Fourteen
TEA AND SYMPATHY
After three hours of interrogation, I finally cracked.
“No!” I screamed. “For the hundredth time, I do not want any more fucking crumpets! And get that teapot out of my face.”
The young man across the table set down the little delftware teapot and put on a face of disappointed concern. “I am sorry that our hospitality is not to your liking. We had very little notice of your arrival. If there is something we can remedy, by all means—”
“I’ve told you a dozen times. I want these handcuffs off. And I want to go to the bathroom.”
Officer Rubatin turned to his partner and said in a conciliatory tone, “They seem reasonable enough requests, Officer Ignateva.”
The woman with the sergeant’s bars pressed her thin lips together. “The manner in which they were delivered was anything but reasonable. Such a tone is inappropriate in this environment, and her use of profanity denotes a person unable to control her passions as society requires.”
“Ohhhhhh, I get it now,” I said to the woman. “You’re the bad cop and he’s the good cop. You know how I can tell? Because you whisper louder.”
“Plainly we are getting nowhere,” Good Cop said. “Perhaps if we remove the restraints, as a gesture of goodwill, she will recognize our peaceable intentions.”
“Very well, Officer Rubatin,” Bad Cop said, scowling. “I trust that our good-naturedness will not be met with more hostility.” She nodded to Good Cop, who moved around the table to remove the cuffs.
“Um, actually,” I said, “the bathroom thing is a little more urgent right now.”
Bad Cop was incredulous. “We give you one thing and you instantly demand another?”
“Oh, no. No, by all means, please remove the cuffs, that’s fine. I thank you profoundly for the favor.” My wrists were starting to go ominously numb, so I didn’t want to lose the chance to free them, even though my bladder had been a dull ache for most of the last hour. I had drunk one cup of tea to keep my strength up for the interrogation, and a second cup because it really was excellent tea, and a third because the sips gave me a chance to think before I answered. Now I was paying the price. I wondered whether I had fallen into the same trap the first time.
I stood so Bad Cop could remove the cuffs, and stayed standing as I rubbed my wrists. It felt good to have them off now, though at first I had been grateful for them. My greatest fear had been that a Weaver would possess one of the Postcops, take out a cable, and mindsuck me. The thought had made my every socket ache, as though fear had given the metal nerves. So I had been glad of the cuffs that locked over my wrist sockets, giving me the illusion that they were protected—two fewer wounds through which I might be hurt.
But they were not going to go Weaver. I was almost certain of that now. A Weaver can be in a hundred places at a time, so what they do, they do quickly. If a Weaver were going to take one of them, she would have done it long before.
I started to sit down, wondering whether they’d let me go expel the tea if I asked very, very nicely. Suddenly I stopped, my knees half-bent, and thought: Postcops. Maya, these are Postcops, and not Weavers. They were ordinary citizens, appropriated for a day; someone had shown up at their doors that morning, ignored the usual excuses, and inserted the Post moistware into their heads. Their behavior was electronically regulated, and, in the areas that mattered most, predictable. They were going to kill me—there was no doubt of that. It would be soon. And no matter what I did, the death would be polite and painless.
To know for certain that you cannot change your fate can be a rather liberating experience. The instant I’d accepted it, I had an idea.
“May I stand a while and stretch my legs, please?” I asked.
Bad Cop looked sour, but since I had said “please,” she nodded.
“Thank you. I am in your debt, tavarishcha.” I walked a few steps, then stood in the corner, stretching my legs with exaggerated motions. I felt chilly under the thin hospital gown they had given me to replace my muddied clothes.
“Now, Maya Tatyanichna,” Good Cop said, “you were about to tell us what Keishi Mirabara said to you in the trainport.”
“Absolutely,” I said, leaning against the wall. “I’ll tell you everything—everything I can remember. But there’s one thing I need to do first.” And I squatted, hiked up the gown, and urinated on the floor.
“Cuff her again. Behind her back this time. Then get on the Net and get a wet mop up here.” She turned to me and said. “That was so uncalled for I can’t even find words to describe it.”
“Take out that Post chip and you’ll find all kinds of words.”
“I see you think you can defy us,” Bad Cop said ominously. Ominous in a polite sort of way, of course.
“I think I can do whatever the hell I want. This is the last day of my life. I may as well have a little fun with it.”
“With someone who has remained in conformance as long as you have,” Good Cop put in, “we may be able to consider leniency. But only if—”
“Bolus. Nobody comes away from the Postcops alive a second time. I’ll be dead by midnight. All you can offer me is crumpets and trips to the bathroom. But what difference does it make if I wet myself? What difference does it make if I won’t tell you anything? The worst you can do is kill me, which you’re going to do anyway. I can piss on the floor, I can stand on my head, I can tell you every Postcop joke I know, and you can’t do a thing.”
Good Cop interrupted Bad Cop’s glare by plucking at her sleeve. “What?”
“Something’s wrong,” he said. “I’m cut off from the Net.”
Bad Cop’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “I am, too. I’ll go get us an audio communicator.” She stood up, then turned at the door to look at me. “While I’m gone, consider whether you want to leave this room alive. The choice is yours.”
Good Cop watched the door swing shut, then leaned across the table toward me. “I admire your courage, Maya,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “However, I must say that I believe it is ill-timed. Officer Ignateva is operating on an older version of the Emily Post moistware. If you continue to provoke her, it might overload, and my own moistware would prevent me from interceding.”
“Oh. Wow. Thanks for telling me,” I said. Then I leaned forward and matched his whisper. “You know, I really hate these cuffs. If you could take them off—”
He considered, then carefully looked to both sides. “All right, then.”
When they were off I said, “You know, the whispering and the looking around to see if anyone’s looking are great stage business, but they seem a little fake when you’re alone in a soundproof room. Haven’t you ever heard of method acting? Doesn’t the police academy have a drama department?”
He sat back and sighed indulgently. “I really do have your best interests at heart, tavarishcha.”
“Yeah, right. So is the Net really down, or is it a trick to get the two of us alone together so you can be my friend?”
Before he could reply, Bad Cop returned, carrying a portable radio. “The whole building’s down,” she said. “They’re working on it.” Then she looked at me with surprise and said, “You took off the cuffs, Rubatin?”
“He was playing good cop,” I informed her. “It didn’t work very well. Why don’t you try that bad cop thing again?”
“I fail to understand why you refer to me as a ‘bad cop,’” she said testily. “All Post police officers run on the same software. We are bound by the law of the land and the laws of propriety, so we are incapable of being ‘bad.’”