HOMEPAGE

THE INTERROGATION

Sep and Immalda stepped into a large room with dirty yellowish walls and a counter on their left. A long-haired militiawoman was sitting behind the counter, talking calmly in Dibadian to an agitated couple and their three children. The whole family carried backpacks and suitcases.

Other families, all of them with lots of luggage, were sitting on benches and chairs, looking bored, glum or excited. Some people were chatting in low voices, others were waiting in silence.

Ignoring the noisy family, Sep showed his Padzan police credentials to the woman behind the counter, who said something aloud which Sep didn't understand. A middle-aged woman, who had been sitting silently on a chair, stood up and walked towards them.

"Bonjour, I am Deisee Kashal, the interpreter" the woman said in flawless, hardly accented French. "I will assist you for the duration of your mission."

They all shook hands and introduced themselves. Deisee Kashal was short, with a round, wrinkled face, heavy-lidded slanting brown eyes and short wavy gray hair. She wore a beige jacket and long skirt, a white buttoned up shirt.

She led Sep and Immalda into a passage, up a staircase, and into another passage. Men and women in brown uniforms were working in cramped offices, seated in front of computer screens or questioning people. The place smelled of coffee, tobacco and rank food.

As they walked, Sep asked:

"The family we saw in front of us in the lobby, with the suitcases... are they tourists?"

Deisee laughed:

"Oh, no, no. They are new Dibadians. Just off the bus from the provincial townships. The internment camps, if you prefer. Only one of the children is theirs, probably. In the camps women are only allowed one child. The other children must be orphans."

She paused and spoke again, in a serious voice:

"You know, the population of Dibadi decreases each year. People die and not enough babies are born to replace them. The Dibadians have few children. But authorities don't want the population to decrease too visibly. They want the world to know that they treat people well. That's why tens of thousands of people are allowed to leave the camps each year and settle in Dibadi. They arrive here with almost nothing, and the militia has to find emergency housing for them, tell them where the schools and employment agencies are..."

Sep remembered the first chapter of Budai's Memoirs, when the Hungarian linguist arrives in a hotel and a similar family is mentioned. Budai's room was occupied by a destitute family three weeks later.

"They are Niemelagan citizens, then?" he asked.

"Citizenship doesn't exist here. If someone shows up in Niemelaga for any reason and needs assistance, or is arrested for any reason, their name, picture, biometrics, and every other information that can be collected, are recorded in a Niemelagan database and city authorities will take care of you. That's what they are here for. You don't need an identity card here. You press your fingers on an electronic scanner, and the computer automatically identifies your fingerprints."

She paused, smiling and gazing at Sep's face, then at Immalda's, and she said:

"This is recent, of course. The old archives of a century ago still exist, with their cardboard files and shoeboxes. Every tramp who was arrested on the street was photographed and fingerprinted. When someone's identity had to be checked their name, picture, fingerprints and other data were mailed to the population archives and compared with stored data. It took days, even weeks sometimes. Meanwhile, the suspects were kept in custody. That was what the police and the militia had to do. In practice, many officers didn't do their job properly."

Sep remembered Budai's misadventure in a police station. Or perhaps it was a barracks of the militia, like the present building. Dibadian policemen wear gray uniforms and militiamen wear brown ones. The police enforce the law; the militia specializes in social control. But some militiamen work for the police. Nothing is simple in Dibadi.

The Hungarian linguist had been neither photographed nor fingerprinted, although he had been detained for a night in a cell. Nobody had even bothered to find an interpreter for him. In a country where all the interpreters are cyborgs, it may be tricky to find one for something as trivial as a foreigner who behaves drunkenly on the street, like Budai did, Sep reflected.

Deisee was still speaking:

"The situation improved a lot when the police and the militia were given faxes and computers. Now we have electronic fingerprint readers and instant online identity analysis. We don't detain mere suspects too much anymore now."

"If Niemelagan citizenship doesn't exist, how do you travel abroad?" Sep asked.

