Damage Control - ARC by Mary Jeddore Blakney Page A

she agreed. "You should choose
a Human translator from among the prisoners who can speak to me in
standard Aberikekk. I will return in two segments so that you can
explain your need."
    "Raht," Elwood began, and the Personal Device
took over: "Correct. I'll do that. I'll see you then, Zeed."
    They shook hands, Human style, and Laitt
waited until the door had locked behind Elwood before taking
another door into the hallway.
    This issue with toilets is probably just a
translation glitch , Laitt thought. But I'll continue to
watch it closely. She'd been warned in countless training
sessions about odd prisoner requests that turned out to be part of
a sabotage or escape plan. Perhaps the Humans were hoping to access
the sewage recycling system. More likely, the incessant requests
for more toilets were designed to be a distraction.
    But it wasn't the toilet issue that made
Laitt's abdomen feel as tense and twisted as it had after that time
she'd let her friend convince her to try ice cream. What worried
her was the persistent thought—now very close to becoming a
conviction—that her prison was no different from any other POW
facility. There was nothing special about this one. It was no
better than any other prison on any other keev-ship in any other
war. In other words, Laitt was a professional failure. Maybe there
was still a chance, still some way she could stand out from the
crowd. Even this toilet problem could turn out to be her
opportunity.
    At the moment, though, she had a more
immediate responsibility: the solitary prisoner.
    As if she didn't have enough to worry about
with a whole prison full of Aberikekk spies, the keev had
considered it necessary to order that this one prisoner have no
contact with others of her kind. Laitt wondered if he had
considered the fact that she and her staff were now required to
fulfill all the prisoner's needs themselves. Probably not. It
probably had never even occurred to Chegg that Humans had any needs
at all, besides food, air and hygiene facilities (an abundance of
hygiene facilities, apparently).
    Chegg was an interrogator, and while
interrogators were experts at zenopsychology, they studied a
different side of it than Laitt did. Interrogators learned the
out-going side of psychology. They knew how to figure out the state
of a prisoner's mind by reading what came out of it. Laitt had
learned the in-going side. She and her staff were experts at
keeping a prisoner's mind from spiraling into insanity by
controlling what went into it. And that, Laitt knew, required a lot
more work than most people realized.
    At least Chegg stands out from the
crowd , Laitt thought as she opened the door to the solitary
prisoner's quarters. He may be making a lot of work for me, but
at least he's not doing what all the other keevs are doing.
    She found the prisoner kneeling at her desk,
leaning closely over a tablet and writing on it with an Aberikekk
eating utensil.
    Laitt resisted the temptation, this time, to
pet her soft animal head. She had always had a weakness for
fuzzy-headed animals, ever since she'd met her first hippotruncatis
on a school trip to an air city.
    The Human rose and grasped Laitt's arm.
"Zeed."
    "Jade."
    "I, um... Would you like some coffee?"
    "No, thank you," said Laitt, trying as always
to imitate the gentle near-monotone of native Aberikekk speech.
"Why are you writing with a fork?"
    "I didn't know what else to use. I wanted to
use a pen that the ink had run out of, but nobody had one."
    "What is ink?"
    "Ink?" the human replied, the hair where her
eyebrows should have been rising in unison with her voice. "It's,
um, a colored liquid that comes out of the end of a pen, so you can
write on paper. Our paper isn't like your tablets. It only has one
layer and it's not as thick. So if you try to scratch it, it will
probably just rip. We write by putting ink on the paper."
    "How long does a pen run before it has no
ink?"
    "Oh, I don't know. A hundred pages, maybe?
Twenty? I've never