“Common courtesy demands that we answer all reasonable questions,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “There is nothing to fear; the information will go no further than this room.”
“No it won’t, will it?” I said. “Because I’ll leave this room a corpse. Have you already decided which one of you pulls the trigger, or do you flip a coin when it’s time?” I parted my fingers, as if accidentally, to let a little light from my Net-rune shine through. Bad Cop’s eyes widened.
“This information could only distress you—”
Bad Cop grabbed my hand away from my face, revealing the lit rune. “Shit!” she yelled. I longed for my imagination software, to draw a little puff of smoke above her Post chip.
“Smile, duraks,” I said, “you’re on News One. Why don’t you tell the world why you wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom?”
“It’s a trick,” Good Cop said. “It has to be.”
“Of course it’s a trick,” I said sweetly. “Just go on as you were before. What difference will it make?” Then I widened my eyes and said in mock astonishment: “The Post police wouldn’t have anything to hide, would they?”
Bad Cop grabbed the radio. “Front desk, come in.”
“Front desk. This is Officer Miranda.” It was Keishi’s voice.
“Maybe I’ll just take a little warmup on this tea,” I said to no one in particular. “I think the world would like to know what Post-cop tea tastes like, don’t you?” I poured tea into the teapot, then back into the cup, and sipped with gusto.
“Is your Net link still out?” Bad Cop demanded.
“It’s just come on again,” Keishi informed her.
“Tune in News One and tell me what you see.”
There was a brief pause. Then the voice on the radio said, “Oh, gods. Don’t move. Don’t say a word. Just wait, and someone will be there right away.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” I said, sipping my tea. “You swore on duty, and I’ve got every last phoneme on disk. What does the chief of police do in a case like this? Wash your mouth out with soap?”
Good Cop and Bad Cop sat frozen, as though they’d been switched off.
“Well, will you look at this? You give them a little media exposure and all of a sudden they’re so high and mighty they won’t even talk to you—”
“Maya Tatyanichna!” boomed the captain, bursting in. “Thank gods you’re all right. I came the minute I heard about this terrible misunderstanding. I’m sorry to prevail still further on your patience, but may I speak to my officers outside for a moment?”
“Sure, no problem. But I warn you, they’re really not much fun anymore.”
“Thank you,” he said, bowing slightly. “I will return shortly.” He escorted them out.
I did what any self-respecting camera would have done under the circumstances. I poured out my teacup, put it against the door, and listened.
The captain was saying: “… judged that you have erred so grievously that, in accordance with regulation 3708 stroke 25 paragraph c, I am removing my Emily Post chip in order to impress upon you the magnitude of your offense.”
“But… but…”
“You goddamn stupid whores!”
I had to bite down on my hand to keep from laughing. If only I’d really been recording. Of course I wasn’t; I’d had my Net-rune hot-wired years before, so I could turn it on and off as I pleased. It’s nice for letting people think that something’s off the record. But a Postcop captain swearing like a sailor all over the whole Net! If I had to choose between that and the whale, I might be tempted to give up the whale.
The whale. If I was going to live, then there was still a world outside the police station, and in it I had an interview to do. Not without regret, I abandoned my post for a moment to pick up the radio. “Hello, Officer Miranda?”
“I read you, Officer Pudding. Over.”
“Hey, front desk,” I said, “things are a little confused back here. Do you happen to know the time of day?”
“You’ve got around five minutes before someone figures out that everywhere but this building, News One is carrying a political debate in Otaku. Over.”
“What do I do? Um, over.”
“They’re hoping you’ll get bored waiting and everyone will tune out. So you want to let them know it won’t work. Just make a pain in the ass out of yourself.”
“I think I could manage that. Over.”
“That’s a roger, the plan is designed to make use of our operative’s natural talents,” Keishi confirmed. “Break a leg, Officer Pudding. That’s an order. Over and out.”
I pressed my teacup against the door again. The captain was still swearing industriously.
“Haven’t you duraks ever heard of a retrofit? Just because the bitch has sockets in her head, you assume she can’t also be wired with a totem. So you confiscate the totem, don’t deactivate it, and she beams your every word to News One out of our own goddamn evidence room?”
“But we did check. We checked her file and we scanned her twice, and she didn’t have anything that could have been a totem in disguise—”
“Well, you obviously didn’t check well enough.”
“Can’t they just cut off the Netcast?”
“We don’t dare. We cut off the Netcast all of a sudden, and then she’s never heard from again—what are people going to think?”
It seemed like a good time to pound on the door and shout at the top of my lungs.
The captain appeared promptly. “Hey, Cap’n,” I said. “If it were just me I’d wait, but I’ve got half of Russia sitting in this chair and they’re getting a little bit restless. Could you talk to the folks for me? Say hi to your mother or something.”
“We will release you now, Maya Tatyanichna.”
“Oh, come on,” I wheedled. “I spent months setting up this story. You can’t just take it away from me.”
“Right this way, please.”
“Oh, all right. Spoilsport.”
He led me out and down the hall. I felt lightheaded. I was doing it. I was going to leave the Postcop station alive.
“The officers who arrested you have been arrested themselves,” he explained as we walked. “They had altered their Post chips in order to commit these violations of privacy and engage in this unwarranted arrest. I assure you that the Post police have no grievance against you and that we are intensely sorry for what has happened.”
For another five minutes, anyway. The captain led me to the evidence room and gave me back my clothes.
“You washed them for me,” I noticed with amusement. “How nice. What do you do with the clothes when you kill a prisoner? Store them forever?”
“We present the clothes to local charities,” the captain explained. “Of course, that is only in those rare cases when the ultimate penalty is called for. —I’m afraid we have no dressing rooms for prisoners. You may use our officers’ locker room. Here we are.”
I waited for him to leave, then grabbed the hem of the gown to strip it off. A sudden fear stopped me. “You know, people of Russia,” I said loudly, “the captain probably thinks I’ll pause the Net-cast while I undress, so he can cut off my signal and no one will know the difference. Little does he know that I have no shame whatsoever.”
Then I backed against the lockers, seized by another fear. “Also, if my broadcast gets cut off suddenly in the next few seconds, you’ll have a pretty good idea that I was shot in the back. Won’t you?”
I stayed there a moment, my voice echoing through the locker room, then looked around the corner carefully. No one was there. Steady, Maya; the bluff doesn’t have to hold much longer. I dressed hastily and charged back into the front room, the gown over my arm.