Originator (58 page)

“Ah,” said Sandy. Now it made sense, the rapid engagement of the program, before she could even be sure an uplink had been made. “We're in deep immersion?”

“Yes, time is passing quite slowly. About a ten-to-one ratio, I think, depending on variables. And this version of me is a simulation, of course. But quite a good one, if I do say so myself.” He gestured to the streets around them. “This is the best reconstruction my people have of this city, based on what they found when they first landed, having survived by hiding on Pantala.”

“How are you running VR?” Sandy asked, as they strolled slowly along the sidewalk. “It takes a massive system to run this.”

“Oh, this VR is always loaded on Talee systems somewhere. I happen to know it's loaded on the systems of our Pantalan base. This is a capture program. I've inserted you into our mainframes through this VR.”

Sandy blinked at him. “Why? I mean, if we're here, you'd have to know that negotiations between your people and mine haven't gone well.”

Cai nodded. “I told them as much. They didn't listen. You see, Cassandra, they really don't respect human opinion as much as they pretend. And psychologically I am certainly human.” They edged past some running Talee children, cute and shouting, with big eyes and crazy enthusiasm just like human children. Sandy stared in amazement. “I hoped it wouldn't come to this. And certainly I have sympathy for my people's position against the organics. But I told them that you would not, and they did not believe me. Or they thought that you could be persuaded. Or forced.”

“They have no idea what organised violence really looks like, do they?” Sandy said sombrely. “Maybe Talee did once, but today's synthetic Talee are a monoculture. They've no history of warfare, probably they disdain the topic. They understand the technology, but they've no institutional memory of warfare like humans have. They never knew how far out of their depth they were, with us.”

Cai nodded. “I tried to warn them of that, too. They thought humans too little advanced to pose a threat. It's snobbery, really. And from what we know
of Talee history, Talee have never really fought as much as humans. Which seems a little odd, given it is Talee and not humans that destroyed themselves. Many Talee are in denial about their nature, I fear, even to this day.”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” said Sandy. “You need training to handle violence. Not all who have that training will use it wisely, but more than those without training. Violence is most destructive when utilised by those who know nothing about it, because they won't know when to stop. Mind you, that might just be me justifying my own existence.”

“Humans are frighteningly alien to Talee, Cassandra.” They paused at an intersection, where a large park emerged from between the towers. The orange sun shone with a reddish tinge of native leaves, a whole variety of flowers and shapes. “But technology and synthetic snobbery blinded my people to just how alien and frightening. Your internal diversity is staggering. You live in constant internal conflict, violent or nonviolent, and you internalise these conflicts within your institutions. “I tried to warn them. Aiwallawai technologies in human hands frighten Talee, but they failed to appreciate that proposing to elevate synthetic humanity above organic humanity would terrify you just as much. Talee society can tolerate internal divisions and hierarchies without conflict. They may yet manage to convince organic Talee to accept synthetic dominance in some things, once the current disturbance has died down. Everything is rationalised somehow. Humans don't tolerate such things—they fight, and they equalise. Violence rarely seems worth it, to a Talee. Humans think it's always worth it, where freedom or equality are in question.”

“You make it sound like a good thing,” said Sandy.

Cai made a face. “From my first conscious moment, I hoped to find the answers to who I am. Thanks in part to you, I did find some answers. Humanity's constant conflict creates balance. Talee herd too much in fear of conflict. Add a psychological hitch, aiwallawai, and this imbalance becomes a bubble, which eventually bursts.” He gazed up, as a light appeared on the far horizon beyond the towers. “With catastrophic results.”

The light grew abruptly brighter, then pierced the sky from upper levels to lower in barely a second. The flash became a wave, orange and red, and white in the inside, expanding at incredible speed. About them, Talee turned to stare and then to scream. Parents gathered up children, while others ran,
or embraced, or fell to their knees as though in prayer. Sandy felt her eyes fill with tears. Then the shockwave hit them, and all the world disappeared.

