Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) (13 page)

“Please, Benton,” Jericho said with a hand raised in
tempered irritation, “enough with the archeo-slang.”

Benton rolled his pink eyes and sighed. “Judging by the EM
field pouring off him, he’s augmented—a lot,” he said deliberately, his unique
‘accent’ disappearing to be replaced with an altogether unidentifiable, yet
thoroughly bland, one. “I don’t know exactly how much we’re talking about, but
this level is way beyond a local thug-for-hire’s means.”

“More machine than man?” Jericho pressed as he gave hardly a
glance at the screens before opening up his own pasta and devouring it.

“It’s possible,” Benton admitted, and Masozi examined the
images carefully as she recalled meeting the man in Chief Afolabi’s office.
“But regardless of how much gear he’s packing beneath the surface, the fact
that there’s no record of him ever existing suggests…”

The two shared a meaningful look and Jericho nodded before
devouring another bite of the ridiculously tempting pasta. Masozi had been
limiting her protein intake—the shrimp was actually more pure protein than she
had allowed herself in a week—but she simply could not resist the certain-to-be
delicious pasta.

She hesitated briefly before turning and saying, “I have ‘a’
name for him.”

The two men looked at her in surprise.
“Really?”
Benton asked with narrowed eyes in his prior, over-the-top accent.
“And just how you be comin’ by this information, shorty?”

“He was working with my Chief—Chief Investigator Afolabi,”
she amended quickly. “I didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight it seems
so obvious…they were checking to see if I would pose a threat to their plans.”

“Details,” Jericho said, putting his box of pasta down as
his interest was clearly piqued, “what exactly did they say—the
precise
words?”

She closed her eyes and tried to recall the conversation.
When it came to remembering visual events, or even cataloguing information in
her mind—information like account numbers, names, locations, and timelines—her
brain was a finely-tuned machine. But recalling spoken conversations had always
been a particular weakness of hers. “He said his name was Stiglitz, and he
claimed to be from the IIU—the Interplan—“

“Interplanetary Investigations Unit,” Jericho interrupted, “
don’t
clarify; just stay with the conversation.”

“Right,” she said somewhat embarrassedly, having recalled
only after he interrupted her that she had impatiently requested several
witnesses do the same during her career’s many investigations. “Ok…he said he
was with IIU, his name was Stiglitz, and that they were interested in offering
me a post in the IIU if I would assist in their investigation.”

“Go on,” Jericho pressed after a few seconds’ pause.

The details were difficult for her to recall, so she closed
her eyes again and began saying whatever came to mind. “They didn’t trust me,
but I thought it was because they were holding something back and weren’t
certain I would keep the information
secure
.” She bit
her lip as the overpowering smell of Casa Mia pasta flowed through her nostrils
and broke her concentration,
then
she remembered a
look Afolabi and Stiglitz had shared and her eyes popped open. “They were
surprised…or maybe not surprised…” she shook her head, as the word escaped her.
“They were
disappointed
,” she finally managed to bite out, “when I
objected to their characterizations of the Timent Electorum and its role in our
society.”

Jericho nodded slowly as the hint of a smirk danced around
his lips. “Can you remember anything else?” he asked after a few moments of
silence.

In fact, Masozi had remembered something important. “They
said they doubted the insignia you…” the word caught in her throat as she stole
a glance at Jericho, who merely looked at her impassively—which did nothing to
assuage her mounting trepidation. “They suggested that the T.E. insignia you
left at the mayor’s office was not genuine.”

Jericho’s brow rose briefly before he snorted under his
breath. “It’s called a Mark of Adjustment,” he said offhandedly, “not an
‘insignia’.” He turned to Benton, who appeared to be paying their conversation
little mind, “Are you certain it was authentic?”

Benton nodded dismissively, “No chance it was a fake, boss
man. That Mark was legit as can be.”

Masozi’s brow scrunched up as she took the last box of pasta
from the table and began to dig into its contents, which were a kind of ravioli
half-covered in a butter-cream sauce she had only ever seen on gourmet cooking
vids and half-covered in a more conventional tomato-based sauce. “What are you
talking about? How could a ‘Mark’ be faked?”

