Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire (15 page)

“Aunty Sandy!” Salman said upon seeing her. He looked anxious. “Did you get hurt?”

“No,” said Sandy, dismissively. “I’m fine. I have a few bruises, that’s all.”

“Rhian said someone tried to hurt a Grand Council Ambassador.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “It happens sometimes.”

“If you got hurt,” Salman said sagely, “you should go to a hospital. But this isn’t a real hospital.” With a look around at the lab equipment.

“He was at the hospital when the twins had some checks,” Rhian explained. “He knows what a real hospital looks like.”

Sandy squatted opposite the young boy. He looked a lot like his dad, which was to say that one day he’d be a big guy, and handsome.

“Well,” she said, “you know what I am, right?”

“You’re in the CSA!” With considerable awe. It was nice to know that someone still thought the CSA was cool. Still much cooler than the FSA, which might upset a few people in this building.

“Yes I am. But what else am I?”

Salman thought about it. Then realised what she was getting at. “You’re a GI. Like Mum.”

At that word, Rhian beamed. He didn’t use it all the time, but lately more and more.

“Yeah. I’m a GI. And do you know what that means?”

“That means you’re strong and you protect people from the bad guys.”

Sandy nearly burst into tears. It astonished her, but suddenly her eyes hurt badly, and she had to wipe them to keep her vision clear.

“That’s right,” she agreed, her voice tight. “Your mum and I keep people safe. We’re synthetic. That means we’re made of different stuff from you and your dad, but we’re real people just like you. If we get hurt, we have to go to a place that has equipment that can make us better. Ordinary hospitals don’t usually have it, so I come here.”

Salman nodded enthusiastically. “I know,” he said. “Dad told me about it before.”

Just like that. Sandy recalled all the hand-wringing angst when some Callayan media outfit had discovered that one of Callay’s new GIs was adopting children. That one had gone on for weeks. Luckily no one had spilled Rhian’s name, a fact helped by all of Rhian’s underground friends helping to sweep the networks of details the media shouldn’t know, and the promise of a lengthy jail term to anyone publically naming a CSA operative without authorisation. But the debate had been typically stupid, and Rhian had obviously been hurt, however she denied it.

How could a child accept a synthetic person as a parent, they’d asked? What damage would it cause to do so? Hell, Sandy had once asked those questions of Rhian, herself. But Salman just called her Mum, and that was that. Rhian always said she preferred the logic of children to adults, not because it was escapist, but because it often stated truths that adults were blind to. Now, Sandy was seeing what she meant.

“Come on,” she said, and scooped Salman up. “I’ll walk you and Mum to your cruiser, then I have some things I have to do. Are you going to have a party this Holi?”

“Yes,” Salman said happily. “We’re going to have water pistols, and we’re going to make everyone wet!”

“Oh that sounds like fun. Can I come?”

“Yes!” said Salman, even more happily. “And Auntie Vanessa too, can she come, too?”

“You know,” said Rhian as they left the med room, “I sometimes think he’s getting an unrealistic view of women. His three main examples are all grunts.”

“At least he thinks we’re fun,” Sandy said firmly.

“What does unrealistic mean?” asked Salman.

The interviewee was a young woman, no more than twenty-five. She was an Anjulan facility employee, European, moderately pretty. She had a small nose stud, standard fashion accessory on many worlds, and wore a light, peach-gloss eye shadow. She had the blood of thousands on her hands.

“
Can you describe your job in the facility?
” asked an interviewer, off screen. Her voice was measured. Sandy had heard that tone many times, in professional psychs, constructing an angle of attack.

“
I was in prep,
” said the girl.

“
And what were your responsibilities, in prep?
”

“
I would prepare the subjects.
”

“
Prepare them how?
”

“
I’d put them in a sedated state. Then I’d prepare them for the procedure.
”

“
The surgical procedure?
”

“
Yes,
” said the girl.

Sandy sat in a comfortable reclining chair, with a grand view of night-time Tanusha. This was one of Anita and Pushpa’s apartments. They had numerous, which formed a valuable support network for all the curious causes the two very-wealthy businesswomen found it necessary to support. Sandy herself was one of those causes, as were most of the GI asylum seekers.