And slowly resolved itself once more. She was standing in a forest, thick with trees and running vines. Strange animals whooped and sang, and birds flittered amongst the branches. But here amidst the trees to her right she could still make out the edge of a building foundation, a raised ridge where a tower had once stood. The same tower, in fact, that she had just been standing beside. Farther to her left, she could see a similar ridge, where the opposing line of buildings had stood. Amidst the leaves and dirt at her feet, the rubber sole of a shoe, impossibly old and torn from several thousand years of wear.

“This is how it looks today,” said Cai, standing nearby. “The organics are repopulating some old cities, but not this one. This was a capital, and these ruins are preserved, for study and for heritage. In order to learn from the past, we first must preserve it and observe its consequences.”

“You're showing me this as . . . what?” asked Sandy. “A warning?”

“Always a warning,” Cai agreed. “How do we handle modernity? Humanity struggled through its various technologies. Industrialisation and modern weapons caused enormous calamities in your twentieth century. Then in later centuries, similar calamities from nano-tech, then bio, and now synthetic replication. Even your political upheavals are technologically driven; new wealth and industries create imbalances, which create political divisions, which can create wars. Beware your new home, Callay, and the power it accrues. Be sure to share it around, or similar divisions will follow.”

Sandy nodded. “I know. I've warned of it many times, with GIs in the Federal institutions most of all.”

“And one key technology, misused first by Talee, can cause group insanity. Our consciousness is what makes us modern, but our modernity inevitably reworks that very consciousness. Where does that cycle end? Someone must control it, we must rule our technologies, and not let them rule us.”

“Cai,” said Sandy quite firmly. “You lost. The Talee lost. They had their chance, but they're victims of their own mistakes. I see them now attempting to make similar mistakes with humans. If someone is going to get on top of this problem, it's not going to be the Talee. It'll be us. But we have to be allowed the space to do it on our terms and in our way. We'll bring the Talee along with us if we can, but if not, I won't allow Talee smugness to stand in
our way. I have the greatest sympathy for the Talee. I'd like us to be friends. But to be completely honest, I don't see that Talee have anything to be smug
about
.” She looked around at the forest.

Cai smiled. “I know. They made a number of synthetic human gobetweens, like me. I've implanted their names and faces in your augmented memory; the files will unlock shortly.”

Sandy was surprised. “Really?”

“Interacting with humans, I've come to understand myself. My creators may not see it, but I too think that your way may be best. Had I lived, I may have committed all the way to your cause. But I know that others like me feel the same. Approach them carefully and do not misuse what I give you.”

Sandy nodded. “I won't. GIs like that could be our greatest allies.”

“And could elevate the fear of Federal Intelligence and their like to yet-unseen highs.”

“That's inevitable now. Cai. I'm sorry you won't be there to see it. You'll be remembered.”

Another smile. “I appreciate the sentiment . . . only I really don't appreciate the sentiment, because this is only a simulation. But the real Cai would, I'm sure. This program will activate base coms, the Pantalan base is linked into human global networks. A signal will be sent.”

“Thank you. Cai, Taluq said others. Other intelligent life.” She had no confidence that a simulation program could give her an answer, but she had to ask. “We've only found Talee. Are there others?”

“Five,” said Cai. Sandy stared. Unable to think of anything to say. “The locations you should look and the regions of space you should not progress beyond, I've also locked into your memory augments. In the next phase of human expansion, once you move beyond this current calamity, you will encounter them. Three are benign but interesting, one is rather too friendly for their own good, and the last is rather frightening. But you will do your own assessment, in turn. After all, many Talee find humans rather frightening. Now more than ever.”

“They should,” Sandy agreed. “But only if they screw us around.”

Cai inclined his head. “Point well taken. The program has accessed base coms, I'll send that signal now. Good-bye, Cassandra.”

“Good-bye, Cai. And thank you.”

