Asimov's SF, October-November 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Then with a sharp grin, he mentioned, “You must be exceptionally qualified to receive this posting.”

  “I must be.”

  “May I ask a few questions?”

  “By all means.”

  “Without giving away secrets,” he began, “what kinds of experiences have you suffered during these hard years?”

  “Are they hard?”

  “I hear little news, and who knows if it's complete.” Ramiro shrugged, laughing softly. “Which is Jefferson's idea, I think. Give the subject just enough information to tease out a few fresh, hopefully useful opinions.” Then he sat back, a good-natured sigh rising out of him. “But yes, Carmen. From what I have learned, I think these times are genuinely terrible.”

  “Montana,” I said.

  “What about it?”

  “The day you were found beside the road and captured ... I was stationed outside Kabul.”

  When interested in any subject, Ramiro leaned forward and stopped blinking, his black eyes filling up his face. One examining physician had proposed that the microchines inside his brain were boosting his neurological capacities, and the eyes were a kind of tell. Others thought it was just a personal quirk. Whatever the reason, he was using his interested gaze on me now.

  “Then the following year,” I continued, “they stationed me in Iraq.”

  “Of course.”

  “I was sent to help hunt for WMDs. My assignment was to interrogate the old Baathists and such.”

  A thin smile surfaced; he saw the punch line coming.

  “Of course there weren't any nukes or biological nightmares. But we didn't know that yet. And by ‘we,’ I mean the people on the ground. Washington had strung together the ridiculous intelligence, and the media beat the drums, and we went into Baghdad and kicked Saddam out of his palaces. Victory was declared. But then during that window between the celebrations and the first car bombs, my assignment shifted. That country was collapsing. Our soldiers were pretty much letting it happen, as far as I could tell. But someone gave me dozens and then hundreds of shackled bodies, plus an ever-changing checklist that made no sense to me.”

  My host leaned back, his chair offering a comfortable creaking. “I can appreciate your confusion.”

  “You understand how my game works,” I said. “I try to know more than I'd ever admit to my subject. But when it suits me, I can be very stupid. And if she gives me something ... most of my prisoners were female, I should mention ... if she offers some bit of intelligence that I didn't have, my first response is to say, ‘Oh, yes. We know all about the cement mixer with the fertilizer bomb. You can't help yourself with that crumb of old news.'”

  I had shifted into my best Arabic.

  Ramiro was fluent in Arabic and English, Portuguese and Spanish. But his natural tongue was an odd Creole that borrowed from each language, plus a rich seasoning of peculiar syllables and tech-terms that wouldn't exist for another hundred-plus years.

  I wished I knew his native tongue. But I was too old and cranky to learn it in a workable span of time.

  The prisoner stuck to his Americanized English, asking, “With that checklist, Carmen ... what sorts of items made no sense to you?”

  “Individually? Nothing was blatantly strange. But it was the whole goofy package. My bosses were hunting people who didn't belong in Baghdad. Who weren't native to Iraq, and maybe not even to the Middle East. I made some discreet inquiries, asking for clearer instructions. But nobody knew the sense behind any of our orders. One of my prisoners would eventually stand out—that's what the generals promised. She would be in her late twenties or thirties, or maybe her forties. Her accent might be wrong. Unless she was exceptionally good with languages, which was another key to watch for. There wouldn't be any genuine records showing her whereabouts more than five years earlier. And a three-star general confided to me—to all of us—that in the worst interrogations, my phantom would enjoy an extraordinary tolerance for pain and drugs and boredom. And the general promised that when I finally found my girl, she was going to be worth a hundred bloodied mistakes.”

  With a dismissive gesture, Ramiro said, “I told Collins. I told everybody. As a young man, I purchased a cheap package of tailored genes and various nano-organs.”

  “Of course.”

  “Common add-on talents popular in my world.”

  “To insulate your poor citizens from the ravages of poverty,” I said, nodding agreeably.