Jericho and Benton shared a look—a look that was
disturbingly similar to the one which Afolabi and Stiglitz had shared the night
before, and she felt herself chilled to the bone at the similarity. “About
three years ago,” Jericho began with a short sigh, “an Adjustment was made on a
magister named Dukane out on the Skylark colony. Everything was done within
established protocols, and the Adjustment was verified according to the two
century old system we’ve used since the first Adjustment.”

Masozi recalled the case, since it had been caused a media
frenzy surrounding on the discovery of disturbing evidence at the crime scene.
The case itself had involved Magister Dukane secretly holding a significant
share of stock in a corporation which had been losing market share to a
competitor’s firm, a firm which had been founded by a pair of men named Seeton
and Crain. Dukane had manipulated the timing and sequence of events by having
Seeton sequestered during the unveiling of their latest model drive units.
Crain had failed spectacularly in the ensuing press conference, and public
confidence in his and Seeton’s company vanished overnight.

Obviously, Dukane’s company had profited massively from
their competitor’s downfall, so it had come as no surprise when the T.E.
revealed they had been behind the death of the corrupt magister. None of the
material facts of the case had been disputed in the aftermath.

“The problem wasn’t with the Adjustment itself, but with the
Mark,” Jericho explained as the bank of screens lining the wall switched over
to show data pertinent to that case. Masozi doubted she could have called that
much information up with a day’s time, and Benton appeared to have done so in a
matter of minutes. She could finally comprehend just why individuals like him
were so dangerous to society: with supposedly secure information at his
fingertips, he would be ahead of even the people who were sent to pursue him.

“It was a forgery,” Benton agreed as he expanded the view of
the item itself—an apparently exact copy of the one Masozi had seen on
Cantwell’s desk. “But not just any forgery,” he added with a hint of
appreciation in his voice, “this one was made using the
exact
blueprints
and specs of the real thing, right down to sourcing materials from the same
supplier as the originals.”

“But I thought,” Masozi said with a furrowed brow, “that the
Marks were merely a way to present the evidence justifying
an…
Adjustment?”
she said, lingering on the last word after she said it. It was such a cold,
calculating term for what amounted to little more than a publicly sanctioned
assassination.

Jericho nodded. “That is one of their purposes,” he allowed,
“but they’re also the way an Adjuster officially receives the contract in the
first place.”

Before Masozi could question any further, a blue light began
to strobe beneath the hemisphere of monitors hanging above Benton’s bed.

“Casting off in two minutes,” Benton reported between bites
of his pasta, and Masozi decided to finally indulge her curiosity and take a
bite of the meal.

If the salad had been better than sex, then the pasta might
have been better than solving a case. She tried to pace herself, but before too
many minutes had passed she had finished the entire box—and immediately
regretted her gluttony as she felt her stomach protest at its overfilled state.

Jericho stood from his chair and moved to the side of Benton’s
bed opposite Masozi. “You’ve got more questions, but you have to prove
something before I can give you the answers,” he said as he held out a data
pad.

She accepted the pad warily, acutely aware that she was
becoming swept up in the events but finding herself nearly overwhelmed by the
fantastic situation. She glanced at the pad and saw a series of opinion
articles, homemade video clips, and dozens of other amateur media pieces. She
could see no rhyme or reason behind any of it, but she was intrigued all the
same.

“You find the message buried in that content,” he said with
a tilt of his head toward the pad, “and I can answer your next round of
questions. But you’d better get started since you’ve only got nineteen days.”
Jericho then turned and made his way to the door which led down to the lower
two ‘floors’ of the cubical container.

“Why should I do any of this?” she demanded tersely as she
waved the pad to indicate the entire room. She truly despised people thinking
they understood her—especially people who had literally known her for less than
a day!—and she found her temper flaring at his continued dismissal of her
choice in the matter. “Even if you are who you say you are, you’ve all but
admitted to committing multiple murders—and, regardless of what my superiors
might have said today, I
am
an Investigator whose primary caseload
consists of murder investigations.” She took a step toward Jericho as he
stopped at the threshold of the door and looked at her over his shoulder. “When
I work a case, I
never
fail to make the collar,” she said icily.

Jericho snickered softly. “Investigator,” he said evenly as
he turned away and took a step through the door, “I promise you that if, after
breaking the code on that pad, you still want to march me down to the nearest
station and book me…I’ll give you the chance to do just that. But until then, I
suggest you get to work.”

