Free An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews Page A

them compete for his approval and respect. That was one of the reasons that Tutors handled two Students in the same Term, and on the same shift as well. Receiving a stern reprimand in the presence of a social and professional inferior could, with any luck at all, be counted on to set young Koscuisko’s aristocratic teeth on edge.
    “I’ve reviewed your practical exercise, Koscuisko. I am disgusted with the manner in which you conducted yourself. You seem to think that this is all some sort of a perverse amusement, an adolescent game.”
    And he could all but hear Koscuisko seething where he sat, with his spine locked rigid and his hand that lay on the table suddenly motionless; still, there was no hint of Koscuisko’s fingertips whitening at the point of the stylus in his hand. Koscuisko had control.
    Chonis didn’t know if that was a good thing or not, yet.
    “It is a game.” Sweet and soft, Koscuisko’s reply, but Chonis could hear the confusion and worry behind the response. “You explained it to us yourself, Tutor Chonis. We pretend that the crime deserves its punishment, and in return the prisoner pretends that there is hope of Judicial leniency.”
    It wasn’t the sarcastic route Koscuisko’s reasoning took that disturbed Tutor Chonis. He knew about it already, of course, from Joslire’s reports; and his own experience had prepared him to expect it from a man like Koscuisko. It was not an uncommon psychological defense, especially at the beginning of the Term.
    “Don’t try to mock me.”
    He turned away from the two of them in order to emphasize his displeasure and to analyze its source at the same time. The real problem was that Koscuisko gave every evidence of possessing an unusually healthy sense of the ridiculous. He could not be permitted to leave Fleet Orientation Center Medical with that sense of the ridiculous intact.
    “Capital eight-six. On the appropriate display of the accepted psychological conviction.” Damn the insolent little wretch, Koscuisko was quoting his own lesson citations at him. “The Inquisitor is at all times to display clearly evident conviction that the Jurisdiction’s scale of punitive measures is wise, tempered with mercy, and above all completely just. Correct moral stance on the part of the Inquisitor will greatly facilitate the creation of the appropriate attitudes of contrition and submission to the Law on the part of the prisoner.”
    As if he didn’t know, when he had all but written the text himself. “Leaving apart for the moment the unpleasant flavor created by a Student attempting to lecture his instructor. Dare you suggest that your clownishness in the practical exercise created the appropriate sense of respect for the Judicial order in the mind of your prisoner?”
    He turned slowly back to face his Students again as he spoke. Noycannir first: she seemed to be enjoying the show. If only she could learn from it. Her first exercise had been completely serious — without technical error and with every indication of utter conviction, as if her personal background — her proven skills for survival in the unspeakably sordid circumstances of her earliest years in an ungoverned Port, her demonstrated facility for carrying useful survival strategies to their logical limits — had somehow deadened her imagination. She would not make an adequate Inquisitor without an imagination. A torturer with an intensive medical background and a set of legal parameters to conform to could be considered to be a perversion of a sort, that was true. But a torturer without imagination was only a brute.
    “A man,” Chonis continued, “since you obviously need the reminder, who was honest enough to make a full and free confession. In order to protect his family from the consequences of his own guilty actions. Whose dignity should have been respected.”
    Koscuisko met his eyes squarely, and did not drop his gaze until a precise fraction of a moment before the stare would have