"Those of us who have to travel abroad are given passports by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

"Ah, I see, yes. There's something else which I'd like to know. Why is the population decreasing?"

"Dibadian women have few children, usually only one. Primary education is free and mandatory. Girls know what contraception and abortion are, and they have access to it, free of charge, in every dispensary. Conversely, secondary and higher education is private and expensive. Many people can't afford it. Most people can pay for one child, but not for two or three. Housing is expensive and flats are small. Both parents have to work, babysitters and crèches cost plenty... And there's also the fact that every old person gets a pension here, even the people who never worked in their life. That's why Dibadians don't need children to look after them in their old age. Old people usually live in special blocks of flats, with nurses and staff provided by the government. Children are a burden here, and they ignore you when you're old."

She added, with a wink:

"Many people say that the cyborgs deliberately want to keep birth rates low."

They stepped into a small office where a very tall, massive man sat behind a big wooden desk. He stood up as they entered and had a short conversation with Deisee, in a jocular tone. Visibly they knew and appreciated each other. Deisee introduced the man as captain Elwass.

"Patlisztada" the captain mumbled. Sep smiled. The word means "Full things" and it is the standard greeting in Dibadian. It was originally internment camp slang. It meant "May your belly be full" or something similar. When he arrived in Dibadi, Budai heard it wrongly as "Patashara" or "Patarechera."

"Patlisztada" Sep replied, doing his best to imitate Elwass's rasping, indistinct Dibadian accent. Immalda said nothing.

The captain uttered a long sentence in Dibadian.

Deisee translated:

"Captain Elwass says that Goquok, the man you want to question has been summoned and is expected to come this afternoon at three o'clock. An office has been reserved for you."

The captain led them down the corridor and opened a door with a key he pulled out of his pocket. The room was sparsely furnished: a table with an old computer and a telephone set on it, four chairs. The yellow walls looked like they hadn't been washed for years or decades. A barred window looked on a busy street.

Sep had a look at the computer. The keyboard was Niemelagan, with Deseret letters, Arab numerals and international symbols like + and #. He turned the machine on. The operating system was nothing he had ever seen. Even the icons baffled him. He suspected that the machine wasn't connected to the Internet, for reasons of safety. The Dibadian militia was probably afraid of hackers. Too bad. Sep had thought of using online word processing software and an online keyboard with the computer mouse.

It was impossible to type anything in French with that machine. He turned it off.

"We'll have to use a pen and paper" Sep said. "I have all I need in my briefcase. I'll put Goquok's statement in writing while you ask questions, right?"

"Yes, yes" Immalda replied. "But it's ten past two. We have fifty minutes left before the interrogation begins."

"I can fetch coffee, tea, or otlakhya, our Dibadian honey-flavored light ale, while you wait" Deisee said obligingly. "Or I can take you to the cafeteria."

"We must prepare the interrogation" Immalda said. "It would be good if we could stay alone undisturbed in this room until Goquok arrives. Our investigation entails absolute secrecy. As a Padzan chief investigator, can I have the key of this room?"

As usual, Sep was impressed by Immalda's shameless nerve.

Deisee and Elwass spoke briefly together. The captain shrugged and handed the key to Immalda.

"I'll be back just before three o'clock" Deisee said. "If you need anything, go to captain Elwass's office, or to the lobby. The woman behind the counter knows how to join me. If you want to wash your hands, just turn right when you step out of this office. The bathroom is at the end of the passage."

Immalda waited until the two Dibadians had left and locked the door behind them. Then she turned towards Sep and kissed him on the lips.

"This is hardly a romantic setting" he said, running his hands down Immalda's back. "Do you think that horrible things happen in this room? Maybe they torture men and rape women?"

"Don't be stupid, Sep. The window looks on the street and there are no curtains. It's just an office like we have in Padza."

"Let's go under the table, then. Nobody will see us."

"The floor is dirty" she objected.

"I have a newspaper in my briefcase. I'll be glad to sacrifice yesterday's news to cover this dirty floor."

"You naughty boy!"

