Killswitch (30 page)

It all seemed eerily calm and orderly, despite all the world's events. People went about their lives, on streets that had just recently been jammed with protesters, and lined with armoured cordons of riot police. Perhaps, the thought flashed across Sandy's hyper-speed mind, some of these folk had been at the protests themselves. One uniform by night, another by day-such was the Tanushan way, in good times and bad. The mega-rise tower soared high overhead, reaching for a clear, unattainable blue sky. The morning air was crisp and fresh in a way that off-world visitors from cities with less than Tanusha's zeroemission controls always remarked on. People passed on all sides, oblivious to the identities of those among them.

"Strange, isn't it?" said the GI, with a faintly curious glance about. "Hiding here is so easy. The best way to hide is don't. Trying to hide will only attract attention. You hide in plain sight. Like everyone else does. All these people, hurrying about their busy little lives, not knowing shit from gold. Just stand in their midst, as plain as you can. It makes you invisible."

"You're wrong," said Sandy. "Two things Tanushans always differentiate between-shit and gold."

The GI might have smiled, but faintly. A stray gust of breeze caught her hair, lifting loose strands. To an untrained, unaugmented eye, she might have looked average, plain and human. And without Sandy's need for disguise, she dressed less self-consciously too. She looked like she fit in, Sandy realised. Like she could blend effortlessly into a crowd. The perfect covert operative. And exceptional good looks would only attract attention. Only custom-design combat ops could afford to be distractingly pretty-a small pleasure to counter an alarmingly short life expectancy during the war. It didn't necessarily make this GI any less dangerous, however.

"Do you have a name?" Sandy asked.

"Do I have a name?" the GI replied, with slow, sceptical contemplation. And glanced slightly away to one side, eyes narrowed in thought. "There's a philosophical question. What constitutes a name? We're not born with them-they're imposed upon us. Like everything else."

"As GIs, that's something we're stuck with," said Sandy. "It doesn't make names any less significant for us than straights. All identity is self-constructed, ours and theirs."

"I'm not self-constructed," the GI replied easily. "I was born this way."

Sandy's eyes narrowed. "What way?"

The GI smiled. "You of all people should know, Cassandra Kresnov." With a mild irony, voicing that name. "You trained the CDF at the Parliament, didn't you? They're very good, for straights. Not that it made any difference ... but you had to know that too. If you need a name, call me Jane. It's plain and simple. Like me."

Sandy was glad for the combat-reflex. Its deadening calm hid the growing, cold dread in her gut.

"The FIA activated you?" Sandy asked.

"Sure did." With cool, utter nonchalance.

"And how do you feel about that?"

"About existing? I'm grateful, naturally." She shrugged. "It's good to be alive, wouldn't you say?"

"That depends on what you do with the experience," Sandy replied.

"I think I make pretty good use of the time," said Jane.

"I think you could do better."

Again the faint, narrow-eyed smile. "You think you're better than me, is that it?"

"It's not a contest."

Jane shook her head faintly, in mild disbelief. Gazed about at the sunny urban sprawl about them. A police car cruised by on the side street, and stopped at the lights, to Jane's utter unconcern.

"You're kidding yourself," she said finally. And looked back at her, coolly. "You know that, don't you?"

"Enlighten me."

"This place. All these people. This system. It sucked you right in, didn't it? You think you're one of them now. But you're not."

"You went to all this trouble just to tell me that?" Sandy didn't bother to disguise the rising disgust in her voice. "I'd rather you just ambushed me in my sleep. It would have saved me the trouble of pretending to be interested."

"I was instructed to kill you," Jane replied with an utter lack of emotion. "If I got the chance. But I'm learning. I've this profession, do you see? I was born to it. I'm not all that old yet, and you know how GIs mature. If I'm going to improve, and expand my horizons, I need to study others. That's why you're not dead." And nodded to Sudasarno. "Him too. But I'm told you're rather like me. I was based upon your design, they said. And so I wanted to know. To see the older me, as it were."

"And what do you think?"

"I'm disappointed." Very calmly. Sandy could not remember ever having felt so pleased to be insulted. "You don't know who you are. You're delusional. Happiness is accepting your true nature. It's not here, in this city, not for you. Certainly not for me."

"Listen, junior," Sandy told her, not bothering to restrain the rising edge to her voice, "I'm just a kid myself compared to a lot of these people you look down your nose at, but compared to you, I'm ancient. Let me fill you in about a thing or two that might have escaped your vast perception.

