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by labingi
Scorpius recognized her at once. In the cycle since he'd seen her, her hair had grown longer. She was wearing brown now and had slightly altered her facial appearance, but the oval of her face was the same. As he met her eyes from across the tavern, several impressions fired through his head--
She looked Kalish again, the Peacekeeper overlay scrubbed away.
She was a traitor.
He deeply desired to snap her bones in his hands.
She was still beautiful--it was troubling that that seemed significant.
Why would she be looking for him? He had no doubt that she *was* looking for him. The odds were astronomically against her being here on this commerce planet in this tavern purely by coincidence. She showed no surprise when he looked at her. Indeed, she had been watching him first, sitting at a table in plain view. She had meant to get his attention. Why? What could she possibly think she could have to say that he would listen to? Or was she simply put in place as a decoy to distract him from a trap?
That explanation appeared all too likely. He must keep doubly alert--to her and to everything else around him. But he had waited a long time to make contact with his agent here. If Sikozu had found him, she might well already know that. And it was not worth changing his plans to hide information she already knew.
He turned away from her and moved to the Charrid at the bar. The Charrid passed him the data chip on Motak 4 with sufficient dexterity that a casual viewer would almost surely have missed the transaction. He must presume, however, that Sikozu had seen it, had probably been waiting for it. Well, the next move would be hers. If she wanted something from him, she would have to come and get him. He exchanged a few diversionary words with his contact and made his way to the door as he had planned, scanning it for possible traps.
There were none. Out on the street, he walked toward his hotel. There was little point in disguising the direction when it was likely she knew where it was as well. When he had gone only a few paces, he heard familiar footsteps padding behind him.
***
It would not work. The thought struck Sikozu like a slug in the chest the moment he entered the tavern. He would not hear her out, would not believe her even if he did, would not agree to anything she might propose. Why had she volunteered for this mission? They should have sent any other Kalish operative before they agreed to send her.
But, of course, she knew why she had volunteered. And it had very little to do with the Kalish Resistance.
But it should. The Resistance should come first. Her priorities were backward. They had been better before.
When his eyes locked on her icily, she felt a stab of fear.
But she was here; she could not back down now. When he walked out of the tavern, she fought the urge to race after him and demand that he let her explain. After all, this district, with eyes everywhere, was no place for an overwrought display. She got up as casually as she could and followed him at a discreet distance.
After trailing him for several blocks, she lost him for a moment around a corner. Rounding the bend, she still didn't see him. There was a large recycling dumpster--and in the microt it took her to register the obvious, his hand flashed out from behind it. Seizing her wrist, he flattened her against the wall.
Quietly, he said, "Your aptitude for espionage has deteriorated since our last meeting."
She could feel her bones grind where he held her wrist, her hand already hot and limp from lack of circulation. He was leaning against her heavily enough to make breathing difficult.
"It is not as if I didn't know you knew I was there," she answered. Inhaling laboriously, she added, "I need to talk to you."
"Surely, we have said all that needs to be said."
"I have a proposal from certain Kalish." She would not name the Resistance in the street.
"You are a Scarran agent."
She drew in another slow breath. "I am a Kalish agent. I was a Kalish agent then." Another breath. "You did not give me a chance to explain."
"If you had wanted the leisure to explain, perhaps you should not have brought a Scarran attack down on our heads."
She was starting to feel lightheaded. "Let me explain now."
Abruptly, he wrenched her away from the wall. Still grasping her wrist, he marched her down the street, as if he were afraid that she would try to escape. As if she had not been the one tracking him!
After traveling several more blocks and down two levels, they came to dilapidated hotel. He keyed in a code on one of the doors and pushed her into a cramped room, locking the door behind them. She flexed her hand to get the blood flowing; her wrist was bruising a deep yellow.
For some microts, they stood on opposite sides of the small space, not quite facing one another.
"If you have something to say, say it," Scorpius growled.
Sikozu tried to remember what she had planned to say but could only summon up approximate fragments. "You were wrong about me," she began.
He narrowed his eyes as if about to retort but said nothing.
Sikozu went on, "You. . . misunderstood my. . . situation." What had happened to all those perfectly chosen words she had practiced for this moment?
In an unsettlingly calm voice, he put in, "You did confess to spying for them."
