going, and so have a fair chance of forcing a response. But his mind
won’t survive the damage.”
He ground his cigarette hard against the lip of an ash-taker before
letting the stub be removed. “You weren’t in that state, obviously.” His
voice roughened. “In fact, you had no drug immunization. Why weren’t you
narcoed instead of ‘probed? Or were you, to start with?”
“I don’t remember–” Astounded, Kossara exclaimed, “How do you know?
About me and drugs, I mean? I didn’t myself!”
“The slave dealer’s catalogue. His medic ran complete cytological
analyses. I put the data through a computer. It found you’ve had
assorted treatments to resist exotic conditions, but none of the traces
a psychimmune would show.”
Flandry shook his head, slowly back and forth. “An overzealous
interrogator might order an immediate ‘probe, instead of as a last
resort,” he said. “But why carry it out in a way that wiped your
associated memories? True, such things do happen occasionally. For
instance, a particular subject might have a low threshold of tolerance;
the power level might then be too high, and disrupt the RNA molecules as
they come into play under questioning. As a rule, though, permanent
psychological effects–beyond those which bad experiences generally
leave–are rare. A competent team will test the subject beforehand and
establish the parameters.”
He sighed. “Well, the civil war and aftermath lopped a lot off the top,
in my Corps too. Coprolite-brained characters who’d ordinarily have been
left in safe routineering assignments were promoted to fill vacancies.
Maybe you had the bad luck to encounter a bunch of them.”
“I am not altogether sorry to have forgotten,” Kossara mumbled.
Flandry stroked his mustache. “Ah … you don’t think you’ve suffered
harm otherwise?”
“I don’t believe so. I can reason as well as ever. I remember my life in
detail till shortly before I left for Diomedes, and I’m quite clear
about everything since they put me aboard ship for Terra.”
“Good.” Flandry’s warmth seemed genuine. “There are enough unnecessary
horrors around, without a young and beautiful woman getting annulled.”
He rescued me from the slime pit, she thought. He has shown me every
kindness and courtesy. Thus far. He admits–his purpose is to preserve
the Empire.
“What pieces do you recall, Kossara?” Flandry had not used her first
name before.
She strained fingers against each other. Her pulse beat like a trapped
bird. No. Don’t bring them back. The fear, the hate, the beloved dead.
“You see,” he went on, “I’m puzzled as to why Dennitza should turn
against us. Your Gospodar supported Hans, and was rewarded with
authority over his entire sector. Granted, that’s laid a terrible work
load on him if he’s conscientious. But it gives him–his people–a major
say in the future of their region. A dispute about the defense
mechanisms for your home system and its near neighbors … well, that’s
only a dispute, isn’t it, which he may still have some hope of winning.
Can’t you give me a better reason for him to make trouble? Isn’t a
compromise possible?”
“Not with the Imperium!” Kossara said out of upward-leaping rage.
“Between you and me, at least? Intellectually? Won’t you give me your
side of the story?”
Kossara’s blood ebbed. “I … well, speaking for myself, the fighting
cost me the man I was going to marry. What use an Empire that can’t keep
the Pax?”
“I’m sorry. But did any mortal institution ever work perfectly? Hans is
trying to make repairs. Besides, think. Why would the Gospodar–if he
did plan rebellion–why would he send you, a girl, his niece, to
Diomedes?”
She summoned what will and strength she had left, closed her eyes,
searched back through time.
{Bodin Miyatovich was a big man, trim and erect in middle age. He bore
the broad, snub-nosed, good-looking family face, framed in graying
dark-blond hair and close-cropped beard, tanned and creased by a
lifetime of weather. He eyes were beryl. Today he wore a red cloak over
brown tunic and breeks, gromatz leather boots, customary knife and
sidearm sheathed on a silver-studded belt.
Dyavo-like, he paced the sun deck which jutted from the Zamok. In gray
stone softened by blossoming creepers, that ancestral castle reared