"You're very young, less than two years old, if what you say about being based on my design is right. I'm seventeen, and I can't remember a thing from when I was that age. These are your formative years, do you understand that? When you reach my age, if you do," (heaven forbid, she barely managed to avoid saying) "you won't remember anything about this. Not this meeting, not this operation, not Tanusha or Callay itself, get it? Your mind is immature. Undeveloped, no matter what your intellect.

"You've been tape-taught. Stored knowledge, pre-constructed and formulated for someone else's purposes. It's not reliable because it's not yours. The Federal Intelligence Agency made you what you are. They hate GIs. You're an experiment to them. Your whole psychology is an experiment. You speak as if you're making a free choice of lifestyle. Your body is not your own, your future is not your own, your life is not your own and your mind is definitely not your own. You're not a free person. Your opinions aren't worth a thumbnail full of earwax to anyone. You're not a person. You're just an empty, walking, talking shell. And the saddest thing of all is you don't even realise it."

"I kill because it's my nature," Jane replied in a low, harsh voice. Her unblinking stare was intense. Somehow, Sandy hadn't expected a reaction. It surprised her. "You think you're civilised, but you're still a soldier. You're still looking for your next fight. Anticipating it. You couldn't function any other way. And yet you reject your true self, and live your life as a lie."

"You kill," Sandy retorted, "because you're programmed for it. The FIA don't believe GIs have any other purpose, they wouldn't have given you any other kinds of tape because they wouldn't have believed you capable of anything more anyway. You think that pseudo-philosophical crap you're feeding me represents intellect on your part? It's a manipulative rationalisation designed to stop you from questioning. All intelligent beings question, unless given believable rationalisations within which to construct the parameters of their personal reality. Everything you think you know has been predetermined by the people who made you, including your rationalisations. And you think you can lecture me on life? You pathetic little moron, you don't know what life is."

"And yet I have the codes to the killswitch," said Jane, with quiet menace. "It's hard to be right when you're dead."

Sandy nearly laughed, contemptuously. "You idiot, most of humanity's most correct and righteous people have been dead for centuries. You think you can make me less right by killing me? You'd only prove my point."

"Why do you think ... ?"

"Excuse me," someone interrupted to one side. Sandy, Jane and Sudasarno all turned to look at the new arrival-a tourist, presumably, to judge from the large photo-map he held in both hands, the backpack over his shoulders, and four people who seemed to be a wife and three children waiting behind. All appeared Chinese. The man smiled as he approached. "Hello, sorry to bother you ... could any of you please direct me to the Vandaram ferry service? My wife and I ... we wanted to take a river cruise, the rivers here are so pretty."

Looking askance at Jane, much to Sandy's alarm. But perhaps given the choice between a dark "noir-chick," a starch-collared young suit, and a mild, ordinary-looking young woman, the choice wasn't so strange after all.

"I'm sorry," Jane said mildly, "I'm a tourist too. These two are locals." The man looked at Sudasarno and Sandy, expectantly. Sandy wondered once more at her shades, and if tourists were as familiar with her face as local Callayans had become.

"Oh, right ..." said Sudasarno, with forced congeniality. Sandy's enhanced hearing heard the strain in his throat. "That's the Vandaram River down there, yes? I don't know this area well, but I remember clearly the ferry terminal is just ten minutes' walk from here. If you just head down this road until you hit the river, and then turn left, it's a pleasant walk along the bank."

"Wonderful," said the man, in one of the Federation's several distinct Chinese accents, "thank you very much."

He beamed a smile and departed, as Sudasarno and Sandy wished him a happy holiday.

Jane gave her a sardonic look. "You would give your life for people like him?"

"If it came to that."

"What a waste," Jane said softly. "There's so many of them. And so few of us. We're special."

"Everyone's special."

The other GI shook her head. "I'd rather not have to kill you." The Chinese tourist and his family went past, waving thanks as they headed off toward the river. Sandy and Sudasarno waved back. "We could come to an understanding."

"There's no deals here," said Sandy. "You oppose everything I believe in." Her stare fixed upon Jane's face. "And you're right enough about my nature in one thing-you threaten me, you threaten the things and people I love, and I'll kill you."

Jane gave a faint, dangerous smile. "You try that here, in public, and I'll unload a clip into this crowd. You know I don't miss. How many lives is it worth to you, to stop me?"

