Killswitch: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1)

by Joel Shepherd

  The hum of descent began to ease as the ground neared. A passing elevator flashed by, on its way back up. The GI simply stood, backside leaned gently against the handrail behind, utterly unconcerned with the expansive view to her back. Just gazing, with pale blue eyes within a face that was somewhat attractive, but less so than Sandy might have expected, of a GI. In fact, it occurred to her, this was quite possibly the ugliest GI she'd ever seen. Which wasn't saying much, against the uniform beauty of League GIs. It was a face that could still attract male attention, in passing. But would tend to get overlooked beside herself, or Rhian, or most other female GIs she'd known. Somehow, that rang alarm bells. Hadn't her creators wanted her to be pretty? League philosophy held that uniform good looks would help with socialisation and self-confidence, and thus inspire a counterreaction of good feelings toward those around him or her. A virtuous circle, they'd called it. Had the FIA altered her original, League-designed appearance? To what ends? What, in their eyes and plans, was this GI for?"

  The ground approached, and the elevator slowed. A standoff in an emptying elevator, with its short turnaround time for new passengers to crowd on board, could create even more unwelcome attention. Possibly even the intervention of security officials. Sandy decided she had to take a risk.

  "Are you getting off here?" she asked the GI. "Or are you just joyriding?"

  The GI raised an eyebrow, as if curious at this approach. Sandy's heart sank. She'd known lower-designation GIs to sometimes raise both eyebrows. Rarely one. It was an expression that, in most cultures, seemed to imply a degree of subtlety, or irony, that lower-des GIs usually failed to grasp. But given what she already knew about this GI, it was hardly a surprise.

  "I heard it was a fun ride," said the GI. Her voice was very ordinary. Female, mild, and clearly spoken. Her enunciation was perfect, down to the syllable. "Though I've heard that some people like to come down faster."

  Oblique, ironic reference. Damn. Even Rhian didn't do that. Although her old League buddy Tran might have. Tran had been about Rhian's designation-damn clever, with loads of personality, but not the creative, lateral thought process of herself ... or maybe Ramoja. Although Ramoja hadn't entirely convinced her yet. Quoting Shakespeare was one thing. Understanding it was another. Being able to quote it, understand it, and still find it tedious, as Sandy did herself, was to her mind the greatest sign of intellectual depth yet found. In a GI, anyhow.

  The hyper-analytical time dilation of combat-reflex created such tangential lines of thought. When operating at such furious speeds, her brain was very bad at just doing nothing.

  "If you want to talk to me," Sandy said, "that's fine. I'd like to talk. I just think we should leave these other people out of it, and go somewhere private."

  "I think that would be fine," the GI replied agreeably. For the first time, her eyes flicked away from Sandy, to fix on Sudasarno. Even through the lapel of his suit, Sandy could feel him tremble. "Friend of yours?"

  "Maybe," said Sandy.

  "He's a liability to you," the GI continued. The elevator slowed steadily, the ground coming nearer, walkways about the tower's base, and people moving by. "He led me straight to you. You should get rid of him."

  Sudasarno's eyes were wide. The GI's tone remained mild. Sandy saw nothing on her face to suggest she was joking.

  "No one's getting rid of anyone right now," Sandy replied, her gaze fixed with unblinking determination. The GI just considered her. The elevator arrived. The crowd's excited babble continued about them, unaware. A child said loudly that she felt so heavy now. They turned from the glass, and clustered back toward the door. Sandy remained unmoved, her left hand clasped upon Sudasarno's shoulder as people milled and pushed past, and the door opened. She was between the GI and the door, but she couldn't turn her back. Didn't dare.

  The GI pushed gently off the rail, and strolled calmly past, dawdling as the crowd slowly cleared. Gazed Sandy directly in the eyes, from point-blank range, hands innocently in pockets. It was so tempting-a quick strike with the right fist, a snatch for the gun, something to end it right then and there ... but she dared not, considering all those still in the crossfire. And more than that. She wanted to know.

