Originator (27 page)

“Mr Takewashi,” Ragi asked earnestly. “How did you make the leap between the second- and third-generation neural models? The technological concepts involved had nearly nothing in common with where human research—League research—had reached at the time, and . . .”

“He didn't,” Sandy interrupted. Watching the old man with half-lidded eyes. “Renaldo's initial training wasn't neuroscience, or biotech. It was linguistics.”

“The neurology of linguistics, Cassandra,” Takewashi corrected with a benign smile.

“You're a translator,” said Sandy. “You translated what you found in Talee symbols and language into things humans could understand, you borrowed and copied, you didn't create anything.”

Takewashi shook his head. “Now, now, Cassandra, that's not quite right . . .”

“And then you claimed all the credit for yourself, because how lucky for you, your government decided it would keep these discoveries a secret and let the Federation think that League science alone had made this astounding breakthrough. Or did you play some role in persuading them of that decision also?”

A flash of frustration crossed Takewashi's face. Perhaps anger, quickly suppressed. The too-wide smile replaced it, like a slash. “Cassandra, I have come this far to help you. Perhaps you should think of that before hurling these grotesque accusations. . . .”

“He's not your creator, Ragi,” Sandy told the bewildered young GI by Takewashi's side. “He's a fraud. Always has been. He's been playing with things he's never truly understood, and now he's reached the last page of the Talee instruction manual, and he's scared and out of ideas.”

Takewashi glared at her, jaw set hard. FedInt agents looked urgently to Shin for guidance, for hints of how they might intervene. Shin merely watched, always cautious.

Sandy leaned forward and put her arms on her knees, pistol loose in hand. “If you've set them on my boy,” she said coolly, “if you've made some trouble with the Talee that brings them here and puts Kiril in danger, then you and I will have a real problem. Do you understand?”

It had scared her since she'd known where Kiril's uplinks came from. Takewashi's insider at Chancelry Corporation—Margaritte Karavitis, a mole of his, who Sandy suspected but had never been able to prove had played a key role in Kiril's operation.

“Did you give her the tech?” she persisted. “Karavitis? You had all these pages of Talee manuals you hadn't gotten to yet, or hadn't found a way to make work—that's why there's so many different kinds of synthetic neurology, isn't it? Why I'm a rare and unusual kind, and Ragi's another kind again. And Jane was. More pages in the Talee manual—let's try this one, this one looks like fun. And so another one of us is born and spends an entire life wrestling with the bloody consequences of your curiosity.”

“Cassandra, you don't understand,” Takewashi said sternly. Nearly composed, with effort. “League's use of Talee technology uplinks is causing a neurological and sociological condition, as you know . . . or rather, a neurological condition whose manifestation is only observable in sociological outcomes. A group condition, of transmitting thoughts, of forming collective identities.

“We were working on cures. But we were not working fast enough, so League Gov went to the Torah Systems, to Pantala, where the regulations are . . . less onerous. They were desperate, and still are. You saw the results there, the GIs used for terrible experiments. Synthetic brains are similar enough to human brains that they make a good template to study the technological effects of uplink activity and data-process distribution. I would not allow it!”

His voice shook with anger, his gnarled knuckles tightening upon the cane.

“I would not allow it in my labs, and so they left and took it to Pantala, where the Corporations were beyond my reach. But I had a mole there. Karavitis, a talented researcher. They knew she was mine, but they did not fear me, and valued what information she possessed. My research was advanced, and the Corporations of the Torah Systems have no real knowledge of the information they possess—it is all residual data, their only advantage comes from their utter lack of morals in pursuit of results. Karavitis suggested to them a technique. It is the best thing I have yet developed. My brightest hope. I did not ask that they implant it in a child, but in children it achieves the best results.”

“What is it?” Sandy asked. Takewashi knew better than most what her unwavering stare meant.

“It is . . .” Takewashi exhaled hard and stared down at the floor. “It is something I have not dared to use before now.” He looked up. “Cassandra. You are aware that the Talee are a dual-ELE species?”

