Assets of the Ass. Rep.
"MINISTRY OF INTERNAL SECURITY SERVICES
SPRAWNIA DIVISION
MEMORANDUM OF INTERAGENCY PREROGATIVE
SECURITY LEVEL: GUARDED
[Child and Second-degree-related Documents Security Levels: Hardened]
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MISS must have plenary powers over the hydro-oxide assets given their crucial nature in terms of maintaining functioning of essential personnel to assure continuity of the lineage of command essential to maintain values, laws, traditions and ordering congruent with maintenance and extension of the Associated Republic, spatially and temporally."
Whew... What a pompous mass! thought Rachel, without an attempt at humor. The glaring light of her little study carrel was setting off a migraine and her shoulder spasmed from carrying elephant-folio-sized tomes back and forth from the stacks. So far, after a full day of inhaling legal dust, the obfuscation of the memorandum was the only lead in the case of the disappearing water. Would it be too crass to translate the legalese of this mess from MISS as saying, “The Ministry of Internal Security Services CAN DO WHATEVER THEY DAMN WELL PLEASE with the water supply”?
As she read the document, Rachel struggled to keep the huge yet cheaply bound folio flat on the surface of the cramped desk. She was sophisticated enough to realize that no one who had achieved significant political power would put her or his career on the chopping block by confronting the clause that had just horrified her with its circuitous language. A politician who didn't care about its career was by definition impossible, but even if such a fantastic being existed in the political climate of the dark age gripping Semiramide, it would still have second and third thoughts about voicing such criticism, out of concern for its own safety, for Rachel lived in an era in which demagogues tried to distract from disease and potential famine by whipping their constituents to frenzies of paranoid patriotism. Thus, possibly not just his or her career, but her or his ass would be on the chopping block if the hypothetical muckraking politician were reviled as a traitor rather than revered as an exposer of waste and double-dealing.
So far, her genuine perplexity about the falling reservoir level and fear of what it implied, along with her natural resentment about the mistreatment she had received from Major Munir and Miss Haggardie had driven her through the discomfort of the dust, the boredom and the glare of the study carrel. Now that she had a possible lead that would clearly require significant time, energy and perhaps even courage to follow, her stomach reminded her that she had selfishly ignored its needs. She had worked completely through lunch and now it was already past dinner time.
Rachel felt frustrated, despite her eagerness to attend to her stomach's needs. She had just found her first lead but could not continue to follow it without improving the energy flow to her brain. Without sustenance, in addition to her stomach's rebellion, she knew her head would be punishing her with an ache that made further work impossible. On the other hand, the law building of the archives was hardly a popular hangout, and the mere idea of a cafeteria in the building or even a coffee shop in the immediate neighborhood made her smile.
Just as she was deciding she needed to figuratively bite the bullet in order to literally bite something she needed, she heard the elevator doors. “Ding!” they opened and then, "ding-ding!" they shut.
During her hours so far down in the library basement, while making sorties to the restroom or water fountain, she had run across only two other researchers, and it seemed the three of them were the only inhabitants of the entire 2000 square meter floor. If they were to be called “fellow” scholars, the adjective would need to be flagged, as Rachel felt barred from interaction merely by their appearance, which fulfilled the stereotype of perpetual library denizens. Both looked to be myopic social isolates, and Rachel felt she could detect cobwebbing between the temples of their thick spectacles and the temples of their skulls. They did not return eye contact as she passed by them, and as until now she had not heard the sound of the elevator doors, it seemed that they had been there when she arrived. She did not know how they obtained sustenance, but from their gaunt appearance, it seemed they did not need much.
Now, finally, after her hours in the stacks, it seemed someone else had arrived. The chances were very high that it would be another withdrawn nerd, and Rachel dismissed the arrival as unimportant, especially because she expected to never see whatever hominid made the doors ding.
Rachel was nonplused when the footsteps of the new arrival made straight for her and turned the corner around the nearest stack. A female teenager appeared, wearing a vividly patterned, purple and dark-red woven top conspicuous for its warm appearance in scantily-clad, sweltering Sprawn City. Her lack of eyewear intensified the effect of her bright, direct gaze, the opposite of the virtual oblivion of the other library patrons.
After she recovered from her surprise, Rachel was able to recognize Yarawi, Manqu’s daughter.