  “My warnings were explicit,” Ramiro told me. “I couldn't be certain about the genetics of the other warriors, or their current identities, much less how well or how poorly they would blend into any local population.”

  “You gave us Iraq,” I mentioned.

  He bristled. Then after a moment, he said, “This is very old ground.”

  “It is,” I agreed.

  “Iraq,” he repeated. “Over twenty million people, most of them young. And what percentage of that population did your colleagues and you process? One percent? Was it that much?”

  “We tried our best,” I claimed.

  “I told Collins. One of the voices mentioned Iraq to me, in passing.”

  “It wasn't Abraham?”

  “No, it was one of his associates. He said Iraq was our focus. But even if that was the case, and even if Abraham and his people didn't slip out of the country before your noisy invasion ... well, I was always critical of your clumsy methods and your very poor odds for success.”

  “I know. You gave Collins ample warnings.”

  “Even in the smallest country,” said Ramiro, “there are so many dark corners in which to hide.”

  “You warned everybody,” I said.

  “And you were following orders,” he said flatly. Then he added, “Carmen,” with a suddenly friendly, familiar tone. “But really, how could your masters expect you to find anybody of substance?”

  I paused, just for a moment. “Yes, it was a difficult assignment.”

  He didn't seem to notice my careful tone. “What about blood and skin?” he asked. “Were you taking samples?”

  “I wasn't. But some med-techs were doing just that.” I finally pulled the soggy tea bag into the air and sipped from the cooling mug. “Everybody had their own secrets to keep. Nobody knew more than a sliver of the whole incredible story. I didn't know samples were being sent back home, thousands of them, and being tested for key genes.”

  “Genes that might not have been there,” he pointed out. “Or that could be removed or easily hidden.”

  I nodded. “We knew your genetic markers, sure. But who could say what we'd find inside another warrior's chromosomes?”

  “Precisely.”

  “But what else could my people do? We were facing an unexpected threat—temporal jihadists born in a distant, treacherous future. What reasonable, effective measures would have helped our security?”

  Ramiro swiped at the air.

  Quietly but fiercely, he said, “I told you what I knew.”

  “Of course.”

  “Once my terms were met, I explained everything to our friend Collins.” His voice rose, cracked. “Imagine that a foreign power captured the man standing guard outside my door. They would easily break him. In a few days or weeks, he would confess everything. But what is the operational knowledge of a lowly soldier? Does that man ... my friend Jim ... does he even halfway comprehend my importance?”

  “Probably not,” I conceded.

  “And I'm just a simple soldier too.”

  “Simple? I doubt that.”

  A sly smile blossomed, faded. “What happened next, Carmen?”

  “In 2005, I was yanked out of Iraq. I was flown back to the States and promised a new assignment. But before orders came down, they pressed me into helping with certain war games. Very secret, very obvious stuff. After the endless mess in Iraq, we were going to try to do a better job taking on Iran.”

  Ramiro watched me.

  “Two strange things happened at that conference,” I admitted.
“On the first morning, I ran into a colleague on his way to a back room breakfast, and I was roped in and told to play along. It seemed like a chance deal, but of course it wasn't. There were a lot of strange faces sitting with eggs and oatmeal. And there was Collins. I hadn't seen that man in ages. God, I thought, he looked tired and pale. But he practically latched onto me. We sat together. This other fellow sat in the corner, watching the two of us. I think we managed maybe five minutes of catch-up. I told him about coming home. He gave me a cover story, but he didn't bothering pushing it too hard. Then one of the unknown faces, a guy sitting at the end of the table, threw out this odd, odd question.”

  Ramiro leaned forward, absorbing my face and soul with a blinkless gaze.

