Marque of Caine

by Charles E Gannon

  Riordan followed at a distance. “So the Collective doesn’t approve of secret organizations or activities. Sounds like I’m risking expulsion just by being here.”

  Alnduul stopped, folded his long, thin hands. “Today’s activity is not prohibited. And I am not pursuing it in cooperation with any other Dornaani except Thlunroolt.”

  Riordan looked around at Alnduul’s almost archetypal secret hideout. “Then why all this?”

  “Just because today’s activities are not prohibited does not mean that I welcome scrutiny. You have a saying: to ‘fly under the radar’? That is what I am doing.”

  Riordan looked up into the soaring darkness. “You most certainly are.”

  * * *

  After all the not-quite-skullduggery of their journey, Alnduul’s hidden facility was distinctly anticlimactic: another smooth-cornered room with few appointments.

  Thlunroolt was already there, sitting behind a ubiquitous crescent-shaped desk and control center. He raised a hand, let his fingers trail through the air like loosely jointed chopsticks. “Welcome, Caine Riordan. I am glad you sustained your resolve to participate.”

  Caine smiled. “Well, it’s not like I really know what I’ve resolved to do.”

  But Thlunroolt’s attention had—conveniently? pointedly?—returned to the controls before him.

  Alnduul led Riordan to a human chair positioned in front of an equally human desk. There was a streamlined HUD unit on it, sized for a human head. Riordan picked it up, turned a questioning look at Alnduul.

  “Yes. Please put it on.”

  Riordan ensured it fit snugly. “Now what?”

  “Can you see the chair?”

  Riordan looked down. “Yes. But nothing else. Not even my own feet.”

  “That is as it should be. The rest of the scene will fade in when we begin. For now, be seated and relax.”

  “It would be easier to relax if I know what I’m expected to do.”

  “I would like you to conduct an interview.”

  “Of you?”

  “No. We are simply asking you to use the skills you acquired as a defense journalist, and to ask the questions that we have prepared for you.”

  “You know I only did this a few times, right? I mostly did field research, spoke to a few people off camera, read a lot of briefs, wrote up my analysis.”

  “I am aware. Your skills and natural aptitudes are more than adequate for today’s activity.”

  Damn, I travel fifty light-years to reprise the gig I hated the most? That’s fate for you. “When do we start?”

  “Now.”

  The HUD functioned similarly to old-fashioned VR goggles. The cream-nothingness of the null-image became a little more grainy, then shapes started emerging from it: a tan leather recliner, a hazy window, white drapes rippling in a breeze too light to feel, a hint of clear blue sky beyond. It wasn’t virtuality, not even close. It was a minimalist dreamscape, softened by a layer of gauze. But no interview subject.

  “Alnduul, where’s the—?”

  “Please! Do not speak, except to the subject. That is imperative.”

  Yeah, but there’s no subject. So who do I—?

  And then there was a hazy figure in the recliner: a tall man, but his clothes were a bit baggy, as if he had lost weight since first wearing them. So, old or possibly infirm. The resolution of the image swam and then suddenly sharpened.

  Caine gasped.

  “Hello,” said the face of Nolan Corcoran.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  APRIL 2124

  ROOAIOO’Q, BD +66 582

  Riordan could hardly think through the surprise. Not until the image of Corcoran smiled one of his avuncular smiles—my God, it’s just like him!—and urged, “You can start any time you like.”

  Riordan swallowed; his throat felt like old leather rubbing across older leather. He coughed, glanced down, discovered a virtual data slate on a virtual table. Okay, I’ve got a script. That will help. “It’s quite an honor to interview you, Admiral Corcoran. Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”

  Corcoran smiled, his salt-and-pepper eyebrows crinkling. “My pleasure. Where would you like to start?”

  Riordan forced himself to take a deep breath. The voice, the face, the small gestures, the nuanced shift between facial expressions that were as unique to Nolan Corcoran as his fingerprints…Christ, how do they do this? “So, how…how about telling us something about yourself that we probably don’t know?”

