Sandy raised her hand. Thiaw stopped, hands frozen in mid sentence. When she was sure she had their complete attention, Sandy spoke. "The mindless, headkicking grunt portion of my brain just lost you. How does any of this affect me and my situation?" Rafasan, she noted, cocked her head in curiosity at that turn of phrase. As if impressed, and surprised to be so. Thiaw took another deep breath and threw Rafasan a brief, reproachful look. It had all fallen apart since her interruption, obviously, all his carefully planned explanation. The technocrat and the spin-doctor. Not a good match. But they seemed to know each other well.
"Cassandra," Thiaw resumed with long-suffering patience, "the Senate Security Council are concerned at your presence. You are a GI. Right?" Eyebrows raised expectantly. Inviting revelation. Sandy frowned. "Cassandra, you're in the Federation now. People here don't like GIs much. We fought a war about it with the League, precisely to stop the spread of Gl-oriented technology. In many ways it's the fundamental ideological split between the Federation and the League ..."
"No it's not," Sandy replied calmly, "it's just the most obvious manifestation. League progress-or-bust triumphalism goes all the way to the bone. GIs are only the main area of dispute ... if not for that, there would be others."
"Fine, right, sure, whatever." Rafasan, Sandy noticed, was eyeing her colleague with increasing bemusement, some of the nervousness fading. "The point is, Cassandra, that the President's own party are putting pressure on her, since that courtroom hearing, to hand you on to the Feds. Over Director Ibrahim's objections. If you don't prove more cooperative than you have, then we're going to run out of excuses to keep you here on Callay, and then you'll get handed over to some Federal party who'll take you to Earth, where old mentalities are strongest, and where the FIA has most power, and where you're no damn good to Callay or the CSA in trying to find the bastards who've penetrated our security and could easily do so again. Does that make sense to you?"
It did. She stared at Thiaw for a moment, perched on the edge of his chair, eyebrows raised expectantly, looking pained. Rafasan, too, looked subdued, glancing at her lap with a resumption of bangle-fiddling.
"I've already given you a whole stack of information from League Intel on the FIA's own biotech research," she challenged half-heartedly. "Mr Naidu was very impressed."
"Yes, and I thank you for that, Cassandra, that's valuable background information ... much of it we already knew, but it certainly filled in the gaps. But we need operational detail. We need to know the specific operational details as to how the League is infiltrating local biotech firms, how the FIA are doing it, and on the possibility that they might be working together on this. And you've refused any detailed questioning on those matters, haven't you."
Sandy gazed back at the TV. A tennis ball spun backwards and forwards over the net. She had refused it. Repeatedly. And if they were speculating on complicity between the League and the FIA, supposedly the worst of enemies ... then they were evidently quite advanced in their research. She sent the TV a mental signal, and the screen went blank. But still, she had her reasons.
"Okay," she said, quietly. "How do I know that if I help you, I'll get something for it? That I won't just get carted off to wherever as soon as you've milked me of everything I know?"
"We're working on getting you a firm guarantee from Justice Guderjaal," Rafasan said. "If you cooperate, we can ..."
"You're working?" Fixing Rafasan with a firm, hard gaze. Rafasan looked desperately at Thiaw.
"Cassandra," Thiaw said earnestly, "it's the best we can do under the present circumstances. There are legal precedents for services rendered to Callay. Asylum of sorts has been granted under those circumstances, right?" At Rafasan. The legal advisor nodded quickly.
"Of course, absolutely. There are numerous cases, most of them regarding far less vital information than we presently require from you ..."
"You'd grant asylum to a GI?" Staring very directly. The lawyer met her gaze with commendable conviction.
"Legally ... well, it would, um ..." flick at one elaborate earring, "... it would be an adventure. But Callayan law on the recognition of artificial sentience is actually very advanced. I'm ... I'm actually quite confident, in all honesty, that if the process went to trial, you could definitely achieve asylum. Of some kind." Rearranging bangles on the other wrist. Despite the fidgets, Sandy nearly believed her. Nearly.
"And that," she said dryly, "is of course why all the cultural conservatives are so scared of letting me stay on that long, isn't it? They're scared I might win."