When League marines burst into the underground city, they found it largely deserted, the Talee population fleeing into deeper catacombs rather than fight the human force that descended upon them. At the base of the central tower, its glass top shattered and burning, they found FSA spec ops Commander Cassandra Kresnov, with a badly wounded but still living high-designation GI whom she called only Jane. In the middle floors of the tower they later found evidence of heavy close-range combat, numerous dead synthetic Talee, and traces of gas where desperate Talee had finally resorted to trying to flush her out by other means.

“Inbound Talee say they got a message from this base too,” one of them told her, crouched alongside while other marines began clearing the building. “Say someone told them in their native tongue that Commander Kresnov of the FSA had recovered what they were searching for and was going to give it to them.”

Kresnov looked up from the sleeping face of the female GI alongside, as medics attended. “They're looking for their original genome,” she said. “We'd better give it to them—we can beat them on the ground, but it'll be a long time until we can match them in space. And I don't fancy being stuck on this dirtball one hour longer than I have to.”

A year later, the last thing Sandy had expected was that the wedding of a GI, in Tanusha, would be called the “wedding of the year.” Maybe if
she
were getting married to someone famous . . . but she'd never in all her life found famous people especially interesting, so there didn't seem much chance of that. But when the glamorous spokesperson for the Federal Security Agency had met big Tanushan movie star Vijay Kulkarni at a charity dinner, wedding arrangements had followed with alarming speed.

Sandy suspected the kids had something to do with it.

She picked her way through the sparkling crowds in the vast gardens to the part that had been left grassy and found a whole bunch of kids running and yelling, playing some game she didn't know the rules of. Svetlana was amongst them, in her baggy orange salwar kameez she'd grown to love since she'd stopped sulking from Sandy telling her she was too young for a sari. And too skinny, damn thing would fall off her with nothing to cling to. And she was being bossy again, shouting at other kids, telling them they were breaking the rules, they couldn't do it like that . . . but that was fine, she was older than most here, and she was organising the littlies, like an umpire running a football game. That was gratifying to see—Svetlana actually giving a damn about other kids whose names weren't Danya or Kiril.

Amongst them ran little Darge, five years old and quite delighted at it all. He looked so healthy now, most unlike the little bundle of rags they'd received off the freighter from Pantala nearly a year ago amongst the thousands of other orphan kids they'd brought back under the standing agreements. That had started an adoption drive like the ones in the
immediate aftermath of the war's conclusion, when League had been more sanguine about unloading a few hundred thousand hungry young mouths into Federation arms. This one was much smaller, just five and a half thousand kids, and it had been Rhian cunningly insisting Amirah should come to the hospital where the ones needing treatment were being kept. There she'd struck up a conversation with then-four-year-old Darge and his six-year-old sister Miniya, and they'd talked of little Darge's liver condition and how many more weeks of treatment until it was fixed, and Miniya had cried because everything here was so foreign and she didn't know where she and Darge would end up after he was better . . .

. . . and the next morning Rhian had arrived at sim-training with an evil smile and said that Amirah was filing adoption papers for both of them. A number of GIs had since followed, citing Sandy's and Rhian's example, and promising they'd blame them for every smelly diaper or dinner-time tantrum. Sandy had told them that she, and Rhian in particular, would only laugh.

To one side of the children's games sat Miniya, talking with Kiril. Miniya didn't play very much, suffering from Danya's condition of having borne horrible responsibility far too early in life and struggling with the concept of just having fun. Worse, there had been a third sibling, Leia, who had died of a lung infection two years ago, despite Miniya's attempts to find her medicine, five years old and begging for someone to help her little sister. But now Kiril sat with her beside the garden fishpond rather than play, and talked with her, and Sandy's heart melted all over again at how lucky she was that such a kind and considerate boy had fallen into her life.

“Hey, you two,” said Sandy, crouching behind them. “Wha'cha talking about?”