  Corcoran rubbed his chin. “Well, to do that, I need to know what your readers are likely to know about my career.”

  Riordan realized that he would get through this interview if he followed two strategies. Firstly, not to look at the Corcoran-image for more than two or three seconds at a time. Second, redirect that focus to the script. “Our audience will surely be familiar with your roles in the Highground War, the Belt Wars, and particularly, the mission to intercept the Doomsday Rock. And almost as many will remember your name in conjunction with the subsequent military initiatives that made the UCAS the CTR’s preeminent space power, and ultimately, transformed humanity into a starfaring race.”

  “Well, it’s very kind of you to think so, but I doubt that my name is as closely associated with those activities as you presume.”

  “On the contrary, yours is the name most associated with them. But today we’re hoping to get a different, more personal sense of who Nolan Corcoran really is. So, let’s try this approach, instead: which of your activities, including those of which we are not aware, are you the most proud of?”

  “You mean, aside from my children?”

  Riordan didn’t have to fake the script-cued laugh. “I wasn’t aware they were part of your resume.”

  “They aren’t. And frankly, they are not the outcomes of my efforts.” The Corcoran simulacrum frowned, interlaced his creased fingers tightly. “After learning that the Doomsday Rock had been pushed at us by exosapients, my life was no longer my own. Which means I was not present for my children or wife anywhere near as much as I wanted—as I needed—to be. So when it comes to my greatest sources of pride—Elena and Trevor—all the credit goes to my wife Patrice, who somehow managed to be both an all-star physician and family locus. She was the glue that held us all together.” His head sagged wearily. “So I’m not proud of what I did as a father and a husband. I’m proud that my family thrived in my absence.”

  Riordan scanned the next line, felt his heart sink further. My God, do I really have to ask him this? “It sounds as though you’re ambivalent about your life’s work.”

  Corcoran forced himself to look up, unfolded his hands. “I think we can safely call that an understatement.”

  “Then I wonder if you wouldn’t mind telling us what aspect of your career you feel most ambivalent about?”

  Corcoran’s chin came up; his voice was sharp. “Circumventing due process.”

  Riordan would have asked the next question even if he hadn’t been prompted. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Circumventing due process,” Corcoran repeated firmly. “I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. But when you take that oath, you never envision that you might wind up not merely authorized, but mandated, to suppress facts, avoid ready accountability, create the illusion of transparency where none exists, and just plain lie. All at the behest of my Commander-in-Chief, mind you, with a unanimous sign-off from the Joint Chiefs. All approved by the relevant Senate subcommittees.

  “But none of that removes the raw reality of looking in the mirror every day and asking, ‘How is it that I am fulfilling my oath of service by doing all the things I swore not to do?’” Corcoran sighed deeply. “And of all the circumvention and clandestine misrepresentation I had to carry out, the case of Caine Riordan is right at the top of my list of regrets.”

  Riordan could barely keep reading ahead on the dataslate. How can this be happening?

  There was sudden sound in the actual room behind him
, as though Alnduul had raced over to Thlunroolt and was now whispering urgently.

  In the HUD, the copy on the dataslate altered, then flashed red three times. Riordan choked back a rush of tangled emotions—surprise, confusion, indignation, but most of all, mourning—and refocused on following the script. “I can see that this is a sensitive topic for you. However, it’s also a natural segue into a related question that I’m sure you were expecting.

  “Specifically, your detractors charge that you not only used information control and influence peddling to manipulate organizations, corporations, and even governments, but also to maintain one of the longest conspiracies on record: concealing the existence of an extraterrestrial threat. How would you respond?”