  “ ‘What if you could jump back in time?’ the gentleman inquired. He was pretending that his question wasn't serious, that it was for shits-and-giggles only. He made himself laugh, asking, ‘What if you and some like-minded friends gathered together? Say there's a few dozen of you, a couple hundred at most. You're going to travel back in time together. But there are rules. You can cover only one or two centuries, and with restrictions. Your journey has to be a one-way. You can carry only a limited amount of mass. Bodies and a little luggage and that's all. There won't be any return missions to the future. There's no supply train with fresh M-16s and laptops. And your goal? You want to conquer that more primitive world, of course. You are invaders. Two hundred soldiers armed with your beliefs and training and your superior knowledge, and you'll have to find some clever way to make your little force strong enough to defeat the old horse armies.”

  Ramiro smiled.

  “Of course there was a purpose to his wacky scenario,” I allowed. “That much was obvious to everybody there. But the gentleman didn't offer explanations. For all I know, he was told that our own physicists had just built a time machine, and we were trying to decide what to do with our new toy. The truth never had to get in the way. During a five-hour breakfast, he led a clumsy, half-informed discussion that ended up with tactical nukes burning up London and Paris. And do you know why this happened? I think the show was put on for Collins’ benefit. To give him ideas, to help guide his future conversations with you. And meanwhile in those other rooms, the future Iranian war ran its imaginary, surgical course.”

  The prisoner had leaned forward, elbows on knees. Then he revealed something of his ability—his clear focus, his absolute mastery of detail—when he said, “Earlier, Carmen. When you admitted that your Iraqi assignment was difficult. I had the impression—tell me if I'm wrong—but it seemed to me that despite some very long odds, you were successful.”

  I said, “I was.”

  “You found a suspect? Somebody out of place in our world, did you?”

  “Yes.” I paused. “A young woman without family. With no paper trail reaching back more than a few years. She claimed to have worked as a lab technician, nothing more, and she had reasonable explanations for the gaps in her records. But she was the right age, and she was very, very tough. I worked her and worked her, and the only information I got from her was the name of a river in Kashmir.”

  Ramiro stared at me.

  “At least that's what others heard when they listened to the interrogation later.” I shrugged, glancing down. “I couldn't tell you what she was saying exactly, since she was throwing up at the time. But two days later, a special ops group came and took her away.”

  My new friend smiled. Then after a moment or two, he guessed, “Collins told you this news at the breakfast, did he?”

  “Later, actually.”

  “You had uncovered one of my sisters. Is that what he told you?”

  “Not in those terms. But Collins took me out for drinks and mentioned that my girl was interrogated by other teams, and when she finally talked, she admitted to pretty much everything.”

  “Very good,” he said.

  I kept my voice as level and cool as I could manage it. “Collins told me that she was a holy soldier in a war that hadn't seen its first shot yet. But that day was coming soon, he confided. And my prisoner ... that young woman ... had promised that our world would be helpless before this mighty hand.”

  Ramiro watched me sip the tea. “Collins never mentioned the girl to me.”

  “That's the way it should be,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  Then I leaned forward. “I asked about her.”

  Ramiro waited.

  “I asked Collins if she was still being helpful to us.”

  “Was she?”

  “Not anymore. Since she managed to kill herself.'”

  A doll's eyes would have been more expressive. Very calmly, he asked, “A suicide implant, was it?”

  “No,” I said. “She slammed her forehead into the corner of a desk, breaking a blood vessel in her cortex.” I set down the cold mug of tea, adding, “But now you know why I'm so highly regarded, at least in some circles. I've had some measure of success at this very odd game.”

