All My Sins Remembered Read online

  ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED

  Joe Haldeman

  www.sf-gateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

  Welcome to the SF Gateway.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Interview: Age 22

  Prologue

  Redundancy Check: Age 32

  Episode: To Fit the Crime

  Redundancy Check: Age 39

  Episode: The Only War We’ve Got

  Redundancy Check: Age 44

  Episode: All My Sins Remembered

  Interview: Age 45

  Website

  Also by Joe Haldeman

  Dedication

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  INTERVIEW:

  AGE 22

  Close your eyes.

  All right.

  Do you feel anything?

  No.

  Good. Open your eyes. State name, age, relief number.

  Otto McGavin. Age 22. 8462-00954-3133.

  Why do you desire a position with the Confederación?

  I want to go places and do things. I have never left Earth. This is the most interesting way to do it. I believe in the Confederación, and want to help it protect the rights of humans and nonhumans.

  Do the initials TBII mean anything to you?

  No.

  To protect the rights of humans and nonhumans, would you lie, cheat, steal, and kill?

  I… I’m an Anglo-Buddhist.

  If enough depended on it, would you kill?

  I don’t know. I don’t think so.

  Relax.

  —McGavin finds himself walking down an alley in a strange city. There’s a small hard lump to the right of the small of his back. He checks; it’s a laser pistol. While it’s still in his hand, a figure jumps out of the shadows. “All yer money, cob,” he says. McGavin fires instinctively, killing him.

  Would you do that?

  I don’t know. I think I would. And feel remorse, and wish his soul—

  Relax.

  —The same alley, in shadow. Two men standing under a dim light ahead of him. One holds a knife. “Just chuck it over, an’ you won’t be hurt.” Otto shoots the brigand in the back, killing him.

  Would you do that?

  I don’t think so. I would wait and see whether he actually intended to harm the man… and would first give him a chance to surrender.

  Relax.

  —The same alley. Otto is peering into a window, laser in hand. Inside, a man sits drinking tea and reading. Otto’s assignment is to assassinate him. He aims carefully and shoots the man in the head.

  Would you do that?

  No.

  Very well. Inkblot. Nail file. Soup. Fandango.

  Otto shook his head and looked at the clock on the office wall. “That didn’t take long,” he said.

  “Rarely does,” the interviewer said. An attendant unstuck the electrodes pasted to Otto’s head, arms, and chest, and then left.

  Otto slipped back into his shirt. “Did I pass?”

  “Well, this is not the sort of test you ‘pass’.” He took a sheet of paper off the top of Otto’s application packet and slid it across the desk. “Please initial the ‘Interview Completed” box.

  “There are various positions you’re undoubtedly eligible for. Whether there are openings, that’s another question.”

  He stood to go. “How soon will I find out?”

  “Two or three days.” They shook hands and Otto left. The interviewer touched his ear, activating a communicator, and recited a sequence of numbers.

  “Hello, Rafael? Just finished with that McGavin kid. Maybe you can use him.” He paused, listening.

  “Well, his training, academic training, is appropriate. Politics and economics, subarea in xenosociology. Physical condition superb. Megathlon winner, reflexes like a cat. The only problem I see is attitudinal; he’s a little too idealistic. Religious.”

  He laughed. “We certainly can. I’ll have the tapes sent up. Endit.”

  There was hope for McGavin, he thought. In the second situation, he’d said he would give the man a chance to surrender… not a chance to get away.

  PROLOGUE

  Two years later:

  Otto walked slowly along the broken slidewalk that over-looked the East River, enjoying the autumn breeze and the tang of ozone from the crawling stream of traffic beneath his feet. Approaching the UM building, he tried to contain his excitement. His first offplanet assignment.

  He’d been to the Moon as part of his intensive and confusing training, but that was really just a suburb of Earth. This would be for real.

  Georges Ledoux’s office was in the subbasement of the building. Getting out of the elevator you stepped through a search ring guarded by two tense armed men. Otto didn’t set it off.

  The third door down had a small card saying G. Ledoux/Planning. It opened before Otto could knock.

  “Come in, Mr. McGavin.” The office was a cheerfully cluttered place, piles of paper held down with bric-a-brac from a dozen worlds, a battered wooden desk, soft chairs covered with worn but real leather. Ledoux was a bald, slight man, also leathery, smiling. He motioned Otto to a chair.

  “We’ll get to your assignment in a minute. First, I’d like to clear up a few things about what you’ve been doing the past two years. You know that a great deal of your training was under deep hypnosis.”

  “That was pretty easy to figure out.”

