Originator

by Joel Shepherd

  “They’re not so tough,” said Sandy, eyes half-lidded as the combat reflex began to spread across her vision once more. She forced it back, with difficulty. “They’ll need a lot more than what they’ve brought so far to get past me.”

  “And that’s what they’ll bring,” Cai said quietly. And sipped his half-forgotten coffee.

  “Well, then we’ve all got a problem,” said Jane. Effortlessly hefting the rifle in her left hand. “Takewashi sent me here to look after you, sis.” With a cool stare at Sandy. “And your brat. He knew what he was doing would bring them down on you. And him. But he said it was the only way.”

  “To do what?” Ragi asked.

  Jane made a face. “Save humanity,” she said vaguely. “Or something like that. I only did it because he made me promise. He sacrificed himself for you lot. I hope you realise that.”

  Or what? Sandy nearly asked her. Or you’ll get upset at us? Since when had Jane ever been upset at the demise of anyone? Takewashi had created her but sold her off to the highest bidder when it proved the only excuse to allow her technology to see the light of day. Rapid-gestation high-des. Sandy had taken five-years-plus to become functional. Jane had taken months, perhaps a year. It meant shortcuts in mental development. Lots of tape teach. Drone-like behaviour. Murderous indifference . . . and indifferent murder. Now she claimed sentiment?

  “Takewashi thinks the technology in Kiril’s head is the only way to save humanity from killing itself,” Jane finished. “I don’t know how or why, it’s not my field.”

  “Then we have a real problem with the Talee,” said Ragi, gazing at Cai. “Because if we can’t live without it, and they can’t live with it . . .” He let it hang, unfinished.

  “Cai, you said there were others?” said Sandy. “On Pantala? That Chancelry put the same technology into, like Kiril?”

  Cai nodded. “Whether they’re still on Pantala, or whether League has figured out what’s going on and moved them, I don’t know.”

  Sandy’s eyes slowly widened. “Then the Talee will be going after them too?”

  “Quite likely,” said Cai.

  “Then we need to find League representatives here and warn them,” she said.

  Ragi frowned. “Cassandra, if Talee are acting in unison to eliminate all those test subjects, it’s likely they’ve already moved. And given Callay is farther away, it’s quite possible the others are dead already and Kiril is the last test subject left.”

  Svetlana sat beside Kiril and hugged him. Kiril just scratched the asura’s head, sombrely. The animal flicked its big ears.

  “All the more reason to get the League onside,” Sandy said firmly. “Because in that case, Kiril’s their last hope too.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ibrahim threw his coffee cup at the wall. It smashed, splashing coffee to the carpet. Everyone stared. No one had ever seen Ibrahim do such a thing.

  “So you’re telling me,” he said, “that we are under attack by an alien race that everyone thought benign, and that there is absolutely nothing we can do to fight back.”

  They sat about the central table in the secure briefing room. All was dark, save flashlights and independently powered monitor screens. Room lights ran off the HQ grid, and if they powered the HQ grid, it was conceivable that power could be siphoned to activate the currently deactivated network. The only option was to power down completely and turn off the backup generator. If the network was operating, it could be used against them. The only way to fight the Talee was to give up electricity entirely. But most of the city couldn’t do that.

  “The attack appears limited,” Reichardt offered. “Just the beach house, and our reports are that Cassandra was there, and her youngest boy . . .”

  “And which of those reports do we trust?” Ibrahim asked the Captain bleakly. “Which of those people reporting to us are reporting things that actually happened, or merely experiences that the Talee placed in their heads by remote?”

  Reichardt looked at the wall, the splatter of dark liquid running to the floor. Then he snapped the elastic band about his wrist for the sensation of pain that would tell him if this was a simulation or not. About the table, Hando, Amirah, and Ibrahim did the same.

  “VR simulation in everyone’s heads,” Ibrahim muttered. “All for games. We could so easily do without it, but it’s too entertaining. And now we don’t even know if we’re awake or not.” He’d never felt so helpless. He wondered if there was really any point in him being here at all. Maybe he should go home to his wife and his bed.

