Originator (31 page)

Sandy sat in the rear seat with Danya and Poole, pistol out, as Cai drove. Svetlana sat in the passenger seat, upset and trembling. Sandy watched all ways at once, or tried to. Here in busy northern Tanusha, she felt naked without her uplinks.

“How many are there?” she asked Cai.

“No way of telling,” said Cai, steering by pure visual and no connection to traffic central. Normally that was illegal and would have cops on their tail in no time. Now, nothing. “Numbers are not their style. They would not have believed you could survive their initial attacks, in this network environment. Their tactics will now change.”

“Why?” Danya asked, voice low and hard. “Is it Kiril?”

“Yes,” said Cai.

“So why attack us?” Svetlana demanded.

“To split Cassandra's attention and draw her out. Remove Cassandra, and Kiril's primary protection is gone. It nearly worked.”

“Not so nearly,” Sandy growled. “They're dead. I'm not.” Still the combat reflex remained. She could not read the kids' expressions clearly, though their upset was clear enough from their voices, posture, and racing pulses. The faint muscle tremors, all the little things that fear did to straight humans, but rarely to GIs. She had no desire to drop out of combat reflex and face that.

“I helped,” Cai pointed out.

“Yeah,” said Sandy. “Thanks” didn't quite pass her lips. She didn't yet know if it was warranted. But if he hadn't started shooting when the first net attack had hit her . . . “They got past my barriers when I was completely autistic. How the fuck?”

“Have you been hit by assault barriers in the past day?” Cai asked.

The stolen car, Sandy recalled. At the beach, she'd tried to access wire-lessly and had been reverse-hacked for the briefest moment. . . . “Yes,” she said.

“They plant traces, activated remotely.”

In another mode, Sandy would have sworn. “Can you get them out?”

“Yes,” said Cai. It still shouldn't have been possible. Damn alien tech. The car reached a freeway onramp, and accelerated into the traffic stream. Great flashes of white light lit thunderclouds behind nearby towers.

“Why can she beat them?” Danya asked. “I mean, aren't they more advanced? Aren't
you
more advanced?”

Cai shrugged. “If your most advanced soldiers today were to go back in time to fight ancient Roman gladiators with swords and spears, even with all their training and augmentations, they'd probably lose. We become dependent on technology. Talee fight by network, by wireless assault and computer assist. Cassandra remains the latest word in guns and fists.”

“Who are they?” Sandy asked. “Exactly?”

Cai said nothing for a long moment. Hell of a thing, Sandy realised. To find yourself at violent odds with the people who made you. She knew exactly what that felt like, and even in extreme combat mode, she retained some sympathy.

“Something that shouldn't exist,” he said finally. “Talee can control their own technology, but not that of humans. For that, they had to create others.”

“Combat units,” Sandy said flatly. “Assassins.”

“Yes. And me.”

“And who do you answer to? Who do they?”

“We should wait,” said Cai. “Even cars have microphones. In any networked space, my people's technology can find a way to listen to anyone.”

Sandy glanced at Poole, seated between her and Danya. He looked grim, unspeaking. “You okay?” she asked him.

“I can't fight that,” he said. “I'd be dead if Cai hadn't shown up. Don't know what use I'll be.”

“I hope to live long enough to see GIs no longer defining themselves by how useful they'll be,” Sandy replied. “Thank you for guarding them.”

“If Cai hadn't shown up, we'd have been killed,” Poole said blandly.

Combat vision intensified. Sounds deepened, broke into individual throbbing vibrations. Sandy fought back the hyperfocus with difficulty. “You did what you could.”

“I'm okay too,” Svetlana muttered, wiping tears. “Thanks for asking.”

Sandy tried to say something but couldn't. This was why she'd originally
never wanted kids. How did a combat GI mix these two sides of her life and stay sane?

Cai wiped the car's memory with a direct cord and sent it driving on auto back to the city. There it would reconnect with traffic central, finally find a park, and alert its owners where it was. In a city of sixty-two million people, rogue cars and glitches happened frequently enough that checking each one would be time-consuming. If found, the car could not tell where it had been, and its location would be central Tanusha.

