Originator

by Joel Shepherd

  Ragi bowled spin, unable to generate Rhian’s inhuman pace, and again the ball looped down the pitch, spinning madly. Poole leaped forward as it dropped short, and swung hard . . . and got a huge inside edge onto his shins . . . as Poole, of course, wore no pads. Ari threw up his hands and cried out at the closeness of it.

  “Hmm,” said Poole, picking up the ball and tossing it back. “That was different.”

  “Ragi!” said Ari with excitement. “The flipper!” That was a top spinner, Sandy had gathered.

  “It’s about the position of the seam,” said Ragi, catching the ball. “There’s a position that plays tricks on a GI’s eyes. It looks like it’s spinning sideways, but it goes straight on.”

  “Really?” asked Sandy. “How does that work?”

  “Find your own special delivery,” Ragi told her with a smile, walking back. Sandy grinned, suspecting he was playing mind games. A very high-des might do that successfully to a lower-des. And if anything was going to interrupt Poole’s awesome hitting display, it would be the uncertainty that he could trust what he was seeing. Which was actually quite a fun thing to explore. Since she’d been introduced to GI-racquetball last year, she’d been slowly discovering that she wasn’t as bored by sports as she’d thought. A few of them could actually teach her things, about herself and her kind, that nothing else could.

  “Ami!” Poole called to the far fence, and they turned to see Amirah arriving, dressed in gym shorts and runners. “You made it!”

  And others by the fence turned to look at her in astonishment, having no idea that the slim, bushy-haired girl in gym shorts could possibly be a GI . . . until she accelerated off the biggest run-up anyone had ever seen, a ball in hand she’d collected from the ball kids, and hurled it down at Poole at twice what a regular human could. She aimed straight at him, and Poole hooked it, and got a top edge that went rocketing into the night sky.

  “It’s high!” Ari shouted. “If it lands in play, it’s caught and out!”

  Sandy saw where it was heading. “Danya, Svet! Watch out!” Danya, Svetlana, and Kiril were over by the side fence, bowling tennis balls at Rhian’s little Salman, who was a year older than Kiril.

  “Danya, catch it!” Svetlana shrieked. But it was a mile in the air, and the lights made it hard to see against a black sky . . . and Danya, with no intention of trying to catch a hard ball falling from that height, pulled Kiril well clear and let it hit the turf. The ground erupted with ironic cheers, from perhaps a hundred people gathered. Danya grinned and threw the ball back.

  “Have a bat, kid!” someone shouted to him.

  “No thank you!” Danya said loudly. “It looks like a firing squad out there.”

  “Ami,” said Poole, offering her the bat, which she took graciously. “You know how to play?”

  “Of course I know,” Amirah scolded, “I’m the only socialised one here.” And gave Poole’s backside a playful whack as he passed to prove it. “I picked it up from TV. And the boss explained it a bit.”

  “Ibrahim watches cricket?” Sandy asked.

  “Of course,” Ari said, frowning. “You’ve known him eight years, how do you not know that?”

  Sandy shrugged. “Never came up.”

  Then Kiet arrived, the last invite, with more greetings all around. Sandy could have invited more, but this seemed a comfortable number—all her closest synthetic friends, plus Ari. It had been Vanessa’s idea, even as Vanessa had ruled herself out from coming. “You guys need to talk about your stuff,” she’d said. “Because GIs in Tanusha, you’ve got lots of stuff to talk about.” And Sandy had to agree.

  They talked about new asylum seekers, who continued to arrive from different parts of the League, and the progress of other asylum seekers through the Callayan legal system and finally into their chosen professions. That was usually CSA or FSA for combat GIs, which the majority of them were. Not only did they have the abilities for it; it was where most of their new friends and support networks were—support networks like this one. This very night, Sandy knew there would be groups of GIs out at bars or nightclubs, or restaurants or concerts, or just staying at home, hanging out. Mostly they would mix with the Tanushan population quite well. If anyone disapproved of them, they were usually too smart to make an issue of it. And every week, Sandy heard gossip of hook-ups, Tanushan locals and new synthetic citizens meeting and getting along, carnally or otherwise. It was even becoming a tourist attraction—visit Tanusha and you might run into a real-life combat GI. For Federation citizens it remained a novelty.

