18. The Drift
Following the confrontation in Grid’s room, the cadet felt something familiar begin to set in: the calm, but not quite.
All too often, it was the cadet’s experience that right when a case was approaching its zenith, right when it felt like all the stars were coming into alignment and the bright burning light of truth was about to shine down upon the perp and expose his crimes for all to bear… it went quiet again.
Or maybe in this metaphor it would be better to say, “it went dark again”? And “bright burning light of truth” was a bit over-the-top, Bluebird had to think. “Zenith” wasn’t really the right word here, either. The cadet had always had an appreciation for poetry, but knew from high school experience that he was pretty lousy at it.
And really, metaphorically it was anything but quiet to the cadet. In the hours after he and his mentor had split up in order to pursue whatever-comes-to-mind in search of clues, he swore he could hear at all times the frantic panting of a changeling exile, pale and trembling, cornered and out of options. The bug spoke admissions of truth into one of his ears, and self-serving deceptions into the other; pleaded for mercy with one breath, and denied any help with the next.
Ahah… Right now, Bluebird couldn’t tell who was breathing down whose neck!
As the sun set on this second day (eternity) of their investigation, he crossed paths again with his mentor in the upstairs hallway.
“Bluebird,” Pesco greeted. His eyes were still red, but the bags which hung from them like drapery gave him a much more exhausted look than anything. He fished around in his pockets for a moment before retrieving his badge and identifying himself with it.
The cadet found the gesture more than a little strange. “Ahah, Detective Pesco Margherita?” he said, leaning in to read the lettering. “Nice to meetcha. My name’s Bluebird.”
“Your badge, please,” he responded dryly. “We can’t let our guard down around a shapeshifter. We wouldn’t want another ambush.”
“Oh, right. Fair enough.” Bluebird reached into his bags for his own means of identifying himself. Once convinced of his identity, Pesco turned around and gestured with a hoof for the cadet to walk alongside him.
Once at pace, Pesco continued, “I’ve taken the liberty of revisiting the six kids these past few hours in an attempt to learn any new information.”
“Find anything?”
A weary sigh. “For what little mood any of them were in to chat, I wasn’t able to glean anything we didn’t already know. I more thoroughly cross-examined their school memories while I was at it, and found no inconsistencies—at this point, I think it’s safe to conclude our theory of a long-term impostor is sound.”
“Suppose so.”
“Have you looked into anything in the meantime?”
“Oh. Yeah, ahah, I just decided to check out those places on my to-do list from earlier that Grid’s visit disrupted. You know, the attic, the boiler, a couple others.” The cadet had not, in fact, searched the attic, the boiler, nor a couple others. He couldn't remember much of anything he’d done these past few hours, besides wander the halls like a lost spirit. “Nothing to report.”
“I see. A shame.” His eyes came to rest on the cadet’s back. Bluebird followed his gaze to see he was looking at the prybar, strapped awkwardly to Bluebird’s side underneath his wing. “You might as well put that evidence in the guest room up ahead. I talked with Bon and arranged one for each of us to sleep in tonight.” He reached into his pocket and handed a ring of bedroom keys over to the cadet.
“Oh?” Bluebird felt his voice rise an octave. “No more couch duty for us? Or insomnia lookout duty for you? No complaints here!”
The cadet thought through the implications: Did that mean Pesco no longer minded if, in the dead of night, the changeling just so happened to…?
His mentor pushed a yawn. “It’s a luxury, I’ll grant, but it’s not for our sake—think of it as a trap for the changeling, first and foremost.”
Bluebird felt a lump in his throat as Pesco reached into his coat to retrieve two glassy, baseball-sized crystals and what looked like an empty kite spool. Walking with the light for a few seconds, however, Bluebird could make out sparkly little rainbows winking in and out of existence in the air around the spool; it appeared the spool was actually wrapped quite thickly with a transparent, faintly iridescent thread.
“Bon had some spare channeling wire lying around. I wound it around the first-floor exits of the villa, and then had Bon magically link it up with these beacons.” He tossed one of the gems over to Bluebird. A mischievous smile pushed up against the bags hanging from his eyes. “Suffice to say, if the changeling tries to slip away in the dead of night, these crystals will interrupt our beauty sleep to let us know.”
The cadet rolled the hefty little orb around in the crook of his wing. Its rough edges tousled his feathers. Like always, the great detective had thought of everything.