  “Sir,” tried Amirah, “high-designation GIs will be least affected. We’re not easily forced into VR without a direct link; Cassandra herself made that assessment after her encounters with Cai at Pantala last year.”

  “Well, if they can help,” said Hando, “they’re on their own. If the Talee are after Cassandra’s kid like we think, we don’t know where he is and finding out could kill him.”

  “We’d be better off with an army of children,” said Ibrahim. “Completely without uplinks, they’d be more use than us.”

  “Sir,” Hando said carefully, “in all seriousness, I know of some high school cadets who would likely volunteer for messenger duty. Scouts, possibly football teams. Community-minded kids. They couldn’t be hacked.”

  “No, just killed physically,” said Amirah with obvious disapproval. “We’ve already got one much younger child being targeted, they wouldn’t stop at more.”

  “I was in Fleet Academy from fifteen,” said Reichardt grimly.

  Ibrahim stared at the wall for a moment. “Do it,” he said finally. “Talk to their parents, get them out of bed if you have to. Courier by motorcycle or public transport; cars and cruisers are too vulnerable.”

  “Sir,” Amirah began.

  “We have to be able to talk to each other,” Ibrahim cut her off. “I mean, what is a human being without the ability to communicate?” Amirah said nothing, unaccustomed to her boss’s temper. Ibrahim had been through bad situations before, but this was too much. Before, there had been options. Now, their only option was to lie still and take it. He looked at Reichardt. “If Fleet have any more Talee stories you haven’t shared with us yet, now might be the time.”

  “I was hoping you had something,” said Reichardt. “No, we’ve got . . . biological clues, ideas about physiology based on what we know of their home-world’s atmosphere, ship performance . . . nothing helpful here.”

  “They have to know,” Ibrahim muttered. “I mean they can’t just let this happen.”

  Hando frowned. “I’m sorry, sir, who?”

  “The Talee. This can’t be the mainstream society attacking us, this has to be some fringe. They’ve been so meticulous not to aggravate us, and now this?”

  “Sir . . . guessing games with Talee social and political structure is dangerous, we just don’t . . .”

  “I’m sick of being careful, Mr Hando. Careful got us here. The Talee are evidently sick of being careful too, since careful got them Cresta’s destruction and the fears of species-wide extermination. That must be it, mustn’t it?” Looking around at them all, faces underlit in the dark room. “Whatever uplink tech is in Kiril Kresnov’s head, they must be terrified of it. And with whole moons being destroyed in human space, they’ve leaped from too-cautious to too-aggressive in one leap. Well, two can play at that.

  “Captain, I’m putting Fleet on full alert. A war footing. The official announcement shall be ‘pending invasion.’”

  A very predictable silence about the table, though their faces did not show as much shock as one might have expected. Federation Fleet hadn’t been in full alert since the war. “The whole Fleet?” Reichardt asked. “Even if we could get the word out, I’m not sure the whole Fleet would listen or respond, things as they are at present.”

  “The whole Fleet,” Ibrahim agreed. “I’m overruling anything Ranaprasana may say, I’m invoking FSA’s rule. The Federation has been attacked by an external entity. This means war.”<
br />
  “Sir?” Amirah ventured carefully. “You’re going to take the entire Federation to war against the Talee?”

  “They’ve left us no choice. We can’t negotiate, they won’t let us even talk to each other, let alone to them. Their technological advantage is so extreme that it demonstrates to us a clear existential threat. We either submit to their intervention whenever they feel like it, or we retaliate. The only retaliation they will notice, given the scale of their advantage, is total war.

  “I cannot believe this is the entire Talee people in action. Surely this is only one small part, acting without consent from the majority. To have feared interaction with us for so long, only to intervene now so brazenly, makes no sense in any other context.”

  “Hell of a gamble,” Reichardt observed.

  “As was theirs,” Ibrahim replied. “Thus my move.”

  “And if the Talee majority doesn’t take the hint and drag this smaller group back into line?” Hando asked. “Or if the smaller group launches an all-out attack before they can do so? What then?”

