Steel, Titanium and Guilt: Just Hunter Books I to III

by Robin Craig

  “No,” he ordered.

  She looked up at him, puzzled.

  He stepped up to her, gently removed her hands. “I don’t know what dark purposes are at work in all this. I didn’t know if you were part of it. But if you were, you wouldn’t have hesitated to seal the deal. Frankly, I thought that’s why they’d sent a young woman in the first place. I’m sorry: but it’s the only way I could find out whether I could trust you – or if you were one of them.”

  For long seconds she stared at him, then all the conflicting emotions of the past weeks and nights and minutes coalesced into an incandescent ball of anger. “You bastard!” she yelled. “Bastard! Screw you and your fucking tests!” She slapped him, hard. Her outraged emotions wanted nothing to do with him. They urged her to run, to leave now, to flee through the wilderness outside until she dropped. But her body knew better. She spun into the guest room, thumping the plate to shut the door as she went.

  Beldan stood rubbing his jaw. He had the reflexes to stop that slap but they had refused to, as if acknowledging her right. He let out a long breath, went to the bar and poured himself a cognac. He sat wearily on the arm of the couch, just swirling the tan liquor in its glass, thinking. Suddenly he tossed it back, rather more rapidly than its quality deserved, letting it burn down his throat like a slug of lava. It’s like I told her. Nothing is free in life. Especially the truth. Let’s hope the price wasn’t too high for either of us.

  Chapter 36 – Strategy Meeting

  Beldan had been up for a couple of hours, hooked into his company network. He had already left a message that he would be working here today and should not be contacted except for emergencies. His philosophy was that a CEO should hire people who can do most of the job without him, so he had no worries that things would fall apart without his august presence.

  He had eaten only a little, just enough to keep hunger from distracting him. Whenever thoughts of Kali intruded into his work he banished them. There were too many unknowns, too many questions for such thoughts to be profitable, and the part of his mind desperate to find the answers waited impatiently for Lyssa to emerge.

  He heard a sound and looked up as her door slid open and she stepped out. She looked less tired but still subdued, and she glanced around nervously as if worried he might throw her out – or wondering whether she should beat him to it. Then she appeared to gather her resolve. She stood straight and gave him a timid almost-smile.

  Beldan stood as well and bowed slightly. “Good morning, Miss Morales,” he said. “We haven’t been properly introduced – last night doesn’t count. I am Dr Alexander Beldan. You may call me Alex.” He extended his hand.

  Lyssa looked at the hand for a few seconds then at his face. She stepped forward and shook it. “Hello, Alex. Please call me Lyssa,” she said in a formal tone, not smiling but with a peculiar look in her eyes. It was the look of a person who had been lost so long in a cave she feared to hope at the sight of distant sunlight.

  He smiled. “Now please, join me for breakfast. I imagine you can use it after Domestic Security’s version of hospitality. Not that mine has been much better so far, for which I can only express my regret for the necessity.”

  She thought his version of an apology odd, until she realized it was the only one that made sense. Necessity places its own demands; she knew that from her own life. A faint smile touched her lips. “I will forgive you, if you forgive my response.”

  “Oh, I think I earned it,” he replied. “Now sit. Choose whatever you want from the autochef.”

  After a while she tapped a few items then looked back at him.

  “Dr Beldan… Alex?” She looked frightened, as if she had to face something but was afraid to, as if it might reawaken what was best left undisturbed.

  “Yes, Lyssa? You don’t have to be afraid. Not now.”

  “I can think of many reasons why I might have accepted your offer last night and still been telling the truth. How did you know it would work? What if I’d agreed straight away?”

  “The way you spoke about Charlie made me think it would work, and I really wanted to know if I could trust you. It would be a lot harder to work out what’s going on if I couldn’t rely on you to tell me the truth about your part in this. I needed that one point of certainty to anchor the rest.”

  He paused, and she was glad the ruthlessness in his eyes had a target other than her. No, she thought. The target was her, but as she might have been, not as she was.

  “But sex as a tool of espionage is as old as spies. And I don’t think it’s inherently immoral – it depends on circumstances. So I’d have gone ahead, assuming you were using me – but trying to use you too, to find out what you were after and get to the truth. It would have made things a lot more complicated and uncertain, though.”

  She thought it would be bad strategy to ask how he knew she wasn’t just a good actress. He decided she didn’t need to know how good his AI was and that it was sure her reactions had been genuine.

  “Now time to eat,” he announced, as a whiff of aromatic steam announced the arrival of food. “We can start discussing business between mouthfuls.”

  She began to chew her food contentedly then he wondered why her face fell and a look almost like fear returned to her eyes. She swallowed and said in a low voice, “If there’s any business to discuss.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sorry, I should have told you earlier. I’ve just been through too much, and I didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t afford to believe it; couldn’t afford to think about it because I’d have just given up. But those agents showed me something when they were holding me. It was a photo of me, the one in their system that alerted them to my arrival.” She stopped, afraid to put words to it, as if the words would make it real.

  “You remember what I told you about when Kali first found me? How she was about to kill me? Their image was taken then, from where she was standing. They could only have gotten it from her. They must already have her.”