“Where did you get this from?” Vanessa asked Pushpa. She’d excused herself from Phillippe’s company, citing an evening with the girls—any excuse to get away from one of Phillippe’s functions with the various music-supporting VIPs that she found so awful. Sandy doubted Phillippe had any problem with Vanessa’s absence—when Vanessa was unhappy, she had a way of spreading it around.

“Ask me no questions,” said Pushpa around a mouthful of ice cream, “and I’ll tell you no scurrilous half-truths.”

“Ah,” said Vanessa. Ari was still on Pyeongwha, leading the FSA’s investigations. These interviews were strictly not for public release, but mysteriously, a bunch of them were now making the rounds on a string of pirate network sites, the kind that propagated themselves in a dozen new locations every time the authorities shut one down. This was a new interview that wasn’t even on the networks. Yet.

“
Did it concern you at all that these were ordinary people?
” asked the interviewer. “
Pyeongwha citizens, like you?
”

The girl shook her head. “
They weren’t like me.
”

“Disassociation,” said Anita, watching the screen with wide, transfixed eyes. She had a mohawk now, dyed various colours, and unorthodox jewellery. Among her many unofficial qualifications was psychology, which she’d acquired by being one of Callay’s best uplink software constructors.

“
How were they not like you?
”

“
They were rejectors.
”

“
What is a rejector?
”

“
A rejector is a traitor,
” the girl insisted, with a flash of anger. “
NCT is Pyeongwha’s greatest achievement. It makes us strong against our enemies. Rejectors are traitors who try to destroy everything good in Pyeongwha. They serve our enemies, and they must be fought.
”

“Notice the language,” said Anita. “The overuse of the first person plural, we, our, us. Collectivists always do that.”

“Nothing you don’t hear from radicals here,” Pushpa said skeptically.

“
Some of our research suggests that many of these rejectors, as you call them, were not actually opposed to Neural Cluster Technology at all, nor to Pyeongwha society,
” the interviewer continued. “
Instead, it’s more that their brains were not structured to best adapt to NCT. So they weren’t making a conscious choice to reject NCT, it was just an accident of biology.
”

The girl just looked at her blankly. There was a chilling pause. No one in the room spoke.

“
Does this distinction mean nothing to you?
” the interviewer persisted.

“
What distinction?
”

“
The distinction between someone who is consciously betraying everything you claim to be defending, and someone who merely, through no fault of their own, does not have the biology to assimilate Pyeongwha’s NCT regime.
”

Another long pause. “Good God,” Anita murmured.

The girl finally shook her head. “
I don’t understand your point.
”

“
So there’s no distinction in your mind between the different kinds of people you dealt with in prep?
”

“
A traitor is a traitor. Pyeongwha society works a certain way. They knew that. They chose another path, and all societies have the right to defend themselves from those who attack them.
”

“And so all resistance or non-compliance becomes attack,” said Anita. “Thus justifying anything Anjula does in response.”

“Hell, politicians do that here,” said Pushpa. “You brand a political attack with something morally unacceptable—racism, sexism, qualificationism—to try and make your opponents shut up.”

“Attacking free speech isn’t the same as mass murder,” Vanessa replied.

“I’m not saying it’s the same thing,” said Pushpa, spooning another mouthful of ice cream, “I’m just saying that you can observe the same rhetorical mechanisms at play in all societies. The consequences of those rhetorical mechanisms may vary wildly, but the mechanisms themselves all come from the same places and the same logic.”

“Sure,” said Vanessa, “but that just leads to some soft civvies in places like Tanusha, who’ve never seen a real blood and guts disaster up close, thinking that all this shit is basically equivalent—freedom of speech here, mass murder there. It’s not.”

Pushpa held up a pacifying hand. “No, you’re right, I agree. I’m just saying.”

Sandy smiled. Pushpa and Anita were from what was, in Sandy’s opinion, easily Tanusha’s most intelligent segment of society—the freewheeling, free commercial, free everything underground. It made everything they had to say worth listening to. But Vanessa knew things they didn’t, first hand, and argued like a grunt—straight for the throat every time. What Vanessa liked about Anita and Pushpa was that they’d actually listen to a mere grunt, unlike many far more “capital Q” Qualified individuals who found security personnel irredeemably blue collar and beneath respectability.