"Yes, I was spying for the Scarrans," Sikozu admitted, striving to keep her voice as calm as his. "That is, I was aware that they were tracking my movements with the coms you. . . found implanted in my back. But you must understand how. . . recent a development that was." She sighed. Her wrist was throbbing. "It began less than a monen before you found out. I was on that reconnaissance mission to Edrasska. The Scarrans captured me. They told me that they had discovered the use of bioloids in the Kalish Resistance. They demonstrated that they had developed means for recognizing bioloid energy signatures. Using this technology, they had been able to uncover most of our major networks. They were on the point of launching a purge against us when they found me. When they discovered that I had access to the Peacekeepers, they agreed to preempt the purge in exchange for my services as a spy."
He retorted roughly, "That is not consistent with your previous explanation."
Sikozu was taken aback. "Of course, it is!" Had she not told him that the Scarrans had promised to spare her people?
"You told me that they agreed to free your people from their servitude."
Had she said that? It seemed to her now that she might have. What an absurd thing to say! "They told me both," she stammered. "First that they would free the Kalish. I did not believe them. Then, they told me they would preempt the purge, which I did believe--because if they moved against my people, they would have no more hold over me."
"And you chose to give me the explanation you yourself did not believe?"
Sikozu's face was flushing. This was a nightmare. "I evidently do not remember precisely what I said to you. I think perhaps that is understandable since my *universe* was falling to pieces." She had done her best to blank out those days of being a Scarran pawn; that had been foolish. Now, she took a steadying breath and endeavored to place herself back in that time. "I believe that by the time you discovered the coms, I had begun to. . . comfort myself by supposing that the Scarrans might actually keep their promise to set us free. When you confronted me, that must have been foremost in my mind."
He eyed her coldly.
No. If she were Scorpius, she would not believe it either. Not after this debacle.
"It is the truth," she said. "If it sounds inconsistent, even a sophisticated mind is not always consistent."
"So you offered your services. With the greatest reluctance."
She was gripped by a sudden urge to seize him and shake him, as if that could make him understand. Instead, she crossed to his side of the room and stared up into his face. "It was agony," she answered, "every microt."
"Yet once they released you, it never occurred to you to indicate your situation to anyone on the Command Carrier."
"Scorpius, *I could not.* They made it clear that if I showed the slightest sign of disobedience, my people would pay the price. The coms they implanted in me was tracking my actions as much as it was tracking my location. It contained audio, visual, even tactile transmission. I could not talk to you because they would hear me. I could not write you or signal you because they would see me. Do you understand? I was being watched all the time." She drew in closer and laid her hands on his arms, comforted by the familiar feel of his muscles underneath his coolant suit. "I need you to believe me."
"Why?"
"Because. . . ." *Because we were meant to be together?* When Aeryn had suggested that to her, she had found the concept ridiculous. Meant by whom? For what purpose? And at the same time, she had understood.
He was still staring at her, waiting.
"Because I am sick and tired of everyone around me assuming that I am contemptible." Well, that was true as far as it went. "Please, try to listen to me." She rested her hand against his neck, hoping to get something back of their old sense of intimacy.
***
Her eyes were too bright, her face too immobile. He did not think he had ever despised a non-Scarran face so much. But that she dared to lay her hands on him--that was beyond endurance. It suggested a facile belief that she could seduce him into giving her his trust again, despite the singular ineptitude of the lies she had just insulted him with. Instead, her touch aroused fury shot through desire. For an instant, he imagined holding her down and raping her with deep satisfaction.
The idea left him feeling sick. He batted her hand away and moved to the other side of the room, suddenly aware that his face was streaming with sweat.
"Get out of my sight," he demanded.
Sikozu's voice came stridently from behind him. "I did what I needed to do." A pause. More quietly: "I tried to tell you. Do you remember that time--we were sitting in your quarters, and I looked into your eyes, and I said I wished never to lie to you?"
Yes, he remembered. He had remembered on that day when he had realized that it had all been lies.
"And then I said that I never *would* lie to you?" she continued. "The first was true and the second a lie. I was hoping you would read the change in my energy signature and understand that I needed to tell you something that I could not say. But you did not notice."
Suddenly, he found himself reevaluating her story.
