“Stop calling me that,” I snapped, still mystified as to how he knew. “I meant to ask who it was that brought you here.”
“The song.”
“But—”
He shook his head as much as he could in the restraint system. “Been hearing the song for a long time.”
“But—” I was distracted by a nurse entering. The man walked over to my bed, smiled down at me, and adjusted some arcane diagnostic tool built into it. By the time I returned my attention to Renaud, he was gone, replaced by the madness that lurks in all Broken.
“Twenty-eight jumps before we broke,” Renaud said, launching into an incomprehensible tirade of filth. It was the last coherent thing he said that day.
The nurse went to fiddle with Renaud’s bed as he had mine. Renaud’s speech slowed, slurred, and eventually subsided into snores.
“Pardon me, Nurse,” I said, counting on my reputation for civility and, of course, generosity, to pave the way for me.
“Monsieur?” the nurse asked, bright, perky tone assuring me he knew who I was.
“Would you do me a great favor and tell me what you know of him?” I said, waving at my roommate.
The nurse nodded. “Renaud Foucault. Six years for attempted murder.”
“Why send him to a working colony?”
“His records indicate he was functional at trial. Even passed the psych examination.”
“Bullshit.”
“I thought so, too, but I saw the files myself. I can send it your way if you like,” he said, obviously on the make for more money.
“Yes, please.” I said it thinking someone had obviously played the system to get Foucault sent up the well. Even if it didn’t contain any useful information, I had deep pockets, and medical people were good friends to have.
There was no treatment for Broken, so he could not have been compos mentis at trial. Their minds were broken on a level we still did not fully comprehend, even hundreds of years after the invention of jump technology. We could condition minds to resist the brutal duality of a mind stretched, duplicated, and rewritten by the contortionist physics of interstellar jumps, but if that conditioning failed, we could not put minds broken by such stresses back together.
“And before that?” I asked of the still-waiting nurse, not wanting to think too much.
“From his tats, it looks like he was a member of the Merchant Navigators, but I don’t know if that’s what broke him.” The nurse shrugged. “Could have been later. Medical data from before Handover is difficult to find.”
“I see.” Such a lack of administrative tail was one of the many reasons I had chosen to move to Nouvelle Geneve in the first place.
“I will keep an eye out for anything else on him, if you like?”
“And send those trial records to me, please.”
“Sure.”
I got his name, thanked him, and assured him there would be a little something for him in the next packet. True to our unspoken contract, he saw to my comfort and left me to my thoughts.
As I drifted off to sleep, I resolved to keep an eye on the comings and goings of this particular Broken. Something odd was going on, and I sensed opportunity.
RELEASE
“Monsieur Borges, may I have a moment?”
I started, almost bumped my head against the locker. I had been so engrossed in a final check of my hardsuit I hadn’t heard anyone enter the morgue. I carefully put the thigh guard down, pasted a respectful smile on my face, and turned around.
When the warden asks, the smart inmate bloody well treats it as an order.
“Of course, Warden Tailleur,” I said, taking in the warden and his companion.
I had scarcely laid eyes on Tailleur since my arrival. We had made arrangements the first time we met. I did not offer a bribe. He did not demean us both by asking for one. We instead came to an understanding that was to our mutual