“Say, Pesco?”
“Yes?”
“Did you, well, mean everything you said back there? In Grid’s room?”
His mentor’s pace seemed to falter for just a moment. Maybe it was just Bluebird’s optimism. “Yes,” Pesco repeated. “Why wouldn’t I have?”
“Nothing in particular. I just know you sometimes like to ‘read the room’ before you say things—don’t we all? Especially in the presence of suspects,” he added. “And, ahah, maybe sometimes… you just don’t know how to say the things you really feel?”
They continued walking, but for a time, they did not continue speaking.
“B-but don’t we all?” Bluebird reprised. “I mean, no shame about it, I know I don’t most of the time!”
“I meant everything I said,” he reiterated. His eyes focused down the hall. “That includes what I said about our partnership—I consider us as independent equals. Beyond that, I value you as a friend. If you don’t wish to pursue this case any further, then I won’t question your judgment.”
His mentor had come right out with it. To tell the truth, the thought of quitting the case hadn’t seriously crossed the cadet’s mind before that moment. The thought of abandoning his mentor never had, in fact.
Pesco held his hoof out and eyed Bluebird’s beacon as he awaited a response. “Well?”
“Umm,” Bluebird stalled. “No, you’re right. We have our job to do. I guess we’ll just, have to see how things turn out?”
The hoof withdrew. Bluebird wasn’t sure what he himself meant with his latest words, but even if he did know what they meant, he didn’t know why he said them out loud. Pesco’s malcontent silence had him anxious that it wasn’t inspiring his mentor’s confidence in him.
Right when he was about to reaffirm his commitment to the case, they were interrupted by a voice behind them: “Officers?”
It was Blanche. They had passed her bedroom several paces ago, and the young doe now held the door open as she hailed the detective and the cadet from afar.
Given the mood, Bluebird was happy to have some company. “Blanche!” He threw up a wing to greet her before taking to the air and gliding on over. The sound of plodding hoofsteps echoed behind him as his mentor took his time in following along. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing terribly important,” she replied. Her business-as-usual frown indicated that whatever she had to say probably wasn’t an emergency. And yet, it was hard to miss the way she fidgeted in place, coiling and uncoiling her hoof around the doorknob. “Although, obviously I’m not here to waste your time… Do you happen to have the evidence that was found in my room?”
“Evidence?” Bluebird said. “Oh, you mean the parchment and wing fragment?”
Coil and uncoil. “Yes.”
“Yeah, Pesco should have it. Let’s wait for him together, shall we?”
The doe trained her gaze on the detective as he made his final trudging steps into the conversation circle.
“Blanche here was wondering if you had that evidence bag on you, Pesco,” Bluebird said. He turned back to Blanche. “What is it you said you needed it for?”
She took a long time to answer the question. “I would just like to take a closer look at the parchment. Overnight, if it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Overnight, huh.” Pesco looked dead on his hooves. “There’s something specific that has you asking.”
“Nothing really,” she deflected. “If it’s a no, I’ll understand.”
“You seem to be preoccupied with this parchment lately,” he said bluntly. “I would have thought you’d seen—and felt, and smelled—everything you could have wanted from it when I let you examine it earlier.”
A boa constrictor on the doorknob. “Don’t belabor it,” she said, restraining a sneer. “I understand. I’ll leave you to your work.”
Pesco sighed. “Wait,” he called, as she made to return to her bedroom. “Fine. It’s doing us no good at the time being, anyway. Just answer some questions for us first so we know we’re not loaning out evidence to the wrong creature entirely.”
His mentor proceeded to ask several simple memory-recall questions from the past thirty hours in order to confirm that the individual they were speaking to was indeed the Blanche they had come to know. Bluebird contributed a couple of his own, coming from their first interview together.
Pretty soon, they both ran out of questions. “Well?” she pressed.
“All right,” he conceded as he passed off the parchment. “We can expect to collect this tomorrow morning, then? Completely intact?”
“Yes.” She stood rooted in front of the doorway with the parchment in her telekinetic grasp, looking like she had more to say—something of finality, perhaps, or something to clue the cadet and his mentor into what all she planned to do with this blank piece of paper. Whatever it was, she decided against it. She thanked the two for their time, and made to return to the solitude of her workspace…
But Bluebird had one more question to ask. He hadn’t found any better timing for it, and he couldn’t think of any subtler approach than:
“Say, Blanche?”
