Raphael Carter - The Fortunate Fall

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.’”

“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.