He remembered that conversation clearly. It had struck him at the time that her locution had been unusual. But because her energy signature had not significantly altered, he had put it down to a surge of sentimental emotion. All his life, he had instructed himself not to rely too heavily on his ability to use energy signatures to distinguish truth from lies. Yet he had done just that.
A cycle ago, when he had discovered her treachery, the realization that she could lie to him without an energetic shift had been unsettling. But more unsettling had been the reflection that he had lived side by side with her for monens and never suspected her of deception.
And now, she asked him to believe her. And, indeed, it was true that in the days following the Scarran-Peacekeeper treaty, the Scarrans had launched a major assault against the Kalish Resistance, one that had crippled it for some time. But that alone did not mean that all she said was the truth.
He turned to face her and said, "If we were on the Command Carrier, I could verify your story by putting you in the Aurora Chair."
If it worked on bioloids.
"We are not on the Command Carrier," Sikozu replied with a familiar flicker of impatience in her voice. "And since you no longer work among the Peacekeepers, it does not seem we are likely to be."
"True," said Scorpius. "Therefore, we will have to make do with more primitive methods of verification." Before she had time to process that statement, he crossed to her and twisted her arms behind her back. She winced but made no attempt to fight him. Then, he wrestled a piece of cord off the room's dingy curtains and, pushing her to her knees at the foot of the bed, secured her arms to the bed frame so that her wrists were tied up next to her shoulders.
"You must think very little of your own judgment if you think this is necessary," she spat.
That statement was discomfortingly accurate. But as there was nothing meaningful he could say in response, he offered no reply.
Instead, he took a stylus from his supplies and applied its point to her throat till she winced.
"Now," he said, "tell me where precisely on Edrasska you were captured."
"Is this necessary?" she repeated.
"It is. Edrasska."
"The northern space port. Customs."
He shifted the pressure on her throat slightly. "What was your first indication that your mission had been compromised?"
And as they began the questions and answers, he could feel his calm return.
The principle was simple. Anyone could and would lie under torture, but few could maintain an internally consistent account of a complex set of fabricated events. The technique was to keep the questions detailed and concrete, to repeat the same questions in slightly different forms at unexpected intervals, and, in general, slowly to scale up the pain until suspicious inconsistencies appeared or until the subject became incoherent.
Sikozu, when he had met her, had not been particularly adept at managing pain. She had even had a tendency to panic when faced with significant injury. But she had improved precociously. Even before they had left Moya, she had become an intrepid fighter. Now, he felt a flush of pride to see her coherence under duress. Indeed, she retained such an appearance of composure that he was uncertain if the consistency of her responses was a sign of truth or of expert lying. He would need to break down that composure if he were to assess her veracity with any reliability.
It occurred to him that her limbs were re-attachable.
When he bit off her index finger, she cried out—but not nearly as loudly as she would have two cycles ago. The taste of her blood brought back their time together, times when she would come in from a battle covered with abrasions and he'd lick her wounds clean.
He laid her finger on the floor and asked, "Tell me again, when Minister Ahkna came to your cell for the second time, what did she tell you about Katratzi?"
"Frell you!" she gasped. "I told you it was the *third* time. She told me the attack on Katratzi had alerted the Scarrans to the presence of bioloids in the Resistance."
Yes, she was impressive.
But by the time he had severed her third finger, she had ceased to respond to his questions and was merely hurling invective in Scarran. He would get no more out of her for the present--and in any case, he was now reasonably certain that her story was true. He rummaged in his first aid supplies and found tape to bind her fingers. When he had bandaged them, he untied her wrists, noting that her hands were an unhealthy yellow-brown. If lack of circulation had caused nerve damage, she would have to seek medical care; his first aid supplies were inadequate for such repair.
As soon as her arms were free, she flopped onto her side, breathing raggedly and trembling.
"We will take an interval," he told her.
"You *rescradettat*!" she shot back. "I will not take an *interval*. I am done with this game."
Scorpius all at once felt tired. No, there was no more point to this. He settled himself with his back against the far wall, legs stretched out in front of him, and watched her.
After some time, her breathing steadied. Though she continued to shake, she pushed herself upright with her uninjured hand.
"Do you believe me now?" she asked.
He answered carefully, "To an extent."
"You lied too," she said bitterly. "I know you lied when you said you had only been using me to service your desires. You lied when you said you'd known my duplicity from the beginning--because in the beginning, there was nothing to know." She was breathless again, slowly flexing her hands.
