Lagoonfire, page 6
My heart sank, but I rallied. What I couldn’t share with Ateni today, I could share with him before the month was out. Maybe by then the charges against him would even be dropped. I started filling out the form and immediately hit a roadblock.
“It says prisoner number,” I said. “But I don’t know his prisoner number.”
“Name?” the officer queried.
“M-mine, or his?”
“His, of course.”
“Ateni, Ninin Ateni.” Had the room’s cooling system quit? My skin prickled with heat. I had the sense that everyone else in the room was staring at me, but I refused to glance back and see.
“Ohhhhh.” The officer drew out the syllable, a long exhale. Now he was standing, gazing down at me avidly. “You’re that Ministry of Divinities functionary.” Without taking his eyes off me, he spoke into his unicom. “Captain Lotuk, you won’t believe who walked in here. Ninin’s confederate, the one that woman at Divinities swore up and down had nothing to do with him. She wants to see him!” He couldn’t stop staring at my Ministry badge. “How’d you pull it off, Ms. Jowa?” he asked, emphasizing the family name, eyes narrowed. Sweat ran down my back beneath the twisted cable of my hair.
“It’s Manu,” I croaked. “Manu Sae.”
He barked a laugh. “Sure. I’d change my name, too.”
By then the narrow door at the far side of the wall had opened, and a woman, whom I realized must be Captain Lotuk, had joined us.
“Hello, Ms. Manu,” she said. “It’s good of you to come in.”
“I’m not ‘coming in,’” I said, taking a step backward, “I just wanted to see Mr. Ninin. I’ll just finish filling this out and be on my way.”
“Relax,” Captain Lotuk said. “You can see him right now—how would that be?”
“Are you detaining me?” I whispered.
“Captain!” the officer at the high desk exclaimed, clearly eager to offer his opinion on the topic, but Captain Lotuk raised a long-fingered hand, and he said not another word. She hadn’t turned her attention from me the whole time, and now, without answering my question, she beckoned me through the door and into the interior of Civil Order’s West Ward offices.
We walked down a narrow corridor with numbered doors on either side, then took a lift down a floor, maybe several floors, exited, turned a corner—and then Captain Lotuk was opening a door to a small office very much like Decommissioner Five’s, with binders lining shelves along a side wall and a desk supporting a database access console and piles of folders and loose papers.
“Have a seat,” the captain said, indicating a chair on one side of the desk and making her way to the other side. Seemingly out of nowhere she drew a pitcher of water and lemon slices, along with a cup. She filled it and passed it to me. It was a relief to drink—cool and refreshing. When I set the cup down it was empty.
“I’m not detaining you,” she said. “But I thought we’d have a brief chat before I let you see Mr. Ninin.”
I nodded. She had the same air of authority as Five, but she was taller and longer limbed. And like the officer in the reception hall, her hair was no more than a fine dark fuzz following the contours of her skull.
“You really seem to have made something of your life,” Captain Lotuk said, her eyes traveling to my Ministry badge.
“I… Thank you.”
“Children of parents like yours generally come to no good,” she said. “But you’re the exception.”
What could I say to that? I lowered my eyes, focused on the droplets of water condensing on the pitcher, now out of reach on the other side of the desk.
“Would you say you’re a happy person? A loyal citizen of the Polity?”
“Yes!” I said, looking up.
Captain Lotuk’s brow wrinkled. “So why have you suddenly decided to befriend an undesirable like Mr. Ninin? Someone like you, I’d think the last thing you’d want to do is jeopardize the life you’ve made for yourself, against all odds.”
“He’s not an undesirable! I-I mean, he’s, he’s—” He’s a teacher, I wanted to say. He’s helping people out in the workforce broaden their horizons. He’s curious; he cares about the truth. But then there was the fact that he had sneaked back onto Daybreak Ventures’ property after being banned, that he’d removed artifacts without permission. To save them, to be sure, but in Captain Lotuk’s eyes it would still be theft. It was still theft.
“He’s a retrogressivist and a vandal who caused significant damage to a major development project. It’s only luck that no one was hurt,” Captain Lotuk supplied, when I didn’t finish my sentence.
