Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  Next-in-line had been Ulu N’Darie, five years ago, but she’d pointedly resigned in order to end that argument, and had taken up a senior post at a think tank instead. She wasn’t Ibrahim’s equal in this job, she’d stated quite plainly, and nor were the next four rungs down, and probably never would be, and the CSA was simply too important an institution to be changing horses now or into the foreseeable future. It hadn’t stopped some of the most eager ladder-climbers, however, from claiming that Ibrahim had been there too long, and it was time for a change.

  “No,” Ibrahim said. “No, I do love this job for all its challenges, and would not normally have any intention to leave. Unfortunately, as with most things, these choices in life are never entirely up to any of us.”

  Sandy frowned, awaiting an explanation. Ibrahim’s lips pursed. It was emotion. Upset. Ibrahim almost never showed that.

  “My wife Radha is ill,” he said finally. “A rare form of cancer.”

  “Oh no,” said Sandy. Shocked.

  “If it were one of my children or grandchildren,” Ibrahim continued, a faint quaver in his voice, “well, I love them as dearly of course, but they have families of their own now, and do not require my individual attention in the same way. But Radha has been my partner in life for nearly forty years now. Children leave home, yet we have always been partners, and always shall. And if I must step down to care for her, then I must.” He smiled, weakly. “I have always lived by the creed that all individual concerns must be measured against the greater good. Now, I find that philosophy tested.”

  “Callay be damned,” Sandy agreed. “Take care of your wife.”

  “Hello Siddhartha,” Sandy said ten minutes later, piloting her cruiser through busy Tanushan skylanes. “I’m researching Type QL neural cancers and treatments. What can you tell me?”

  A narrow face peered in her display. Siddhartha was another of Ari’s friends, a senior figure in a research laboratory connected to some huge biotech firms and Callayan teaching hospitals. Like many such people, he frequently played around the edges of the Federation’s crazily complicated biotech laws. Also like many of them, he was very pleased to be friends with Sandy.

  “Almost always terminal, I’m afraid. Is it someone close to you?”

  “Close to a dear friend.” Sandy had met Radha Ibrahim a few times, and thought her wonderful. A gentle lady with a fearsome intellect, her law practise took lots of pro-bono cases, from local unfortunates to League immigrants, to recently, several GIs hoping for asylum. “Are treatment chances any better in the League?”

  “Well no, not that I’m aware. It is always the question, isn’t it?”

  “Always,” Sandy agreed. Advanced biotech was restricted in the Federation, least it be abused. That meant that the Federation forewent many treatments that could cure terminal cases, and the black market buzzed with illegal and semi-legal treatments. “Why haven’t the League found a cure? There’s not that many incurable cancers left, are there?”

  “No,” Siddhartha agreed, “but the body keeps inventing new ones. We keep doing things to our biology and biology always fights back. Something like ninety percent of the disease fatalities in the Federation today are from things that didn’t exist two centuries ago, disorders that we basically invented as a corollary to all our new treatments and enhancements. Or responses to alien environments and diseases, of course. Type QL cancers are one of these, and for whatever reason, the League doesn’t have any more answers than we do right now.”

  “It’s a dysfunction of the occipital cortex, isn’t it?” Sandy pressed determinedly.

  “Uh, I think you mean the occipital lobes.”

  “Whatever. That’s near the parietal lobes, I recall.”

  “Well, yes.” Siddhartha was always nervous trying to explain the latest neuro-biology to laymen. Even most neurobiologists didn’t understand it themselves without the assistance of enormous VR constructs and AI revision to sort out all the pieces. “What are you thinking, Cassandra?”

  “Well I’m obviously no neuroscientist, but I’ve read enough about my own origins to know that my brain function is pretty advanced around there. And that there’s more overlap between my synthetic brain function and human biology than in nearly any other organ.”

  A pause. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. That would probably be illegal.”

  “Probably.”

  “But you know, I’ve been having these awful headaches lately. I think I need an expert of your caliber to take a look and see if there’s something wrong.”

  “Well actually, headaches and brain function are completely unrelated . . .”