"It does not follow that, therefore, I was not merely using you."
"You were not," she said and glanced at the door. "Let me out."
"We have not yet concluded our business. You said you had a proposal from. . . certain Kalish."
"If you think that--" She stopped and stared at him a long moment. "I am not sufficiently. . . collected to conduct that business now. I know you are not scheduled to depart for two solar days. I will meet you back here in thirty arns."
"I am not prepared to take you word for that."
"Then to what extent *do* you believe me?" she demanded.
He answered truthfully, "I believe you were coerced by the Scarrans on Edrasska. I am not satisfied that you are no longer compromised by them."
She staggered up and sat on the end of the bed. "I will not submit to further interrogation."
It came to him that he did not wish to submit her to it either. "Will you submit to a transmitter?"
"That is my alternative?"
He pulled himself up and searched in his supplies. "A simple neural audio-only." He held out the chip to her.
She took it in her uninjured hand and inspected it as minutely as the naked eye would allow. "If that is my alternative," she said finally.
They exchanged not another word as he injected it into her brain and unlocked the door. When she was gone, he implanted the receiver in his ear and lay back on his bed, half wishing he did not have to hear the rough sound of her breathing as she stomped away.
***
Sikozu's first objective was not to faint in the street, not to stagger, not to look weak enough to invite attack. She hurt in more places than she could count. Her hands were worst, stinging acidly, her three bandaged fingers hot and fat and useless. It had been a long time since she'd been so angry, but she could not let anger blind her now, not out in the middle of a commerce planet thoroughfare, not till she was--at least nominally--safe in her transport pod.
It took forever to get there. Her legs were knocking dangerously by the time she reached the pod. And once she was there, she had to override the palm lock because it was keyed to her mangled hand. It took at least forty microts to enter all the key commands--and then she was inside, the door locked behind her. She curled up in a ball on her cot.
*That frelling, stupid, implacable. . .*
She was asleep before she could finish the thought.
A tearing pain exploded in her fingers. She jerked awake and rolled off of the injured hand that had somehow ended up mashed under her chest. The fingers, at least, had not pulled free of their attachments. The bandages were holding, and she could feel the all-too-familiar burning of her tissues reconnecting.
Checking her internal chronometer, she noted that she'd been asleep for three arns. Her body was still lethargic but her mind now wide-awake.
The worst part was that she was angrier at herself than she was at Scorpius. She shouldn't have come. She had hoped that things would go better but had known that, realistically, they would not. She had prepared herself for the possibility that he would kill her. Barring that, he had reacted about as one might expect.
Of course, he would not trust her. Of course, he would be furious. It was *not* her fault--and yet it was, all the same. She had helped the Scarrans. It didn't matter why. To him, that was the one unforgivable crime.
He was such a single-minded infant! He could not be reasoned with, not about this. She had been an idiot to come. And to think that not so long ago, she had been certain that an idiot was the one thing she was not.
A wave of self-pity swept over her, tears pricking at her eyes. But she would not cry, not with him listening. He had never yet seen her cry; he would not hear her now.
He would think it was a ruse. She smiled grimly at the thought.
If she had any sense, she would leave this planet now, go back to her Resistance node and get this transmitter pulled out of her brain. They could send someone else to solicit his partnership with the Resistance. He would say "yes" to someone else. He would recognize the Resistance as a useful ally--just not Sikozu. Not ever again.
***
For two arns, he lay on his bed, listening to her breathing somewhere many blocks away. The slow rhythm of her sleeping breaths was too evocative. He could almost imagine her lying within arm's reach.
He was drained. She drained him. The situation was a farce.
If he had been functioning rationally, he would have refused to speak with her--better still, he'd have killed her. Better still, he'd have killed her when he'd first grasped her betrayal.
When she had followed him into the street and demanded that he let her explain, it had seemed imperative to establish the authenticity of her story. At some point, however, he had realized that her account was largely irrelevant. She hated the Scarrans; he had never doubted that. She had betrayed him in an attempt to spare her people; that too, he had never doubted. The fact remained that she could not be trusted. She had proven that she would and could lie to him, even betray all his work to his enemies.
And she had a proposition from the Resistance.
Perhaps. But how could he tell if the proposition was genuine? He could interrogate her again, but that notion was fatiguing.
