Silver Screen

by Justina Robson

  “O'Connell,” he said, “I was very sorry to hear about the incident at Peterborough.”

  There was no suitable response to this so I waited, leaving the whole discussion in his hands.

  “The reason you're here is that I must ask you a few questions about it.”

  Again, no response required. The elf HughIe looked up sympathetically from her shorthand. Vaughn leant back in his chair and composed his hands together, forming a church with a steeple which slowly collapsed. “Did you recognize your assailant?”

  “He wasn't an assailant,” I said, resenting his attempts to distance the event. “He was an assassin. And, no, I've never seen him before.”

  “Your description to the police was rather sketchy—for you,” he said.

  It was not a question, but lack of an answer from me, his face said, would be interpreted as hostile. I fought an urge to fold my arms, and instead sank lower into the cushions and stretched out my legs in as carefree a manner as possible. “The light was very poor and he was wearing dark clothes,” I said truthfully. “But I have identified the gun from photographs.”

  “Ah yes.” He turned to the elf and she said quickly, “A Crabbe Mark 4, handheld semiautomatic pistol firing smart body-armour-piercing rounds.”

  “The early ballistic reports say the gun was of homemade-kit manufacture and had only been fired a few times before, presumably to test it,” he said, watching me keenly. “So I don't think this ‘assassin’ was a professional. Do you?”

  I remembered the calm manner in which the man had abandoned his struggle with the controls of the door, stepped back to brace himself, and waited for the train to roll forward so that the trajectory line between the gun and my head was at an exact right angle to the window glass. Robotic was one word which sprang to mind, and professional was certainly another.

  “I couldn't possibly say,” I answered. “His actions seemed consistent with someone who knew exactly what he was doing.”

  “Well, perhaps you're right.” He swung on the chair's swivel motion and faced the corner to my left. “The police have still not apprehended him. The waitperson found the gun on the floor of the train by the door, but no sign of the man himself.”

  I wondered if he knew who it was.

  “So who do they think was behind it?” I asked. I still didn't mention the message I had received by implant at the station. I was sure the attack and the threat couldn't be from the same people.

  “Possibly it was one of the Helping Hand branch of the purists,” he suggested, still keeping his face pointed away from me, but shooting me little glances now and again, one hand airily dismissing the idea even as he said it. “Your name has been all over the media since the trial was announced.”

  No accident he should mention that name, I thought, even though I knew it was dead wrong because they were waiting on my call at the trial. Despite all the sugar and nervous chemicals circulating in my blood, I felt a strong sense of cold seep into me, as if the room temperature had taken a dive. I doubted he knew of Carlyle's message, and wondered which suit would be stronger to play—that I knew his game or that I was ignorant? Probably the latter. I still did not know how much bargaining power my witness statement might have with the Company and 901's fate.

  “We think it will be best that you should stay here until the trial, and have a guard to watch you when you go off station,” he said, spinning back around to face me head-on once more. “Until then your team duties have been absorbed by the others in the Core, and we don't see any need for you to trouble yourself with that. You're free to concentrate on the trial. Manda Klein will be working with you in putting together the evidentiary submissions.”

  “I see,” I said. No wonder Klein had looked so po-faced earlier. She must be looking forward to that almost as much as I was.

  “And she'll be able to help you with any posttraumatic shocks,” he added, half smiling.

  I didn't trust myself to speak, only nodded and looked at the nearest statue, imagining he and Klein were big moths impaled on its spines. It seemed clear that they were taking every precaution to spy on me, and, since they didn't trust 901, were resorting to more ordinary methods. It was no surprise when he told me they'd reassigned Klein to an empty apartment across from my own.

  “House arrest,” I said, looking closely at him.

  “Hardly.” He waved across the flat of his desk and gave a short, the-very-idea kind of laugh which let me know that was exactly what they had in mind. His manager really ought to have put him through more convincing lying courses. But I realized that he had not been in a situation as serious as this one before and so he was probably approaching the limits of his experience, if he hadn't passed them. This could make him, and the other names on that list, rather dangerous from now on.

  His HughIe looked up from her earnest writing towards me. I started violently. She was wearing Ingrid Bergman's face, monochrome and gentle, crossed by the barred shadows of the Casablanca marketplace. Ilsa Lund, the angel, trapped in danger.

  Vaughn spun to look at her as he saw my reaction, obviously well primed by whatever cute things she had been doing during 901's Blue period, but, by the time he had moved, her porcelain fantasy eyes and ears were back in place, as neat and sharply defined as pinpoints.

  Josef Hallett, the lawyer, and his aides were late for the meeting in central conference. When I arrived, beginning to feel the first stages of exhaustion, the Steering Committee was milling about in the anteroom, drinking coffees and eating canapés from a heavily laden table. They all went quiet when I stepped in, and there was an uncomfortable moment as they realized what kind of state I was in and did not know whether to offer sympathy, ask the questions bursting in their throats, or maintain a genteel distance. I offered them a cold, efficient kind of smile, one that might suggest I could keep a cool head no matter how many station managers were shot next to me. I didn't want to talk to anyone, and made strong headway towards the table, hoping that a quick burst of extra carbohydrate would somehow stall the crushing sensation coming over my muscles and the nervous tension making my mind race.