"I don't plan on making a trade," Sandy said coldly. "You can go. I won't follow you. Not here. But know this ... if you don't behave yourself, I'll catch you. I'm original League technology. You're a cheap copy. I'll kill you, and I'll make it slow, and painful. That's a fact, not a threat."

Jane considered her for a moment longer. Her pale blue eyes were unreadable. Perhaps she regretted. Perhaps she hated. Or maybe she merely considered, adding equations of probability and strategy in her doubtless capable mind. It was too much to hope that she actually considered the content of her words. She wondered if Jane actually heard her words at all, or if she was as blind to the underlying moral arguments as deep-sea creatures were to colour. One image, two realities. One sentence, two understandings. With such a person, reason became impossible. The software that processed the words was so utterly different, they may as well have been speaking different languages. She watched the GI named Jane turn on her heel, and stride coolly from the scene, with a dread that numbed her to her soul.

"Oh dear lord," she murmured beneath her breath, watching that departing back mingle and fade into the flow of streetside pedestrians. "What in the hell have they gone and done now?"

"You're just going to let her go?" asked Sudasarno then, recovering his voice with an abrupt, startled terror. "You're just going to let her walk off like that?"

"I can't track her covertly without uplinks," Sandy said quietly. "She's not making idle threats, Sudie. She'll kill civilians just to warn me off. No way I call anyone else onto her tail. They don't know what she's capable of. It might trigger a massacre."

"Then how the hell else are you going to catch up with her again?" Sudasarno's voice was high with barely restrained panic, hands waving. "After what she's already done? By the Prophet himself, Sandy, you can't just let her walk away!"

"I can't take the risk, Sudie." She fixed him with a very direct gaze. "You know the stuff the xenophobes all said about me, when they first found out about me? All the fear, all the hatred? I never deserved it. I think she might."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

anessa left gold six last, holding her beret in place as the flyer departed in a roar of hyper-fans. She made no attempt to run with the others, but instead walked as steadily as she could in the declining gale, and paused a moment upon the rim of the rooftop pad to observe the scene. Gold two and three roared up and past from their perimeter LZs below, troops jogging quickly along garden paths and up the outer stairways, spreading out to cover all the ground level exits. As she unfocused her vision, she could see a visual outline of the State Department Wing, its security codes acquired only with the authority of the Supreme Court itself, so closely were such access codes guarded these days-in metal vaults unconnected to any network, like bullion or gemstones.

On pathways through lush Parliament grounds gardens, people in suits stopped and stared at the commotion, or stood up from outdoor cafe tables, where some were eating late breakfast, or conducting early business. S-2 Security, a separate branch of government security specialising in State Department and diplomatic matters, conferred bewilderedly in small groups about the perimeter. Further back along the State Department wing, where the building adjoined the main Parliament building, she could see other security personnel-S-3, meaning Parliament Securitystanding and watching with evident concern. On the local network, her visual graphic showed encrypted transmissions spiking dramatically. And she winced processing two visual fields simultaneously did nothing good at all for her headache, and she damped it down accordingly. Beyond the beautiful, arching dome of the Parliament building, several CDF flyers were making their final approach.

She turned and walked about the pad perimeter, headed for the rooftop entrance where her troops had disappeared. A pair of S-2s climbed the stairs and emerged from the glass doorway, staring up at the approaching CDF flyers. Then both looked at her, and her uniform rank.

"Major," said one, with astonished concern. "What's this about?"

"This is a security lockdown," she told them, raising her voice over the approaching howl of engines. "By order of Director Ibrahim, all State Department facilities are now under a minimum twenty-fourhour quarantine." The younger S-2 looked more than just astonished, as if he hadn't seen anything quite this exciting in the short time since he'd joined. "Cool, huh?" Vanessa added, and pushed through the doors before the approaching flyers made her headache even worse.

She ignored the lift and took the stairs-carefully-and then entered into a broad, shiny hallway with large portraits on the walls, and photos of the capitals of various Federation worlds.

"Great," she remarked to Private Ijaz, who was standing guard at the bottom of the stairs, "no more bright light. Stupid invention anyway, sunlight." She removed the sunglasses with painful blinking, and stowed them in a pocket. "This'll be a real tough assignment, Private, guarding a staircase from undersecretaries and speech writers. Think you're up to it?"

Private Ijaz grinned, his rifle still shouldered, as instructed. "Major, can I get you a painkiller or something? Someone's bound to have one in an office around here ..."

"Kid, I'm pumped so full of painkiller I could have flown here myself." A dark figure was approaching down the hall, avoiding confused, milling office personnel with casual ease. "You have my permission to hit on passing secretaries, but only if they're really cute."

