Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (18 page)

Ari shrugged. “That's the sort of answer an extremely intelligent man would give who got his jollies messing up otherwise simple questions and throwing them back in the face of the person who asked them. Sometimes a question's just a question. You complained the door wasn't open, and I asked you if you thought it would be smart of us to open it for you. Do you think so?”

“I don't know,” said Ragi. He seemed quite honest. “I suppose I don't know you well enough to answer. Or come to that, I don't know myself well enough to answer.”

Ari sighed. “So it's going to be like that, then?”

Ragi made a face. “As though you'd expected anything else.” He crossed his legs, hands folded, and made a pleasant expression. “So. I can't remember where I'm from, I have no active recollection of how I got here either, which might tell you that my type of synthetic human is somewhat susceptible to mental manipulation. Probably I'm not very old. And I know quite a lot of things, though I'm not sure how. I'm both a font of information and a black hole of ignorance, and I'm afraid all the other investigators and experts who've come to see me have left unenlightened as to my origins, and thus my prospects of ever making it out of this room. What would you like to talk to me about?”

“Politics,” said Ari.

Ragi raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Or religion. Have you a preference?”

“Religious? I don't imagine so.”

“You mean you've never thought about it?”

“If I have I can't recall.

Ari grimaced and scratched his nose. “You might be the stupidest smart man I've ever met.”

Ragi frowned just a little. “Well, this
is
a different interviewing approach,” he observed. “First politics, now religion and insults.”

“Well, you know, when people talk politics and religion, insults soon follow. Do you support the League?”

“In what sense?”

“In the sense that they built you. In some GIs it inspires loyalty.”

“While many others come here, I understand.”

“Do you? Understand?”

Another slight frown from Ragi. “Why GIs come to the Federation?”

Ari shrugged. “Anything.”

Ragi no longer looked so serene. “In the League they feel they are not free. GIs are designated roles in life. Here, they can choose…although it seems that here they often end up working in military or paramilitary roles also.”

“Sure, but here they can quit if they want. I know one who works as a florist. You ever wanted to quit anything, Ragi?”

“I have no memory of it.”

“You want to quit this room though. Why?”

“I think it would be nice to be free.”

“Why? What would you do with freedom?”

A deeper frown. “I'm not sure. But I think I'd like to find out for myself.”

“What good would that do? For a man who makes clever observations but draws no conclusions? Who sees everything but understands nothing?”

“How do you know how much or little I understand?” Ragi retorted.

“Which is better, League or Federation?” Ari asked, rapid fire.

“It depends…”

“Beep, wrong answer. That's the beginning of a very clever answer without a conclusion. Are you capable of conclusions, Ragi, or just clever answers?”

“It's a very technical question that you ask, there's nothing insightful in overlooking those technicalities just so that you can rush to an emotionally satisfying answer.”

“The thing with emotionally satisfying answers is that they indicate the existence of emotion,” said Ari. “In your case, I wonder. And it's really the simplest thing in the world to answer: which is better, Federation or League? Because that's what all the reasoning is for Ragi, so that you can draw conclusions. A mind that reasons but does not conclude is like a car that drives but never reaches its destination, a complete waste of time and space.”

Ragi's frown was now intense. Then eased, as he thought of something. “You're trying to upset me. You think it can indicate some aspect of my psychology that has thus far escaped you.”

“But here's the thing,” said Ari, “I don't think I can upset you. I think upset is a state of emotional conclusion you're not capable of reaching. Like you're not capable of concluding if you like the League or Federation better.”

“And so every response I give you will suit your prejudged conclusion. If I avoid getting upset, I'm an emotionless robot, and if I become upset, I'm simply trying to prove to you that I can.”

“No, I've already told you, I don't think you can, full stop. If you did get upset, I wouldn't believe it.”

Ragi raised his hands in exasperation. “Then why bother? Why are you
here, Ariel Ruben? To judge me? To tell me if my life is worth living? Because I'd truly like to know, do you think I
like
being here, not knowing what I am or what I'm doing here?” There was definitely a quaver in his voice now, and anger in his eyes. “Why not try something useful, like helping to find some answers to these riddles, instead of attacking me as though they were all somehow my fault?”