Standing partway in her room, her door already halfway closed, she cast a glance backward to hear the cadet out.
“In your researched opinion, what do you think would happen to an outed changeling, in the best of cases? That’s to say, if he hasn’t hurt anybody or stolen anything. And maybe, ahah, wasn’t even here on Chrysalis’s orders?”
In his periphery, Bluebird caught Pesco rolling his eyes. Meanwhile, Blanche stepped back into the hallway. “It’s a prickly question, Officer, and one without much legal precedent. And you should know, precedent is everything in affairs such as this.”
The cadet didn’t feel he needed a lecture on the law from the girl, but he was eager to hear her out on the changelings.
“I’ll ignore your last criterion, since it’s by and large an unverifiable statistic,” she said. “That being the case, there is a short list of changelings who have been captured alive, and an even shorter list of those who have been captured when there was no crime in progress. I can tell you that, in each and every case that I looked into while researching Changeling Ringing, it was the opinion of the royal magistrates involved that the changeling’s capture only preempted any criminal wrongdoing—in other words, it would have only been a matter of time were they allowed to roam free.”
“That can’t be right,” Bluebird said. “It’s in the Equestrian constitution itself, isn’t it? Never shall any creature, regardless of species or citizenship status, be punished by Her Royal Authority in the absence of criminal culpability. Ahah.”
Truth be told, Bluebird did do more than just wander the halls these past few hours. He had also taken the time to pursue some choice reading in the library. He had felt it might become relevant to the case… or its aftermath.
Blanche shook her head. “Her Royal Authority has strived for benevolence in each case, but in each case it’s a quagmire. Let me recount one such incident from a decade past, one which directly inspired my book.
“News broke of a changeling busted in bustling Manehattan. He had disguised himself as quite the dashing rogue of a stallion, and he had earned a secret admirer of sorts, you see. This admirer was as awkward as she was prying. Eventually, she pried right past his disguise, and—in a fit of panic, and to her immediate regret—reported him to the authorities.
“A high court found him innocent of any charges beyond that of identity theft. He had not kidnapped anyone, but instead chose to continue the legacy of a suicide victim, you see. In addition, his orders by Queen Chrysalis, although he never denied having them, were never made clear. And so, the Equestrian government only requested that the Hive apologize for their agent’s involvement, and compensate them for procedural costs in exchange for cooperation in a deportation procedure.
“Alas, the Hive issued no response.
“Perhaps feeling their bluff had been called, the Equestrian government withdrew their demands. Without any preconditions, they granted the Hive diplomatic immunity so long as they arranged an envoy to transport their agent back home. But still, the Hive issued no response.
“By this point, a grassroots protest to see his release fomented, one headed by his very own secret-admirer-cum-whistleblower-cum-public-admirer, in fact. The protest gained traction in the local news. And so, mindful of their optics, the Equestrian government offered to send their own envoy, at their own expense, in order to return the changeling agent back to his homeland. All they requested is that their envoy not be attacked once they cross the border, as had happened in a previous diplomatic outreach. Once again, the Hive issued no response.
“Do you get the drift, Officer? The Hive doesn’t want their failed agents back. At the same time, there’s no place for them in Equestria. Thus, they are condemned to legal limbo in perpetuity—and as Prans Kafka would say, this is the only place worse than jail.”
“That’s nonsense!” Bluebird spat. His mentor flashed him a disapproving look. “You said yourself ponies wanted to see him released. It sounds like he has a perfectly accepting community waiting for him.”
The doe was too late to stifle a scoff. “I’m sorry, Officer. You have predicted what happens in my cheesy doorstopper, but not in reality. Let me summarize: In Changeling Ringing, he is detained and released in this way multiple times, inciting a greater and greater public awakening. (‘Zeitgeist’ is the word I used. Ad nauseum.) All the while he’s incarcerated, he nurtures a correspondence romance with his admirer by writing on this… this dreadful prison stationary he’s given. And this romance blooms once he is finally granted his freedom by an edict from Celestia herself.
“In reality, our dashing rogue never wrote a single word to his ‘lover’ after his arrest. And you should know, his true supporters could all fit comfortably side-by-side on the steps of the Manehattan district courthouse.