  As they stammered back to life I concentrated on cataloguing sandwich fillings. That was safe and distracting at the same time. Even if someone did speak to me, I could keep looking at the food and not have to meet their eyes, particularly if their name had been on that cursed List.

  Cheese, egg salad, chicken tikka—the good old cafeteria had never been very inventive—Brie and grape, Stilton on biscuit, roast beef and mustard, tuna mayonnaise, grilled sardine in baguette, Greek salad, peanut butter and jam with white, sticky marshmallow fluff, ham and turkey on sourdough, smoked salmon on wholewheat with dill, big kosher pickles, California rolls, jacket-potato crisps; they were all delicious.

  I was still chewing when my eyes got to the end of the table and I saw it on the condiments tray. Until then I wasn't even aware that I hadn't been looking, but eating.

  Tomato pickle—a big dish of it, with the straight metal handle of a spoon sticking up out of it like the narrow blade of an ice pick or the smooth-ruled trajectory of a large bullet. It was in a pleasant earthenware dish, dark brown on the outside and bone-white inside. Someone had taken a serving and left a big smear of pickle against the inside curve. Fragments of raisin and cucumber and little seeds were all mangled horribly with the thick red sauce. I turned around as fast as I could and almost knocked over a man in a suit who had been about to greet me.

  “Hello,” said Josef Hallett with a friendly smile, a sort of hail-friend-well-met, and I threw up on his shoes.

  Slowly I lifted my head, covering my mouth with my hand. The room was silent.

  “I'm really sorry,” I said. They had been good shoes, too. “Lucia Spadi?” I guessed.

  He nodded. Next to him Maria's mouth was hanging open like a broken gate.

  “I'll just go and…” I made some gestures towards the door and shuffled out of the room into the ladies', eyes firmly on the floor all the way. />
  Inside, I leant on the sink and rested my forehead against the mirror. Behind my eyes, all I could see was the manager's surprised face, the bowl of his skull filled with tomato pickle. I opened them and looked at myself. I wondered what his wife would be seeing if she looked in the mirror right now.

  “Jools!” Maria snapped, darting in and closing the door firmly behind her.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I said without enthusiasm. I touched the taps on and cleared the sink. With a toilet tissue I damped down the worst spots on my overalls and cleaned my face.

  She stood there, and stood there, stunned.

  “Go make nice to Hallett,” I suggested, “and get him some more shoes. Tell him I'll be out in five minutes and to start the meeting.”

  She stood there.

  “Go on!”

  She went.

  We sat down together in a circle in the huge comfortable chairs of the central suite. There was no table, since each chair had its own resting plate and a full set of interface points for any type of information record. I reclined mine, switched on its heater to a gentle warmth that I hoped might soothe my nerves, and keyed the headrest to blip me if I showed signs of falling asleep. Because 901 was excluded from this meeting we had to activate the lights, amplifiers, and minuting station of each seat ourselves. There were not a few disgruntled faces around and a great deal of muttering and fiddling. Josef Hallett was sitting a few seats from me. I sent him a private apology through the heads-up display monitor system. He was wearing standard-issue thick station socks, and waved at me with them, to show that he did not mind. Maria was not present, since she had had to take the shoes to be cleaned.

  Dr. Klein was the present Chair, so she messaged everyone with a copy of the agenda, and opened, “Since we're all present, there are no apologies for absence. I suggest we move straight to the first item…er, there are no minutes of the last meeting since this is a special convention…First item, Mr. Hallett will brief us on the likely course of the hearing to be held in Strasbourg next Monday.”

  All faces turned towards his chair which illumined itself in a gentle yellow glow and lit his face so that we could see it well in the dim room. His voice emerged from speakers in the headrest for those furthest away: “Thank you, Dr. Klein. I'd like to begin by reviewing the basics of the case.” He keyed his personal handpad and each of our monitors shoved the agenda to one side and displayed his document. “This is a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You will see that nowhere on it is any consideration given to the idea that other animals or beings of any kind should be subject to its articles. However, the fact that the Court and Committee have accepted Mr. Croft's case signals that they have already decided not to waive it due to the fact that the plaintiff concerned is not human.”

  “So you're not going to go that route?” asked Horst Erskind, chief of station operations.

  “Well, not in an attempt to have the case thrown out,” Hallett replied. “If you bear with me, I think you'll get a clear picture of the strategy…” He keyed again and Roy's submission documents appeared. “In here the highlighted areas will show you the key points. The case concerns Article 2—the right to all the rights and freedoms of the Declaration; Article 3—right to life, liberty, and security of person and most of the rest. In particular, however, the charge against us concerns Article 4: ‘No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.’ Whatever the outcome on the rest of the case, this is the thing that we have to prepare for.”

  “But the implications of the rest!” Elizabeth Astrode, communications director, burst out with. “We could theoretically get taken to the cleaners. And by our own machines. There must be some interim law to protect us from this kind of thing.”