“
That's enough
,” said Piyul's voice in his ear. “
That's a good reading right there
.”

“Good, great,” said Ari. Ragi blinked, wondering who he was talking to. Ari smiled at him. “Look, I'm sorry about that—you were right, I was trying to upset you, I had a bet with my buddy Piyul I couldn't do it in less than five minutes, he said I could, he thinks I'm the most annoying person alive.”

The poor synthetic looked completely baffled, with nothing to say.

Ari got up. “We're going to go and analyse that, and if it gets us the answers I think it might, we might be able to finalise what you are for the reports. And once we can do that, we should be able to get you out of here. Sound good?”

“
In English, if you please
,” said Director Chandrasekar on the vid screen. His hair was still perfect, Ari saw—no increased hours of pressure would come between the new CSA Director and his hair products.

“Okay,” said Ari, “this is Piyul. Piyul helped to work up the latest GI-specific psych software, he used the other interviews on Ragi to get a baseline of mannerisms, responses, and stress readings. But he had to know where the stress and conflict lines kicked in, and on what issues and to what intensity…”

“
Wait a moment
,” said Chandrasekar on the screen. “
I'm not such a fan of psych profiles that I'd trust them to define anyone completely, especially of as low a base as you've established on this guy
.”

“Director,” said Piyul, “it's different on GIs.” Piyul was short and squat, a power lifter in his spare time, and much better with software and heavy weights than people. He had this odd habit of not meeting people's eyes when he talked, as though in a state of perpetual distraction. “Especially young GIs. They've much less psychological complexity, all the triggers and layers we use for the psych mapping construct become much more accurate.”

“
Sure
,” said Chandrasekar, in a way that made Ari suspicious that he didn't already know that. He
should
know it. “
What did you find?
”

“Well, we're pretty sure his knowledge base is mostly tape,” said Ari. Piyul preferred it when other people did most of the talking, even if it meant he lost some of the credit. “The patterns and repetitions when he's talking about things he knows are too similar each time. So if it's tape rather than experience, he's very young. So young that if he was created using the usual techniques, he couldn't possibly be this smart. Sandy at this age wouldn't have been much of a conversationalist, she wouldn't have even been in active service; her gestation was long, about five years.”

“
There was another GI who reached mental maturity very early with lots of tape teach
,” said the Director.

“Sure, there was Jane,” said Ari. “But she was a combat GI, and she didn't have these network uplinks. Plus she had almost zero emotional range; there's a chance she evolved it later, but she was a modification, an overwrite, of a standard human psych template, with all the unneedful bits suppressed. Ragi still has all that, so he's much more a standard template than Jane, less modified, meaning he still thinks and feels much more like the rest of us.

“Plus he's just scary smart. He's not real experienced or mature yet, so I can still boss him around in a conversation on ground he's less familiar with. But intellectual range with GIs usually evolves as they grow older, and he's already very advanced. If he's any of the types of GI we're familiar with, it shouldn't be possible.”

“And he's not a fighter,” Piyul added, to Ari's surprise. He must be very interested in this one if he was volunteering conversation. “Lots of GI brainpower just goes into making them fast and dangerous, some huge percentage of Sandy Kresnov's brain is devoted to making her better at killing people. Ragi doesn't have that, being a non-combat. I'm betting it frees up a lot of his brain space for other things.”

“
So what do you think he is?
” asked the Director.

“Something completely new,” said Ari.

“
Talee?
”

Ari took a deep breath. The CSA Director had obviously heard
something
about recent events in New Torah. But at Ari's pay grade, he wasn't allowed to guess at what. “Sir, with respect, I can't talk about that. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to even confirm or deny a possibility.”

Chandrasekar made a face. “
This is what happens when I lend you to the Feds.
I suppose I'm going to get a call from Ibrahim any moment saying Ragi's now their problem?
”

“I couldn't say,” said Ari. “But it's not impossible.”

He wondered how much Chandrasekar knew. Probably little, the Talee were the highest of high-priority secrets. He still couldn't quite believe that alien contact on the level it had happened had fallen to
him
…even if the alien in question hadn't truly been an alien, just a friend and creation of theirs. But Talee themselves were no secret. Talee had been known to various portions of humanity for a long time now, and everyone had sources and opinions on the subject. Especially men like Chandrasekar, who worked in intelligence-enabled security for a living.