Dead silence from them both. Evidently not having expected that much insight. She didn't know the details. But she could think. And she could guess. It had always been her strong point. Now, a whole range of unpleasant possibilities were opening up before her.
"Do I really have a chance?" she asked, into that silence. "If I cooperate?"
"If the information you provide leads directly to the capture of some of the FIA infiltrators," Thiaw said, and shrugged, "of course, definitely, your chances then are extremely high."
"Despite the fact that my revealing League military secrets will attract the attention of all the top Federal military, political and security apparatus, FIA and otherwise, who will all demand access to me and my knowledge, and will use some overriding Federal security law to get past any temporary asylum that Callay might offer me. They do have those kinds of overriding security laws, don't they?" she asked Rafasan. Rafasan glanced distractedly out the broad windows, and the sunny sprawl of the metropolis beyond. Nodded, reluctantly. "Then I'll want something more watertight than what you're offering before I tell you anything. Otherwise, opening my mouth any further is only going to land me in even bigger trouble."
"Cassandra," Thiaw pressed, "your trouble doesn't get any bigger. If you don't cooperate fully, Cassandra, then the political implications for you are ... well, they're not good. Right now it only looks like you're protecting someone ..."
"Damn right I'm protecting someone," Sandy cut in, with a hard stare and cooling voice. "Me. I know some basics about Federation security laws. Like Federal security in general, it takes precedence over the security of member worlds like Callay. That means they can declare me a Federal security asset or risk at any time and whip me off to Earth, and there's not a damn thing you or any of your puny local laws can do about it."
"And," Thiaw shot back, "you'll end up there anyway if you don't help us. Your one chance is to help us catch the FIA infiltrators here, and hope that that builds up enough local support for you in the corridors of power that..."
"With all respect, Mr Thiaw," Sandy said coldly, "but you can't be fucking serious." She could feel her stomach tightening, a painful cramping through the bandages. "Politicians here are going to overlook the mass anti-GI panic out there because they feel grateful to me?"
She hadn't wanted this at all. To become a political pawn. To get caught up in the doubtless labyrinthine machinations of the Callayan corridors of power, and all the populist nonsense that went with it. To be backed into a corner, forced to tell more of what she knew, knowing this would cause trouble ... so much damn trouble that she didn't want to contemplate it, it went too deep, and stretched too far into matters that she knew far too little about. She was feeling increasingly lost and threatened in the whole calamitous mess ...
Thiaw sighed, oblivious to her growing anxiety, shoulders slumping.
"Cassandra ... why don't you just think about it, huh?" He gave her a wry, winsome smile. "I'll be frank. We need to catch these FIA. The Security Council is increasingly alarmed, as are the President's more predictable opponents ... and we need to catch them soon. You think about it. I'll call on you again soon, once you've had some time to consider your options."
He rose to his feet, looking deflated, and Rafasan made to follow...
"Wait." They both paused. Sandy gazed past them at the far wall. Uncertain of what she was doing. She was confused. Frightened even. But not just for herself. "Sit down."
They sat. Sandy gazed at the wall for an indeterminate moment. Wondering if she was about to sign her own effective warrant to bureaucratic hell. But she was running out of alternatives. Had, in fact, run out of alternatives long, long ago. Only now was she starting to realise it. She hated bureaucracy. Here, with its links to alien, populist politics in a society that actively disliked and distrusted GIs and advanced synthetic-replication biotechnology itself, it made her nervous in the extreme. But she was here now. She could not escape it. She was in the game, for good. Once in it, she had to learn to play within the rules. It was a slim chance. But it was the only chance she had. She switched her gaze to Thiaw. Thiaw looked back expectantly. Poor guy, she thought. You're in for it now.
"This is how it works," she said quietly. "The League have an official policy of changing the Federation from the inside. League theory on modern human evolution dominates all policy, including security. Market- and demand-driven forces cannot be challenged, cultural resistance just creates temporary hiccups. They're all convinced the Federation will embrace advanced biotech eventually, it's just a matter of time. They try to push the process along by feeding advanced biotech to various plants within the Tanushan BT industry. But you know all that.
