“Where did you people go to school?” I said, rolling my eyes. If Good Cop could overact, so could I. “Haven’t you ever watched CHIPS? Haven’t you ever watched Hill Street Blues? Do the words ‘Book ’em, Danno’ mean nothing to you?” I looked down on their scrubbed puzzled faces and sighed. “Okay, kids, let me correct a major gap in both your educations. When cops in Classical America interrogated a prisoner, one cop would be the Good Cop and try to become his friend, and the other would be the Bad Cop and try to scare the shit out of him so he’d confess to his buddy the Good Cop. Just like what you’re doing. Except they could back up their threats. They could swear. They could break things. They could hurt people. You can’t even ask me for something without saying ‘please.’ Frankly, Ignateva, you’re pathetic.”
“Insults can only make this more difficult.”
I laughed, leaned back, and rubbed my eyes. “I was hoping they’d make it more interesting. But it’s like teasing animals in the zoo: it’s poor sport and it frustrates the animals. Why are we doing this? Why don’t you just—”
I broke off. Why didn’t they just mindsuck me? You think of Weavers doing that, but Postcops do it too, once they’ve run through all the polite options. Ignateva and Rubatin were incompetents—that’s what you get when you recruit by lottery. It would take them a long time to give up. But in the end they would, or they’d be relieved by someone who would. And then the cable would come out of whatever pocket it was hidden in, and any hope that Keishi had would be gone.
I had known that. And I had thought that there was nothing I could do. But there was.
“Could I have another cup of tea, please?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
“Oh, certainly, certainly,” Rubatin said, hastening to pour.
“Thank you,” I said, and gripped the handle like a lifeline. Taking the encyclopedia out might be enough, and then it might not. But surely, after all these years, the waterproofing would not hold against a direct assault.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s put all our cards on the table. I seem to have run out of reasons to play for time. What can I do that will get this over with?”
“You can tell us what we need to know, tavarishcha.”
“Other than that.”
“Let’s just make a start, shall we?” Good Cop said sympathetically. “You came back from Kazakhstan. You arrived at the train-port. What did you do?”
“I went to the bathroom. It smelled a lot like it does here.”
Good Cop leaned over and whispered to Bad Cop, “Is that janitor on the way?”
“They said she would come. See what the radio says.”
Bad Cop switched it on. “Officer Mayich,” it blared, “Officer Andrei Mayich, come to the front desk please.” She scowled and turned down the volume.
“What did you do after you went to the bathroom?” Good Cop pressed on.
“I washed my hands in the sink.”
“We don’t care about that,” Bad Cop put in.
“You don’t care about washing your hands after you go to the bathroom? Oh gods, and I let you hand me that crumpet. That’s disgusting.”
“What we want to know, please, is when you met Keishi Mirabara.”
“I didn’t meet her at the port at all. She had me paged over the trainport speakers, but I was too busy trying to get drunk.”
“You cannot get drunk, Andreyeva. No bar would serve you beyond your ration. We know that.”
“I didn’t say it was working. I just said I was trying. Why do you ask these questions if you’re not even going to listen to the answers?”
“Officer Ivanova,” the radio said, “Officer Tatyana Ivanova, please come to the front desk. Your daughter is here.”
Tatyana Ivanova was my mother’s maiden name. Strange coincidence.
“Maya Tatyanichna,” Good Cop said, “our records indicate that you did insert the courtesy plug.”
“Officer Pudding,” said the radio, “Officer Chocolate Pudding, please come to the front desk.”
I laughed and slouched back even further, tightening my grip on the cup. I would have to take the socket-cap off with one hand, and raise the cup with the other. The parietal socket, on top, would be best; to get the tea to run out again, they’d have to turn me upside-down, and by then it would be much too late—
I sat upright. Officer Pudding. The speaker trick. It was Keishi.
Or the Postcops trying to entrap me with hope. I had to be sure. “Yes,” I said carefully, “that’s true, I did put in the plug. She told me to put my Net chip in, so we could virtual conference. But I thought, ‘What would a person like Keishi Mirabara want with me?’”
“Officer Cavalry, Officer John Wayne Cavalry, please come to the station, you are needed.”
Bad Cop gave Good Cop a worried look and said, “Officers of French ethnicity are an asset to the Leningrad police force.”
I suppressed a smile. Somewhere deep in Bad Cop’s mind the words “goddamn frogs” had flared up and been quenched. Jean-Waine Chevalri. No allusion to the Ancient West could have come from these duraks. And no Weaver would have reason to play such games.
“What exactly did she say to you over the courtesy plug?” Good Cop asked.
“Oh, I hung up after a few words,” I said. “She was trying to tell me what to do. I hate it when people do that.”
“Officer Rune, Officer Net Rune, please return to your vehicle. Your headlights are on. Officer Net Rune.”
Bad Cop and Good Cop exchanged perplexed glances.
“She tried to tell me why, but by that time I’d hung up on her,” I said.
“Officer Pavlov, Officer Ivan Pavlov, please report to the front desk immediately. There is a camera here to interview you. Your tardiness in this significant public relations effort does not become the Leningrad Police Force. Officer Pavlov, come to the front desk now.”
Of course.
I let the cup go, buried my head in my hands, and pretended to sob. “I’m sorry, officers. I’ve been trying to lie to you, but I see now that it’s fruitless. Can we start at the beginning again? Could you repeat the charges against me?”
“You are here for conspiring to remove a court-mandated suppressor chip, and for consorting with a known dissident, and for intent to commit affectional deviance.”
“And disturbing the peace,” Bad Cop added peevishly.
I knew my singing would be the death of me in the end. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t know the jargon. What is ‘affectional deviance,’ please?”
“You deliberately set out to fall in love with a person of your own sex, in flagrant violation of the laws of the Fusion of Historical Nations as well as of the terms of your parole.”
“And did I succeed at this?”
“Not at the time at which you were arrested,” Good Cop said.
“And why not?”
“Because of the corrective device which we implanted twenty years ago, at the time of your first arrest.”
“Because of Postcop mind control.”
Bad Cop and Good Cop exchanged nervous glances. “The colloquialism is essentially accurate, yes.”
“And how did you find out about this intent? By monitoring private videophone conversations, yes? Through spy satellites? Through hidden cameras? By using the Net to spy on people’s minds?”
“She has no need to know that, Officer Rubatin,” said Bad Cop warily. “She is stalling for time.”