When Deisee came back, just before three o'clock, she found the office door open. Sep and Immalda, red-faced and dishevelled, were reading documents.

"Monsieur Goquok is here" she said. "I can ask a militiaman to bring him here when you're ready."

"We're very ready" Sep said. "Let him come here."

Goquok was a thin man in his mid-forties, with a brown moustache, shifty eyes and a balding head. He looked like a clerk or an accountant and he carried a black leather briefcase. Sep and Immalda sat on one side of the table, Goquok and Deisee on the other side.

"I'm a Padzan" Goquok said in French. "We need no interpreter. In fact, I hope you know that Dibadian interpreters are usually cyborgs. I feel more at ease without a cyborg being present. I apologize to this lady, but if you agree I'd rather talk to you when she has left this room."

"This lady works for the Dibadian militia" Sep said. "I'm glad that we can speak without an interpreter. Nevertheless, Madame Kashal can stay if she wants to, as far as I'm concerned."

"Are you a cyborg?" Goquok asked Deisee. Sep was irritated by the man's impudence but he said nothing.

"Yes, I am a cyborg" Deisee replied with a contrived laugh. "These Padzan officers here never met cyborgs before, I guess. I'm going to explain, they must know. We are people. Constructed people, like there are constructed languages. Look, the Dibadian language is a constructed one, you all know that, right? Yet, it is spoken by nine million people as their mother tongue. Cyborgs are to biological people what Dibadian is to natural languages. If you hadn't been told that Dibadian is an artificial language, you wouldn't have noticed, right? And if I hadn't told you that I'm a constructed person, you wouldn't have noticed either, right? That's all there is to say."

"Well, not quite" Sep said. "How about your childhood?"

"I never had any. I woke up one morning as an adult in Niemelaga, without a past but with my brain full of data and abilities. Then I was given a name, an identity, and I was taught how to behave as the person I had been constructed to be."

She laughed again.

Sep was intrigued:

"Who constructed you? I don't really understand how cyborgs rule Niemelaga..."

Deisee didn't answer his question:

"I'm here to help. You need no interpreter at the moment, I see. I'll give you my cell phone number. Just telephone me when you want me back, I'll stay in the barracks. You can use the telephone on the table."

She wrote a number on a page she tore off from a notebook and handed it to Immalda. Then she stood up and left.

"I can't believe she's a cyborg" Immalda said. "I thought cyborgs were the rulers. The big guys. Not little women like her."

"The cyborgs don't want the Dibadians to communicate with the other nations. Interpreters and polyglots are the interface between nations. The cyborgs control contacts with other nations." Goquok said.

"Now we ask questions, Monsieur Goquok" Immalda said. "You're a suspect here, and we can arrest you if we decide to."

"I know" Goquok said, in a low voice. "That's why I didn't flee when I received the summons. I have nowhere to go. I'd like to negotiate."

"We have evidence that you embezzled millions in Padza and fled to Dibadi with it. What is there to negotiate?" Immalda said harshly.

"I am a scholar, I work in a scientific institute here. I can speak Dibadian. I know horrible secrets, which I learnt here, and which I can reveal to the government of Padzaland. And I have money. Here, in this briefcase."

Immalda had never been at ease with the technical aspects of her job. She let Sep begin the interrogation in earnest. He wrote pages and pages of questions and answers, while Immalda watched him, her face all rosy and smiling. Uncharacteristically, she hardly spoke.

Sometimes, the interrogation went off track, and Goquok spoke about his life as a Padzan expatriate in Dibadi:

"Life isn't really easy here. There's always have one percent of the population homeless, as if the government did it on purpose. If you work hard, you have the right acquaintances and you're lucky, you can be rich here, but it's hard if your parents weren't rich themselves to pay your college tuition. If you're rich, your children are likely to be rich, too, and if you're poor they'll be poor. And if you become homeless, eventually you disappear."

After two hours of interrogation, Goquok said:

"There are five hundred thousand Padzan sequins in my briefcase, all in brand new banknotes. You can have them if you make me look like an innocent man in your investigation. I want to stay in Dibadi, not be deported to Padza and go to jail."