A hundred kilometres north of Tanusha, Sandy led the group along a path by the riverside. Thick tropical foliage overhung the dark waters, insects flittered, and fish broke the slow-moving surface. Here and there, a few house lights shone through the trees. This was Greenwood, a light residential zone more than a town. Most folks out here commuted but preferred life away from the urban crowds. Aircars had hollowed out many Earth cities, leading to urban collapse as citizens chased cheap land to commute from by air. Around Tanusha, environmental protections made this land even more expensive than the central city, and the houses that peered through the lush forest were large.

The path passed several riverfront homes, their gates lit by small lamps, swarming with flying bugs. All had cruiser ports—no roads here; they were air access only. Four houses up, beside a leaning swarm of riverside bamboo, Sandy pushed through the gate of a house on stilts, front porch well over the river.

The asura bounded on the porch to greet them, ears pricked attentively. Danya and Svetlana were not surprised, having been warned. But they ran as Kiril emerged from a doorway and grabbed him in a three-sided embrace. A lump fought its way into Sandy's throat, but here in the house there were approaches to guard and security possibilities to consider, and all without the usual assurance of uplinks. Combat reflex reasserted, and she walked the perimeter to check, noting Ragi on the sofa with heavy bandaging where his hand had been. Jane was around the back, lying flat on a mattress in the rear bedroom, rifle by her side. Eyes watching impassively upstream, even as Sandy passed before her. She'd be changing positions every five minutes, Sandy knew—endless pacing just drew attention. Anyone scouting this house would watch for a long time, so there was no need to keep moving. Just watch each approach, intently, for any sign of movement or observation.

Jane volunteered nothing, and Sandy went back to the living room, a wide space surrounded by windows with river views. Not the most defensible, perhaps, but with window tints it was easier to see out of than into . . . and when defended by high-des GIs, line of sight was nothing to mess with.

“Whose is it?” Poole asked, cracking a beer in the kitchen. When he'd acquired that taste, Sandy didn't know. CSA training, perhaps.

“It's on the market,” she said. “No personal connections to trace, it's just empty. We won't be here long.” Poole offered her a beer, forgetting that she'd rather drink the brown river water. Offered it to Ragi instead when she refused, cracking it for him first so he could drink one-handed. Sandy looked at the tight bandaging on his wrist stump.

“Kiril helped,” said Ragi, looking worn and pale. Worn and pale for a GI, anyway.

“This is really good, Kiri,” said Sandy, as Cai put a kettle on for himself and Sandy. Searched the cupboard for coffee or, failing that, tea. “Did you help wrap this?”

Danya and Svetlana were still standing with Kiril. Kiril was crying again, softly, as his siblings comforted him. Which had set Svetlana off too. She looked at Sandy now, accusingly. Do something, that meant. Sandy felt offended. Keeping them alive was going to be hard enough . . . now she had to keep them emotionally stable as well? She barely knew how to do that for herself half the time.

“Kids?” Cai asked quietly from the kitchen. “Would you like some tea?”

“No!” snapped Svetlana. “I don't want anything!” Danya looked at Sandy helplessly. Looking back at him, Sandy felt the combat reflex dropping, for the first time since the beach.

“Guys,” she said. “Guys, look . . .”

Suddenly her heart was pounding, and her face was hot. For a moment she thought perhaps she'd been hacked again, those damn Talee trace codes still lurking in her system to ambush her . . . but this felt nothing like that. Her gut tightened, and suddenly she was short of breath. She gasped, a hand on the sofa for balance.

“Cassandra?” asked Ragi. “Cassandra, are you . . . ?”

Cai came over. Sandy's head was pounding, and she felt nauseous. Still her heart accelerated further, galloping fit to explode. She went down on one
knee, trying to breathe, trying to stay focused and get enough air as Cai knelt before her and tilted her head back to gaze in her eyes. Slapped her cheek, quite hard, to gauge instant response. . . . Sandy felt the combat reflex kick back in briefly, an abrupt calming of the heart . . . but it was only Cai, and her conscious brain didn't believe what the automated hindbrain was telling it.

“Sandy?” Danya came over, all concern. “Cai, what's wrong?”

“I think she's having a panic attack,” said Cai.

“Oh fuck,” Sandy muttered, and put her head down, focusing just on breathing. “First time for everything.” She'd never seen it before, in any GIs. Had never heard of it happening. But if anything could get her this paralytically scared . . .