  The GI moved on as the crowd cleared, Sandy walking after with a hand upon Sudasarno's shoulder, past the new crowd gathered behind the entry barrier in the waiting hall. As soon as they were clear, the GI fell back to walk at Sudasarno's other side, keeping him between them as they strolled across the broad, high foyer floor toward the mega-rise tower's looming, revolving doors.

  "Sudie," Sandy said without looking at him, as they emerged into the early morning sunshine. "Go home. Whatever you wanted to tell me can wait."

  "I'd rather he stayed," the GI said calmly, as they strolled together. Outside, a security guard paced, unaware that anything was wrong. "He might call for help."

  "He won't," said Sandy. "Where do you want to talk?"

  "Just up here will be fine." Another fifteen strides and the GI stopped. Sandy stopped and Sudasarno too, thin, quiet and very pale. Sandy strolled a couple of paces, to make certain the frightened young advisor was not in the line of sight. On the broad, paved space before the enormous glass foyer wall, people stood and conversed, or awaited those they'd arranged to meet. Stairs led down across a broad, quartercircle curve, interspersed with pockets of urban greenery. At the bottom, between two flights of stairs near an artificial waterfall, business people and tourists clustered at cafe tables for breakfast. Beyond, a cross-road met a major Tanushan highway, six lanes filled with zooming traffic, tightly packed and interlocking with the ease of collective automation. The sidewalks were busy with morning traffic, a seething mass of people.

  It all seemed eerily calm and orderly, despite all the world's events. People went about their lives, on streets that had just recently been jammed with protesters, and lined with armoured cordons of riot police. Perhaps, the thought flashed across Sandy's hyper-speed mind, some of these folk had been at the protests themselves. One uniform by night, another by day-such was the Tanushan way, in good times and bad. The mega-rise tower soared high overhead, reaching for a clear, unattainable blue sky. The morning air was crisp and fresh in a way that off-world visitors from cities with less than Tanusha's zeroemission controls always remarked on. People passed on all sides, oblivious to the identities of those among them.

  "Strange, isn't it?" said the GI, with a faintly curious glance about. "Hiding here is so easy. The best way to hide is don't. Trying to hide will only attract attention. You hide in plain sight. Like everyone else does. All these people, hurrying about their busy little lives, not knowing shit from gold. Just stand in their midst, as plain as you can. It makes you invisible."

  "You're wrong," said Sandy. "Two things Tanushans always differentiate between-shit and gold."

  The GI might have smiled, but faintly. A stray gust of breeze caught her hair, lifting loose strands. To an untrained, unaugmented eye, she might have looked average, plain and human. And without Sandy's need for disguise, she dressed less self-consciously too. She looked like she fit in, Sandy realised. Like she could blend effortlessly into a crowd. The perfect covert operative. And exceptional good looks would only attract attention. Only custom-design combat ops could afford to be distractingly pretty-a small pleasure to counter an alarmingly short life expectancy during the war. It didn't necessarily make this GI any less dangerous, however.

  "Do you have a name?" Sandy asked.

  "Do I have a name?" the GI replied, with slow, sceptical contemplation. And glanced slightly away to one side, eyes narrowed in thought. "There's a philosophical question. What constitutes a name? We're not born with them-they're imposed upon us. Like everything else."

  "As GIs, that's something we're stuck with," said Sandy. "It doesn't make names any less significant for us than straights. All identity is self-constructed, ours and theirs."

  "I'm not self-constructed," the GI replied easily. "I was born this way."

 
Sandy's eyes narrowed. "What way?"

  The GI smiled. "You of all people should know, Cassandra Kresnov." With a mild irony, voicing that name. "You trained the CDF at the Parliament, didn't you? They're very good, for straights. Not that it made any difference ... but you had to know that too. If you need a name, call me Jane. It's plain and simple. Like me."

  Sandy was glad for the combat-reflex. Its deadening calm hid the growing, cold dread in her gut.

  "The FIA activated you?" Sandy asked.