“
Very well
,” said the Director. “
I'll file the report with Ibrahim myself, save you the trouble. And I shouldn't have to remind you, if this security level is about to jump up to Talee and Talee-related matters…
”

“Won't say a thing,” said Ari. Chandrasekar nodded grimly and disconnected.

“Save you the trouble?” Piyul asked. “You're still reporting to Ibrahim?”

“No,” Ari lied. “Chandi just gives me shit about it, everyone always said I was Ibrahim's boy.”

“Are you?”

“He doesn't sign my credit.”

Piyul exhaled and looked back at the monitors to Ragi's apartment. Ragi was sitting on the sofa, reading books. A monitor showed the title, something huge by some twenty-third-century literary legend, two thousand pages long.

“Talee,” Piyul murmured. “Wow.” Ari said nothing. “Though you know, I still think all neuro-synth technology came from Talee, I don't see how the League made that breakthrough on their own. You know anything about that?”

“I know nothing,” said Ari, getting up to leave. “I'm the stupidest smart man alive.”

“Cai,” said Director Ibrahim.

All were gathered in the most secure room the FSA building contained. The numbers were rather small—besides Sandy it was FSA Director Ibrahim, FSA Operations Director Hando, Fleet Rear Admiral Hoi, and Fleet Intel Commander Lupicic. Even Chandrasekar's clearance wasn't high enough for this—he wasn't a Fed, and Talee were Fed business. Thus the presence of Fleet, who liked to behave like they knew more about the Talee than anyone, and probably did. Normally Sandy's clearance would not be high enough either, were she not the source of the intel in question. Not even Grand Chancellor Li could enter this briefing, if he'd known to try. He'd be briefed in turn, but later, once the security professionals had considered it and figured out what to tell him.

Sandy was more nervous about leaving the kids alone at home. Security was no issue; Canas District was so tight even the casual breaking of wind would register on someone's display somewhere. But they hadn't been alone since they'd left Pantala. Those three being alone had typically meant working and struggling and worrying, trying to make enough loose change to buy food and stay alive without treading on the toes of some heavy who might kill them like swatting flies. Now they'd have nothing to do. Play some games, read some books, watch some movies. Seriously? She knew Danya had woken hard last night, three times, gasping for air and braced for some emergency. And Svetlana, barely waking, had pulled him back down and held him like a giant teddy bear. Mental note, she thought, buy Svetlana a real teddy bear. Maybe she'd like her own bed better with something to hold.

How did you tell kids from that background to just switch off from everything they'd ever known? She opened an uplink now, a high visual of the living room, where she could see Kiril and Svetlana indeed playing a game, something holographic. For a moment she couldn't see Danya, but a new camera angle revealed him in the kitchen. Doing something. Cooking? It looked like he was reading from a recipe book. Had they ordered more food?
She hadn't known Danya could properly cook beyond bacon and eggs. What was he cooking?

Fleet Admiral Hoi asked her a question. About the most important development in Federation security since the end of the war with the League. And she'd much rather have watched Danya in the kitchen.

“No, sir,” she answered Admiral Hoi. “No idea where Cai is. He expressed a desire to make his own rendezvous with a Talee vessel. Last I heard, Captain Reichardt was going to let him have a limpet, then arrange to ‘look the other way’ while the pickup was made.”

“And how were the Talee going to communicate this pickup?”

“Again, sir, no idea. I'd advise awaiting the return of either Captains Reichardt or Wong. Being knowledgeable Fleet men, they could give you far better answers than I.”

“And no one thought to detain this…Cai?” asked Lupicic. He was tall and bald, with a face naturally given to skepticism. “Ask him further questions?”

“No,” said Sandy. “It might have come up, but everyone present, including myself, was of the opinion it was a bad idea.”

Lupicic folded his hands on the tabletop. “Enlighten me, please.”

“Cai is the first open contact made with an acknowledged representative of the Talee or any other intelligent alien species. That I'm aware of anyway, Commander Lupicic, you may of course know otherwise.”

Lupicic smiled thinly.