  “Then,” said Ibrahim, “I doubt there will be very many of us around to debate the point. But there won’t be many Talee either. We have to hope they won’t make it three times extinct.”

  “Sir,” Hando persisted, “consensus with the Talee has always been to tell the public as little as possible, to avoid the considerable public alarm that everyone expects if there were any incident. But your strategy is to provoke public alarm on purpose?”

  “Yes,” Ibrahim nodded firmly. “The more the better. They can only have calculated that we’ll go along with them in keeping it quiet. They’ve miscalculated us, because now our only defence is to let them know that there is no such thing as safe intervention against humans. Every human being alive will learn of this and be alarmed. Let the Talee deal with that, next time they consider doing it again.”

  He snapped the elastic band against his wrist again and felt the sting. And thought, on an impulse, to pull up his left elbow to crack his shoulder—an old injury from many decades ago, as a young agent in the field. The shoulder joint enhancement cracked slightly off, and a twinge of pain followed. But this pain usually tingled. Today, it merely stabbed. He tried it again. Same result. He hadn’t done that for a long time; the doctors insisted he shouldn’t, and his wife scolded. The sensation wouldn’t be stored in his short-term memory implant. Talee VR couldn’t replicate it. They’d be guessing.

  “Fuck,” he said. Again the stares. He never swore either. Was that VR, messing up his head, or was that really him? He pulled his gun and strode from the room.

  “Sir?” called Amirah. “Sir!” Out into the hallway, headed Allah-knew-where. “Director Ibrahim!”

  He spun on her and put the gun to his head. “My shoulder has an old injury. The pain when I manipulate it is different. This is VR.”

  “Sir, no!” Real fear on Amirah’s face, coming closer, her hand outstretched. “Give me the gun, the Talee could be manipulating that pain to make you think it’s VR, and shoot yourself for real.”

  “Why not just kill me outright?”

  “To not make a bigger incident, to not kill the FSA Director themselves, make it a suicide.” Behind her, Hando and Reichardt were in the dark hallway. “Sir, let me take . . .”

  Ibrahim levelled the gun at her head. “Are you really Amirah? Can they put us all in a VR together, or are you just a simulation?”

  “If that’s your question, then nothing I could tell you could convince you,” Amirah said carefully, slowly creeping in that braced, dangerous way GIs did when threatened.

  “The real Amirah could have disarmed me by now. . . .”

  And in a flash his pistol was gone, his hand stinging from her speed. She pocketed the pistol and put her back to the wall. “Hit me here,” she commanded, pointing to her left ribs. “There’s a raw nerve in one that never entirely healed from the last shooting. Hasn’t twinged for months. If it’s VR from short-term memory they won’t be able to replicate it, same as your shoulder. Hard as you can.”

  It still gave him pause. She was a slender girl compared to most GIs. Pretty, young and . . . yes, he had to admit, something like a daughter to him, in these last months, in what they’d been through together.

  She saw his hesitation. “Seriously?” she asked him, half exasperation, half teasing. He recalled the speed with which she’d removed his gun and drove his fist as hard as he could into her left ribs. And immediately grabbed his hand and wrist, because it was only a bit more forgiving than hitting the wall. She blinked at him, bounced hard off the wall but unbothered. “Nothing,” she said.

  She pulled her own pistol, a heavier calibre than his. “I’ll do it,” she said, and put the muzzle in her mouth.

  “No!” He grabbed her hand and would have made little progress with the steel of her grip, but she let him pull it back. “No. We don’t even know if that works.”

  “Look,” Hando intervened, “they must have cut in at some point. Seamless, so we wouldn’t notice. Think back. What was the last time we can definitely agree was real?”

  “Dammit, we can’t afford this,” Ibrahim muttered. “We have to find a fast way out and put the Fleet on alert, simulation death usually works. Give me back the gun.”

  “You think I’ll let you do it but not me?” Amirah said incredulously.