He made himself rise, lowered the ambient temperature of his room. He did not like to accustom himself to temperatures colder than the norm of his environment, but just now, he had need of all his energy reserves. Dutifully, he ate and drank--and, less dutifully, considered departing the commerce planet early, preempting a further encounter with her. He had got as far as drawing tentative plans to cancel his meeting with his contacts tomorrow, when it came to him that the only explanation for such a course of action was cowardice.
It almost defied belief that he had actually contemplated fleeing from Sikozu. He would not, of course. He would stay and hear her. Even if she lied, he might learn something of value. If he could parse out the lies from the truth.
***
By the next day, the swelling in Sikozu's fingers had gone down, though they still felt unequal to performing most tasks. In a few arns, she would meet with him, and he would demand verification of everything she said, and the data chip she had been given to present to him would not be sufficient. And he would want to interrogate her again.
She needed some way to defend herself. She considered taking a pulse pistol but quickly dismissed the idea. His armor would repulse most shots. To be sure of incapacitating him, she would have to aim for his face, and that would kill him. Besides, he would surely recognize the sound of her loading her pistol and be prepared, and shoot her first.
She could generate her radiation, as long as she kept her hands free to direct it. But the radiation was designed to kill Scarrans, and as he was half-Scarran, she might easily kill him when she meant only weaken him.
None of it would inspire him to give her the trust that she longed to win back.
She looked at her bandaged hand and almost winced aloud at the thought of those fingers being wrenched off again--or of losing all her fingers this time. But if that was what it took. . .
***
As their meeting approached, Scorpius could hear a noise, like stone being filed, from the transmitter. A weapon? When she tapped at his door, he was primed to shoot her at the slightest provocation. But when he let her in, he saw from the set of her jaw that the sound was the gnashing of her teeth.
Without preamble, she said, "My companions in the Resistance wish to negotiate an alliance with your network. We wish to pool our information, with the possible aim of conducting operations together in the future."
That was more vague than he had expected but essentially the only thing she could have said. And there was a possibility that it was true. . .
For the moment, he chose to say nothing.
Sikozu went on, "I have a data chip, which contains good faith information on several Scarran projects." She produced a chip, which he took from her. "I have also been authorized to share names and contact information for three of my colleagues posted near your sector."
"You appear already to know a great deal about my movements," he observed.
Sikozu smiled at him briefly. "Scorpius, you do not blend into a crowd."
That was a problem. Most of his career had been conducted among the Peacekeepers, where he could play his conspicuous appearance to his advantage. But now, Peacekeeper interests no longer served his: since the treaty, they had ceased to combat Scarran power. Now, he must often perform undercover work himself. That, however, was a temporary setback; as soon as he had accumulated enough liaisons, he would retire to a more administrative role.
"Give me the contact information," he said.
She provided it, then hesitated. "Next you will tell me you wish to verify it," she added with something like a sneer.
"I will verify it independently," he replied.
She bit her lip. "That may be difficult for your network. My colleagues keep their identities well hidden."
"We have our resources."
She inclined her head. "That is why we wish to work with you."
For several microts they stared at each other in silence.
"If I am satisfied of the authenticity of your offer, I will contact your associates," he said finally.
After a moment, Sikozu said, "Will you remove this transmitter?"
He got out his implanter and took her jaw firmly in his hand. She stiffened and held rigidly still, only gasping slightly as he extracted the implant from her brain. When he let her go, she backed away quickly.
"I will *verify* that it is gone when I rejoin my people," she said.
For a moment more, Scorpius studied her face. In all but the most minute particulars, it was just as he remembered. It was difficult to believe it had been a cycle since he had seen it, difficult to believe that within a few microts, she would be gone and--with luck--he would never see it again.
"They should have sent someone else," she said.
"Indeed."
She turned to go. When she reached the door, she looked back and said, "I volunteered because I needed you. . . I needed you to know the truth."
She did not understand that the truth made no difference.
"You may go," he told her. And she left.
***
When Sikozu returned to her transport pod, she sat on her cot and let the tears come, wondering if he had removed the transmitter at all, if he could hear her hiccuping now like a child. She wondered whether, if he could hear, he would think better of her. Or worse?
She wished he *could* put her into the Aurora Chair. Then maybe he would understand how little she had meant to betray him. But he would never understand.
