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Polian planted a hand on the rolling bed’s foot rail and stopped it.
    He shouted, “What do you think you’re doing?”
    The two trench-coated men pushing the gurney looked up at Polian. The one on the left peered from beneath the brim of his slouch hat with eyes as black and cold as marbles. “Custody transfer, Mr. Polian. The IP has humored you for a month.”
    The man, an Interior Police chief inspector by his lapel badge, shifted his weight and shoved the gurney toward the waiting ambulance. Polian planted his feet, shoved back until the gurney quivered, and stared at the cop. Every member of the Interior Police that Polian had encountered had the same attitude and dead eyes.
    The locals called the IP “ferrents,” after an indigenous species of anvil-headed, rat-sized amphibians. Partly because the IP wore ferrent-colored brown leather trench coats and slouch hats. Mostly because ferrents—the four footed kind—had a singularly disgusting habit of nosing around in other creatures’ dung.
    Polian looked down at the bandaged, unconscious figure strapped to the gurney. “Thirty days was a reevaluation date, not a turnover deadline.” He peered over the ferrent’s shoulder at the lab-coated physician who stood behind them in the corridor. “Doctor, what’ll happen if she’s moved?”
    The physician glanced sideways at the ferrent, around spectacles fashioned from bent wire. “As I explained to the chief inspector, each surgery has improved her chance of regaining consciousness. I think that in a few more days—”
    The ferrent rolled his eyes. “ More days? She was unconscious when she got here. After a month of your coddling, she’s the same. Our methods have gotten the attention of subjects less lively than she is.”
    Ferrent “methods” would only kill her. That she die, and painfully, suited Polian fine. But not until she talked.
    The doctor and this idiot ferrent knew only that the woman on the gurney was a high-value detainee and that Polian was a civilian with an odd accent and too much stroke. And that was all they needed to know.
    So Polian simply sighed and exercised his stroke. He stared at the ferrent. “Would you care to see my papers?”
    The man scowled and stared at Polian’s chest.
    In a leather wallet in his breast pocket, Polian carried a simple letter on the personal letterhead of, and signed and sealed by, the chairman of the Republican Socialist Party and chancellor-for-life of the Tressen Republic. It advised the reader to render all assistance to the bearer that he might request. It encouraged the reader to contact the Chancellery directly if further clarification was required.
    So far, further clarification had never, ever been required by anyone who saw the letter.
    Undoubtedly, the ferrent’s predecessor had told this new ferrent about the fiat letter, if the doctor hadn’t. Polian cursed himself silently for keeping a predictable schedule. The ferrents had expected to steal the woman before he arrived, then fumble and shuffle about her whereabouts while they worked her over. They had nearly succeeded. The Trueborns had a saying that possession was nine points of the law. Evidently the Tressens did, too.
    The doctor laid a hand on the ferrent’s coat sleeve and shook his head. The gesture measured the power of a simple Chancellery fiat letter. Just as no sane civilian Yavi back home laid hands on a government representative, no sane Tressen laid hands on a ferrent, unless the consequences of holding back were worse.
    The ferrent glanced down at the hand quivering on his sleeve, then up at Polian. After two breaths, the ferrent nodded to his trench-coated companion, and the two relaxed their grips on the gurney rails. The senior ferrent narrowed his eyes at Polian and pointed. “I don’t know who you are, but I know you’ll regret this. This woman is trouble.”
    Polian warmed to his role and mocked a pout. “Ah, women! How many years have the Interior Police been