  Beldan look shocked, then sat back to think. “No…” he said after a while, “No, I don’t think so. That video I showed you, the one you said was a mishmash of truth and lies. Some of it came from a ‘meld’, when two Spiders share memories. But Kali was still rogue then and it was after she spared your life. Your photo…”

  Beldan’s face went blank, in a way that made her think of being hit by a train, and she felt a shiver of fear. She wondered what he was seeing beyond the distant look in his eyes.

  Then he spoke, but she knew he was not talking to her. He pronounced his words slowly, as if picking his away along a path on the side of a cliff. “Your photo. It came from Kali. But then how did Domestic Security get it? Oh my God…”

  His eyes focused on her, and she drew back at the intensity of his gaze. “Kali’s fight with the other Spider was after she met you, after she let you go. The picture of you had to be from the same meld. Sheldrake had the image all along but he didn’t share it with me: he must have contacts in Domestic Security and he sent it to them instead. He knew you had something to do with what happened to Kali, and he wanted to find out who you are. But he didn’t want me to know. He said he was trying to find out what had happened… and he knew the significance of the photo… but he didn’t tell me about it…

  “That tells us one thing. Sheldrake is not behind what happened to Kali,” he concluded. “If he was, he wouldn’t be talking to me about it, let alone getting Domestic Security involved. But if someone has hacked his machine, he shouldn’t be hiding your existence from me while trying to find you by other means, because you’d have to be his best clue and prime suspect. So what in hell is his game?”

  He sat still, struck by another thought. If AC were lying, trying to cover up the true nature of Kali’s rebellion, was it the only thing they were covering up? What if something like this had happened before? He suddenly felt very cold, remembering the missing reporter who had thought he was onto a hot story. What if these machines are
capable of self-awareness? What if Kali isn’t the only one, just the only one who got away? That would be the kind of story that a reporter would die for. And maybe he did.

  Then he went even colder at the full horror of the possibility. What if Miriam found out about it? What if her death wasn’t an accident, but murder; what if she got too close to the truth and had to be eliminated too? Taking the terrible risk of killing a cop – because it was less than the risk of letting her live?

  He knew it wasn’t true. He knew he wanted too much for Miriam’s death to have meant something, not be just some random accident at the end of a long spiral into self-destruction. That at the end she was a warrior fallen in battle, not a failure who had sold piece after piece of herself until she had no reasons left to live. For all its horror the idea was too seductive, too much like wish fulfillment to be true. But…

  She wondered at the look of pain in his eyes. Then he shook his head slowly, unable to speak.

  “Dr Beldan… Alex… what’s the matter?”

  He continued to shake his head. “Nothing,” he replied softly, “nothing I can be certain of yet.” He looked directly into her eyes. “But we’ve let ourselves be distracted. Tell me everything that happened. You’ve told me some, but I need to hear it all.”

  He listened intently as Lyssa started from when Kali had first found her to their final meeting. When she had finished, he sat staring into the distance for a while.

  “That’s – astonishing,” he finally commented. “But what in all Pluto’s hells does it mean?”

  “Perhaps it means just what it seems.”

  He stared at her, unwilling to take that step but unable to refuse it.

  “There’s something else that worries me, Alex.”

  “It has plenty of company. What is it?”

  “Whatever Allied Cybernetics is up to, it can’t be good. They must know who I am by now and that I’m safe with you – for now. But if they know who I am – what if they know about Charlie, too? He’s still over there. They might try to get to him. Use him against me, against us.”

  Beldan thought about the still indistinct chessboard and the too few rays of light illuminating it. Best protect all the pieces we have.

  “Yes… They can’t know too much about you if they had to find you through Domestic Security, but who knows what they might find out now they have your name.”

  His voice became brisker. “I need to know more. How strict is the discipline in your group? How did you get away?”

  “It’s not like the army, we don’t shoot deserters. I just told the truth, or as much of the truth as I could. I said I had something important to do. They looked at me as if they understood, but I think many of them thought I’d broken. That I was running away. But they let me because… well, I suppose because they understand even that.”

  “So Charlie can get away just as easily?”

  She gave a rueful grin. “Technically. But he’s as proud as he is brave. He’ll know people will suspect he’s a coward; that he’s broken too, like me. But I think I can persuade him how important it is.”

  “Do it. We don’t know how much time he has. Tell him this is the most vital thing he can do for your side. Tell him you’re safe. Tell him not to tell anyone he’s going but just to vanish. Now.”

  She nodded dumbly, rose to go to her room.

  “Wait. Make sure we can contact him, preferably at any time. We might need him to do something for us. A man on the ground over there might prove vital. And don’t use your phone – who knows what traces are on it after Domestic Security had access to it.”

  “Heimdall!” he said, addressing his security AI. “Get Miss Morales a secure line from her room, maximum encryption, untraceable as you can make it.”