“You're Ms. Rasmussen, right?"
“Yes, Yarawi. You can call me Rachel.”
“My dad wanted me to find you and bring you this.” She proffered an unusually shaped canister. “It's... it's like a Huari thermos,” she said in response to Rachel's questioning gaze.
It seemed to be some sort of gourd with a very thick rind. The extreme bottom had been sliced off to enable it to rest upright and the top was some sort of stopper that had obviously been made from a different, corkier plant. A fiber cord attached to the top prevented it from getting separated from the container.
“Go ahead, open and let's have some,” Yarawi encouraged Rachel, any initial vestiges of shyness already gone. She produced two small cups from her purse and laid them on the study carrel, next to the huge legal folio that took up most of the available surface.
Rachel pulled on the stopper and it came out with an audible pop. Steam curled up. The aroma was spicy, clearing the sinuses. She tilted it and out poured a hot, whitish, liquid, as thick as sweet syrup from the pamel tree. Rachel filled both cups to near the top and looked up at the girl.
Yarawi returned Rachel's gaze and said, “I'm sure you'll like it.” She raised the cup to her lips. Rachel followed suit.
Her entire mouth was enlivened by a spiciness just on the verge of a tingle. The sensation going down her throat and behind her sternum was smooth, warm and comforting. She gave Yarawi a look of appreciation, and suddenly felt more alert.
She looked down at the document she had been reviewing. Surprisingly, she did not feel unease with her friend's daughter, who made no move to leave. She tested her sense of comfort by reading a few paragraphs and making some notes.
“Wow! That's interesting. I feel like I could go till closing without eating!”
Yarawi simply smiled. “Do you mind if I stay for a while?”
“Of course not, but I'm afraid you'll be bored. I'm just going to be reading and writing.”
“I'll be fine,” Yarawi replied, as she sat down at a nearby communal study table.
Rachel resumed her research. When she looked up, she saw that Yarawi was simply sitting tranquilly at the desk, apparently not feeling compelled to perform any activity. Again, Rachel was surprised that she felt no need to converse or entertain. She considered where she might find the “child and second-degree related documents” mentioned tantalizingly in the small print of the MISS memorandum. “Security levels: hardened”-what exactly did that mean? Rachel guessed that even if the document itself was inaccessible except to a select few, its level of inaccessibility would be defined in another document. "So, how can we find the documents summarizing the difficulties imposed on finding various documents?" She began to look up abstractedly to better consider this thorny problem, but in raising her eyes, her gaze was arrested at the nearby desk. Yarawi had slipped away.
Rachel then reluctantly accepted she would have to visit the reference desk. Not only was it on the main floor and thus somewhat of a schlep, as she was now accustomed to doing nothing but sit, but she was hesitant out of concern the librarians would regard her as engaged in suspect behavior.
Nonetheless, she got up with a sigh and began the trek.
She was just approaching the bank of elevators when she saw Yarawi making her way back. The girl cradled a folio size legal binder which spanned her chest from the crook of her right elbow to where it was held up by the fleshy prominence of her left lower palm. Despite its weight and size, she carried it gracefully. Without her balance faltering, she looked up to meet Rachel's eyes. “I just had a feeling you would need this,” she explained.
Rachel twisted her head to read the extensive verbiage of the title page:
"MINISTRY OF INTERNAL SECURITY SERVICES
DIVISION OF HERMETIC ASSURANCE
Regulatory Bulletin Number HA-lOO
[abridged edition excerpt AIEEHA-IO-0]
TOPIC: SAFEGUARDING OF CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION
Warning: All Topics Regarding The Handling, Storage, Retrieval And Dissemination Of Classified Information Are Classified And Actions Managing Such Information Shall Not Be Initiated Without The Granting Of Full Clearance."
“Wow, that's amazing! how did you know I was looking for that?”
“Oh, I just had a feeling”, Yarawi repeated. “Remember, I spent a long time in this library working on my senior thesis.”
“So, you know this building like...”
“... Like my tanymyk’s ear, as my dad would say.” Rachel knew she was referring to the Huari practice of identifying their animals with notches and other markings on their prominent and conveniently wool-free auricles. She smiled in recognition and added, “Thank you for finding it,” as she turned back to return to the dreaded study carrel. Somehow, with Yarawi accompanying her, it seemed less forbidding.
