An Officer’s Duty (14 page)

(
If you keep interrupting to ask questions and make comments, this
will
take all night,
) Leona admonished the younger woman.

(
Skipping over the vast majority of the instances in which
she used her abilities with a broad, generalized statement of…of dismissal is a violation of procedure!
) Kaskalla argued.

(
In Ia’s case, since she
does
use her abilities near-constantly, examining each and every single instance on an individual basis would take as long as the entire span of time between her last probe and now,
) Ortuu retorted. (
Possibly longer.
)

(
Oh, for God’s sake,
) Ia muttered as Kaskalla marshalled her thoughts for another attack of procedures versus expediency. (
We don’t have
Time
for this.
)

The word dumped them onto the timeplains. A jerk hauled them up out of their individual timestreams. Kaskalla gasped, clutching at Ia’s hand. Metaphorically, she was dripping wet and shivering, more strongly affected by that brief dip into her own existence than any non-psychic. Ortuu and Leona, veterans of the inadvertent effect, merely waited for Ia to stabilize them.

“
Look
, you silly little rules lawyer,” Ia stated, impatience sharpening her tone. “
This
is why I can call upon
Johns and Mishka
with impunity. This is
Time
.” Thunder rolled at the word, washing across the endless sea of grass and streams. She zoomed them upward, making Kaskalla gasp and Leona sway. Ortuu blinked a little, but said nothing as Ia reshaped the timeplains into a sepia-toned chart on a wall, standing them in an amber-hued version of the same conference room their bodies still occupied. “Everything I do is so gods-be-damned
interconnected
with the future that it would take your mind literally a year to understand just how much I have to use my gifts every single day.

“Every single day, I spend hours sifting through the future possibilities and probabilities so that I can find the right path to ensure that the maximum number of sentient beings have the maximum possible chance at a good quality of life overall.” Releasing their hands in the vision, though not in reality, Ia tapped the chart of interbranching lines on the wall, thumping it to highlight each section in different colors as she spoke. “Do try to keep up?

“I have
one
shot at stopping the destruction of our galaxy three hundred years into the future. The Fire Girl Prophecies have already shown this coming invasion in the symbology of the great Wall. The physical source of that Wall is a Dysun’s Sphere filled with intergalactic locusts coming to devour the entire resources of the Milky Way. Since so many of the key
events needed to aim for that one shot will happen long after I’m dead and gone, I must seek out the key focal points and write precognitive directives for people to follow. The right people must be born at the right point in time, the right decisions made…and the wrong decisions and the wrong people must be carefully calculated and guarded against.

“Bump into the right person here,” she stated, thumping the tangle of lines so that some of them turned blue and streaked toward a star-shaped point on the far right of the map, “and two people will meet, fall in love, have the right kids who will go on to have more of the right kids, who will eventually befriend this person here,” Ia added, thumping another section which turned yellow, intersected with the blue lines, and formed green streaks toward the star as well, “who will provide the right focal moment for this line of people to have the right life-experiences to be in the perfect place and time to help
this
person, who will stop the coming invasion.

“But in order to get this yellow line to exist, I have to throw off this person here from their current path in life, or this entire branch vanishes, the blue doesn’t turn green, but instead goes purple, and poof, no Savior, no stopping the locusts, no Milky Way and no octillions of sentient lives still able to live free and enjoy their lives four hundred years from now,” Ia told her. “If throwing off that one life here at the start of the yellow path means killing that person, I’d say a ratio of one to octillions is worth the stain on my soul.

“But losing that life when it isn’t necessary is
also
a sin against the future. So I have to be damned sure that it’s the absolute best option…because if I can find another option which keeps that person alive and gives them a good quality of life without destroying the future for everyone else, then I
have
to find it.

“
That
is the only ethics I have to defend. Not deciding whether or not Mary and John should get married so that the blue line can be correctly formed with the right kids at the right time. That chain of events is relatively harmless and benign, compared to the fact that, elsewhere, I literally have to decide who lives and who dies.”

Ia eased back on the illustration, returning them to the timeplains.

“Your job is
not
to sit on your sanctimonious little butt debating the scale and scope of a problem beyond your meager comprehension.
Your
job is to make sure that
I
comprehend it, and am doing my best to sufficiently agonize ethically over the worst of my decisions before following through on any choices I must make,” Ia finished tartly.

“Even the laws of physics can seemingly be bent, though never broken,” Leona said as Ia finished, unruffled by the rapid changes in venues. “So, too, can the laws of ethics. This woman
is
one of the most ethical, honorable beings in the known universe. She has proven it consistently time and again in these ethics sessions.”

“What if she told you that you had to die? And by her hand?” Kaskalla argued. “What if she said she had to
kill
you?”

“Having already examined her and her ethics several times over the years, I would know she had already spent untold hours agonizing over the decision, searching for any other possible way to avoid such a fate,” Leona replied calmly.

“And you’d just…accept it?” Kaskalla asked, clearly bewildered by that thought.

“Would you run into a burning building with children trapped inside? Would you do it knowing you would probably die in the attempt to save them?” Ortuu asked mildly. “But still knowing they
needed
to be saved?”

“Well…”

“It’s the same thing,” the priest dismissed, flicking his hand. “The only difference is that Ia asks it of everyone, not just of herself. You should know these things, being an ordained priestess of the Witan Order. The vast majority of known sentientkind, all the races of the Alliance, believe in certain principles of kindness, compassion, and cooperation. These are the trademarks of sentient civilizations, however disparate we may be in physiology. A Dlmvla is as likely to rush into a burning building to save its progeny as any Gatsugi or Human.”