“The last thing we're going to do,” Sandy continued, “to said representative of a species far more advanced than our own, is piss him off. To use plain language. Cai was exceptionally helpful to us, and to the Federation's interests, on several occasions. To the point of actively intervening on two occasions in military conflict to ensure the Federation's success. That strikes me as a wonderful strategic success, a stunning success in fact, and possibly a vital one, in the struggles that lie ahead with the League, if the League's problems are as bad as they seem. We decided to pay Cai every courtesy, and to communicate our courtesies and heartfelt gratitude to his Talee friends when he reunited with them. A copy of which courtesies I included in my report, and you've all no doubt read.”

“I concur with this decision,” said Fleet Admiral Hoi, with what might
have been a disagreeable glance at his Fleet compatriot. “Talee contact to positive ends is a staggering development—actual military
assistance
is beyond belief. My only complaint is that you did not put on a banquet in Cai's honour.”

“We thought that sucking up should not be the Federation's style,” Sandy said drily.

“If only that were true,” said Hoi. He was a tough little nugget of a man, broad and grey with a toothy smile. Without the uniform, he'd have looked like farmer or the guy who came around to fix the electrics. He'd risen all the way through Fleet ranks from ensign to become commander of everything. Sandy didn't know him very well, but what little she'd seen, she respected.

“Plus the distinct possibility,” Sandy added, “that if we'd decided to detain Cai, Cai might have decided otherwise. And we couldn't have done anything about it.”

Grim assessment around the table.

“Commander,” said Ibrahim. “Can you assess the evidence that Cai was acting a lone hand toward your situation? Or was he representing the thought-out policy of his superiors?”

Just like Ibrahim, he asked the central question every time.

“Logically any actor in Cai's position has a degree of operational autonomy,” she said. “Like Fleet Captains, information takes so long to move in space, decisions cannot always be consultative, decision makers must be empowered to decide, with some degree of finality. Sir, there's no conclusive evidence either way, as you've read in my report, and Cai was deliberately vague on the question, as you might expect of a competent operative determined not to reveal too much about the Talee. But in my opinion, Cai did have general support, what you might call conceptual support. I find it inconceivable that an individual of Cai's capabilities would be allowed to make contact with us, against all established precedent, in that situation, and command the actions that he took…I mean, the destruction of a League ghost recon vessel and the effective network takeover of Pantala's primary space station.”

Amazed silence. They'd read the report, but it still read like fiction.

“Talee have been so cautious,” she continued. “This was an extraordinary break from that caution. I can't conceive that they would allow such a break to occur by carelessness. I think Cai was where he was meant to be. Now, whether all Talee are happy with the results, that's another matter.
Little enough a lowly soldier like myself is qualified to know about the Talee's internal organisation.”

With a faintly hopeful look around the table. Hoi might have smiled a little. If they knew, or anyone knew, they weren't going to tell her.

“So if he was in your opinion just where he was supposed to be,” Ibrahim continued, “why did the Talee want him there?”

“There's only one conceivable reason why a people so determined to avoid human contact in the past suddenly change their position,” said Sandy. “Fear. Or whatever the Talee emotional or intellectual equivalent. Whatever's going on in League space, centered upon events on Pantala, the Talee don't like it. Now, whether that's out of concern for themselves or out of concern for us, I'm in no position to say. Perhaps both. Perhaps our fates and theirs are connected. Perhaps Talee have had something in their past that makes them particularly concerned about what they see happening now amongst humans. I don't know.”

“Pantala was a Talee outpost, two thousand years ago,” said Ibrahim.

“Yes,” said Sandy. “Then mysteriously abandoned. And I'm betting, perceptive grunt that I am, that this is a pattern of settlement and abandonment Federation and League spacefarers have encountered before, out at the fringes of our existing territory, all highly classified from the rest of us. It suggests some kind of disaster. That would make a species concerned.”

“It would, wouldn't it?” said Hoi. And no more, as Lupicic gave him an unimpressed sideways glance.

“Do you think Cai will be back?” Hando asked her. “Talee seem to have the ability to avoid our sensors when they choose, probably they can insert their own synthetic human copies into our populations as well, should they want.”

“Oh, I'm betting they've been doing that for decades,” Sandy said dismissively. “Probably there's a bunch of them walking around in Tanusha right now.”