“He didn’t do it, and you know it!” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, and now my heart leapt up to follow. What had I done? I crossed my arms against my stomach, bracing myself.
“I don’t know that at all,” Captain Lotuk said mildly. “Are you suggesting someone else placed explosives there?”
“I just mean—if explosives were used, then why was the Ministry of Divinities contacted? Why were we asked to look into it?”
“There does seem to have been some bureaucratic miscommunication there,” Captain Lotuk acknowledged.
I highly doubted it was a matter of miscommunication. If explosives had truly been involved, there would have been no reason whatsoever to contact the Ministry of Divinities. But the Ministry had been contacted. The story of explosives had come later. But why?
If Captain Lotuk was going to insist that explosives had caused the damage, I couldn’t contradict her. She was watching me expectantly.
“Whatever happened, Mr. Ninin couldn’t have had anything to do with it. He didn’t even know about it—he was horrified when I mentioned it,” I said at last.
“Do you have any other candidates for the culprit?” she asked—pleasantly, as if she were asking for dessert suggestions for a commemorative banquet. And then, in the same tone, “Are you involved, Ms. Manu? Are you maybe the instigator? Some kind of long-game revenge for a perceived injustice?”
I felt it like a physical blow.
“No! No, of course not! I was assigned this case, I—”
Captain Lotuk interrupted me, her brow wrinkled again. “Am I recalling correctly that you were assigned because of concern that a decommissioned god might be involved? One you decommissioned? But you botched the job, somehow? And by interesting coincidence, he was one of the deities worshiped by the population subject to the Sweet Harbor Relocation Initiative, some decades back? People were willing to massacre innocents over that, back in the day, as you’re aware—I apologize for touching on a painful topic.”
An overwhelming nausea gripped me.
“I need a bathroom,” I choked out.
“Of course, of course. I’ll take you. But do answer me first: are you involved?”
“No!” And then I retched. Fortunately, I hadn’t eaten anything that day, or the papers on Captain Lotuk’s desk would have suffered. She appeared unruffled.
“There, there,” she said, stepping to my side and helping me stand. “Let’s get you to the bathroom. We’ll talk again another time.” Then, into her unicom, “Have Mr. Ninin brought to C4.”
She led me to a bathroom, where I rinsed out my mouth, splashed my face, and retwisted and fastened my hair. She smiled blandly when I came out. We continued down a corridor to a cluster of doors. An officer stood sentry by one. As Captain Lotuk approached, he opened it. She stepped aside, but I hung back.
“Go on,” she said, as if to a small child. I stepped in.
It was a tiny box of a room, completely empty except for three stools, two in the center of the room and one in the corner right by the door. Ateni, dressed in gruel-colored prisoners’ garb and with his hands restrained, sat hunched up on one. At the sight of me, his eyes widened.
“Have a seat.” Captain Lotuk indicated the stool next to his. She settled herself on the stool by the door.
“You’re staying in the room?” I asked.
“Yes.” Another bland smile.
I climbed onto the stool next to Ateni.
“What’s going on?” he asked, in a low voice that wasn’t quite a whisper. “Why are you here?”
“It’s strange, isn’t it,” Captain Lotuk put in from her perch in the corner. “A complete stranger until yesterday, and yet she’s visiting you here! Few lifelong friends would be that devoted.”
Ateni scowled at her, and the frown remained when he turned back to me.
I cleared my throat. “I just wanted to tell you that you were right,” I began. I licked my lips, swallowed. “About the knots, the Laloran-morna knots. They are from before. The other Sweet Harbor gods confirmed it. Your theory was correct. And there’s more—there was a garden, and…”
For a moment Ateni straightened and his eyes lit up, but the brightness faded as quickly as a struck match.
“That’s good to know,” he said. Then, bitterly, “Maybe I can write a paper—a decade or half-decade from now, when I’m done with rehabilitation and reeducation.”