Sandy nodded. No surprised looks or frowns from the others. Of course not, they were spies. If the FSA knew, FedInt would know. “Self-inflicted, I know.”

“Twenty years ago,” Takewashi continued, “I had a visit. From a synthetic woman who was not of human construction. You are aware of these individuals.” Again, Sandy nodded. “Fleet and ISO had known of them for some time
before, but this was my first encounter. She warned me that there was one branch of research that I could not explore. That the Talee would make certain would never succeed, should we try. She was quite explicit.

“And so for fifteen years I did as she asked, and avoided the field entirely. Until League's problems began to manifest, and I returned to it. The synthetic neurology involved led me to new uplink technology, which grew by self-analysis and learning. I could not have attempted it twenty years ago even had I tried. But now, the technology has moved along, and whatever its Talee origins, Cassandra, we
do
now understand considerably the fundamentals.”

“So test it on your own damn kids, why don't you?” Sandy replied dangerously.

“I was not able to develop the technology sufficiently to create a working model,” Takewashi said quietly. “But Chancelry succeeded, with Karavitis's help.”

“Were there others? Or was Kiril the only one?”

“There are others,” Takewashi confirmed. “Still in Chancelry custody. All in good health.”

Sandy looked at Kiril. He was quiet in that way he got when adults were having interesting conversations, listening intently. A smart boy, but not so genius-smart that he could join in. Just a regular smart kid, who didn't deserve this. Sandy took a deep breath.

“Why are the Talee trying to kill you?” she asked.

“The technology that I was warned against is feared by the Talee,” Takewashi said sombrely. “They think it responsible for their dual catastrophes. They do not allow anyone to possess it. Amongst their own kind, the punishment for possession or development is death. I was warned that that exclusion would extend to humans too.”

“Oh dear fucking god,” said Shin, and got to his feet to stare out the window, hands on his head. And muttered something else, in Chinese. Otherwise, stunned silence from the spies, if only to see their implacable boss so upset.

“Sandy?” said Kiril, gazing up at her with dawning concern. “Sandy, what does that mean?” Sandy couldn't move. Her heart was thumping, her vision dropped into full multi-spectrum. Ready to fight and move, but with no one to kill.

“But our real problem,” Takewashi continued sombrely, “is that the technology may be the only way of stopping the League's condition. If it works, we can adapt and upgrade the population. But at present, even if we were sure it does work, which we are not, such a policy would bring us into a full-scale war against the Talee, which we would surely lose.”

Shin stood, hands on hips, and looked at Kiril. Kiril now looked a little scared. And not before time either, Sandy thought. She grasped his hand.

“Sir,” said one of the FedInt agents, “if this one boy brings down Talee assassins on our heads . . .” And left the sentence incomplete. Considering the gun in Sandy's hand.

“This one boy,” Ragi said coolly, “could be the best hope of preventing humanity from destroying itself. Why such fear of aliens, when the real monster is ourselves?”

“Yes, Ragi,” Takewashi agreed. “And so I came here, to warn you. League got wind of my departure and wanted it stopped at any cost, given my knowledge, and the blow to League prestige. But what I share with you here is paramount. The Federation must assist the survival of this technology, even should it mean resisting Talee agents. The League insists it does not need Federation help, and fears that Federation help would mean the end of League as a political, independent entity. They may be right. But that has always been secondary to me, against the advancement, and survival, of the human race.”

“There's not another way?” Shin asked. “We have advanced labs, in Tanusha. And funding beyond anything the League could offer, should we offer it. With your help, you could achieve in months what in the League would take years.”

“The advantage of this technology is that its success is already established, amongst the Talee themselves,” said Takewashi. “It is known to work on them but to have deleterious side effects. To develop entire new technologies from scratch is an operation of guesswork and trial that takes unavoidably enormous periods of time. Time that we do not have.”

“What side effects?” Shin pressed. “On the Talee?”

