“I want proper tape teach.” Very seriously. “Top-level stuff. SWAT stuff.”
“I don't know if it's safe to use that on kids.”
“But you can ask someone who knows.”
“I can,” she agreed. “I'll look into it.”
They were approaching the house when one of Sandy's network seekers fed her back something it thought she should see—a visual came through, shaky and hand-held, and she watched on internal vision as Svetlana and Kiril ran to her across the school playground, then Danya bringing up the rear, then hugs and kisses and talking. A rapid process of the image location found the file relaying off one of the circumference hubs, where node blockers should have shut it down, given it was featuring her image and had “Kresnov” in the title heading.
It was rare but happened sometimes, so she sent to the usual blockers…and got a bounce back from half of them, unable to link in. Which snapped her into full emersion visual with the construct ahead of her so she could hack in quickly and disable some of the barriers, but that took time and each node was different, and the codes embedded in this visual feed were propagating to new nodes faster than she could hack the old ones.
“Dammit,” she said, as they crossed the road to the house, interrupting whatever Svetlana had been saying. “Sorry, guys, I need to net talk for a moment.”
“Problem?” asked Danya.
“Maybe, there's a visual just now from the school, when we met to walk home. Someone was recording us and now the feed's on the net and propagating, it shouldn't be, it should all be blocked.”
She tried CSA protective intel, who were alert to it and making inquiries. Then some underground friends, a few of whom were unreachable, then finally up to Anita, who said she'd look into it, but sounded slightly…evasive? Or was she imagining things?
Now she was sitting on the sofa while Kiril and Svetlana played a noisy vid game, and Danya put an ice coffee in her hand, strong, the way she liked it. And sat beside her, waiting patiently. Ari got back to her.
“Yeah, Sandy, I think I know who that is…can't tell you, it'll violate an investigation I've got running.”
“You mean you know someone compromising Canas network security?”
“Yeah.” Reluctantly. Like Anita had sounded reluctant. What was going on?
“Can't be many people with the expertise to penetrate Canas net?” she pressed.
“Yeah, it's kind of the point of confidentiality to, you know, hide the identity of the person being investigated?”
“Sorry. If you can't tell me who, how about why?”
A pause. “Sandy, you might have noticed…you're not quite as popular as you were amongst the underground.”
“I actually had noticed that. I'm the authority, they're anti-authority, it was bound to happen.”
“It's more than that. 2389 hits a nerve with a lot of folks. A lot of the underground seriously don't like Federal power used to assault member worlds.”
“Sure, and a lot more of them who know about Compulsive Narrative Syndrome and are heavily into tech-induced mass psychology thought what we did on Pyeongwha was awesome because Pyeongwha scared the shit out of them.”
“Right,” said Ari, “and so there's a crisis of ideology and politics right through the Tanushan underground right now, a lot of people who thought they were anti-authority find themselves cheering the attack on Pyeongwha, and a lot more say no matter how awful Pyeongwha was, the precedent established by using Federal force to attack it was even worse.
“The thing is, you've been relying on these people for a long time now to stop a lot of the chatter about you, they're naturally pro-biotech, pro-technology generally, often pro-League, and so almost always pro-GI and GI rights, and lucky for you, they're the ones who pretty much control the flow of covert information through the net's back channels. They've been helping with the CSA's filters to stop the information flows that make your life unsafe, but I think it's a pretty safe bet a lot of that assistance will start to break down now. Could be a concern, now you've got the kids.”
“Yeah.” She thought about it for a moment. “Shit.”
“Sandy,” Ari ventured, still cautiously, “I was waiting for the right moment to talk to you about this, but this seems as good as any. I think it could get a lot worse. The FSA's fine because the FSA serves the Grand Council, but the CSA serves the Callayan government. And President Singh is all over 2389 like a rash.”
“Noticed that too. I've considered it, Ari.”