“Yes, but we don’t go around ordering other people into burning buildings!” Kaskalla protested. “Normal, sane people don’t do that!”

“The military does,” Ia told her. “That’s the burden of every officer, as well as the duty of every soldier. And we
are
normal and sane, all jokes set aside.”

“Firefighters, Peacekeepers, and other emergency, safety, and support services also order their fellow sentients into danger,” Ortuu reminded the young priestess.

“Those who have the experience to direct the fight against the fires will give those orders to those who have the will to save property and lives. Now, if you don’t mind, we’ve wasted enough…seconds…on this subject,” Leona stated, carefully skirting the T-word. “Ia, please take us to the first potential psychic ethical conundrum you have faced since our last probe in February.”

“Of course.” She slid them through the timeplains, back into the past, and transformed it into the same presentation display of different colored lines. “The first one took place during a boarding inspection of a Gatsugi merchant vessel, the
Plump-Brown
, at the end of February. I knew in advance that they were smuggling hallucinogenic drugs, which carry the strong possibility of harming people. But I also knew the effects of this particular shipment on the settlement of Ceti Omega IV would positively affect the future in the following ways…”

Two hours later, they were done. Ia knew the presentation board visualization dehumanized the impact of what she was discussing. Unfortunately, it was necessary; the sheer scope of time and lives involved required a vastly simplified version. She herself was used to skimming the timestreams more directly and kinesthetically feeling her way through the effects that would happen downstream, but she couldn’t do that in this session. Not without traumatizing the others.

At least the pulses from Kaskalla’s mind, laced with irritation, confusion, and the urge to comment on anything she didn’t understand, had slowly quelled as the session continued. Pulling them fully out of the timeplains at the end, Ia flexed her muscles subtly. The others also shifted in their chairs, stiff from having sat for too long. (
So. That, I believe, was the last of the moral ambiguities on my plate. At least to date. Any questions?
)

(
Yes, actually,
) Kaskalla stated, her thoughts crisp but guarded.

Ia’s instincts prickled. Worse, the clarity she could usually sense the future with had thickened, turning misty and obscure.
Not overall, but for the next day or so. Warily, she asked, (
What do you need to know?
)

(
Can we go back to the,
ah,
timeplains, you called them?
) she asked.

Ia didn’t trust her motives. Grey patches on the timeplains were often dangerous points of transition. Sometimes it was just a matter of too many choices. Sometimes it was a matter of too much interference from others. In this case, the interference came not only from a fellow psychic, but from the fact that Kaskalla was young enough to want to enjoy her position of power, and young enough to not quite have learned the life-lesson that
having
power was not the same as
wielding
power. Not where true wisdom was concerned.

Partitioning off a corner of her mind from the others, Ia examined the streams which exited the fog. The quick peek showed that whatever happened here wouldn’t badly mangle the necessary paths of the future, but if she didn’t pick the right choice, the wrong side-stream would increase her workload to lay and strengthen the correct courses for the future.

(
Or are you going to refuse a direct request to view your psychic abilities and activities during your current ethics review?
) Kaskalla added smugly. She tightened her grip on Ia’s hand as she projected her thoughts, proving physically that she wasn’t about to let go.

Ia did not trust her. It was fairly obvious the younger woman wasn’t about to retract the request. She glanced at Ortuu and Leona, who were frowning slightly, but who weren’t contradicting Kaskalla’s request. Unfortunately, there was nothing Ia could do to probe the young woman directly, since an unasked, unauthorized telepathic scan, particularly of one of her own ethics session examiners, would violate psychic ethics beyond redemption.

There was only one path she had available to safely navigate this grey patch of uncertainty, and that was to do some legal asteroid-covering.

(
If you insist. But I’ll remind you that, whatever you wish to see, you are to keep to yourself under the seal of the confessional,
) Ia added, holding her gaze.

(
I wish,
) Kaskalla stated, staring back, (
to go back onto the timeplains and ask one more question.
)

(
So be it.
) Since Kaskalla was determined to make this a
part of her ethics probe, Ia had no choice but to haul all four of them back onto the timeplains. Amber sunlight replaced artificial white, with the walls of the conference room dissolving into waves of wheat and wending streams.

“So. What did you want to see?” Ia asked her, facing the other woman.

Kaskalla lifted her chin. “I wanted to know why you don’t like anyone to say the word
Time
while you’re here.”

Ia winced as the word rolled through their current plane of existence. “Please, don’t.”

“Why not? It’s just a word.
Time!
” she asserted.

Ia flinched again, struggling to control her gifts. The timeplains trembled under their feet, streambeds rippling as alternate possibilities tried to shift into existence.

“Kaskalla, you’re a
fool
!” Ortuu berated her, tugging on the younger woman’s hand. “Haven’t you figured it out, yet? For someone like Ia, word and thought and will are combined. You say that word in this place, and it will trigger her abilities involuntarily.”

“That is the
point
, Ortuu,” Kaskalla retorted. “If she is not in control of herself, she is a danger to others.” Turning, she projected the word right in Ia’s ear, deep into Ia’s mind. “Time Time Time Time TIME!”

Ortuu and Leona broke their link the moment Kaskalla shouted, ripping their minds and their hands away from Ia and the other girl with a jolt. Kaskalla clung, despite the way Ia tried to shove her away. The other woman was too strong a telepath to be dislodged, her intent too piercing. With that word echoing and bouncing around them in multiple thundering rumbles, the timeplains heaved, lurching up around them like tsunami waves. This had only happened twice before in the early exploration of her newly awakened abilities…but despite being much more practiced in her gifts, Ia could only roll herself up in a ball and endure.