“Don’t talk that way,” I said. “If the real cause of the flooding comes to light, they’ll release you. And it will come to light.” There was so much more I wanted to say, but not with Captain Lotuk sitting right there. For a brief moment I wondered about that. Why was she in the room with us? Surely all visits were audiovisually recorded anyway—why be physically present?
Ateni was shaking his head. “They have it in for me. Because of a box of fireworks at my apartment.”
“Fireworks?” I echoed, confused. “Like for—”
“Like for First Harvest Festival,” he said, an edge to his voice. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, blinked. I realized that not only were his hands restrained, but that the restraint was fastened at his waist. If his eyes were itching or hurting, he couldn’t rub them.
“Are those the explosives you’re talking about?” I demanded, swiveling round to face Captain Lotuk. “Are you saying Daybreak Ventures was attacked with fireworks?”
“It’s a known retrogressivist method: disassemble fireworks and use the powder to create a larger device.”
“Lots of people have fireworks,” I said. Before I’d been sweating; now I was beginning to shiver. “If you were going to detain everyone who has fireworks—”
“Yes, lots of people have fireworks, and they keep track of where they purchase them, as required by law. But Mr. Ninin here can’t recall where he bought his. Now maybe that’s because they’re not really his. Perhaps he’s holding them for a friend, and that’s the person I should be asking for a sales record. But Mr. Ninin says no, the fireworks are his own. And yet”—she shrugged—“he doesn’t have a sales record and can’t recall where he bought them!”
I looked to Ateni for some sign of what all this meant, but he was staring fixedly at the floor near the base of my stool.
“Perhaps now you realize, Ms. Manu, that an afternoon’s acquaintance isn’t really enough for an assessment of a person’s character,” Captain Lotuk observed, and then, addressing Ateni, she said, “But you’re as much misled as misleading, Mr. Ninin. You never even learned the name of your surprising advocate, did you. Ninin Ateni, meet Manu Sae, born Jowa Sae. She’s the daughter of Jowa Fen and Manu Nakra, the Fifteen Breezes Relocation Center bombers. Her parents killed your parents.”
At this Ateni looked up, shock and disbelief overspreading his face, his eyes seeking mine.
“It’s the truth; she won’t deny it,” Captain Lotuk told him gently. Then she hopped down from her stool and clapped her hands, whereupon the officer outside opened the door. “We’re finished for today,” she said. “Think on what I told you earlier, Mr. Ninin. Contrition and confession are good for the spirit. Ms. Manu, come with me. Officer, please take Mr. Ninin back to holding.”
“Why did you tell him that?” I cried, trotting to keep up with Captain Lotuk’s quick strides. I tried to catch a last glimpse of Ateni over my shoulder, but the muscular form of the Civil Order officer blocked all but the back of his head from view.
“Doesn’t he deserve to know?” returned Captain Lotuk. “You’re asking him to trust you, making him promises, and you haven’t even told him your name! He’ll be much better off if he takes responsibility for the Daybreak Ventures incident and gets rehabilitated.”
“But he didn’t do it!”
“You still don’t think so? Even though you know he was keeping explosives at his apartment? Think about it for a moment.”
I did. Was it possible that the Ministry really had been contacted in error, and explosives really had been used? And could Ateni—who, as the captain pointed out, I didn’t really know anything about—have planted them? Could he have been feigning horror when I told him about the flooding? And was the story of Laloran-morna and Goblet unrelated to the incident?
Captain Lotuk smiled into my silence. “Thank you for coming in, Ms. Manu.” She opened the door to the reception hall, but I didn’t move.
“If I find the real culprit, will you let Mr. Ninin go?” I asked.
Her smile deepened, but she said nothing.
“If he didn’t do it, you’d have no reason to keep him, right?” I pressed, and when she still didn’t respond, I added, “It’s heterodox to detain the innocent.”
Captain Lotuk’s smile evaporated. “Everyone is guilty of something. If you give me the least grounds, I’ll have you brought back here. So watch yourself. Goodbye now.” With a light but firm touch, she propelled me through the door and shut it.
I was aware of heads turning as I made my way past the ranks of benches, and as I reached the entrance doors, I realized several people were following me.