  “Quite so. Now it’s time to bring it up to the surface.” He glanced at a slip of paper in his hand. “Close your eyes… ‘atlas, beach ball, mantra, pest.’”

  … black precipitate of iodine and ammonium hydroxide… in the kidney even superficial-seeming wound brings on shock… kick, don’t punch… go for the eyes… conceal the knife until you’re in range… short bursts to preserve power… fence with your head, not with your heart’… fingers stiff into soft area under sternum, aim for backbone… once he’s down kick his head… sell your life, don’t give it away…

  “My God!’ Otto opened his eyes.

  Ledoux picked up a heavy-bladed knife from his desk and hurled it straight at Otto’s heart. Otto plucked it out of
the air without thinking.

  “I… I’m not a diplomat at all.”

  “No. You know enough about it to masquerade as one. That’s all.”

  “I’m a Class 2 operator for the TBII?”

  “That’s right. And slated to be a prime operator after another year.”

  Otto shook his head, as if to clear it.

  “I know,” Ledoux said gently. “It’s not the cruise you signed up for.”

  Otto toyed with the knife. “More interesting, actually. And more useful.”

  “We like to think so.

  “This first assignment will not require any personality overlay”—the phrase triggered a memory of two months of training—“but will be TBII business, nevertheless. You’ll be assisting a prime operator named Susan Avery, on the planet Depot.”

  “Arcturus IV,” Otto said, with a trace of wonder.

  “Yes. She is on the planet as Olivia Parenago, Earth’s ambassador.”

  “Where is the real Parenago?”

  “Dead, murdered. Do you know what a ‘protection racket’ is?” Otto shook his head. “Well, it’s an obscure term for a specialized kind of blackmail. I come to you and offer not to burn down your place of business, with you inside, for a certain amount of money, paid regularly.”

  “Sounds like something for the local authorities to take care of.”

  “Normally, yes. Parenago got involved in it because she suspected it was affecting interstellar commerce—which technically would bring it into our sphere of influence. And the local authorities are evidently corrupt.

  “With the murder of an ambassador, of course, there’s no question that it’s Confederation business. TBII business.”

  McGavin nodded slowly. “Will I be impersonating anybody?”

  “Only yourself. A junior attache. You’ll have to attend various functions, give out medals and plaques, that sort of thing. Mainly, you’ll be helping Avery with footwork, re-search—and violence, if there is any.”

  “Think there will be?”

  He shrugged. “The only ones on the planet who know about the substitution, besides you and Avery, will be the ones who killed Parenago. They killed her brutally.”

  “You’re sure there was more than one?”

  “At least three. Two held her arms and legs while the other killed her at leisure.”

  Depot was a well-developed planet that moved in a tight orbit around Arcturus’s invisible companion Sleeper (“real” name TN Bootes AA). Sleeper was the closest tachyon nexus to Earth, so almost every outbound ship stopped at Depot to refuel and take on supplies.

  Otto was stationed in Jonestown, the planet’s largest city. It had a university and a spaceport and was rougher, raunchier, dirtier, and noisier than anyplace he had ever been. He liked it.

  He was walking with Susan Avery in the industrial park, where they wouldn’t be overheard. She was a few years older than he, intelligent and tough if not physically attractive (though there was no way to tell what she really looked like; she was a perfect xerox of Olivia Parenago). She had been a prime operator for five years.

  “We may have a new informant,” she said.

  “Better at staying alive than the last one?”

  “We hope.” The first informant, a merchant who’d decided to stop paying, had died of an industrial accident during the half-hour that elapsed between his phone call to Parenago and her arrival at his place of business. He’d called the police first. “She’s a court recorder in the third district, I met her at a luncheon and she passed me a note. Through some jurisdictional technicality, she has access to police credit records.”

  “Did she say anything specific?”

  “Only that she thought she had evidence of a Charter violation. That would have to be offworld money going into police pockets. Let’s go out on the dock. Be sightseers.” They were walking along a bay whose shore was dominated by a huge electrolysis plant, churning out oxygen for spaceship resupply and hydrogen for local energy.

  They moved to the end of the dock and sat there, watching a mat of purple seaweed lap against the pilings. There was a slight smell of chlorine in the air.

  “She didn’t want to bring her evidence to Jonestown; didn’t want to take it from her office until she knew that she could be far away when the trouble starts.”

  “Reasonable.”

  “Sure. So I’ve got her booked on a two-week industrial sight-seeing tour of the Sleeper plants, under a false name. I’ll be taking her tickets to her, down in Silica, this afternoon.”

  “Should I come with?”

  “No, I’ll be back tonight sometime. What I want you to do is go back to the office and set up an all-contingencies algorithm.