  “When can we meet?” Sandy said sourly. Trust the neuro-nerd to miss the point.

  “Ah, well, tomorrow at six, if you come in then I could . . .”

  “I’ll send you the address, and you make your way there inconspicuously. Okay?”

  “Yes. Certainly.” With a mixture of trepidation and excitement.

  Sandy disconnected. God knew what she was doing. But it was her damn brain, she could do with it what she wanted.

  She found Poole at Anita’s third residence (of the ones she knew of). It served as a kind of halfway house for GIs, to assist them in making their transition into Tanushan society. Civilian manners were often confusing, and it was better for them to enjoy each other’s company for a few years, most agreed, until it was decided where they’d go next.

  The house was a mansion in a secluded neighbourhood, nine bedrooms, surrounded with thick gardens and tall walls for privacy. Sandy wondered just how much money Anita and Pushpa were making these days, as she uplinked to the complex interface and completed fifteen ID locks just to open the front door.

  The layout was wide and modern, big rooms with sunken floors and lots of glass; a minimalist, Japanese inspiration. Sandy wandered, finding no one obviously home, and uplinked to the house network. There were two people upstairs, noisily fucking. Weller and Khan, by the sound of it. And one person in the rear room, playing piano.

  Sandy went that way. Poole’s piano was above the step-down to an indoor garden, a big square hole in the floor. On the other side of window glass, a long pond along the outer wall, in which big, native fish swam. Beyond that, a field of high, green bamboo. Poole played quite intricately, hands flying over the keys. Sandy thought it sounded beautiful. She stopped by the garden in the floor, and listened.

  Poole played on, knowing she was there but not really caring. Or whatever Poole thought at such moments; no one really knew. He was shirtless, his torso as sculpted and muscular as any combat GI, like a regular human gymnast . . . only Poole would retain that shape regardless of how much he exercised or ate. Male and female GIs were different in basic structure, just like regular humans. Males packed more synthetic myomer muscle onto the same length of bone, and weighed more accordingly. Males thus tended to have better long-term power, better endurance, and could take more punishment. But large muscle mass tended to preclude the most sensitive fast-twitch reactions, so females tended to have marginally faster reflexes and better short-term accuracy, to say nothing of more explosive, short-term power generated by sheer speed. There were so many other variables gender was often drowned out, but broadly speaking, if you wanted something particularly heavy lifted, you asked a man. If you wanted something particularly strong broken, you asked a woman.

  “Who is that you’re playing?” Sandy asked finally, deciding she didn’t have all day to wait. Poole sometimes played for hours without pause.

  “Jiang Shuangchao,” said Poole, still playing.

  “I like the sound. When was Jiang Shuangchao composing?”

  “Late twenty-first century.” He could talk and play incredibly technical things at the same time. Regular humans couldn’t. “She was a leader of the revivalist movement. She didn’t like all the modernist stuff of the time, so she wrote stuff she liked instead.”

  “Ah,” said
Sandy. “I knew I liked it. I like the revivalists.”

  “No one at the time appreciated her,” Poole added, hands flying on the keys. “They said she sounded too much like older guys, Beethoven and Mozart and stuff. Only after she’d died did people realise how good she was.”

  “Yeah,” said Sandy, leaning on the wall alongside. “Cause when she was dead, she became just another dead composer. People are dumb like that, they always think their era is unique, and everyone should act unique because of it. Only once it’s passed does everyone realise it wasn’t.”

  “It’s sad no one liked her when she was alive,” said Poole. “She became very famous after she died. Everyone played her, everyone agreed they’d been dumb not to like her before. Some say she was better than Beethoven.”

  “Sometimes people don’t see what’s in front of them. They have this idea in their head, this framework, and all information they take into their heads has to fit into that framework. Those people had an idea that no new composers were allowed to compose like Beethoven. If someone did compose like Beethoven, then surely it couldn’t be any good. Even if it was good, even if it was better, they’d still deny it. They wouldn’t allow it to be true. Lots of things are like that, even today.”