  Corcoran sat straighter; there was no longer anything casual in his expression or his voice. “Well, firstly, I was in charge of a ‘covert operation,’ not a ‘conspiracy,’ and there is a profound distinction between the two. I was not operating as a rogue agent nor against the orders or interests of the United States of America. In the wake of the evidence discovered on the surface of the Doomsday Rock, a top-secret collective was created to coordinate global intel containment and assessment: the Institute for Reconnaissance, Intelligence and Security. Its formation and mandates were expressly ordered by the Executive Branch, following unanimous recommendations by a blue-ribbon panel from the Senate Near Earth-approaching Asteroid Response subcommittee, chaired by Arvid Tarasenko. Within five years, IRIS had official buy-in and clandestine assistance from the European Union, the Russian Federation, and select elements of what later became the Trans-Oceanic Commercial and Industrial Organization.”

  Riordan discovered that his emotional discomfort was rapidly giving way to intense curiosity: he’d guessed at the origins of IRIS, but had never had them confirmed. Although I’m presuming the simulacrum will be as accurate about that topic as it’s been about the others. “Let’s go back a moment. Arvid Tarasenko was a friend from your days at the Naval Academy, correct?”

  “Correct. And once our activities became a matter of public record a lot of people misconstrued my work with him as evidence of some kind of ‘Bilderbergers in the Making’ relationship.”

  “Which your critics have since done. Repeatedly.”

  Corcoran nodded. “Naturally. However, that’s putting the cart in front of the horse. Arvid and I were not late-met schemers who fell upon an opportunity to power. We were old friends who could trust each other and were in the right places to support any initiatives that accelerated Earth’s accrual of the advances it would need to survive.”

  Riordan frowned. What the hell are the Dornaani after with these questions, or with having them answered by this simulacrum they’ve concocted? “As I’m sure you are aware, your detractors prefer the first interpretation of your relationship with Tarasenko: that you were power-seeking illuminati.”

  Corcoran’s smile was rueful. “I’m sure they do. It makes for better copy. But if they stopped to think through the details, they might find some contradictions that they’d be at pains to explain away.” The simulacrum stopped, frowned, seemed puzzled. “I must admit, though, that I can’t remember the specific accusations of those detractors. Or their identities. But, er, your report of their existence doesn’t surprise me. It’s just that I, I—”

  The HUD blanked to white.

  Riordan started, ripped off the headset, jumped up. “What just happened?” Then, flooding in behind the disappointment of having Nolan taken away all over again, was a wash of horror at the technology that had brought his simulated ghost to life. “Why the hell are you doing this?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  APRIL 2124

  ROOAIOO’Q, BD +66 582

  Alnduul approached Riordan, hands outstretched. “We simply terminated the simulation. There is no problem—”

  “No problem?” Riordan stalked toward the Dornaani, who stopped, retreated a step. “This whole simulation is a problem! An atrocity! Where…how the hell did you—?”

  Thlunroolt’s voice was loud. “Calm yourself, human. I can—”

  “You can shut the fuck up, you smug bastard,” Caine shouted, then closed with Alnduul. “Downing let you bury Nolan in space. Because you said you revered him.” Caine felt his hands balling up, didn’t care. “This…this is reverence?”

  Alnduul stood his ground. Thlunroolt was reaching for something under the table.

  Without looking at the old Dornaani, Riordan snapped, “If you put your hand on a weapon, you’d better be ready to use it.”

  “You are overwrought,” Thlunroolt said quietly, withdrawing his hand. “You are not thinking clearly.”

  “I’m thinking clearly enough to tell you this: I’m done nodding at your evasions and half-truths and I’m done smiling through your condescension. But you are right about one thing: as a human, I’m extremely—excessively—proactive. So if you want to be on the receiving end of that, just keep pushing me.”

  “I deserve that remonstrance,” Thlunroolt said quietly. “But threatening and harming us will achieve nothing. Except that it will end Elena Corcoran’s only foreseeable hope of going home.”

  “Screw that,” Caine bluffed. “Assuming I can find her and wake her up, what do I tell her? That you’re building an electronic freak show with her dad as the prime attraction? If I haven’t turned this place into a crater, she’d come do it herself.”