  “Look at the city and state tables of organization and figure out how many Confederacion administrators, and how much muscle, would be required to take over the police—quickly and, if possible, without bloodshed. Send in an order for them, under my name and with my scramble, to be filled if I don’t cancel within twenty-four hours. ‘Explanation to follow.’ Then get back to your place and lock the door until you hear from me. Clear?”

  “I suppose… commandos for muscle?”

  “Best; keep from wrecking the town. Are you dressed?”

  “Uh, no.” The shoulder holster had given him a rash.

  “Otto.” She put a hand on his knee. “I know you’re a gentle sort. But you saw what these bastards did to… the real Olivia.”

  He nodded. Having seen a holo on Earth had kept him uncomfortable around Avery for the first few days. Seeing her face made him visualize the mutilated body.

  “So go dressed, double-dressed. I want to keep you in one piece.” She stood up. “I’d rather not involve any other embassy people in this. Will you need any help with the technical end?”

  “No, it’s the same kind of machine we used in training.” They started walking down the dock. “Should we split up?”

  “Not if you’re not dressed.” She slid a hand lightly under his bicep and moved close to him, falling into step. “Act like we’re lovers, out for a stroll,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  An unsurprisingly easy act. “It won’t take you out of your way?”

  “Shuttle to Silica won’t leave for six hours; gives me plenty of time ”

  Plenty of time for what, Otto wondered, and subsequently found out. Avery made the shuttle with two minutes to spare.

  The computation, coding, and message transmission took Otto until after midnight. Following Avery’s advice, he left the embassy through a secret entrance, took a roundabout way home, on foot, and snuck into his apartment via rooftop and service door. The only thing he was really worried about was being arrested as a burglar.

  He slept fully dressed and armed, feeling ridiculous, and woke up with a rash. The phone was buzzing.

  It wasn’t Avery; it was the embassy, wondering where she was. Otto said he didn’t know. The man complained that she had appointments all day. Would Otto come in and substitute until Avery showed up? Of course.

  He took a direct route to the office and nobody tried to assassinate him. He sat behind Avery’s desk for eight hours, being polite to a succession of complainers, trying to find a comfortable position with a heavy-duty Westinghouse weighing down his left side and a small Walther neurotangler in a spring-sheath taped to the small of his back. He buzzed Avery’s apartment between interviews, and worried.

  When the day was finally over, he hurried directly to Avery’s place. Knocked and rang and finally tried to pop the lock. TBII agents know a number of ways to subvert locks, but it works both ways; Avery evidently knew one more trick than Otto did. He considered using the Westinghouse on it, but instead found the supervisor and bullied him into opening it.

  Nobody in the living room, but a window was missing, smoothly melted away around the edges. The supervisor demanded to know who was going to pay for it.

  He followed Otto around from room to room, demanding, complaining. When Otto opened th
e bathroom door he smelled something odd, closed his eyes, said a three-word Buddhist prayer, stepped inside, and found Susan Avery lying naked in the tub, face-down in two centimeters of clotted blood.

  REDUNDANCY

  CHECK: AGE 32

  Biographical check, please, go:

  I was born Otto Jules McGavin on 24 Avril AC 198, on Earth, with jus sanguinus citizenship to

  Skip to age 22, please, go:

  Thought I was being trained for Confederatión xenosociology or diplomacy post but had been with TBII for two years, all the immersion therapy that I couldn’t remember, it was weapons and dirty tricks, wondered why the other students always had more to talk about but my counselor said it was normal, I tested out fine under hypnosis, it would all be clear and accessible by graduation, but all through my twenty-second year, I remember, felt like I worked harder than anyone else but

  You did, Otto. Skip to age 25, please, go:

  I was a Class 2 operator until mid-223, when I went on probationary prime operator status and got my first personality overlay, impersonating Mercurio de Follette, a credit-union manager on Mundo Lagardo suspected of Article Three violation

  Was he guilty? Please, go:

  Of course he was but we wanted to see which others were implicated, it turned out his whole surrogate-family

  Skip to age 26, please, go:

  That was the year I killed my first man, third assignment as a prime, it was self-defense in a way, in a way, he had me at his mercy if he only knew, I had to kill him or he would, in a way it was self-defense

  Syzygy.

  in a way it was

  Aardvark, worship-devil.

  self-defense.

  Gerund. Now sleep.

  EPISODE:

  To Fit the Crime

  Every direction seems uphill in artificial gravity. Isaac Crowell, Ph.D., paused to get his breath, pushed damp hair back from his forehead, and tapped on the door of the psychiatrist’s stateroom. It slid open.