“Let me conclude with this: During the course of my research, I perused no small number of newspaper op-eds on microfiche. Perhaps the one I remember most clearly ran with the title Not in My Apartment Complex! and it was accompanied by an opinion poll. The results spoke to a reality far more satirical than my story could ever hope to.
85%—‘I wish the changeling the best and that he can find his freedom somewhere.’
70%—‘I would feel uncomfortable living next door to a changeling.’
60%—‘I would vote to keep my own community a changeling-free space.’
35%—‘I would support dehorning mandates for changelings in Equestria.’
“Et cetera. Do you get the drift, Officer?
“All in all, he was a flavor of the week. He lost out in the headlines to this new sparkly meteor shower, you see, and after that, I failed to find any more articles about him.” She leaned against the door with her eyes closed and nose held high.
Bluebird tasted bile in the back of his throat. It wasn’t his overactive imagination that had him thinking about a world where every third person would have him clip his own wings. He wondered, just how many paradoxes in society might be explained by the fact that 85 plus 35 was greater than 100? How many of the world's problems boiled down to wishy-washy well-wishers?
“Thank you for your account, Blanche,” his mentor said. “It’s been illuminating. We’ll come around in the morning to collect that parchment.” He turned to leave while looking at the cadet. It wasn't a subtle cue.
Whatever. The cadet knew that nothing he could say would change the past. Or the future, apparently.
The investigators found their way to their own bedrooms and dropped off (what remained of) their collected evidence. Bluebird had been unsure whether the hour was late enough, and whether Pesco was tired enough, for Pesco to call it a night. To his surprise, it was.
“Let’s be up bright and early to continue with the case,” his mentor said between yawns. “We only have so much time with this one.”
“Can do!” Bluebird agreed, feigning eagerness. It didn't sound like his own voice.
“And if you are, in the end, fully on board with the case,” he continued, mustering a last little bit of energy to convey some gravitas, “do make sure you sleep with that beacon within earshot.”
“… Can do.”
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I'll be publishing both chapters 19 and 20 tomorrow, since 19 is rather short and they form a natural pair, anyway.
And remember: One for each letter of the alphabet.
Hmm…
Fascinating and distressing glimpse at the state of changelings in this setting. And of Bluebird’s precarious emotional state. We’ll have to see what happens in the night.
what the hell are we going to find in the boiler room everycreature has collectively agreed to not step in for any reason. i don't even know if it is relevant but it is stressing me out. aaa
So...a changeling (or at this point much of anything, really) could still be hiding in any of those places then.
Good to know.
I suppose.
Or any creature getting up to use the restroom, or get a drink from the kitchen, or deciding they can't sleep and visiting the library, the gym, or any number of other locations this villa has...
Still, I suppose it's as sound an idea as any...though I think said changeling probably isn't going to be doing much snooping around at the moment...at least none of the sort Pesco's apparently expecting, because, after all, the changeling is either deliberately messing with them, in which you'd think it'd plan for something like this and work around it, or benevolent and possibly just wanting to be left alone. Directly attacking to cause physical harm or just doing general snooping doesn't seem to be it's intentions either way.
Also, as you yourself pointed out, Pesco, changelings fly. So what good is some tripwire going to be?
I think the problem is less that, Pesco, and more that Bluebird would like to pursue the case in a different direction than you have been.
I mean, might as well. Your approach hasn't gotten the results you wanted still, so might as well step aside and let Bluebird take the lead for a bit, see if his different viewpoint to things can't make any further progress. If it doesn't appear it is, you can always step back into the lead, or work together to come up with yet some other approach.
Of course, teamwork is what makes the dream work, so whatever you do, you're both better off working together than apart.
This is the second time she's asked to see that...Blanche is definitely onto something here, and I'm really starting to wonder what. Particularly as it's sounding more and more like she's trying to pull a Zorn here.
I wonder if Blanche's faith in the detectives has been rattled as well...
...either that, or she's just not confident whatever she's pursuing is going to pan out, and thus doesn't want to say anything until she's sure.
And, unless I miss my guess as to what she's likely doing, considering that outcome could potentially be throwing someone under the bus in the process...let's just say it's something she doesn't want to get wrong either.
Fair enough, especially as we the readers don't even know with certainty it's an actual factor in all of this.