  Poole kept playing with no sign that he’d heard, or that what she’d said had registered. She had an obligation to get her fellow GIs thinking, in the hope that they’d absorb something and become a little better equipped to handle their new world. And she had an obligation to Callay, to find out what her fellow GIs were thinking, in case one of them was seriously not coping. The problem with Poole was that no one knew if he was coping or not. He rarely stopped playing long enough for anyone to find out.

  “Poole? There’s a rogue GI in town. We think he’s from New Torah. He’s the same designation as you, his name’s Eduardo.” Poole kept playing. “Poole?”

  Poole stopped. He stared at the keys, as though the sudden silence affronted him. “I can never get it good enough,” he murmured. “Always it’s flat.”

  “It sounds wonderful to me,” Sandy offered, in all honesty.

  “It doesn’t have the expression. You listen to Jiang Shuangchao, there’s so much expression. I can copy it, but I can’t create it.”

  “Hey,” said Sandy. She put a hand on his bare shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “You love music,” said Poole, and looked at her for the first time. He had blue eyes, within a strong, young, handsome face. Dark hair, shaved short. He looked for all the world like all the other combat GIs she’d known. But he wasn’t. “You’re the smartest GI ever commissioned, you love music and arts, yet you never learned to play. Why not?”

  Sandy gazed at him. “I suppose I’m scared I’ll mess it up,” she confessed.

  “How can you mess it up? You’re almost technically perfect at any physical thing you do. You find most sports boring because you almost never miss. I bet you’d play better than me, even, and you’d barely have to practise.”

  Sandy felt uncomfortable. Why hadn’t she learned? She’d had it suggested to her often enough, most recently by Vanessa’s new husband, who knew more than a thing or two about music. Because Poole was right, she didn’t even need to learn. She could probably just do it, just like Poole played now without sheet music, just reading off the uplink visual in his head. Probably he’d never even played this piece before.

  “You’re scared the emotion won’t be there, aren’t you?” said Poole, his blue eyes searching her face. “That you’ll sit down and pour yourself out onto the instrument, and nothing will resonate back. That the only sound will be this dull, empty thud.”

  Sandy stared at him, feeling cold. A little frightened, in fact. She didn’t know what to say.

  Poole put his hand on hers. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I know what that feels like. That’s why I sit here and play. I’m listening to the resonance, trying to find that emotion. Maybe it’ll tell me who I am.”

  And Ari had left her. Had she done that? Even Vanessa had once accused her of not feeling love like a regular human. GIs didn’t get jealous, and she’d thought that was just socialisation too, but even now she thought that if she were still with Ari, she could probably handle Ari screwing other girls and have no problem, so long as he let her screw other guys as well. Which was most unlike straights, who were neurologically programmed to pair-bond, however inconsistently that programming actually translated into real life. She’d thought she’d grow into love with Ari, and get devastatingly jealous when he flirted with other girls, but she hadn’t.

  Were there limits to how socialised a GI could become, in a civilian world? Did it mean she’d only ever have successful relationships with other GIs? Or what did “successful” mean, if it could only define promiscuity? Promiscuity was a very low setting on the bar for success, surely? Even now she was upset that Ari had dumped her, certainly, but not devastated. Just confused, and hoping, she admitted, that he’d come back from Pyeongwha soon, and they’d be able to resume their old friendship, just minus the fucking. Was that wrong of her? Shouldn’t she be torn apart, if she was wired correctly? And was it wrong of her to be mildly relieved that she wasn’t? She loved him, certainly, but there were plenty of people she loved, yet didn’t sleep with. Yet every regular human girlfriend who’d spoken to her on the breakup insisted that a good, clean break was essential, and that she should see him as little as possible from now on, if at all. But that was stupid. Ari was still Ari, and she was still herself, and everything could still be somewhat like it was before, just without the sex. Couldn’t it?

  “Hey,” she said to Poole, feeling a little lost. “I’m single now. You want to go upstairs?” It always worked for her, at least in the short term, when she felt like this. Perhaps it would work for Poole also.

  “Thanks,” he said. “But I really want to finish this piece.”