With that, he disappeared through the door and left Masozi
standing there with impotent fury coursing through every fiber of her being.

She heard Benton chuckling and she whirled to face him.
“What is so funny?” she demanded hotly.

The mound of blubber and skin which comprised his torso was
wracked with a series of rippling perturbations which somehow managed to make
him appear even more disgusting. “He used the ‘grilled cheese sandwich’ line on
you, didn’t he?” he said with more than a hint of sympathy before sighing.

Masozi was taken aback by his inference and it must have
showed on her face, because Benton nodded shortly before returning his attention
to the array of screens above his bed.

“Settle in, girlfriend,” he said with a gesture to one of
the cots, “it’s gonna be a long trip. But one thing you’ll learn about Jericho
is that he’s a man of his word; you crack that code and he’ll do as he says.”

There was the distant sound of a massive horn blowing, and
Masozi realized it must have been the seafaring vessel’s castoff alert. She
looked down at the pad in her hands and took a short breath before making her
way to the cot and examining the seemingly endless stream of data.

It turned out that the stream of data was, effectively,
endless. After examining it for nearly a week—during which time Benton and
Jericho barely said a word to each other, and neither said even a single word
to Masozi.

Eve had made several attempts to interact with her, but
Masozi had politely declined each such advance. The re-programmed hover drone’s
overt sexuality was more offensive to Masozi than she had expected it to be.
That irritation may have been more related to her being locked inside the cargo
container without leaving for even the occasional breath of fresh air, but
Masozi well-and-truly did find Eve’s personality more pathetic than she could
tolerate for more than a few minutes at a time.

Eve had, however, brought a set of real clothing for Masozi
to wear. It was not a precise fit, but she gladly changed into it at the first
opportunity. Without that wretched bodyglove clinging to her in all the wrong
places, she felt more like
herself—
and considerably
less exposed.

On the eighth day of researching the seemingly random files,
Masozi finally thought she found what she had been meant to uncover.

Buried in the thousands upon thousands of items on the data
pad, she found a correlation between the dates of each entry and several nouns
which were placed prominently—which were often suspiciously mis-capitalized—and
they began to form a kind of vocabulary.

Another three days of research—during which time they drank
plain water and ate nutrient bars, which was fine with Masozi in general but
the lack of variety was beginning to wear thin on her—produced a rudimentary
message which she triple-checked to verify its contents. Once she was certain
she had done so, she went to Jericho and handed him the pad. She was
interrupting his usual routine of calisthenics—a routine which Masozi had
observed with more than a passing interest.

He stopped in the middle of a set of push-ups and took the
pad from her wordlessly before examining its contents and handing it back to
her. “That’s a start,” he said evenly as he rolled his neck around, eliciting
several audible cracks, “now tell me what it means.”

“They’re the names of various magistrates, barristers, and
even a few non-professionals with what seem to be notarial privileges,” she
said shortly. “Each name has a date and an alphanumeric—
which
I can’t decipher—attached to it. So far I’ve found seventeen of them.”

Jericho nodded approvingly as he keyed in a sequence of
commands to the pad before handing it back to her. “You’ve got questions,” he
said, rather than asked, “and I promised to answer some more of them.”

“How is any of this related to where we’re going?” she asked
measuredly, having considered the question carefully.

Jericho rolled his shoulders and removed his exercise shirt,
and for the first time Masozi saw a cluster of scars over the left side of his
chest—one of which appeared to have been made quite recently. “Those are over a
year old, so the only value they hold is as a primer to one of our many methods
of communication. Essentially,” he said as he stretched his calves against a
nearby wall, “whenever an Adjuster receives an Adjustment to carry out, that
Adjuster has to find a minimum quantity of evidence supporting the popular
request’s validity. The vast majority of requested Infectus Adjustments never
take place,” he explained as he winced after moving his leg awkwardly. He
gritted his teeth and continued, “Since most officials who actually
are
corrupt
are too good at covering their tracks.”

“I’m sorry, ‘Infectus Adjustments’?” she repeated.

Jericho nodded shortly. “You’ve seen the three phrases on
the Mark of Adjustment,” he said, as though it explained everything.

And after a moment, she realized that it probably did. “Ure
Infectus,” she repeated after recalling the image of the Mark on Mayor
Cantwell’s desk.