“Here, put it down, it looks really heavy,” she said as they approached the desk. “I can tell it's heavy, I mean in other ways that aren't good, just from reading the title,” she added.
“I know what you mean,” Yarawi said with an emphatic and empathic smile.
The girl pulled over a chair from the nearby table and sat beside Rachel at the carrel. Although she had not invited Yarawi to do so, Rachel found that she welcomed the camaraderie, and was again surprised by how comforted she was by Yarawi's presence, even though she was at least a decade younger than Rachel.
"OK, compose yourself," she thought, as she faced the daunting prospect of slashing through the bureaucratic thicket that was the document Yarawi had so thoughtfully obtained.
She was reluctantly fingering the first page when Yarawi helpfully interjected, “There’s an index.”
“Really?!?? That amazes me.”
“I know... You’d think an agency like MISS would never make it easier to find things.”
“Exactly...”
“The only thing I can think of that makes it a little less strange is something I learned in my Authoritarian Regimes class. They all kept obsessive records of their crimes, even when it could get them in trouble later.” She paused for a moment, showing a concerned hesitancy Rachel had not seen a hint of up to that instant.
Yarawi began an explanation. “I’m not saying that MISS is committing-” Rachel interrupted her with a laugh. “Two sides of the same coin,” she explained. “I took that course too. Professor Norman, right?”
Yarawi smiled. “Yes, he was my thesis advisor. He even told me he would visit my Dad’s home town with me... not that it’s really a town.”
“Yes, incredibly conscious for a professor-” Rachel paused, reconsidered her statement, and added “-or for anyone... so, let’s take a look at this index that Dr. Norman almost predicted would exist.”
She grasped half of the thickness of the elephant-folio size pages in an attempt to turn to the back of the document, but her wrist gave out and she let the stack fall back. “Here, let’s do it together,” Yarawi volunteered. The girl slid a hand under the upper corner, while Rachel did the same at the lower, half a meter away. Without needing a signal, they lifted in unison and flipped the cumbersome sheaf to reveal its back pages.
“You were right,” Rachel marveled. “There it is- an index!” Her tone suggested someone who had just been shown a living bird reputed to be extinct, rather than a dusty researcher examining a tome in the bowels of a law library.
Yarawi jumped right in. “Let's see- I think we should try to narrow it down to ‘Sprawnia’. MISS covers the Ass Rep whole”-at that moment, the girl seemed to pause for such a infinitesimal instant that Rachel could not be entirely sure it was real, and give an even less certain flutter of one eye that may or may not have been a wink- “and this vast Republic is such a land of contrasts, with such differing circumstances, all in its demesne, that what is right in one might be not as right in the other.”
Rachel, a moment ago marveling, was now flabbergasted. Could such subtle sarcasm actually be improvised? The sweetness of the girl was palpable enough to taste, yet the vulgar insinuation at just the right moment, and just fleeting enough that one could not be sure, thus leaving her angelic persona sufficiently intact, gave the sweetness enough salt for Rachel to be confident that this was an ally living in the real world, who would not shrink from dealing with real blood or whatever stink or slime needed to be managed.
As Rachel was regarding Yarawi almost worshipfully, the most elusive wavering seemed to momentarily distort her field of vision, as though an oily, refracting film slid across her eyes for a millisecond... and the precocious teenager was back, someone very smart but without the worldly knowledge to take on legions of lawyers and politicians.
Snapping her attention back to the page, she found the heading “Sprawnia”:
“Let's see... Water... No, they wouldn't call it that... Resources... No... Essential... no, too simple... what did they call it before?” Rachel muttered to herself.
“An asset... a hydro-oxide asset,” supplied Yarawi, her index finger indicating the relevant line in the original document peeking out from underneath the massive folio.
“Yes. Asset- that’s how they would think of it,” Rachel agreed. Her index finger moved up the Sprawnia section of the index, coming to the top of the page when only at “Depreciation”.
She flipped back, this time requiring no help to lift the single page. “OK, here it is. Asset, hydro-oxide... wow-even more than I thought!” Her finger again moved down until it encountered “Powers.” From there it was just 9 lines beck up to “Plenary.”