"Yes, sir," said Ijaz, with a delighted salute as she turned to leave. Vanessa returned it, and noticed a woman nearby raising an eyebrow ... presumably at the "sir," Vanessa reckoned, but damned if she was going to allow "ma'am" to breed in the CDF, as if an officer's gender was an issue of the slightest significance for privates to worry about ... and she realised that there were quite a few milling suits in the hallway, most of them breaking off their bewildered conversations to stare at her. She ignored them and walked to meet the approaching dark figure halfway.

Ari reversed direction, slowing his lengthier stride to match hers.

"Hi, Ari."

"Hi, Ricey. You look like shit."

"Yeah, well I feel like I've been defecated from some orifice or other. How's Sandy?"

"She's fine. Your, um, beret's not on ... quite the right angle."

"Oh fuck it, I think either I wasn't standing up straight, or the mirror was crooked, or the ground was sloping on some strange angle when I put it on ..." Ari gave one corner a decisive tug as they walked. "You're sure it's not just my head that's crooked?"

Ahead, the hall opened into a broad, circular atrium with a domed skylight overhead. There was an important-looking eight-pointed star on the floor, and two soldiers presenting a calm front to a pair of frustrated suits who wanted to use the elevator. Several S-2s stood and watched, halfway between concern and bemusement.

"You spoke to Krishnaswali?" Vanessa asked as they entered the atrium and turned left. Corporal Chang gave her a mildly aggrieved look over the heads of the troublesome suits. Vanessa spared an ironic smile, and gave a thumbs up. Chang repressed a smile of his own.

"Um, yeah, he wiped me off his shoe as he came past," Ari said mildly. "Didn't even offer a handkerchief." Ari, Vanessa reflected, was even more obtuse than she was. She could definitely see why Sandy liked him so much, whatever the downside of his ideology and profession ... and, more to the point, found him so attractive. She shared the sentiment herself ... or mostly. Except that somehow, with Ari, she found herself bantering in a comfort zone that felt much like the now regrettably-rare lunches with cousins Pierre and Margarite-the French side of her family, the side she clicked with. The men she liked to sleep with she preferred big, strong and conveniently silent. No, the only smart, bewildering, intriguing people she generally wanted to sleep with were women ...

"Yeah, well," she sighed, "you'll have to excuse him, you're not catching him on his best day."

"Oh right, it's a weekday, I forgot. He's pleased you came along?"

"Oh, ecstatic," Vanessa said drily. "Your idea?"

"Why do you always assume that I'm the sole source of your daily misery?"

"Experience."

"Funny, that's what Sandy says."

They turned right at the corridor that ran along the building side, sunny windows overlooking lush garden grounds along the left wall, office doors to the right. A pair of larger, more important doors at the far end, guarded by Privates Mohammed (that was Mohammed number four, on Vanessa's mental list-the one whose mother was a concert-level tabla player) and Kravchenko. Both saluted as she approached.

"Oh, knock off the salutes, guys," Vanessa told them as she returned it, "it's too much effort."

"But the General's inside and he'd kill us, Major," Kravchenko replied, keeping her face straight with difficulty. Inside, a waiting room was lined with pictures of important people around the walls. A frustrated-looking secretary sat in his chair by the next main door, terminal headset hung upon the dead monitor-in total lockdown, nothing worked.

"What?" Vanessa asked indignantly as she caught Ari giving her one of his very curious, sideways looks. They paused before the main doors to Secretary Grey's office.

"Sandy says how popular you are with your guys," said Ari. "I think I can see why."

Vanessa made a face. "They don't love me on the training track, I'll tell you that."

She pushed the doors open, and they stepped into a broad room with an oval meeting table, surrounded by chairs. Before the broad windows, Secretary of State Grey and General Krishnaswali were exchanging pleasantries ... unpleasantly, Vanessa noted with little surprise. She stopped behind a chair, both hands upon its back to stop the room from spinning. Damn Ibrahim. Why couldn't he have let her stay in bed?

Secretary Grey's head snapped across to stare at them as they entered. Krishnaswali stood poker-straight before him, immaculate in his dark green uniform. Like Vanessa, he wore only a sidearm at the hip. Unlike Vanessa, his uniform collar and shoulders were decorated with the additional gold pins of rank.

