s chair to spin, dumping me onto the floor in a terrorized heap. “Why did I ask you that? Tell me why I asked you that!” She kicked me in the ribs.
“You just told me you don’t know why!”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Beard sat down in the pilot’s chair; her long frame absolutely drooped, and she sighed. “All right, what can you tell me about the murder of Billie Beard in Saigon?”
“Aren’t you Billie Beard?” I asked, hopelessly confused, trying to get my feet under me and to get between her and the hatch.
“Answer the question!”
I felt like a complete idiot. Perhaps that was what she intended. “I do not know anything about the murder of Billie Beard in Saigon. I am going to Saigon myself. If you are going to be murdered there—”
She lunged out of the chair and braced me against the wall. “Who the hell says I am going to be murdered in Saigon?”
“You just did! You asked me what I knew about the murder of Billie Beard in Saigon.”
“I did ask that,” she said. She had that strange blank expression that I had seen twice before, but now she reset it into a pleasant smile. “Your answers have been extremely helpful. This will look really good on your record if you ever decide to apply to become a citizen of any of the Reichs. Well, I can’t stay, so thank you very much and have a nice day.” She turned and went out the hatch before I could say a word, leaving me slumped against the wall of my own cabin, shaken and frightened. She went out with a sway in her walk like a teenager looking for a boyfriend, and gave me a flirty-little-girl “bye-bye” wave at the hatch, before going out. “Jump boat,” I croaked, “wake up extra fast.”
There were thuds, pings, clangs, and whizzing sounds all over; that’s the command you use to get the robot all the way up and running when you need to run like hell. “Secure all,” I added, and the gangway retracted, the hatch slammed shut, and the jump boat cut its own mooring line.