There was the elderly crossing guard and a man in a gardener’s smock who stood proprietorially close to her. There was a young woman in a sanitary worker’s coveralls, and a pale-skinned, middle-aged man whose right arm hung unresponsively at his side.
“Did you see Professor Ninin?” the crossing guard asked, palms pressed together in supplication. “Is he all right? We’re so worried about him.”
“He w-would never do anything w-wrong,” the middle-aged man said. “It’s g-got to be some kind of…” his mouth twisted for a moment “m-mistake.”
“He’s the best teacher I ever had,” declared the sanitary worker.
“I did. I did see him,” I said. Their anxious faces wrung my heart. “He’s…” It was no good; I couldn’t lie about his situation or state of mind, so I changed direction. “He’s lucky to have such devoted students. Having people stand by you at times like this helps.”
“We all got summoned for questioning,” the sanitary worker said, scowling. “But they haven’t even called us yet. It’s taking forever—we’re going to lose a whole day’s pay.”
“And they won’t tell us anything,” the crossing guard said. Then, hopefully, “Are you an advocate?”
“No Kavia,” said the gardener. “Don’t you see the badge? That’s Ministry of Divinities.”
The crossing guard’s face fell. “Oh! Oh yes, I see. I beg your pardon.”
“That’s quite all right. I want to help Mr. Ninin—Professor Ninin—if I can.”
“Osh Kavia!” barked the officer at the front of the reception hall.
“That’s me!” said the crossing guard, wide-eyed. “It’s my turn.”
“We’ll go up together,” said the gardener, slipping his arm through hers.”
“T-Tren’s come out,” said the middle-aged man, pointing with his good hand to the door I’d come through moments earlier. The little group returned to the front of the hall, the gardener escorting the crossing guard to the high desk and the other two heading for their classmate.
I pushed the heavy front doors open. The scent of steaming asphalt and vehicle emissions greeted me, with other odors threading through the humid air—tobacco, garbage, perfume. There must have been a cloudburst while I’d been inside: the gutters hemming the streets were tiny rushing rivers, and the vehicles’ wheels hissed over the sheen of water that couldn’t be channeled away.
I checked my unicom and found a message from Ms. Bama. Laloran-morna was back at home. I did some quick mental calculations, then sent her a message saying to expect company and approximately when. Then I sent a message to Nakona, the only one of the retired Sweet Harbor gods who has the knack for using a unicom. “Can you reserve a boat for moon viewing tonight?” I recorded. “For Lolo. Send the others to fetch him. His Compassionate Care attendant will help you.”
What about you? Aren’t you coming? she sent back. It pained me not to answer, but I couldn’t. Instead, I headed briskly for the nearest stop where I could catch a bus back to the Ministry—and quickly became aware of the slap of rubber sandals on wet pavement behind me, faster when I picked up my pace, slower when I slackened.
I wheeled round and found myself face-to-face with a weedy, sullen-faced man, maybe in his late twenties, in threadbare trousers with frayed cuffs, wearing an unbuttoned shirt like a jacket and nothing else up top.
“What do you want?” I asked, as aggressively and haughtily as I could manage.
The man took a step back, and for a moment I thought he might run. Instead he narrowed his eyes and thrust his skinny chest forward. “You talked to the Civies,” he said. “You wanted to see Ateni—and they let you.”
“What business is that of yours?
“He’s my foster brother. Always looked after me.” The man glowered, then muttered, “He’s in trouble because of me.”
I crossed my arms. “Let me guess. The fireworks in his apartment are yours.”
“Yeah, but I swear they’re legit! I have the sales papers! I was going to rent a cart, sell festival stuff, you know? Toys and decorations and fireworks, all that stuff—but the rental fell through. I didn’t make a bomb!” He glanced back toward Civil Order’s offices.
“Neither did Ateni,” I said, “but your fireworks in his apartment aren’t helping his case any. You should bring in the papers—at least it would clear up that part of his charge.”
“No way. I already had my chat with them, but I didn’t tell them nothing. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.’ That’s the only tune I’m singing.”