"Oh, wonderful," Secretary Grey snarled upon sighting Ari, "Director Ibrahim's personal attack dog. At least now I have no illusions about what this whole thing's about. You tell the Director that he'd damn well better get used to having his authority challenged, and just because he resorts to these kinds of dictatorial pressure tactics, I'm fucked if I'm about to stop it just for him!"

"Well ..." Ari raised his eyebrows in mild bewilderment, and scratched at his thick hair. Vanessa thought she must have worn much the same expression last Christmas, when her six-year-old nephew Yves had accused her of treachery for misleading him all those years about Santa Claus. In her light headed state, she found herself suddenly struggling to repress a grin. "If you feel that way, Mr. Secretary," Ari continued, "maybe you'd better tell him yourself."

Not surprisingly, Grey seemed infuriated by An's manner. He was a tall man, with a curiously unformed face that seemed to lack either sharp edges or soft curves. His eyes were dark and deep, almost puppyish, and his ears stood out sharply from beneath dark, wavy hair. A devotee of the Union Party's conservative left wing, he'd long been regarded by many as the weakest link in President Neiland's Administration ... but political logic meant she couldn't ditch him without a leftist revolt. Vanessa hated political logic. And recalled Sandy's favourite Tanushan comic/commentator, Rami Rahim, saying in a recent spiel how he'd gone to have lunch with Secretary Benjamin Grey, and "then an empty limousine pulled up, and Secretary Grey got out."

"I've had it," Grey exclaimed, with the air of a man who'd reached his limit. He strode forward several steps to confront Ari directly. Ari's gaze was distinctly dubious. "I'm all out of being polite with you people. The CDF and CSA are supposed to be assets of the State Department, and I get nothing from you but obstruction and suspicion. Especially from you ... Jesus Christ, what the hell was Ibrahim thinking even admitting the likes of you into the CSA? Let alone making you his personal right hand ... you've planned this all along, haven't you? Concocted some evidence to give Ibrahim an excuse to crack down on the one department in this entire Administration whose services Callay can least afford to be without at this moment!"

"Well, then," Ari said offhandedly, "maybe if you'd kept better tabs on the activities of your people, you wouldn't have let, um, junior Assistant Director Samarang source a bunch of illegal weaponry through customs using official authorisations." Grey stared, blinking rapidly. "He's in custody now," Ari explained. "He confessed to the shipments but claims he didn't know they'd be used to assault the summit.

"Now. . ." he raised a finger, "... maybe it's just me, but I think it's, um, rather curious that Samarang's assistant, Enrico Kalaji, tried to disappear yesterday when I paid him a visit ... ran real fast down the corridor and jumped from a low balcony, actually. And it's a shame that I lost him, because it would have been, um, pretty interesting to hear him explain exactly who in the State Department gave him the order to bug All Sudasarno's cruiser, and how it was that the crazed GI who killed Admiral Duong somehow had access to that bug, and used it to find Commander Kresnov ... who, incidentally, was trying to hide from exactly that GI. And those she suspected were helping her."

Secretary Grey just stared at him, blankly. Ari looked more closely, as if peering through a window to check if the lights were on inside.

"I could go over it more slowly if you didn't follow," he offered.

"The bottom line, Mr. Secretary," Krishnaswali cut in sombrely, "is that we need to comprehensively search the entire State Department database so that we can trace the leads, and hopefully find out if this GI is receiving inside help. Agent Chandaram will be here shortly, he can explain the procedures to you better than I can. But it's imperative that we have your utmost cooperation on this matter. Will you give it?"

Sandy leaped from the flyer's rear ramp the moment the landing gear touched the pads, and jogged quickly across the wet pad with a borrowed raincoat held above her head, boots splashing on rapidly accumulating puddles in the downpour. The raincoat also had the benefit of blocking all possible view from the snooping super-lense imagers the media liked to use around an action scene-it would be better for all concerned, she knew, if the fewest necessary people knew she was here. Inside the rooftop doors, she took a moment to shake off the raincoat, and hand it to Private Ijaz, as the other two CDF soldiers she'd shared the ride with did the same. Ijaz added them to his pile beside the rain-streaked glass doors, to be dispensed among the next departing group.

"This one came in damn fast, huh?" Sandy commented, shades pocketed as she gazed out at the sheeting rain across the Parliament complex. Beyond the majestic central dome, lightning forked and slashed across the black sky.

"Sure did, sir," said Ijaz, who was plainly far more interested to see her than the newly arrived storm. "And it's barely even midday, usually in summer they don't arrive until at least midafternoon."