A keening wail filled the room, rising up, then falling down, with full, alien vibrato. The FedInt agents looked at each other. One went to the other room, but the asura were already coming into the main room, loping and circling on sinewy legs. Another let out a wail, like the first, body taut, muzzle
searching the ceiling. The agents looked alarmed. Sandy stood, gesturing for Kiril to stay on the sofa.

Shin pulled out a small handheld radio, the simplest of old-tech, and unhackable. “The asura's upset,” he said shortly. “Anything?”

Another wail from an asura, its diaphragm throbbing. “Everyone's autistic?” Sandy asked in a low voice. Combat mode seemed strange without uplinks, no cross-referencing of data on her sub-visual.

“All uplinks are off,” one of the agents confirmed, weapon out, backing slowly toward a wall. He plucked at the elastic band around his wrist and winced as it snapped his skin. Clever, Sandy thought—Talee-GIs fought by VR, but most straight-human VR failed to accurately replicate pain.

“Kiril's uplinks aren't full emersion-capable,” she said, crouching by the boy. “Kiril, if you see anything, you tell me, yes? Anything that shouldn't be here.”

Kiril nodded fast, looking frightened.

“They can't be here so fast!” Takewashi muttered, still in his chair, having nowhere safer to be. “I had more time!”

“Sandy?” Kiril volunteered nervously. “Cai called me last night.”

Sandy, Shin, and the FedInt agents all stared. “What did he say?” Sandy asked.

Another wail from the asura, circling now by the windows but with eyes still directed to the ceiling. “Just hi,” said Kiril. “I couldn't sleep, and he couldn't sleep either, and he said that maybe I should have a glass of warm milk. But I don't like warm milk very much.”

“Cai?” said Takewashi, frowning. Then with dawning comprehension, “You have Talee agents here
already
?”

Sandy thought furiously. A Talee attack would establish a VR framework around the target, simultaneously fooling it and every system in it that nothing was wrong. Everyone here was autistic, systems allowing no external communication. So the Talee
should
find nothing they could hack into. . . .

Shin's radio crackled. “
We have a cruiser breaking lanes. Hold on
. . .” A whine from beyond the front windows. Sandy looked and saw a flat angle of concrete arising from the front garden wall amidst the sand . . . a defensive mount, on this FedInt property, searching the incoming cruiser. Beneath was a mag-launcher, targeting on an articulated mount.

“Is the defence grid autistic too?” she snapped.

“Yes,” said Shin, “but it's . . .” and looked to the rotating mount out the front windows. “MOVE!”

Sandy grabbed Kiril and threw herself toward the rear wall. All hell exploded about her, high-velocity rounds shredding walls, furniture, people, eardrums. She rolled behind the supporting wall at the rear of the living room, covering Kiril as best she could, then grasping him beneath her as she scrambled on hands and knees for the hall as rounds smashed fist-sized holes in the walls above her.

She glimpsed fast around the corner, saw devastation, white walls sprayed red, Ragi low against one wall with his hand gone, Takewashi still in his chair but missing head and arm. She ducked back as rounds from the emplacement tore across the near wall, just missing Ragi, then swivelled back to some new motion. . . . She leaped up the hall, rolling to collide and slide back-first with a wall, cradling Kiril from the impact, then scrambling again on hand and knees. Grabbed a doorframe one-handed and shoved hard, shooting herself in a power slide up the hall, figuring that if the design of this place was like she suspected, the other hidden entry tunnel would be up this end by the second bathroom. . . .

And here before the bathroom doorway she found a FedInt man crouched, waving frantically to her . . . and just as abruptly his eyes glazed, and his pistol raised straight at her. But he was too close, and Sandy smacked the pistol from his hand with force enough that he gasped and clutched his hand.

“Autistic!” she yelled at him. “Autistic or they'll hack you!”

“I wasn't . . . I mean I didn't . . .”

And she dove into the bathroom, aware that someone else was following—a wall in the shower stall was false, and she ducked through and down stairs three then five at a time, then a corner at the bottom and running in the dark. A sprint, clutching Kiril, reminding herself not to do that too hard, usually even her subconscious combat-mode brain could still recall to do that.