“OK, this is it. Pages 408 to 11 seem to be the main reference. I think I need your help again.”
Yarawi thumbed her way to roughly the middle of the tome and the duo again did the page flip. Remarkably, they wound up on page 407.
“OK,” Rachel said again, turning the page on her own. “Sprawnia Division Aridity Special Directive: WARNING-Security Level Hardened. Documents restricted to original, physical deposition in situ at hardened facility most proximal to generation point.”
Yet again, Rachel breathed “Wow... ”. This time, she used it almost as an expletive. “We’re going around in circles,” she complained. “That damned hardening gets us every time.”
Yarawi regarded her with empathy and concern. “I think there’s some hope,” she counseled. “The ‘generation point’- wouldn't that be here? They go right on to say that this is a special case related to the Sprawnia Division.”
“Sounds right. But hardened facility? That sounds ominous.”
“It may not be as bad as it sounds. Believe it or not, my dad may have some insight into the situation. I'm going to copy some of this and show it to him.”
“Go ahead, that would be great. I should take a dinner break, anyway. That drink you were so kind to share with me was amazing! If not for it, I never would have made it this far. It’s amazing that I'm still not really hungry, but I'm afraid if I don't eat now, I'll be ravenous later.”
“Good thinking.” Rachel resisted the temptation to point out the reversal in terms of star-sidekick role structure that the teenager's mode of approval implied. She reminded herself that although a decade senior to the young bicultural, she was still young, and still a simple Observer, Third-Class. Reminding herself of these life-facts, Rachel realized that she was not just young, but an infant in terms of experience with the Huari culture in which her new-found assistant (or colleague?) had been brought up. She believed that the seemingly-magical potion she had recently imbibed was a concrete manifestation of the potential blessings she could look forward to if she learned more of Yarawi’s heritage.
Yarawi offered, “We have some traditional foods to deal with nourishing people who aren’t really hungry.” Rachel felt the wisdom of her decision to quietly receive others’ wisdom rather than becoming embroiled with power-roles had been confirmed. “Would you like to come over after I copy this?” the girl continued. “We can feed you and you can consult with my dad on the best strategy.”
“That sounds great,” Rachel enthused. Inwardly, the feeling of being pleasantly besieged by events moving in a wished-for direction continued. Nonetheless, something made her think, "Strategy? He's a security guard, and he's planning a military campaign?" Even as she had the thought, she dismissed it with a feeling of anger and disappointment at herself. "Do NOT underestimate based on circumstances. He's not only surviving, but raising a family in the city, and he could do the same and even more if he was in his home environment, in the snow under their volcanoes." She inwardly apologized to Manqu. Understanding the importance of self-compassion, she supplemented her apology by giving herself strokes for recognizing and correcting her own bias.
Yarawi scooped up and then elegantly balanced the huge legal tome to take it off towards the copy machines, as Rachel thought, "I can't wait to hear about Manqu’s strategy."
Not having the giant folio to focus on, her eye wandered around the surrounding stacks. The books seemed frozen in an internal neglect, as whatever their subjects, it was clearly not something that was attracting a huge audience, let alone a lively one.
In one of the most obscure corners, far down the farthest aisle from her, she thought she saw the brief motion of a gleam. Perhaps the light glancing off a spiderweb? From her observations of the activity level on this library floor, spiderwebs among the stacks seemed a likely possibility. She kept her eye on the spot. "No… Not a spiderweb… Unless spiders were spinning with red and yellow silk... If not webs, what?" Red and yellow kept fluctuating through the cracks between the books. A sickening suspicion came over her. "The pattern… Variable, overall round patches… Flowers! NOT good!"
Without conscious plan, she drew herself up at the desk. "Slow… No sudden movements… be like a cat …" She navigated out from behind the desk, and, hoping that she was padding as planned, arrived at the end of the aisle in question. "Nothing…" Rachel did not see even the briefest flash of bright swimming trunks or ugly flesh-colored chest. "But I feel sure… I wonder what Yarawi would say?"
But when the girl returned with the sheaf of photocopies, Rachel felt embarrassed to tell her what she at first was sure she had seen. By that time, sureness had changed to "I thought I saw" and fear of having her mental state questioned, even by this abnormally tolerant and seemingly almost saintly youngster, prevented her from fully speaking her mind.