  “I'm afraid there are no precedents of any kind,” Hallett informed us calmly. “The situation has never arisen in which any nonhuman has been the subject of a hearing, and so there is no legislation concerning the transfer of ownership or property. But this works for us as much as against us. I see that this case is going to be the one which sets up the standards for the rest. But, because that is so, the court is likely to be lenient with our position. Whilst I think it is likely that it will grant certain AIs legal rights, they will not enforce it retroactively.”

  “Even so!” Astrode shook her head.

  “Yes, and what about provisions for replacing it, or whatever?” Vaughn said.

  “Let's keep with Mr. Hallett,” Klein broke in, sensing the rise in tension.

  “Thank you,” Hallett said. “However, you are correct to point out that eventually it is almost certain that high-grade AIs will be granted the full Declaration, and so you should take steps to ensure you can provide suitable conditions if you choose to continue working with them.”

  “What do you mean ‘if’?” Astrode said and there was a general murmur about the long-debated wisdom of relying so heavily on 901. Klein shut them up after a minute or two, but they were clearly itching to get past this and into what we could do to limit the inevitable damage. I was more interested in the case, so I said nothing, but my blood pressure—like most everyone else's—was rising.

  “The hearing itself,” Hallett said, moving on quickly, “is going to be composed of several sessions. The first one has to determine whether to grant high-grade AIs rights in line with those of the Declaration. Then the Committee of the Court will sit and draw up the new Declaration document for that. When they've done that there will be another session in Court, where you will have to submit proof that you are in the process of setting up your own situation such that those rights will be respected.”

  He paused and there was audible huffing and creaking of chairs. Across from me Manda Klein rested her chin on her hand, thoughtfully. She and I, to look at, were the calmest people in the room. But, whatever their feelings, no one spoke.

  Hallett continued. “But I have been speaking so far as if all this is a foregone conclusion. That assumes that the considerable number of lobbyists for the decommissioning of high-grade AIs will not be successful with their petitions. There is also the public reception of these ideas to consider. As you know, there is little understanding of how these machines function or what their range of activity is, and so I suggest that you should immediately initiate a media campaign to promote all the benefits of your AI to the public.”

  “We already do that,” said Rostov, public relations consultant to the Committee, “but they aren't worried by the good things it does. They're worried about the fact that it might hack into their house, or take over the electrical supply and try to kill everyone. Or malfunction and annihilate a few cities by crashing the station, or our satellites.”

  “Because they now have to live with genetic and chemical engineering on a huge scale, they are projecting their fears of it onto the AIs,” Manda Klein said quietly. “It is easier to have to be afraid of something far away than something next door. They are still very worried by the newer technologies, but they have to have daily contact with them. They never have direct contact with any of the three high-grade AIs, thus you now have the great conspiracy theories that the high-grades are running the world. Not helped in any way by the activities of enthusiasts such as Roy Croft.”

  She didn't mention the long-term policy, endorsed by herself, of keeping public information about 901 to a minimum. I wondered if her strategy had been to give 901 a kind of legendary status. If it had been, then she had succeeded, but not in the direction she had intended. But that was to assume too much. Klein was now much more of a closed book to me than she had been before I saw the report into Roy's death.

  They trotted off for a while into a discussion about how to plan the information war they were going to wage whilst the case was on. I wondered how Dad was doing. Mum was quite happy beavering away at her research and teaching in Lahore. I suppose one good feature of being sent away to Berwick young was that I didn't miss them much now. It was the first thing
I had in common with Lula. She had no living parents and mine were eternally distant. Similarly, Roy and Jane's father was mentally distant, and 901's production strategy tended to ice its predecessors after a few short weeks of parallel living. Only Peaches, of all the people I knew, belonged to her family and maintained close and loving ties.

  I came to with a start as they shifted subject onto the submissions of evidence and recognized the beginnings of a slide into self-pity. Must think about the present, I determined, and picked out the faces from the List.

  Tamara Goldmann, the Committee accountant, remained silent throughout and looked bored. Vaughn was talking.

  “…isn't even proven in any way that 901 is equivalent to a human being.” He turned to Klein. “In your opinion, Doctor, would you say that 901 has the requisite attributes to be considered alongside human lives?”

  “That is a very complex question…” Klein began defensively.

  “But what do you think?” Vaughn demanded. “You've had your entire career to form an opinion.”

  I saw a darkness flit through Klein's features. Her blonde hair seemed to dull and her voice became hollow, almost fluting like a bass organ pipe as she said carefully, “In the length of my entire career I have had, indeed, a great deal of time to study every facet of the development of the JM Series alongside many human clients, and the great wealth of research that the history of psychiatry and psychology has provided. And I would tell you my personal opinion, if I thought that it would hold the slightest weight with this Committee.” There was a pause and she turned physically to glare at Vaughn. “But this discussion does not concern my opinion, personal or professional, and I request now that we not bother with the illusion that it does, lest we insult all our intelligences.”

  There was a short, bitter silence.

  Hallett spoke. “It seems that there are two issues here which need to be separated. The first is that of whether 901 is comparable with humans. The second is whether this is of relevance to the situation the Company is in with regard to 901. My suggestion is that whatever the judgement on the first, it is not relevant to the Company's stance on 901. What you actually do to 901 is only for experts to know.”