Raphael Carter - The Fortunate Fall

“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.

“All right,” I said, “where the hell’s my moistware?”

“I am afraid that those items have now become evidence in the trial of the renegade officers,” the captain said with rehearsed sincerity.

“Look, I’ve got an interview to do in less than three hours. I need my equipment.”

“I’m sorry. The trial should take place in a few days. When it is over you can return here to pick up your belongings.”

This was his petty revenge, I realized. My only chance was to scare it out of him. I straightened my spine a little to get the full advantage of my height, looked down into his left pupil, and said: “Would you care to give the Russian populace an explanation for this bureaucratic obstructionism? Or would you rather just get me my property?”

“I regret that—”

“Captain, you have a transmission coming in,” said the Post-cop at the front desk. “It’s marked triple-urgent.”

“Triple…? If you will wait one moment.”

“Of course,” I said. He walked around behind the desk and took the plug the receptionist proffered. As he turned away and inserted it, the assignments on the monitor above the desk dissolved into a single word, flashing: NOW, NOW, NOW.

I’d had the same idea myself. I ducked out the front door and took the stairs down to the street three at a time. Then I stopped cold. In front of me was a wall of wasps, all electronically parked, so that there was barely a centimeter between them. I could go down the sidewalk, but I’d be a sitting duck. I turned around and saw the captain clattering down the stairs, with a whole parade of Postcops behind him. Trapped, I backed up till I tripped on the curb and stumbled against a wasp. In my panic, I barely noticed that the car was not cold, like metal, but taut and warm and muscled, like the shoulder of a horse.

“Put your hands in the air,” the captain called out. I noticed he didn’t say please. I tried to comply, but my arms were stuck. As the Postcops raised their guns, I realized that I had sunk into the wasp up to my elbows, as if it were quicksand.

“Put your hands up! This is your last warning!”

“I’m trying!” I called out, but the car had already enveloped me. Something cold touched the back of my head. A thick black liquid wrapped itself around my eyes, and forced its way into my mouth and nostrils. I wanted to gag, but my throat would not obey the impulse. Then my mind folded in on itself, like a burning spider, and for a long time I felt nothing more.

Stop trying to breathe,” said a voice in my ear. “You’re only making yourself panic.”

“Keishi—”

“Don’t try to use your mouth, just think it. If you just forget about your body, you’ll be all right.”

“Where are we? Why can’t I see anything?”

“We’re a couple hundred kilometers out of Arkhangelsk. You can’t use your eyes to see; just look. ”

I did. I was in the front seat of a car, with Keishi sitting next to me. The road was rushing past at an improbable rate. I reached up and felt the driver’s helmet wrapped around my head, with braided cables trailing from it.

“Did we escape? Am I alive?”

“Nothing gets by you, does it?”

I tried to laugh, but the helmet choked me.

“Laugh on the inside,” she advised.

“Keishi, I could kiss you,” I said.

“No, you couldn’t,” she said matter-of-factly, “because for one thing, I’m still in Arkhangelsk, and for another thing, you’ve got a car in your mouth.”

“Oh. I… I thought maybe it was really you this time.”

“Soon, ” she said.

“Sooner than my death?”

“Don’t talk that way. Do you see anyone following us?”

“No,” I said. We were far from the city by now, and the lights on the dashboard informed me we were at 300 kph and climbing. “What kind of car is this?”

“Postcop pursuit vehicle.”

“Oh, gods,” I said, and tried to bury my face in my hands—only to remember that I couldn’t move my head. “You just had to dig us even deeper.”

“Maya,” she said in exasperation, “it doesn’t get any deeper than you were. How much we piss off the Postcops is no longer an issue. They’re as pissed as their moistware will let them get.”