Well, that's a bias and a half. As Blanche said, one not without precedent, but still a bias that persumes a great deal about any changeling put on the stand, rather than verifying that great deal about that changeling.
Of course, the trouble with changelings is that they are known to be skillful deceivers, so I can't really blame someone for second guessing themselves on whether or not the changeling is lying or telling the truth at any given time, as well as the want to just assume the former as a general rule so to play it safe...but that's also playing into paranoia, which is ultimately unproductive at best, destructive at worst.
Sooner or later, at some point, someone is going to just have to trust a changeling at their word and hope for the best.
This is probably just such a time.
Yeah, that fits Chrysalis's MO, all right. If the 'ling's of no use to her, then she generally doesn't care enough to waste time and resources bailing it out. She's got plenty more where that one came from anyway.
Well, we can't do anything about the Hive's side of the picture (well...not without getting a Thorax involved at least
), but there's plenty one could do on Equestria's side, as the only reason there's no place for a 'ling in Equestria is simply because Equestria hasn't tried to even offer them one. And they don't have a good reason to not to at this point, because if the Hive really doesn't want failed agents back, then they probably aren't ever going to try to contact them or create any meaningful threat with them, leaving that 'ling on their own, and at that point, only a fool would assume that not cooperating with Equestria would the better option. By not offering that place, they're basically just demonizing Equestria in the eyes of the changelings, and effectively perpetuating the cycle of hate and distrust both sides have.
So, again, at some point one has to break the cycle and extend some trust to one, the other, or both. Prove the cycle doesn't actually need to continue.
That said, I'm starting to see why Blanche has been so skeptical about a good ending for our changeling--she already knew the fruitless legal cycle it would inevitably face, so that, ultimately, it wouldn't matter what the 'ling's actual intentions were, it wasn't likely to end favorably for it. And her being the realist that she is...
Of course, one actually quite easy fix to all of this is to simply not get the law involved to begin with...but that'll be up to Pesco and Bluebird to make happen if that option is pursued.
Uh, UH, UH WAIT A MINUTE--stationary...like the stationary Blanche is so interested in?
Holy crap, that just might put a whole new spin on this...is THAT why Blanche is so interested in studying the parchment? Is she thinking our changeling has taken pages from the events she wrote in Changeling Ringing?
Is that why the elaborate charade? Is this the changeling's way of trying to signal this situation is essentially the same as that in Blanche's novel, by deliberately staging parallels with it?
You know, we just might need a play-by-play of this book's contents if that's the case, because there may be critical clues to draw off of in there, that could fit this altogether.
A million to one shot the dark, this, but...what if our changeling, is the same as the changeling from this case Blanche is speaking of?
Now wouldn't that be something.
Again, it's not that he's not fully on board with the case, its that he's not fully onboard with your particular approach to it, Pesco.
But I suspect, in your mind, anything that's not in line with your particular approach is going to be taken as "not fully on board with this case," isn't it, Pesco?
In which case...you're just perpetuating the cycle, bud.
11245588
Ah, I should clarify: He's only armed the exits. And they will sound off when any such exit is opened, not merely tripped over.
The needle of suspicion doesn't move at all this chapter, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to talk about.
Assuming that Blanche is saying the truth, then it's sobering, and something that's very much needed after all the focus on what's happening in the present and the past for the past several chapters and more: what happens after the changeling is caught? To risk sounding like a broken record, Zorn's words from Chapter 3 come to mind once again. The little that is clear from the Scolus flashbacks is that Scolus may not have 100% evil intentions (thought we can't rule out the possibility that he's 0% evil, not to mention that even if he'd end up clearly evil, he may not be the most vile one of the bunch, given that Gloria is here).
What I'm missing here is more of that link from the latest Scolus flashback to now. That's still a rather long gap, and while he could've just taken up one of the suspects here and disguised himself over the long haul, it's also possible that he'd had escapades prior to encountering the group here. It may be that being part of this group is his last resort: if he's outed here, it's either escape with a search party after him, or face the music to a society that only has enough sympathy for him to feel bad but not enough to actually help him out.
A vagabond, alone.
If Zorn is knowingly helping the changeling out, then his words will hit all the sweeter... and all the more bitter.
...and given the name of the next chapter, one last obstacle may actually be the Royal Guard that's sent there to help the detectives out, but I'll see how it plays out.