Diplomatic Immunity - Lois McMaster Bujold [81]
"So," Venn growled after a bit, "which one really is the fellow?"
Two sets of documentation for "Firka" included physical vid shots of a man very different in appearance from their moaning captive: a big, bulky, but perfectly normal human male from either Jackson's Whole, no House affiliation, or Aslund, another Hegen Hub neighbor, depending on which—if either—ID was to be believed. Yet a third Firka ID, the one the present Firka seemed to have used to travel from Tau Ceti to Graf Station, portrayed the prisoner himself. Finally, his vid shots also matched up with the IDs of a person named Russo Gupta, also hailing from Jackson's Whole and lacking a proper House affiliation. That name, face, and associated retina scans came up again on a jumpship engineer's license that Miles recognized as originating from a certain Jacksonian organization of the sub-economy he had dealt with in his covert ops days. Judging from the long file of dates and customs stamps appended, it had passed as genuine elsewhere. And recently. A record of his travels, good!
Miles pointed. "That is almost certainly a forgery."
The clustering quaddies looked genuinely shocked. Greenlaw said, "A false engineer's license? That would be unsafe."
"If it's from the place I think, you could get a false neurosurgeon's license to go with it. Or any other job you cared to pretend to have, without going through all that tedious training and testing and certification." Or, in this case, really have—now, there was a disturbing thought. Although on-the-job apprenticeship and self-teaching might cover some of the gaps over time . . . someone had been clever enough to modify that hot riveter, after all.
Under no circumstances could this pale, lanky mutie pass for a stout, pleasantly ugly, red-haired woman named either Grace Nevatta of Jackson's Whole—no House affiliation—or Louise Latour of Pol, depending on which set of IDs she favored. Nor for a short, head-wired, mahogany-skinned jumpship pilot named Hewlet.
"Who are all these people?" Venn muttered in aggravation.
"Why don't we just ask?" suggested Miles.
Firka—or Gupta—had finally stopped struggling and just lay in midair, nostrils flexing with his panting above the blue rectangle of tape over his mouth. The quaddie patroller finished recording his last scans and reached for a corner of the tape, then paused uncertainly. "I'm afraid this is going to hurt a bit."
"He's probably sweated enough underneath the tape to loosen it," Miles offered. "Take it in one quick jerk. It'll hurt less in the long run. That's what I'd want, if I were him."
A muffled mew of disagreement from the prisoner turned into a shrill scream as the quaddie followed this plan. All right, so, the frog prince hadn't sweated as much around the mouth as Miles had guessed. It was still better to have the damned tape off than on.
But despite the noises he'd been making the prisoner did not follow up this liberation of his lips with outraged protests, swearing, complaints, or raving threats. He just kept panting. His eyes were peculiarly glassy—a look Miles recognized, of a man who'd been wound up far too tight for far too long. Bel's loyal stevedores might have roughed him up a bit, but he hadn't acquired that look in the brief time he'd been in quaddie hands.
Chief Venn held up a double handful, left and left, of IDs before the prisoner's eyes. "All right. Which one are you really? You may as well tell us the truth. We'll be cross-checking it all anyway."
With surly reluctance, the prisoner muttered, "I'm Guppy."
"Guppy? Russo Gupta?"
"Yeah."
"Who are these others?"
"Absent friends."
Miles wasn't quite sure if Venn had caught the intonation. He put in, "Dead friends?"
"Yeah, that too." Guppy/Gupta stared away into a distance Miles calculated as light-years.
Venn looked alarmed. Miles was torn between anxiety to proceed and an intense desire to sit down and study the place and date stamps on all those IDs, real and fake,