  Alnduul swallowed. “Caine. I am sorry. There was no other way to expose you to the simulacrum.”

  Riordan leaned forward sharply. “You know, I’m also done accepting that same bullshit excuse. Of course there was another way: you could have warned me. Or didn’t that occur to any of you superbeings?”

  Alnduul folded his hands. “Informing participants in advance of a simulacrum’s first exposure to them is catastrophically counterproductive. Every time.”

  Riordan wanted to stay angry, wanted to have someone to blame, but Alnduul’s statement and tone were too earnest, even miserable, to ignore. “Explain that.”

  “The first activation of a simulacrum has to be with someone that it recognizes and who recognizes them in return. However, the participant must not expect the encounter. It is their surprise which compels the simulacrum to begin reintegrating its memories in order to sustain and clarify the interaction. And, in the process, it initiates the creation of new memories.

  “On the other hand, if participants are informed about their ‘meeting’ with the simulacrum beforehand, they invariably treat it like a fragile patient that must not be disturbed, alarmed, or challenged. And for every minute that a freshly awakened simulacrum is coddled, it is at an increasing risk of deconstructing itself.”

  Riordan frowned. “So this is why you mentioned the observer effect.”

  Thlunroolt opened his hands widely. “Precisely. If the participant behaves in a normative fashion, the simulacrum is too busy reacting to the surprise and new stimuli to detect the initial gaps in its own data template, which will fill in soon enough. Conversely, if the simulacrum is protected from strong external stimuli and challenges, that allows it to turn inward, where it quickly discovers those gaps. That initiates a self-assessment cascade that destroys the nascent homeostatic matrix.”

  “Which is, in plain English…?”

  Alnduul glanced at Thlunroolt before he replied. “It is the interactive and self-learning core of the simulacrum’s pseudo-consciousness.”

  “Pseudo-consciousness”? Either that’s psychobabble or this is a lot more sophisticated and troubling than I thought. “If you want me to remain calm, you’re going to give me a one sentence answer—in plain language—to each of the following questions. What is this simulacrum, really? How did you make it? And what is its purpose?”

  Alnduul’s inner nictating lids fluttered before he answered. “This simulacrum is a partial artificial mind. It was made by accessing Nolan Corcoran’s own memories and cognitive template. And its purpose—my purpose—is to make amends for ca
using his death.”

  Wait: what? “You didn’t have anything to do with Nolan’s death. He was killed by a Ktoran agent. Probably Tlerek Srin Shethkador.” Although I sure wish we knew how he did it.

  Alnduul’s fingers drooped. “The Ktoran assassination was merely an indirect symptom of a greater disease: our—my—inaction. You have seen and lamented it yourself, Caine Riordan: how late we Custodians were in intervening during the invasion of Earth, and how little we were allowed to do. Even Nolan Corcoran’s photographs of the mass-driver mooring points on the Doomsday Rock were dismissed as ‘inconclusive.’”

  “Had we contacted Earth when we should have, and had we protected your species as was our Custodial duty, the Ktor would never have had a reason to silence Corcoran. Our arrival would have made obvious all that he was forced to conceal and which they hoped to silence, or at least derail, with his death.”

  Riordan felt his anger being eroded by Alnduul’s bitter self-recriminations, of the obvious pain he felt over losing Corcoran, a man he had never even met. But still, this damn simulacrum— “You still haven’t explained how you created such an accurate imitation of Nolan, right down to the way he talks and acts in private.”

  “There was no need to create an ‘imitation,’ Caine Riordan. We have a complete recording of all Nolan Corcoran’s significant behaviors, habits of thought, memories, and knowledge.”

  Riordan wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “A recording…from where?”

  “From the organism we insinuated into his chest after the coronary damage he sustained while intercepting the Doomsday Rock. As I told you after Convocation.”

  Riordan lowered himself back into the chair. “So, for over thirty years, you were—what? Recording all Nolan’s thoughts?”