  Vanessa had about as much interest in chasing after a rogue GI as she did in watching the latest immigration debate. She was having time off, as were most of the FSA squad upon their return.

  “Sandy,” she said determinedly, attending to the barbeque in her bikini top and sarong, “have some food and come for a swim. Let Chandrasekar catch the damn GI. That’s what he’s good for.”

  They were in the backyard of Vanessa and Phillippe’s house. Kids splashed in the pool while adults ate and talked on the grass, or on the verandah. Mostly Vanessa and Phillippe’s extended family; they hadn’t gotten around to kids of their own yet. Soon, Vanessa said airily, whenever the question came up.

  Rhian was here too—in the pool of course, with the kids, playing games. One of those was her stepson Salman, who was six. The twins were with Rakesh, a big, handsome guy who worked at a construction firm, was a talented minor league footballer, and loved kids as much as Rhian did. Salman was Rakesh’s from a previous marriage. The twins had been adopted from some struggling League system with too many orphans. They were girls, just recently walking and quite adorable, now fetching their father various playthings on the grass, and looking pleased with his delight at their generosity.

  Perhaps this was why she was feeling a bit morose, Sandy thought wryly. Her two best friends, both women, were recently married, and displaying alarming signs of impending domesticity. While she herself seemed to move in the opposite direction. She wasn’t even sure that she wanted domesticity, it was just that watching Vanessa and Rhian slowly slide into it made her feel . . . well, left out.

  There was another reason for feeling morose, of course. “You heard about Radha?”

  “Yeah. Horrible. And,” Vanessa added, with emphasis, “absolutely nothing we can do about it by feeling miserable.”

  “I’m not miserable.”

  “Crap, you’ve been miserable since Anjula. The happiest I’ve seen you in months was just before the fight.”

  Sandy frowned. “That’s not true.”

  “Well okay, that’s unfair. You weren’t happy, just . . . alive. Buzzing. You had that spa
rk in your eyes, the one that scares journalists and gives real men erections.” Sandy restrained a grin. “Yeah, that one.” Vanessa pointed tongs at her, knowingly. “You’ve got down time. Take it.”

  “Down time is when I feel worst,” Sandy admitted. “I like being busy.”

  “Me too, just not always with work.” One of the kids said something very rude to her playmates in the pool. “Isabelle! Auntie Rhian may not mind you using that word, but I do! Use it again and there’ll be trouble!”

  “But I learned it from you!” came the retort. Sandy smothered another smile.

  “You fucking didn’t!” said Vanessa.

  Phillippe emerged from the house with a bowl of potato salad in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other. “How’s that looking?” he asked Vanessa, his cheek on her head to peer at the barbeque.

  “Pretty good, I reckon.”

  “Don’t burn the chicken. Those ones are for the kids, they don’t like it too crispy . . .”

  Vanessa swatted away his attempt to take her tongs. “My barbeque,” she told him. “Go and give advice on something you’re actually good at.”

  Phillippe grinned, and kissed her, and departed with the salad. It was Vanessa’s bossiness that he liked so much, Sandy reckoned. Phillippe was one of Callay’s three leading classical violinists, and moved in a world of elegant, feminine ladies who felt no urge to take command of the barbeque and arrange lunch dishes like a military operation. Small and pretty, with short, dark curls and an elegant jaw line, Vanessa could have passed for one of those women if she’d wished. But Vanessa was deadly strong, foul mouthed, bitingly funny, and went through life with the energy of a bouncing rubber ball.

  Phillippe had met her at a concert function, and been instantly smitten. Sandy had been there too—they’d had tickets courtesy of some very wealthy friends—and she’d seen it happen. In their first two minutes of conversation, Vanessa had managed to insult him, challenge him, make scathing fun of several fellow attendees, all in the happiest of good humours, all flashing teeth and sparkling eyes. Sandy had never seen a man melt so quickly, and had excused herself with a wink. And Phillippe was dashing, handsome, talented, and more than a handful for most merely mortal women . . . save for Vanessa, with whom he could suddenly barely keep up. Obviously he loved it, and her, and Sandy couldn’t have been happier for them.