“Sandy, a lot of your security rests with the CSA, whatever the FSA being your main employer now. Now…I don't want to do this thing where I outline my usual paranoid theories, and then you tell me I'm a lunatic, and I accuse you of lacking imagination, etc., etc. I mean, we've had that fight before, right?”
Sandy smiled. “About a hundred times. But Ari, on this one, I'd appreciate having a friend inside the CSA who could keep tabs on this for me. A paranoid friend who didn't just assume that the Singh government wouldn't come after me through the CSA would be perfect.”
“I can do that.” Not even joking. That was serious.
“The real question is, if such a thing were to happen, in any form, what should the FSA do about it? Because Callayan security IS Federal security, to a large degree, given all Federal institutions are based here. If the CSA and FSA ever started to work at odds…”
“Sandy, they're already at odds.” He sounded quite unhappy. “It's just they haven't realised it yet. The Singh government's completely at odds with pro-Federalist politics; they're for member rights all the way. They see the FSA as an accomplice in pushing dangerous pro-Federal policies, and they control the CSA, which with recent close ties is the FSA's soft underbelly right now. But the FSA can't change any of this without letting Singh know that they know.”
Crap, thought Sandy. “If you're talking like this, that means Ibrahim knows.”
“Of course.”
“Ari, Chandi doesn't like you nearly as much as Ibrahim does.”
“Noticed that, thanks.”
“Chandi doesn't like people who are more loyal to others outside the CSA than to those inside it. Chandi might want to teach those people a lesson.”
“You do realise that you might fall into that category at least as much as I do. And Chandi won't do worse than fire me, at which point Ibrahim's already offered me a job, and I'm betting Chandi knows it. Chandi doesn't give a stuff about crossing me, but crossing Ibrahim's another matter.”
“I think he might give a stuff about crossing me as well, Ari. We're friends, but this is moving well beyond friendship.”
“Chandi has this way of defining his friendships by their usefulness to his work. I stopped being particularly useful to him a while back, as he sees it. Sandy, I was thinking we should get a trusted little group together, all friends, and have a good long talk about this. I know I don't want to get caught with my pants down.”
It was all very, very preliminary. But they'd both seen enough of this stuff up close to know they didn't want it getting out of hand before they had plans in place.
“Good thought. The good news is that I think we can get most of the guns on our side. Always good to have all the firepower together, and my network through SWAT and FSA spec ops is a group with more loyalty to each other than to either.”
“Sandy…” she could almost see the familiar grimace, facing an unpleasant thought. “Speaking as a native Callayan who's been here all his life, and a lot longer than you, don't underestimate the power of a local nationalism. I'm Federation too, but I'm mostly Callayan.”
“Tanushan,” Sandy corrected. “A wise man told me there's no snob like an urban snob.”
“Naidu?”
“Justice Rosa. But I accept your warning. I just want to head this off before it goes anywhere, let the manipulators know they face a brick wall and there's nothing to manipulate, because we all stand together.”
“That's…that's very…rousing, Sandy.” With dry cynicis
m.
“We could use some rousing. I'll talk to my people, you talk to yours, then let's have our meeting, okay?”
“Good. See you there.”
Disconnect. And she just sat there, heart thumping a little too hard, and wondering what the hell had just happened. It wasn't that dangerous yet, it was just annoying as hell to discover this cleavage that ran straight through the center of what had until recently been a very cozy little setup, Callayan government, CSA, Grand Council, and FSA together. With any luck they could stop it from getting messy before it even started, that was the nice thing about having so many trusted friends in high places: those connections could hold things together against the best attempts of the most determined saboteurs. But still, 2389 was being driven by the Grand Council, and the Grand Council represented forces far, far larger than what could be found just on Callay.
Danya was looking at her with a frown that told her he hadn't missed the concern on her face. “Trouble?” he asked.
It was all speculation, nothing real, all in the future. Danya was a sometimes troubled kid who had difficulty sleeping. She should really just say it was nothing and save them both the alarm.