  * * * *

  5

  To do this job, you need an iron ass. The capacity to sit and listen, nodding with enthusiasm, and remembering everything said while measuring every pause—that's what matters. Find the inconsistencies, and you can be good at it. Connect this phrase to that sigh, and you'll earn your paycheck. What years of experience have shown me is that inflicting pain and the threat of pain are rarely necessary. It takes remarkably little to coax the average soul into revealing everything. Extramarital affairs. Cheating on critical exams. Dangerous politics. Some years ago, during a commercial flight, I sat beside a lovely old lady who spoke at length about cooking and her husband and her cherished garden, which she described in some detail, and then she mentioned her husband again. For a moment, she paused, looking in my direction but seeing something else. Then she quietly admitted that the poor man was beginning to suffer from dementia. It was that pause that caught my attention. It was the careful tone of her voice and the way her steely green eyes stared through a stranger's head. Afterwards, on a whim, I checked with a botanical guide and learned that an astonishing portion of her beautiful garden was poisonous. She never said an evil word about anyone, including that senile old man, but her intentions were obvious. She had made up her mind to kill him, and she was simply waiting for the excuse to use garden shears and a cooking pot, summoning Death.

  But my subjects are never ordinary citizens. As a rule, they consider themselves to be special—committed, determined warriors in whatever grand cause has latched hold of their worthy souls. But their passions are larger than ours, their enthusiasms having few bounds. Rock music makes them pray. Cattle prods and mock executions are exactly what great men expect to endure. But if you treat them as fascinating equals, they will happily chatter on, sometimes for years, explaining far more to you than you ever hoped to know.

  For twelve years, Collins sat inside a very comfortable prison cell, listening to one man's self-obsessed monologue.

  Thousands of hours of autobiography begged to be studied. But I didn't have the time. Even the summaries made for some massive volumes. I had to make do with an elaborate timeline marked with every kind of event found in one man's life. According to my briefings, the enigmatic Ramiro was born in the second decade of the twenty-second century. His family had some small wealth. The paternal grandfather was a Spaniard who had converted to the Sunni faith before immigrating to Brazil, and the boy was raised in a city that didn't yet exist today—a sugar cane and palm oil center in what was once Amazon rainforest. A maternal uncle was responsible for Ramiro's interest in astronomy. Lemonade-7 was preparing for a long, successful career as some type of scientist, but at a critical juncture, politics ruined his dreams. At least that's the story that Collins heard again and again. The entire family was thrown into sudden, undeserved poverty. At seventeen, the young Islamic man had to drop out of school and find any work. At eighteen, when he was a legal adult, he bought a cheap package of poverty genes and nanoplants to help insulate him from his m
iseries; but, unlike many, Ramiro resisted any treatment that would make him happy in these decidedly joyless days.

  People want to believe that in another twenty or fifty or one hundred years, the earth will grow into an enduring utopia. But among the prisoner's unwelcome gifts was a narrow, knife-deep vision of a disturbingly recognizable world. Yes, science would learn much that was new and remarkable. And fabulous technologies would be put to hard work. But cheap fusion was always going to need another couple decades of work, and eternal health was always for the next generation to achieve, and by the twenty-second century, the space program would have managed exactly two walks on the Martian surface and a few permanent, very exclusive homes hunkered down near the moon's south pole.

  Ramiro's world was ours, except with more people and less naivety. Most of its wealth and all of its power was concentrated in the top one-half percentile. National borders would shift here and vanish there, but the maps would remain familiar. The old religions would continue struggling for converts, often through simple, proven violence. But the Islamic Century would have come to its natural end. Mormons and Buddhists and Neo-secularists began to gradually gnaw away at their gains. And in the backwaters of Brazil, young Ramiro's faith would seem quite out of place—another liability in his sorry, increasingly desperate prospects.

  But then a team of physicists working in the Kashmir Free State would build and successfully test the world's first time machine.

  “I can't believe that,” Collins had blurted out.

  Perhaps the prisoner was a little irritated by his interrogator's tone. There were many moments, early on especially, when Ramiro displayed a thin skin. But then he made a smile break out, dragging his mood into a sunnier place, and with a tight proud voice, he asked, “And how did I come here?”

  “This is about me, not you,” Collins replied. “I'm just having trouble accepting this preposterous concept.”

  “You want details, do you?”

  “I want the science. At least enough to show around and get a few smart-sounding opinions.”

  “Of course.” The smile warmed. “I assumed this would happen.”