The spider mech, which had already fixed a half dozen of its eyes on the mech, said, “What is? What is this thing?”
“It’s a mech from the District Voice news service,” said Ingray. “Piloted by a human reporter. And if you don’t want to answer her questions, just say that and she’ll leave you alone.” With a significant look at the orange news mech.
“But you can’t just decide what we call you,” protested Chorem Caellas, a short, stocky woman from the most popular of the planetary-wide services.
“I’m not talking to anyone but the District Voice,” said Garal, as Taucris shooed the mechs away from the groundcar.
“Miss Aughskold!” cried a news service mech, starting a desperate chorus of Miss Aughskold from the others. And suddenly, just as she’d felt slighted when they’d called for Garal and not her, now she wished they would just ignore her. But she knew how to handle this; she knew what it was like, the babble of questions, the mechs pressed close to each other all around, and all she had to do was keep her expression pleasant and not say a single word, or even look directly at any of the brightly colored news mechs.
“If the prolocutor were here,” said the District Voice mech as Taucris opened the groundcar’s passenger door, “none of them would need to pay any attention to you, they’d just talk to him.”
“If they could get what they wanted from the prolocutor,” replied Garal, “none of them would have come all the way here to talk to me in person. If it’s all right with Ingray and Taucris, you can ride with us to the transport that’s taking us to the elevator.”
“And the Geck ambassador?” asked District Voice, collapsing its body down to half its height and clambering into the groundcar after Garal and the spider mech.
Ingray got in herself. “I notice you got into the groundcar before you asked about the ambassador’s opinion,” she observed before Garal, beside her, or the spider mech on the floor, could answer. The news mech had taken a seat opposite Garal. “And look, you were worried about what would happen when the big services got here.”
The District Voice mech gave an amused little chirp. “Thanks for helping a girl out, Ingray. Hey, Officer Ithesta, am I going to get anything besides the official statement from the Deputy Chief of Serious Crimes?”
“You aren’t,” said Taucris, sliding in to sit next to the news mech and pulling the door closed. “So you just pretend I’m not here, all right?”
“Right, right,” agreed the District Voice mech. “So, Ambassador. We’re all having trouble understanding why you’re saying Garal Ket is Geck. I mean, we all understand why e’s agreeing with you, but that’s another thing entirely, isn’t it.”
The spider mech turned all its eyes on the news service mech. “I do not want to answer questions.” It sat all the way down on the floor of the groundcar, its legs curled beneath it. “Garal Ket is Geck.”
“All right then,” said the District Voice mech, quite cheerfully. “So, Garal. How did you manage to get out of Compassionate Removal? The place is built so that no one can get out, right? All one-way entrances? And it’s guarded, isn’t it?”
“I won’t talk about getting out of Compassionate Removal,” replied Garal pleasantly. “I’ll talk about being in, if you like. And of course I’m more than happy to tell you about the Garseddai vestiges.”
“That’s a pretty shocking allegation you made in that recording,” District Voice said, still cheerily. “How can you …” The orange mech paused. “Wait! The committee has just ordered Excellency Hevom to be arrested for the murder of Excellency Zat! And here I thought you were doing me a favor letting me go with you!”
“We are,” said Ingray. “Tell the other District Voice reporters not to rush over to the house. Hevom has been gone for an hour or more; there’s nothing to see and you won’t get to talk to him.”
“And the deputy chief isn’t going to say anything more about it than e already has,” put in Taucris.
“Oh, Ingray,” said the news mech. “You are a jewel of the district.” It turned its attention to Garal. “So, Mx Ket, what I’d really like best is to sit down with you and talk about the situation with the Budrakim Garseddai vestiges. I’d love to do an in-depth piece on that. But we don’t have time for it, so instead I’ll ask you why you felt like you had to claim that the Rejection of Further Obligations is a fraud.”
“Because it is,” said Garal. “Not the words, no, we have the drafts of the resolution, we have recordings of the Assembly sessions where it was hammered out. But in all those recordings there’s no sign of anyone making a physical document. Not like the one in the System Lareum. There were vestiges made, of course; all the representatives who were at those sessions got a specially made copy that they did all physically sign, but there never was one actual original.”
“Are you claiming we’re still obligated to the Tyr Executory?” asked the District Voice mech.
“Not at all. Just look at the history of the document in the System Lareum. About four hundred years ago Tauret Valmor was nearly broke and about to lose her seat in the Second Assembly. Her name was an old one, and one that was indeed there during the drafting of the Rejection, but there were questions about whether she held it legitimately—the Tauret Valmor just before her had died on the way to one of the non-Hwaean outstations, without giving eir name to an heir. The new Representative Valmor returned to Hwae claiming the elder had given her eir name just before e died, but there were no witnesses to that. But of course, her predecessor had told her about the secret storage compartment where the family’s most precious vestiges were kept, including the actual original of the Rejection of Further Obligations, which of course e never would have told anyone but eir actual successor, and of course there was a nice detailed account of how it had gotten into Representative Valmor’s possession to begin with. The donation practically founded the System Lareum; no one had wanted to give up anything really significant before that. It was a magnanimous gesture, and it went a long way to securing Valmor’s Assembly seat, not to mention the fortunes of the next few Taurets. The most obvious giveaway is the lettering, which is nearly a century too late for the supposed date of the document. Whoever Valmor commissioned to do the work should have been more careful, but I suppose it doesn’t matter, because it worked. But there are other problems with it, including the way such an important vestige suddenly appeared, when no one had even suspected it existed before that, and appeared right in time to be useful to the person who produced it.”