“Just breathe,” said Cai, a hand on her back. “It will pass soon, just breathe.”

“Sandy,” said Danya, kneeling and putting an arm around her. “It's okay, we're all safe. You saved us, Sandy.”

She looked up at him, and her eyes filled with tears. “I've never been so scared,” she managed. “It's one thing when it's just me or my friends, but they're trying to kill my babies and I've never been so scared. . . .”

And then Svetlana was hugging her too, and apologising, and she clung to them both tearfully until her heart began to calm and her breathing returned to something approaching normal.

“Svet,” said Danya against her shoulder, “Sandy has to focus. She can't comfort us and fight them at the same time.”

“I'm sorry,” Svetlana repeated. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

Sandy wiped and blinked her eyes clear. Took a deep breath. “Okay. Svet and Kiri, you do what Danya says. He's in charge. And he'll do what I say. We have to be a team. Can we do that?” Earnest nods. “And I'll try to be nice, Svet, but when I'm in combat mode it's just really hard. You just have to trust that I love you and not keep asking for reassurance, okay? I know it's hard when you're scared.”

Svetlana nodded. Sandy smiled and kissed her. “I want a hug too!” Kiril complained.

Sandy laughed and went to him. “Oh, you poor neglected boy, come here.” She scooped him up and smothered him in kisses until he laughed.

“Good lord,” Jane said drily, watching from the bedroom doorway. “I
used to just accept that you could kick my ass. Now I'm embarrassed.” Sandy showed her a middle finger with her free arm.

“Talee have words for it,” said Cai a little later, as they sat in the living room with the auto shades drawn. With both Cai and the asura, the potential for ambush was slight. Kiril sat by the animal on the floor rug, having decided it was his friend. Sandy didn't like that either, but the asura seemed to know who it shouldn't make angry. “But the words won't mean anything to you. Talee language is difficult.”

Sandy watched him carefully, sipping coffee, pistol on the coffee table. Poole alongside, with Danya and Svetlana beside that, eating sandwiches they'd bought from a store on the way here.

“Talee are double-brained,” Cai continued. “So are humans, technically, with left and right hemispheres, but in Talee the separation is even more pronounced. In humans, conscious thought can be traced to specific locations, in the left or right sides. In Talee, the conscious thought arises from somewhere between two hemispheres. Like binocular vision, if you close one eye, you see only what that eye sees. But open both together, and the brain combines them to make a composite image, overlaying one image atop the other.”

“But that's an illusion,” Ragi said cautiously. He was reclined on another sofa, bandaged arm across his middle. The shock of losing a hand was mostly psychological, Sandy knew. Though not a combat GI, physically he could take far worse damage and still function. For a while at least. “There is no single image, it's the brain creating an entirely new one. A third image, an internal construction.”

“Exactly,” said Cai. “Talee consciousness is a construct of a third image, if you will—neither entirely left nor right brain, but something in the middle. It makes them very clever, perhaps cleverer than humans, if one can measure such things. Talee have vast imaginations. Arts and science, for Talee, are much the same thing.”

“You know,” said Jane, “this would be absolutely fascinating, if they weren't trying to kill us.” For once, Sandy found Jane's derision agreeable.

“It sounds like they would be less susceptible to compulsive narrative syndrome than humans,” Ragi offered.

“Yes,” Cai agreed. “Normally that would be true. But Talee psychology
has a drawback. Mostly in the form of drugs. Talee have used them to alter chemical neurology for as long as they've known how to brew, just as humans with alcohol. But the effect on Talee is different, and targets different parts of the brain. This shuts down the cross-referencing process, or parts of it. Which turns a Talee from a thoughtful, cautious, farsighted individual into a far more focused and straightforward one.”

“A drone?” asked Ragi.

“No. A believer.” A quiet pause. The asura yawned, a flash of long, sharp teeth. Kiril scratched its head. Sandy wondered if the animal enjoyed the sensation as much as Kiril thought it did. “Most Talee are thoughtful. Though flexible, they can be conservative in their own way and not rush to judgement. But an ‘impaired' Talee will think in straight lines. The uncertainty of cross-referencing between hemispheres disappears, to be replaced by something far more predictable.