“Burn the Corrupted,” he said by way of translation as he
began to stretch his arms over his head. “Ultimately, Infectus Adjustments are
what the Timent Electorum does more than anything else. But it’s not enough to
prove that a public official is corrupt; there are several criteria which need
to be met before an Adjustment can take place.”

“You keep calling them that,” Masozi interrupted, “you say
‘Adjustments’ when you’re really talking about simple assassinations.”

“There’s nothing simple about an Adjustment,” he retorted in
a tone that was both unyielding and somehow sympathetic. “And while some T.E.
Adjusters
are
often little better than shackled assassins—including some
of the ‘best’ of us, if I’m being totally honest,” he added darkly, “most of us
don’t do this for the license to kill.” He snorted derisively, “There’s too
much paperwork, for one thing, and for another our finances are strictly regulated
once we take up the cause.”

Hearing him speak of what he did as though it was little
more than another form of law enforcement was both fascinating and disturbing.
Masozi had, like everyone else on Virgin, learned the importance of keeping
powerful officials in check. And the truth was
,
the
record of human history showed that something like the Timent Electorum passage
in their Bill of Rights was the only proven method to prevent wholesale
oppression of a society.

“We’re just tools, Investigator,” Jericho said as he began
to wipe the sweat from his body. When he had matted his torso off, he picked up
the data pad and handed it back to her, “And you’re not quite finished yet.”

She cocked an eyebrow incredulously before looking down at
the pad and seeing a whole slew of official documents, including tax filings,
purchase receipts, bank records, and a whole host of other documents. She
nearly gasped when she saw the name at the top of the file before breathing,
“Mayor Cantwell.”

“That’s his Adjustment record,” Jericho nodded gravely. “And
by showing it to you I’m committing an epic breach of protocol, but I thought a
gesture of good faith on my part was called for. Given the circumstances,” he
added dryly, “you’ve been pretty sporting about all of this.”

She scanned through the documents and found several alarming
connections in just a few minutes’ time. Apparently, Mayor Cantwell had
received a truly massive bribe from the PHL—the Professional Hammerball
League—which amounted to nearly one hundred million credits. It was a
staggering sum and the more she read, the more she realized just how corrupt he
had actually been.

“You begin to get a true picture of the man you, yourself,
voted for three times,” Jericho said offhandedly.

“How do you know…” she began, only to realize that with
people like Benton working with—or, perhaps,
for
—him, there was very
little information that Jericho would be unable to access.

“All it would take is one look at your file to know
everything there is to know about you, Investigator,” he said a bit more coldly
than she would have liked. “Do you think those surveys you’ve been forced to
fill out every day of your adult life aren’t logged somewhere? And do you
think,” he added with a lopsided grin, “that there’s any way to keep a man like
Benton from breaking into that log if the price is right? A person with that
information would know more about you than anyone—including you.”

Masozi stiffened, feeling as though she had been somehow
violated but, oddly, also feeling less than surprised about it. There were
comedians who made very good livings criticizing the nature of life on Virgin,
specifically regarding the role of government in its citizen’s daily lives, so
she supposed the idea had already taken root somewhere in her subconscious. “And
you’ve read my ‘file’,” she concluded bitterly.

Jericho shook his head and chuckled softly. “I didn’t need
to; I just guessed your voting pattern based on your line of work and
departmental affiliation—he ran ninety four percent approval with New Lincoln
law enforcement,” he explained with an indifferent shrug. “But to answer your
question specifically, no,” he said seriously, “I didn’t read
your
file—and neither did Benton—which is why my revealing
any
of this to you
is a sizeable risk on our parts. Five minutes with your file would have removed
any trace of doubt from my mind as to how you would respond to all of this,” he
gestured to the chamber with a wave of his arm, “but you’re not in need of
Adjustment, so it would have been wrong of me to violate your privacy like
that.”

Masozi was actually more surprised by his admission—and the
apparent veracity of it—than she was about anything else he had revealed in
this, their longest, conversation.