  "Sure did." With cool, utter nonchalance.

  "And how do you feel about that?"

  "About existing? I'm grateful, naturally." She shrugged. "It's good to be alive, wouldn't you say?"

  "That depends on what you do with the experience," Sandy replied.

  "I think I make pretty good use of the time," said Jane.

  "I think you could do better."

  Again the faint, narrow-eyed smile. "You think you're better than me, is that it?"

  "It's not a contest."

  Jane shook her head faintly, in mild disbelief. Gazed about at the sunny urban sprawl about them. A police car cruised by on the side street, and stopped at the lights, to Jane's utter unconcern.

  "You're kidding yourself," she said finally. And looked back at her, coolly. "You know that, don't you?"

  "Enlighten me."

  "This place. All these people. This system. It sucked you right in, didn't it? You think you're one of them now. But you're not."

  "You went to all this trouble just to tell me that?" Sandy didn't bother to disguise the rising disgust in her voice. "I'd rather you just ambushed me in my sleep. It would have saved me the trouble of pretending to be interested."

  "I was instructed to kill you," Jane replied with an utter lack of emotion. "If I got the chance. But I'm learning. I've this profession, do you see? I was born to it. I'm not all that old yet, and you know how GIs mature. If I'm going to improve, and expand my horizons, I need to study others. That's why you're not dead." And nodded to Sudasarno. "Him too. But I'm told you're rather like me. I was based upon your design, they said. And so I wanted to know. To see the older me, as it were."

  "And what do you think?"

  "I'm disappointed." Very calmly. Sandy could not remember ever having felt so pleased to be insulted. "You don't know who you are. You're delusional. Happiness is accepting your true nature. It's not here, in this city, not for you. Certainly not for me."

  "Listen, junior," Sandy told her, not bothering to restrain the rising edge to her voice, "I'm just a kid myself compared to a lot of these people you look down your nose at, but compared to you, I'm ancient. Let me fill you in about a thing or two that might have escaped your vast perception.

  "You're very young, less than two years old, if what you say about being based on my design is right. I'm seventeen, and I can't remember a thing from when I was that age. These are your formative years, do you understand that? When you reach my age, if you do," (heaven forbid, she barely managed to avoid saying) "you won't remember anything about this. Not this meeting, not this operation, not Tanusha or Callay itself, get it? Your mind is immature. Undeveloped, no matter what your intellect.

  "You've been tape-taught. Stored knowledge, pre-constructed and formulated for someone else's purposes. It's not reliable because it's not yours. The Federal Intelligence Agency made you what you are. They hate GIs. You're an experiment to them. Your whole psychology is an experiment. You speak as if you're making a free choice of lifestyle. Your body is not your own, your future is not your own, your life is not your own and your mind is definitely not your own. You're not a free person. Your opinions aren't worth a thumbnail full of earwax to anyone. You're not a person. You're just an empty, walking, talking shell. And the saddest thing of all is you don't even realise it."

  "I kill because it's my nature," Jane replied in a low, harsh voice. Her unblinking stare was intense. Somehow, Sandy hadn't expected a reaction. It surprised her. "You think you're civilised, but you're still a soldier. You're still looking for your next fight. Anticipating it. You couldn't function any other way. And yet you reject your true self, and live your life as a lie."

  "You kill," Sandy retorted, "because you're programmed for it. The FIA don't believe GIs have any other purpose, they wouldn't have given you any other kinds of tape because they wouldn't have believed you capable of anything more anyway. You think that pseudo-philosophical crap you're feeding me represents intellect on your part? It's a manipulative rationalisation designed to stop you from questioning. All intelligent beings question, unless given believable rationalisations within which to construct the parameters of their personal reality. Everything you think you know has been predetermined by the people who made you, including your rationalisations. And you think you can lecture me on life? You pathetic little moron, you don't know what life is."

  "And yet I have the codes to the killswitch," said Jane, with quiet menace. "It's hard to be right when you're dead."