“Okay,” said Siddhartha, finishing the final screw that connected the brace to Sandy’s neck. “That’s all ready.”

Rhian came across and peered at it. It was a simple enough device: a brace mount for an extremely strong, slim needle. The whole thing was rigged with microsensors, to measure every fraction of a millimeter.

“I’d rather Rhian did it,” said Sandy.

“Oh, no,” said Siddhartha, “the needle is so exceptionally small you’ll barely feel a thing. It shouldn’t cause you any reaction.”

“I don’t care,” said Sandy. “If you’re poking around in the spinal column of a GI, anyone within arm’s reach is theoretically at risk. Rhian will do it.”

“I’ll do it,” Rhian agreed. “What do I do?”

“Oh, it’s all preprogrammed,” said Siddhartha. “You just need to activate it here,” pointing, “and keep an eye on the screen here to make sure the program works as written . . . and if it doesn’t, tell me immediately, because we only use these to sample normal humans, and while I’m sure the needle is strong enough, with a GI you never know.”

“It should be fine,” Rhian said confidently. She knew quite a lot of medical-type stuff these days beyond even her early learning expertise.

“I agree,” said Anita, knowing as much but for different reasons. She dashed for a bottle, poured Sandy a vodka, and handed it to her.

“Won’t do any good,” Sandy reminded her.

“I know. It just seemed appropriate.”

Sandy sculled it and gave the glass back. Then she called up her full internal network diagnostic, so she could look at everything on overlaid vision and be certain nothing would be affected.

“Ready?” Rhian asked.

“Yeah, fine,” said Sandy.

She felt the sting of first penetration. Then a strange, numb pain.

“Okay?” Rhian asked.

“Like I imagine an insect bite would feel, if I could feel insect bites. Is it going in?”

“Slowly,” said Rhian. A pause. “Very slowly.”

“What’s the resistance meter?” Siddhartha asked anxiously.

“Seven four two,” said Rhian. “Is that high?”

“Ridiculously high. But it should withstand up to nine hundred.”

“Seven nine one,” Rhian corrected.

“The needle’s not going in?” Sandy sighed. It was predictable. All GIs were made tough. Herself, even more so. Her internal schematic was unchanged.

“No, wait, here we go,” said Rhian. “It’s going in.” Sandy frowned. The pain was unchanged. That she felt it at all told her how unserious it was. Serious pain kicked in combat reflexes, which dimmed everything with natural painkiller—direct relief in the neural centers themselves, a redirecting of neural activity, not crude drugs in the bloodstream. “And now it’s out.”

Siddhartha stepped back in to undo the fastenings and check the sample.

“Oh yes,” he said, with some excitement. “That’s a very nice sample. Absolutely tiny, just a single molecular cluster. But more than enough to work with.”

“Now,” Vanessa said sternly, “no sharing with anyone.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Siddhartha, nodding his head as the fasteners came away. “The sample won’t leave my lab, and will be locked in the most secure facility. Diamonds are not as well protected.” And Siddhartha was boss of his company, unlisted, with no superior to answer to.

“Diamonds are nowhere near as valuable,” said Anita.

Sandy rubbed her neck as Siddhartha packed up and left, very anxious to get back to his lab.

“I get the feeling he’s going to have a very late night,” Pushpa observed once the door was shut. She’d put the ice cream back in the freezer, and was now started on cream whisky. Sandy was certain that if it weren’t for intestinal micros, Pushpa would be considerably plumper than she already was.

“No sleep for forty-eight hours, I bet,” Anita agreed.

“He’s a good guy, though,” said Sandy, taking some chocolate and a glass of red, and settling onto the couch next to Vanessa. “Ari’s known him a long time, says he’s always been above board. Absolutely obsessive, but then all the best experts are.”

“Well,” Anita said brightly, pouring herself a drink, “I propose a toast! We all just broke the law!” Small cheers. “Including some very senior Tanushan law enforcement officials. I propose we toast a fine day for the restoration of sanity to the Federation’s biotech laws.”

“I accept your toast only on the hypocritical grounds that everybody does it,” said Vanessa, raising her glass.