  Then, inevitably, conversation turned to the Synthetics Caucus Kiet wanted to set up.

  “League’s about to start churning out tens of thousands of new high-des GIs to try and stabilise their internal situation,” Kiet insisted with his usual intensity, “and we’re not going to try and make anything out of it? There’s nearly six hundred of us now in Tanusha, we’ve got the ear of some very powerful people, some of us are pretty powerful in our own right. . . .”

  “Kiet,” said Sandy, “the best thing we can do to guarantee the rights of those new League GIs is to try and help stabilise the League’s internal wars. And you don’t stabilise the League by pushing the Federation—which is without a properly elected government right now, you might have noticed—to declare universal emancipation.”

  Ari bowled his legspin to Rhian, who blocked it neatly, elbow raised and bat straight with perfect form. Ari had given up asking them not to patronise him.

  “League’s taking an awful big risk making so many new GIs,” said Rhian, taking guard once more. “I know the technology’s supposed to be more like Jane’s, they’re not supposed to be thinking for themselves . . . but we haven’t seen the long-term effects of that. I mean, who’s heard anything about Jane lately?”

  Sandy bowled—her new invention, the fast spinner, high speed but rotating like crazy. It turned so much that Rhian nearly missed, and a big edge went flying into the off-side stadium seats. The two kids out that way went racing to get it.

  “Yeah,” Sandy conceded. “It sounds like fifth column material to me too.” She walked back to the bowler’s end. “But problem is, if Jane has become a free-thinking individual, I bet it’s taken her a damn long time to get there. Possibly we could turn these new GIs against the League, but at the rate the League’s disintegrating, it’ll be too late.”

  “You want to go around saying GIs are fifth-column material?” Amirah asked. Poole charged in, and Rhian belted him back over his head. “Because they say that about us. It was the fear used to justify Operation Shield, which then became the near-reality in the counter-coup.”

  “Look,” said Sandy, flipping the ball as she waited her turn, “I’d love it if we started joining other institutions. But no one else will have us, and Callay’s the only world granting citizenship.”

  “Wouldn’t want to go anywhere else anyway,” said Poole, walking back. “I mean why be the first GI on a new Federation world, get stared at and prodded, when you could stay here where people are getting used to us?”

  “We are causing a power imbalance though,” said Amirah, as Ragi bowled. This time Rhian took him on, and put him into the upper stands, but not in the direction she’d intended. Ragi smiled, taking it as a moral victory. “I mean FSA spec ops is now pretty ridiculous, even by League standards. Even Dark Star.”

  Sandy nodded. “Yep. Easily the highest combat capability anywhere, Federation or League. Nothing else comes close.”

  “And this is just the start,” Amirah continued, “because the GIs who are defecting are the cream. League never concentrated them together much, because when concentrated together, high-des GIs get ideas. This little gathering would scare the shit out of League command.”

  “Worse if you start talking about God,” Ari added. “Can you imagine, an army of religious GIs?”

  Sandy jogged in and bowled with massive backspin. The ball kicked up and Rhian barely swayed aside in time, the ball striking her temple on a shall
ow angle. “Ouch,” said Rhian, which was funny, from a GI. Sandy grinned, as the ball hit the rear fence with a loud crash, a hundred meters away.

  “Well, FedInt’s welcome to stop whining about power imbalances and recruit some of us,” said Kiet. “Just cause we’re combatants doesn’t mean we wouldn’t make good spies. Look at ISO’s high-des spies.”

  “If you were FedInt,” Amirah retorted, “would you trust a Federation GI? One of us? I mean, is there any doubt really where our loyalties lie?”

  “Well, I don’t think that’s true,” said Ragi. “Using myself as an example, I’m still unsure where my loyalties lie. I consider you all my friends, and I’ll always endeavour to help my friends, but that’s a different thing to a political loyalty.”

  “Not for me it’s not,” Kiet said firmly. “Friends are politics.”