  Sandy nearly laughed, contemptuously. "You idiot, most of humanity's most correct and righteous people have been dead for centuries. You think you can make me less right by killing me? You'd only prove my point."

  "Why do you think ... ?"

  "Excuse me," someone interrupted to one side. Sandy, Jane and Sudasarno all turned to look at the new arrival-a tourist, presumably, to judge from the large photo-map he held in both hands, the backpack over his shoulders, and four people who seemed to be a wife and three children waiting behind. All appeared Chinese. The man smiled as he approached. "Hello, sorry to bother you ... could any of you please direct me to the Vandaram ferry service? My wife and I ... we wanted to take a river cruise, the rivers here are so pretty."

  Looking askance at Jane, much to Sandy's alarm. But perhaps given the choice between a dark "noir-chick," a starch-collared young suit, and a mild, ordinary-looking young woman, the choice wasn't so strange after all.

  "I'm sorry," Jane said mildly, "I'm a tourist too. These two are locals." The man looked at Sudasarno and Sandy, expectantly. Sandy wondered once more at her shades, and if tourists were as familiar with her face as local Callayans had become.

  "Oh, right ..." said Sudasarno, with forced congeniality. Sandy's enhanced hearing heard the strain in his throat. "That's the Vandaram River down there, yes? I don't know this area well, but I remember clearly the ferry terminal is just ten minutes' walk from here. If you just head down this road until you hit the river, and then turn left, it's a pleasant walk along the bank."

  "Wonderful," said the man, in one of the Federation's several distinct Chinese accents, "thank you very much."

  He beamed a smile and departed, as Sudasarno and Sandy wished him a happy holiday.

  Jane gave her a sardonic look. "You would give your life for people like him?"

  "If it came to that."

  "What a waste," Jane said softly. "There's so many of them. And so few of us. We're special."

  "Everyone's special."

  The other GI shook her head. "I'd rather not have to kill you." The Chinese tourist and his family went past, waving thanks as they headed off toward the river. Sandy and Sudasarno waved back. "We could come to an understanding."

  "There's no deals here," said Sandy. "You oppose everything I believe in." Her stare fixed upon Jane's face. "And you're right enough about my nature in one thing-you threaten me, you threaten the things and people I love, and I'll kill you."

  Jane gave a faint, dangerous smile. "You try that here, in public, and I'll unload a clip into this crowd. You know I don't miss. How many lives is it worth to you, to stop me?"

  "I don't plan on making a trade," Sandy said coldly. "You can go. I won't follow you. Not here. But know this ... if you don't behave yourself, I'll catch you. I'm original League technology. You're a cheap copy. I'll kill you, and I'll make it slow, and painful. That's a fact, not a threat."

  Jane considered her for a moment longer. Her pale blue eyes were unreadable. Perhaps she regretted. P
erhaps she hated. Or maybe she merely considered, adding equations of probability and strategy in her doubtless capable mind. It was too much to hope that she actually considered the content of her words. She wondered if Jane actually heard her words at all, or if she was as blind to the underlying moral arguments as deep-sea creatures were to colour. One image, two realities. One sentence, two understandings. With such a person, reason became impossible. The software that processed the words was so utterly different, they may as well have been speaking different languages. She watched the GI named Jane turn on her heel, and stride coolly from the scene, with a dread that numbed her to her soul.

  "Oh dear lord," she murmured beneath her breath, watching that departing back mingle and fade into the flow of streetside pedestrians. "What in the hell have they gone and done now?"

  "You're just going to let her go?" asked Sudasarno then, recovering his voice with an abrupt, startled terror. "You're just going to let her walk off like that?"

  "I can't track her covertly without uplinks," Sandy said quietly. "She's not making idle threats, Sudie. She'll kill civilians just to warn me off. No way I call anyone else onto her tail. They don't know what she's capable of. It might trigger a massacre."

  "Then how the hell else are you going to catch up with her again?" Sudasarno's voice was high with barely restrained panic, hands waving. "After what she's already done? By the Prophet himself, Sandy, you can't just let her walk away!"