But the pact she'd made with Danya hadn't included her keeping him in the dark. Adults and children didn't make pacts. Pacts existed between equals, and if Danya discovered she'd lied to him, the bond could be broken. And that scared her worst of all the possibilities that emerged on this sunny afternoon.
She took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “This is what we know.”
Ari was sitting at his table at the upstairs lounge of the Happy Song Club with Ruiz when the police raid hit. Ruiz had been charged on more than twenty counts of permit forgery related to illegal augmentation, but only convicted on one for a suspended sentence. At the next table along, some wealthy customers were discussing full illegal gene mods for their yet-to-be-born blue-eyed baby girl, and how the charges would be disguised as “consultation,” which, if handled by the wife's business, were actually tax deductible. At a table beyond that, consultants for a transport company were discussing government-mandated biometrics, required for government contracts, and could they by any chance be falsified? Across from that, with copious amounts of vodka, cards, singing, and the occasional arm wrestle, a big corporate who was a personal friend of Mr Song was “negotiating” with Song's son and cousin about the price of virtual (read false) net identities and the scrubbing of past records from network memory so that new business clients wouldn't find out about that previous graft conviction. Overhearing the nature of that job, and the money involved, Ari was nearly tempted to offer his own services. Some GIs he knew could do that in a few days; the Song family were proposing to take a month.
And then here came the cops, kicking down the doors and yelling at everyone to freeze, guns drawn and angry looking. Ruiz just rolled his eyes and raised his hands, while the Songs all had world-weary chuckles with their client, a big Punjabi with a gold watch and a custom gold pistol big enough to blow his head off, turban and all. He said so to the cops that levelled guns on them, that it was licensed, e-monitored, and unloaded, just to show to his drinking buddies…smirk smirk, another sip of vodka.
And here came the detective in charge, and whoa! Ari blinked, thinking he'd stepped into one of those noir detective mysteries Sandy had gotten him into—not that she was a fan, but she thought he would be—a dame with long legs, black hair, and eyes straight out of some Ramprakash Road song and dance blockbuster.
“My my,” said Ruiz, grinning as the two men watched her weave between the tables with purpose. “Another victory for Tanushan random genetics.”
It was an in-joke in these circles, the Federation laws and their local variants designed to protect the “necessity” of the randomly determined gene pool. Because if everyone got what they wanted—long legs, smouldering eyes, perfect breasts—the gene pool would be robbed of diversity, and, presumably, the universe would end in a frenzy of sobbing self-flagellation. But in Tanusha, these things were easier to talk about than to enforce, thanks largely to places like this one, and people like Ruiz and the Song family. They'd created what the underground called “Tanushan random genetics,” which they'd laugh about whenever one of Tanusha's multitudes of smoking-hot babes sauntered by, multitudes that any half-serious analysis of random Tanushan faces would tell you were statistically impossible, given how much all the “looks” indices had changed in the last fifty years.
“Best-looking city in the Federation, my friend,” said Ari. “Must be the water.”
She was collecting IDs now, showing her warrant. Ruiz was stood up and searched. Then Ari, who gave the cop doing it a “seriously?” look. The cop avoided meeting Ari's eyes. Ari sighed. That meant…
“This way please,” said the cop, indicating for Ari to step out, no attempt to remove his gun, or double-check the CSA badge. Ari went, glumly, but it wasn't all a lost cause because Detective Legs followed him. Out in the hall she beckoned him to follow, down the stairs, then past the restaurant still full of dining patrons, but now with Song's other employees clustered at the bottom of the stairs looking askance upwards for further news.
Then out onto the side road, where police vehicles sat with flashing lights, cops waiting for arrests to emerge. A police van's rear door was open, and the detective gestured Ari inside and followed.
“Sinta,” she said, closing the door. “Homicide, Lagosa District. Need to talk to you.”