“Wonderful,” said the FSA's Ops Director. “Now we have to figure how to tell Director Chandrasekar without violating the Feds-only rule.”

“Agent Ari Ruben,” Ibrahim began, in that slightly cautious way a man might bring up a contentious topic, “has some interesting ideas about a new GI arrival in Tanusha. A man by the name of Ragi, non-combat designation,
massively intelligent, with augmented uplink capability so advanced to look at we're not yet willing to let him within contact range of a network. Given the capabilities Cai demonstrated, it seemed a wise precaution.”

“Wait,” said Hoi, hearing this for the first time. “He's Talee?”

“We don't know,” said Ibrahim. “No recollection of his history, he just turned up on Nehru Station three months ago and requested asylum.”

Everyone turned to look at Sandy.

“Apparently we've done the basic scans on him,” she said. “He gave consent, but the new protection laws won't let us do anything more invasive without an external independent monitor…which of course we can't do because he's too secret.”

“Wait,” said Hando. “Apparently? You're not involved in this personally?”

“I'm attempting to rationalise my workload,” Sandy explained flatly. “We've got a lot of GI experts here now; I don't need to personally supervise everything.” No comment from Hando. Nor anyone else. “I don't think he's Talee; from what I can see he's crazy advanced, almost certainly one of the alternative neural growth methods—most GIs are number one, me and a few others like Ramoja and Jane are number two…
were
number two…” pause for a breath. “And Ragi looks like something else again. I've technical terms that won't mean anything to you; let's call him number three.

“Now if he's Talee, he's not nearly as advanced as Cai, because Cai's a combat GI, and he's got crazy network capabilities
plus
serious combat capabilities my synthetic colleague Rhian Chu estimates are not quite to my ability, but to combine both skillsets in the same brain at that level indicates that the Talee can do far more than the level represented by Ragi. Plus, Cai was a covert operator; if they're using other similar covert operators, that's some serious technology and knowledge, letting them roam around in our midst is a huge risk, so logically they'll be able to defend themselves, like Cai. So Ragi being non-combat, and Talee, doesn't make any sense, nor does the way he turned up here, delivered straight into our hands.”

“So if he's not Talee, what?” asked Hoi. Sandy thought the Fleet Commander seemed a little agitated on this question. Was he expecting something from the Talee? Worried about something? Or just concerned that someone not-Fleet might have access to this much information on them?

“Presumably someone who wanted us to have him,” suggested Ibrahim.

Sandy nodded. “So who is there in all human space, not Talee, who can make GIs to number three specifications?” She looked around the table. Probably they knew but weren't going to say it first. “Well, as I figure it, there's Renaldo Takawashi, and…well, Renaldo Takawashi.”

Ibrahim frowned in that curious, intent way he did when he was right there with her on some very important point. “But what you discovered on Pantala suggests that Takawashi, and in fact no human anywhere, originated synthetic neural design. It's a Talee technology, as are all the different origin methods you're describing.”

Sandy smiled. “Exactly. The League never invented neural synthology like they claimed, and Takawashi's a big, self-aggrandising, fucking liar. Like I always said.” Tried to pass himself off as her Daddy. She hadn't fallen for it then and now had proof she was right. “So where did he get it from? There's only one place anywhere that was working on alternative GI development methods, and that was Pantala. Unless the Talee gave him the tech directly, and somehow I don't think they like him that much.”

“And the first thing he does with this technological breakthrough,” Lupicic said skeptically, “is give it to us?”

Sandy shrugged. “League doesn't control Takawashi any longer; we don't even know where he is. Speculation is he's accumulated that much wealth that he's operating like a shadow department within the League government, pulling everyone's strings within the only field he cares about, which is synthetic development, obviously.”

“Doesn't explain why he'd just give us Ragi,” said Lupicic, shaking his head. “I don't buy it. He's a loose cannon, sure, but a traitor? Because that's how League would view it.”

“I saw a movie once,” said Sandy. “Pretty old film, can't remember the title. But a senior soldier fighting for one side realises his side has created a doomsday weapon, and he has no choice but to defect and give this doomsday weapon to the other side to continue the balance of power and prevent mutual armageddon.”