  “Agree,” said Sandy. “It’s more complicated, as Ragi says. But for most of us, friendships and politics, with Callay and the current FSA leadership, are pretty much the same thing. Of course if anyone ever moved Ibrahim that could change.”

  “Well, this just proves my point,” said Ragi. “We do have different ideas and loyalties, and we’re all individuals. To suggest that there’s only one side for GIs to support is to deny us free agency, which is . . . well, to borrow an old and imprecise term, racist.”

  “Synth-phobic,” Ari offered. “Keep up with the lingo, Ragi.”

  “I try.”

  “Ahem!” Rhian called from down at the stumps. They’d all gotten so caught up talking, they’d forgotten to bowl. Amirah ran in, and Rhian cut her like a bullet into the off-side stands, with a bang that announced a damaged seat. More raucous laughter from onlookers, unable to believe what they’d seen. Sandy jogged to track down an incoming throw from the fence, as the ball kids finally retrieved her ball.

  “Speaking of loyalties,” Ragi continued, “I have a question for everyone. Who here follows a sports team? Not a sport, but an actual team?” He looked around, questioning. Shakes of the head, mild disinterest.

  “I quite like football,” said Amirah. “And cricket. But I like a good game, I don’t mind which team.”

  “Rhian!” Sandy shouted down the far end. “You follow a sports team?”

  “Subianto Shock!” Rhian called back, to cheers from the stands, who could overhear. It was the local team, of course.

  “She’s being polite,” Sandy explained to Ragi. “She doesn’t care.”

  “How about these damned dancing competitions?” Ragi persisted. “Tanushan Dance Star?”

  “Oh, I love that!” said Amirah, quite predictably.

  “Ever pick a favourite really early? Lots of people do.”

  “No, usually they’re all really good.” Amirah looked at him thoughtfully, guessing where he was going. “I suppose if I knew someone personally, I’d cheer for them. But from a distance . . . no. I guess GIs don’t really do that much.”

  “No, we don’t, do we?” said Ragi, flipping the ball. Ari bowled, and again Rhian blocked him. Boos from the stands. “Straight humans typically have an emotional compulsion to pick favourites. With politics it’s understandable, because politics determine how people live. But football teams don’t matter in real terms at all, yet some straights cheer their team as though it were life and death.”

  “I think it’s dangerous to say too loudly that we’re more objective than straights,” said Sandy. “Someone might overhear and think we’re getting a superiority complex.”

  “But we do,” said Kiet. “Comes from real superiority.”

  Sandy gave him a wary look, unsure of just how much he was joking. “But on the whole I think it’s pretty obvious. I think we’d make good judges or lawyers. We only take sides when we have to. It’s not compulsive, like with most straights.”

  “Funny you should say,” Amirah added, and paused, as Poole finally got Rhian to edge one, which counted as an automatic dismissal. And left Rhian looking at her bat, which was now missing a chunk of its edge, removed at 250 kph. “The new girl acting as Grand Council liaison is really unpopular with some of the HQ admin girls. You know, bitchy girl stuff.”

  “You know I never understood that,” said Sandy. “But go on.”

  “Well, just my point,” Amirah pressed. “I made sure I had a coffee with her for ten minutes, and I can see why they don’t like her, she’s pushy and doesn’t listen well . . . but I’m sure I don’t dislike her. I’m not about to become her best friend either, but once I thought I’d figured her out, I found I could manage her bullshit without getting that emotional response. I spoke to that new admin GI, Tanu, about her . . . and he didn’t have a problem with her either. But the straight girls especially all hate her.”

  “Odd to think that we might be the peaceful ones, wouldn’t it be?” Ragi suggested. “The ones preaching tolerance and understanding?” He gave Sandy a meaningful glance. They’d had similar discussions before, with regard to SuperPsych and its various findings. But they couldn’t discuss that here. “But it would be nice to think that if we saw some conflict coming in Tanusha, at some point we might be able to head it off.”

  “Yes,” said Amirah doubtfully. “But that’s dangerous too, because it creates the impression we’re more loyal to each other than we are to the institutions we work for. And if GIs become a separate power center in the Federation, we could become a real threat to lots of people who don’t take threats well.”