  “Right, first thing,” said Reichardt in that Texan drawl that got more pronounced the worse a situation became. “Let’s all take a wander, meet some other folks, see if they’re stuck in this thing too, assuming we are stuck. More data, more possible outcomes. Then we’ll see how far this simulation spreads. ’Cause if it is a simulation, we may as well call a press conference and tell the world we’ve just been invaded by aliens, ’cause then we’ll overload those sons of bitches trying to simulate a realistic response. . . .”

  “This man,” Ibrahim snapped with a finger at Reichardt’s nose, “is a genius.” He strode off. “Let’s go!”

  The kids slept in the riverbank-side bedroom, away from the river front windows. Sandy dozed in the hallway, back to one wall, pistol in her lap. And opened one eye to see Jane approach and lean on the opposite wall, rifle in hand. She had more weapons in a Tanushan safehouse, as did Sandy. They couldn’t get to them, as anything in uplinked, networked Tanusha could now be traced. And if the Talee had guessed who Jane was, then likely they’d found some network trace left by her old com traffic and had found her safehouse by now.

  “You their mother?” Jane asked, with a glance at the bedroom door. Sophistry and explanation was tiresome, with Jane.

  “Yes.” She closed her eye.

  “You do that because you felt it? Or because you thought you ought to?” Sandy said nothing. “It’s an honest question.”

  “It’s a boring, stupid, predictable question, from you. If you’d had any emotional growth since I saw you last, you’d already know the answer.”

  A silence. She thought Jane would leave. Instead, she slid down the wall to sit. Out beyond the windows, the black night, broken by a few lights on the far riverbank. The windows were polarised one way, central minder deactivated, unhackable. They thought.

  The silence stretched for ten minutes, but Jane remained. Sandy opened her eye again and saw her just gazing at the windows. Similar face, but leaner. Not as pretty, but not unattractive either. The kind of face that would blend in with a crowd. Probably smarter to design a GI that way, these days, given the infiltration work they could do. But Sandy’s kind were hunter/killers, with brutal skills and short life spans, with no need of built-in camouflage. She’d been expected to die in pitched battle, not end up running security for billions of ungrateful civvies. Physically, she and Jane were nearly identical. Middle-height, shapely, powerful. Based on the same design, she’d been told. To look at them, side by side, they could be mistaken for siblings.

  “Takewashi sent you to protect me?” Sandy asked. Jane nodded, eyes not leaving the windows. “Why’d you accep
t?”

  “’Cause he asked. ’Cause I had nothing better to do.” A pause. A heartfelt rendition of true feelings from Jane was too much to expect. “’Cause he was the first person to care.”

  “Crap,” said Sandy. “When we met, you killed everyone and everything with pleasure. You liked it. Don’t give me this ‘nobody cared for me’ bullshit. You were homicidal, and you deserved to be killed. Painfully.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Turning her head against the wall to look at her. Sandy thought it was a question Jane had been meaning to ask for the last six years. At the time, Sandy hadn’t been sure she knew the answer. But now, if she was honest with herself, she did.

  “Because I had to know what you’d become. Finding out that another version of me could be a homicidal drone was scary. Everything I do, I do by choice. Or so I thought.” With a faint motion of her head, back to the bedroom. “The variable you were lacking was time. I gave you time. I had to see how you’d use it.”

  “That’s right,” said Jane with an unpleasant smile. “’Cause you’re the humanitarian, aren’t you, sis? Assuming GIs are really human. You want us to be the good guys.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “We’re hiding in your hometown from the most advanced GIs ever made, and they’re trying to kill your cute little seven-year-old. Why don’t you go and explain your synthetic sisterhood concept to them?” There wasn’t much Sandy could say to that. She didn’t try. “You want to see the future of us? It’s out there, making plans for our extermination. There’s nothing inherently good about synthetic intelligence, never has been, never will be. Don’t place your faith with false prophets.”

  “That why you came when Takewashi sent you? Is he the ‘real prophet’?”

  A flicker of resentment in the brown eyes. “Takewashi wasn’t my master. It’s not that we can’t make our own choices. It’s that even when free, our choices are stuck in a narrow multiple-choice between ‘kill’ and ‘kill.’ That’s how we’re made. And the kind of freedom you’re after doesn’t exist for us.”