Ari blinked at her for a moment. Even prettier at this range, hair tied back, typically Indian gold stud in the nose against milk-chocolate skin. She wasn't trying to look smoking hot, he conceded—she was dressed like a plainclothes cop, jeans, jacket, tied-back hair, minimal makeup. But poor girl, she just couldn't help it, and Ari could see situations, amongst the kinds of men cops had to deal with (and sometimes were) where that would make her life much more difficult than if her genetics were toned down several notches. “So you're leading this raid?” No disagreement. “And you're sitting here talking to me instead? Dear God, you didn't do this whole thing just to talk to me?”
Frustration flashed in her eyes. “Listen, do you have any idea how hard it is for a cop to get a hold of some bigshot CSA Intel? You put in a request through channels and it just disappears, you talk to guys in the field and they won't give you a straight answer…”
“Look, lady…” he struggled to control a grin. “I'm not that hard to find, honestly. You held up the Songs for this? Oh, boy, they'll be pissed.”
Her eyes hardened. “So what were you doing in there anyway? A bit of that ‘legal experimentation’ we know you shadowy types like to get up to?”
“Talking to contacts,” he said, still amused. Sinta got even hotter when she was angry. “They don't hang out in coffee shops.”
“Talking about what?”
“Join the CSA and I'll be allowed to tell you.” He leaned back against the bench seat, amidst spare vests and tactical headgear hanging on the ready rack behind. “So tell me, what's a stunner like you doing in the cops? I mean, surely mom and dad didn't pay all those genetic extras so their darling daughter could get paid like robot maintenance to hustle the Song family for scraps?”
He was surprised, and even a little impressed, when that didn't make her more angry. She just gave him a “look,” probably having heard all that before. “I did law and hated it. But I grew up on crime fiction, decided to take a pay cut and enjoy my life more.”
“Ah.” Even more impressed. “Friend of mine did something similar, good for you.”
“Look…I don't know if I have anything. But I've got a very weird case, and it's not going anywhere with my superiors. I think they're getting leaned on.”
Ari frowned. “Homicide, you said? Whose homicide?”
“Idi Aba.”
“The emancipation activist lawyer? The one the League killed?”
“Well, that's just the thing,” said Sinta carefully. “I don't think they did.”
; Ari knew just the place to take a hot girl for some alone time. A private booth at Tickler, one of the hotter clubs in Patna, three blocks from The Happy Song. From the completely cool way Sinta accepted his choice, with expensive holographics, thumping music, and three multi-level bars around the dance floor serving all kinds of probably spiked and VR-interactive things, he had to fantasize that she'd been a patron in these kinds of places before. Maybe like one of these scantily clad girls they walked past on the floor to get to the booth. Or maybe she was just a cop and busted these kinds of places regularly. But that idea wasn't as much fun.
“I know the guy who set up these booths,” said Ari as they settled in, “and I've a passkey to their inner network, so these booths are pretty unbuggable. Drink?”
“Don't suppose they do a cappuccino?” she asked wryly.
“No, but a hell of a cinzano-flavoured lassi, tastes like it'll blow your head off, but zero alcohol.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Sure, but you're paying. Me on the salary of robot maintenance and all.” Ari grinned and ordered. Cops weren't actually paid that badly, they just complained a lot, especially to the CSA.
The drinks came in no time. “The owner knows you?” Sinta said tiredly.
“Sure. Good contacts here.”
“And you won't bust him in the process. You know how many clubs like this are involved in really bad stuff that CSA guys like you just let go?”
Ari cleared his throat. “Well, firstly, there aren't any CSA ‘guys like me,’ just me. And secondly, if you cops knew half the stuff I chase down in places like this, you'd wet yourselves.”
“Sure, let me adjust my sanitary pad.” Sipped her drink. “You're right, that does taste like alcohol.”
“I'm getting you drunk,” said Ari. And, “Kidding, kidding,” at the look she gave him. “So, your case.”
“Okay. I can't reveal any files, can't show you electronic, VR, paper, anything, it's been classified secure and I have to file paperwork up to the highest level to share it. If they saw your name on it, they'd can it and I'd be in trouble.”
Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield Page 30