  As Sandy pondered it, Rhian walked up, with a new bat from behind the stumps, and tossed it to her. “Your turn,” she said. “You know it’s what everyone wants to see.”

  Sandy walked down and took guard—an unorthodox stance, bat as horizontal as vertical, farther back from the stumps. Back and waiting, baseball style. She could see Ari wincing. “I hope you’ve got some clever theory,” he called, “because that looks horrible.”

  “Well, the whole ‘vertical bat’ thing is to eliminate batsman error from variable bounce. I don’t think I need it. And if I tempt you to bowl at my stumps, you’ll just put it where I like it.”

  Ari bowled first. Sandy felt many things toward Ari, but chivalrous and patronising weren’t among them, and she lofted him into the far stand. “G-22,” she said. The ball hit a seat with a crack, but not hard, as Ari’s pace was low.

  “What’s G-22?” Rhian asked.

  “The seat number,” said Ragi. “Incurable show-off. Here, let me try.” He bowled, and Sandy saw how the seam scrambled as it spun toward her, but this one was spinning . . . off. She lofted it again, not especially hard.

  “G-23,” she said. Five seconds later, the ball hit the seat neighbouring G-22.

  “Oh, no way!” said Ari.

  “But can she do it against pace?” said Poole, and charged in. He bowled wide of the stumps, a blur that reached her in barely a split second . . . and she hit it dead flat, barely any arc on it at all.

  “G-twenty . . .” she said, then “Dammit!” as the ball smashed a chair back and split it.

  “H-24,” Poole observed. “You missed!” From a hundred and thirty meters, aiming at chairs that look like little dots high in the far stand.

  “Yeah, and here’s why,” said Sandy, showing him the bat. It had folded at the handle, more from the force of her swing than the impact with the ball. “If GIs are going to play this game seriously, we’re going to need steel bats.”

  The kids found it fun to meet the Subianto Shock players as they watched some cricket on TV. But Sandy only hung around long enough for some brief conversation and to sign a few of Justice Rosa’s books. She was more interested in sport than she had been, but the athletes themselves were never going to awe her, given that she played their sport far better than they ever could and with almost no experience.

  “Sandy,” said Kiril in the cruiser on the way home, “are we gonna be rich with the book?”

  “No, Kiri,” said Sandy from the driver’s seat, “it’s not our money. It’s Justice’s money because he wrote the book.”<
br />
  “That’s not fair,” said Svetlana. “It’s your life he’s making all this money from.”

  “Oh well, I’m used to that.” Her seekers were returning only light “interesting” traffic tonight—some stuff on a controversial asylum case, a report on Chairman Li’s upcoming trial, some speculation on new GI technologies employed by the League’s illegal new production facility. All nonsense, of course. Nothing on tonight’s little gathering yet, though that wouldn’t last. “Besides Justice is donating most of it to war charities.”

  “Hey, the war orphan lady who visited last month!” said Svetlana. “So we will get some of it!”

  “We’re not eligible, Svet,” said Danya, as Sandy repressed a smile. “We do pretty well with Sandy; the war orphan charities only go to kids that actually need it.”

  “So why was that lady talking to us?”

  “I guess there aren’t that many war orphans on Callay,” reasoned Danya. “She just wanted to make sure we knew about it.”

  “Sandy, will the street kids on Droze get money?” Kiril asked. Quite seriously, Sandy saw with a glance back.

  “No, Kiri. The Federation has no official contact with Droze or any of the New Torah systems. It’s in the League, we’re not allowed to touch the League.”

  “You went there.”

  “I went there for security reasons.”

  “But you helped us.” He looked troubled, looking more out the window than at her, as light from passing towers slid across his face.

  “Yes, I did,” Sandy affirmed.

  “So why don’t the Federation help other Droze kids?”

  Sandy glanced at Danya. Danya was craned all the way around in his chair to look at Kiril. Danya thought this significant then—Kiril’s sudden recollection of all the other kids who hadn’t made it out. “Because we’re not allowed to, Kiri,” she said. “League will say it’s interference in their internal affairs.”