“That file,” Jericho said, pointed to the data pad emphatically,
“shows that eighty five million credits were confirmed to have been transferred
into off-world accounts which were verified by five, wholly independent,
officers of the court. The evidence provided therein satisfied, to their
impartial and unbiased judgment, a degree of reasonable certainty which in turn
satisfied the criteria for Adjustment. Hence,” he said as he pulled a new shirt
over his head, and Masozi stole a glance at his truly remarkable
physique—especially for a mundane, well-past-his-physical-prime, man of his
age, “the scene in Cantwell’s office—a scene which your former boss is now
attempting to blame on you.”

The reminder that her boss had betrayed her still stung her
deeply, but she forced the rising tide of emotion which accompanied that
particular memory. “Even if Cantwell accepted the bribe,” she said hesitantly,
hoping to change the subject, “who decides the threshold for ‘Adjustment’?”

Jericho nodded approvingly. “That’s the right question. I’ll
assume you’re more or less familiar with our Sector’s financial system, wherein
each year a thorough census is taken and factors like life expectancy, overall
economic output, and thousands of other variables are computed to provide that
year’s credit value?”

Masozi nodded. It had been one of the founding principles
which all of the worlds in the Sector had agreed to following the wormhole
collapse. “The Sector-wide average life must be valued at one million credits’
worth of productivity, and the formula keeps the numbers more-or-less in line,”
she said when it was clear he expected her to do so. “This minimizes the
possibility for economic manipulation by exchanging currencies unscrupulously,
and exerts free market forces on the various industries of the Sector.”

“Right, it does do that,” he agreed almost reluctantly, “but
it
also
defines the value of a human life.”

Masozi had held several debates in school regarding this
very issue and, while she had never been wholly convinced that the moral
implications were as he was suggesting, even she had to admit that it was a
reasonably valid way to interpret the data.

“Once we have that number,” he explained, “we can determine
the damage a person’s actions cause society. As you are no doubt aware, we use
this number in sentencing guidelines for convicted criminals, among other
things.”

“Yes,” Masozi allowed slowly, “it’s one of our founding
principles: the punishment should always be determined based on the severity of
the crime. This ensures impartiality.”

Jericho snorted at her last, but made no comment. “To make a
long story short, we use the same basic criteria for determining whether an
Adjustment should be instigated.” He pointed to the data slate, “Mayor
Cantwell’s corruption cost his constituents roughly two billion credits in
economic and industrial damages when the Anvil came to New Lincoln. He allowed
the PHL to disrupt the city’s industry, economy, and—potentially the worst of
all—its morale without securing fair recompense for the citizens who elected
him.” Jericho shook his head piteously, “And he did it all for an eighty five
million credit payoff, of which he could only hope to see half after laundering
and securing the funds. His actions created enough suspicion on the part of his
constituents—the only group’s opinion that matters in an Adjustment—that an
Adjustment was instigated and, ultimately, executed.”

“But that money wasn’t truly ‘lost’,” Masozi argued in spite
of her general inclination to agree with Jericho’s stated reasoning behind
Cantwell’s assassination. “If what you’re showing me is factual then the PHL
simply profited at New Lincoln’s expense, but ultimately the money didn’t
disappear—it just changed hands.”

Jericho shook his head slowly, as though he had participated
in this precise conversation a hundred times. “The PHL didn’t elect Cantwell,
though—neither did the many thousands of entities who benefited from his
corruption,” he said pointedly. “The people who suffered were his voters—the
very people whose interests he sword to protect and, if possible, advance. His
actions cost those voters literally two thousand human lifetimes of
productivity—that’s two thousand people who are now functionally enslaved to
interests over which they have little or no control.” He folded his arms over
his broad, muscular chest and asked, “Can you think of a better reason to
execute a man than him enslaving the very people who depended on him to protect
their collective livelihood?”

Masozi had already concluded much of what he had just said, and
found that she fundamentally agreed with his assessment. But that had not been
the point of pushing him to explain the situation—hearing him
compose
the defense, and watching him for nonverbal cues
while he did so, had been the object of the conversation.

“So what about the PHL?” she asked after a moment, and
Jericho nodded approvingly. “What does the T.E. do to them?”

“
We
do nothing to them,” he said pointedly. “They
were merely attempting to advance their private agenda; if we
Adjusted
each enterprising entity which sought to exploit
every possible advantage—including bribing public officials to gain
preferential treatment—our economy would stall and everything that depends on
it would crumble in little more than a generation. Let the bureaucrats fight
the corporations in the courts—I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”