  Lyssa went to her room and he waited patiently, idly watching the sun and the shadows as if they might hide revelations. He wondered if she had noticed that he hadn’t told Heimdall to grant her calls privacy; perhaps she had, but understood that trust could only go so far. He would not spy on her call himself, but if Heimdall detected anything suspicious it would alert him. Finally Lyssa re-emerged, giving him an uncomplicated smile. “It’s done.”

  He waited for her to sit. “We have a lot to talk about,” he said. “The main thing we have to work out is Kali’s true nature. Let’s start with the few things we know,” he began, ticking them off on his fingers.

  “First, your conversations with Kali imply conscious awareness at a human-like level.

  “Second, whatever happened to Kali, Sheldrake is not behind it. Unless he is playing some fiendishly complicated multiple bluff – but plots that complex never work in the real world.

  “Third, you’re not responsible either.

  “Fourth, it doesn’t make sense for hackers to be responsible. If they can take over a thing like Kali, why would they stop her killing you then send you haring off around the world just to see me? If they want me for something, they can contact me themselves. It just doesn’t make sense.

  “But fifth, despite appearances, Kali can’t actually be conscious. It doesn’t make any sense that she could have the capacity.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “According to Sherlock Holmes, if you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” He frowned. “Unfortunately that isn’t much use when all the options are impossible!”

  Lyssa looked back at him, as puzzled as he. She still thought Kali was what she seemed, but knew she had to keep an open mind. Then he saw the dawning of an idea in her eyes. “Wait! Wait! What if… what if one of the AC programmers did it? They don’t like what AC is doing for some reason – and I can think of plenty myself – and they put something into Kali’s programming to cause this? Maybe not just her, either…?”

  His eyes flashed to hers. “That’s a… a fascinating idea. You can’t directly program a brain, any more than we could program Steel’s brain, but the control circuits that interface with it are another matter.” He sat still for a few minutes, mind racing through the possibilities. “Maybe someone could do it. A hidden subroutine, triggered by some event or after a certain time. A collection of simulated responses that look like consciousness. Even some trick that uses enough of the neural tissue to truly reason at some level! Christ…”

  “But if that’s true, we need to find them!”

  Beldan returned her look of excitement, but then she saw it die in his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

  He shook his head slowly. “What are we going to do, march into AC and demand to talk to their programmers? Take a few out to lunch? Even if we did, I don’t think we’d find them. I think they’re dead.” If they were willing to kill that reporter, to kill a cop for Christ’s sake, they’d certainly not balk at killing a saboteur. Maybe that’s even what started this. Maybe the reporter already found our programmer and it got them both killed.

  “Well… if they are or not,” she said, “what does it mean? Kali’s responses are too flexible to just be some simulation and the region is too filled with radio noise and jammers for remote control at that precision. So it brings us to the same place. However it was done – she is self aware.”

  He shook his head. “Not necessarily. Say the backdoor allows remote control, with simulation or reasoning – at the same limited level as they use normally – just good enough to cover the gaps. Or something like strategic remote control with tactical local control. That might do it without us having to imagine a truly thinking machine. With that partial independence she might even think she thinks – not knowing that most of it is controlled.”

  He rubbed his temples. “Bloody hell. Someone is playing a deep game here. But who?” Then his eyes flashed to hers.

  “It’s still possible you’re lying, playing a far more cunning and deeper game than I imagined.” His eyes bored into hers, as if to mine the truth from the brain behind them. “But I don’t believe it. Which makes Allied Cybernetics the liars. Somehow Kali has escaped thei
r control. Not running amok like they claim, but in some way that is dangerous to them, dangerous enough that they’re willing to risk my involvement, and Domestic Security’s, in order to stop her.”

  He knew what he had to do. He turned it over in his mind, hoping to find a less dangerous solution; hoping he wasn’t walking straight into a trap set for him by whoever was behind this, as much a puppet of their schemes as Kali.

  He looked at Lyssa, and he could see the same thought in her eyes.

  “So how the hell do we get her here?”

  Chapter 37 – Until the Night

  Kali had woken early. Dimly orange sunlight filtered down into her lair from the dawn and she wondered what the day would bring. ‘What the day will bring?’ What’s happening to me? I need to go out and shoot something.

  She checked her internal reserves. She had tapped into a good power supply and her capacitors were full. That was good, for she knew now was the time to move.

  She still had not heard from Lyssa. Whether that meant a delay, a problem or her death was outside her control. But her strategy routines had been working while she slept. The more time passed, the more likely it became that Command would suspect, learn or act. The more days went by, the more chance there was that the Spider she had interrogated would reveal their conversation, and that would raise alarms. The average of her possible futures became darker and darker, as risks everywhere from satellite surveillance to anomalous battle statistics became more and more probable. She could wait no longer.

  The thought, however, brought frustration rather than release. For if strategy indicated she had to move, it also indicated she should do it at night when the opportunities for concealment were greatest. She considered this. She called up a map, overlaid it with vectors and strategies. Calculated risks. I need to escape. I must do it myself. Ah. Not too far from here, the city met the jungle. It was not old-growth jungle, but forest that had reclaimed land once cultivated but long since abandoned for better pastures. That meant it gave good cover but was not so dense to make it unduly difficult or noisy for her to make her way through it.