He put his briefcase on the table and opened it. It was full of wads of five hundred sequin banknotes. Immalda began inspecting them: "They look genuine" she said. "I'll check them all, you never know."

"Half a million? Are you joking, you stole at least five million! I want at least two and a half million" Sep said to Goquok.

"Take it or leave it. I can't give you more than what I brought in this briefcase" Goquok said peevishly.

"Merde. Well, let me think... if my colleague and I we did like we'd never got form 9-SX from the bank, and you involved someone else in the affair... Preferably someone who died last week. I can make some bogus searches and conclude that the rascal was the guilty person, but unfortunately he died before we could arraign him."

"I don't know anyone who died last week, or even last month."

"But I do. Let's rewrite your statement..."

Meanwhile, Immalda telephoned Deisee, and asked her if she could wait for another hour or two. Immalda hung up with a smile: "Our brave cyborg will wait for us for as long as we want" she told Sep.

One hour later, an exhausted Sep said:

"I've been writing for three hours and I can't anymore. Goquok, this is your statement. A dead guy named Khampeh Molgo is the villain, okay? Now, you sign your statement, every page of it, then you empty your briefcase on the table, and you get the hell outta here."

Goquok signed the pages, took the wads of banknotes out of his briefcase and put them on the table in eerie silence. Then he stood up, with his empty briefcase in his hand. "You must accompany me out of this building, otherwise the militiamen will arrest me before I reach the exit" he said.

"Fifty fifty?" Sep said to Immalda.

"Fifty fifty" she replied.

Sep accompanied Goquok to the entrance of the barracks and saw him disappear among the pedestrians in the brightly lit street. Night was falling, and it was cold. Neither of the two men had said a word.

When Sep stepped back into the office, Immalda showed him what she had done:

"I put half the money in your briefcase, the other half in my handbag. I left on the table the newspaper which... you know..."

She giggled: "They'll see the sperm in it and they'll know that we fucked!"

"Oh dear, no, Immalda, no. I'll fold the newspaper and carry it. It was so easy. Why did we accept his money?" Sep said. He suddenly realized that he was a corrupt cop now. A criminal, by his own ethical rules.

"My husband and Szangmih, they cheated on me. Szangmih slept with my younger sister behind my back. I've been abused all my life. I wanted to die. I hate the whole world because of what happened to me. I can tell you now, I hated you in the department because you always looked so happy and successful. Please don't betray me. I'm taking my revenge on the world, sort of" Immalda said.

Sep felt ill at ease. "I can't even say I have a good reason to be resentful" he said. "I guess I'm just a pervert."

Before leaving the barracks, Sep and Immalda shook hands with Deisee, who had been waiting for them in the lobby. It was empty now, except for the same woman behind the counter.

"Our mission is over" Sep said. "Where's captain Elwass? We'd like to tell him goodbye but his office is closed."

"He's gone home already. He wouldn't stay late for Padzans. You know, many Dibadians don't like Padzans. They think that they are less affluent than they should be because Padzaland obliges Niemelaga to pay a tribute. Among other things the treaty enables the police of Padzaland to investigate in Niemelaga, but there's no reciprocity. Will you need me again tomorrow?"

"Well, yes" Sep said. "We may have to pay a visit to Goquok's bank, and we'll need you then. We'd also like to visit some places of interest before we catch our train. We have your phone number. We'll call you tomorrow morning after breakfast, does that suit you?"

"Oui."

"I couldn't find a single trash can here, do you know where I can get rid of this old newspaper?" Sep asked.

"Give it to me, I'll deal with it."

Sep and Immalda rode the subway back to their hotel. They hid Goquok's money in their respective bedrooms, took a shower together and had their dinner in the great dining-room. They used Sep's dictionary to select dishes on the menu and they ordered otlakhya, the honey-flavored beer which Budai mentions in his memoirs without naming it.

"I prefer our good old Padzan beer" Sep said.

END OF EPISODE TWO

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HOMEPAGE