"The FIA benefit from this too—they're pragmatists, they view GIs in particular as the League's primary strategic advantage and thus the Federation's primary threat. Federation biotech restrictions mean they're unable to carry out their own research ... legally. And so, in this case, and several others I've read about on League Intel reports, they've teamed up and are effectively working together—the FIA gains invaluable data, and the League gets to spread the advanced biotech gospel through the Tanushan private sector, which is where all the illegal research is based. Got that?"
Thiaw blinked. Doubtless he'd heard it all hypothesised before. To hear it direct from someone who knew ... the cameras were recording. Everything she said was being recorded. In this room, everything always was.
"Now the FIA have abducted me. Whole stacks of research right there. I'm experimental, obviously. Something of a gold mine for them, I'm sure." She took a deep breath, not liking where these conclusions were logically taking her. "Only in doing so they've brought the CSA down on their heads. Their mission could easily have been compromised. The way they planned it, with the whitecoats you captured, it looks like they figured being caught was inevitable. Which means they're prepared for it. Which means they'll start shutting things down before the CSA gets to them, now that the CSA knows where to look. When the mission gets compromised, there's a withdrawal procedure. It's what the Intels call an MEK application ... Most Extreme Kind. If it gets activated here, in this city, you'll know about it. Believe me. If the League's here too, I'd look for something heavy. Possibly GIs. But I'm just guessing, I've never been involved with anything like that myself. My superiors kept me well away from covert stuff ... probably they were worried I'd be contaminated by too much civilian contact and wouldn't want to fight any more. And they'd have been right too."
Thiaw stared at her for a long moment. Rafasan too. No one spoke.
Then, "Heavy?" Thiaw asked, cautiously. "You think the League has a presence here too? For this ... this escape clause? How heavy?"
"The FIA would be orchestrating it," Sandy replied tonelessly. "They're the ones with the inside knowledge. As for how heavy ..." She shrugged. "... it's the FIA. Go figure."
"The FIA are ... are ..." Rafasan waved a beringed hand in search of the appropriate term. "... well, they're not exactly civilised, and I know they've been out in the dark for a long time, what with the war and the secrecy legislation enforced over such wide distances and dubious regulatory mechanisms ... but, I mean, they're a legal entity!" With some indignation, although at precisely what, Sandy could not tell. "Surely there are some limits on their behaviour?"
"Ms Rafasan," Sandy said dryly, "I've been privy to things that go on in areas of space no Federation official ever sees reports on or is encouraged to care about. You'd be amazed. Truly amazed, I assure you." The assertion met with no response. Outside the room, Sandy was certain there would be commotion, calls being made. Doubtless a whole further mass of officialdom would descend on her in short order. Well, at least she'd done something. Tired of being drugged and prodded, she'd kicked back. Now let them panic, she thought darkly. She only hoped that throwing the proverbial shit so directly at the fan did not spray too much of it back into her face. But it was a civilian city. Anything seemed possible.
* * * *
"There," said Dr Djohan, cutting away the last bandage from around her knee. Probed and prodded at the joint for a moment, tapping the kneecap experimentally, fingering recently separated skin. It would show him nothing that sonic-mapping had not already displayed through the bandages, Sandy knew. He then stood back to examine her from a greater distance, arms folded with some satisfaction. Flat on her back, fully restrained and totally naked, Sandy was not entirely sure exactly what he was looking at.
"Can I get up now?" she asked mildly. Djohan actually blushed. She saw it on heat scan.
"Yes, yes, of course." He rapped himself absently on the head and stepped quickly to the door on his small legs. Sandy watched him go. Strange little man, she thought, partway between sarcasm and curiosity. The door closed behind him, locks snapping. A moment later the restraints automatically released and she eased herself up on the bed.
Her joints hurt. Most of her did, a dull, aching, multi-level pain. She stretched a leg out before her and looked at it. There was a clear red line about the knee, around the top of the kneecap, raised in a small ridge. She touched it. Probed with both hands. Nothing hurt. Everything was more or less where she remembered it to be. The underside tendons were sore and twinged unpleasantly when she flexed. Her other knee was much the same.
And it hit her, suddenly, what had happened ... she squeezed her eyes shut, very hard, attempting to fight off the surge of horrid memory. She had been a special forces soldier. She had seen terrible things in the war. Operating theatres were not strange places to any GI, least of all one with her experience, for both battlefield injury and surgical upgrade as League biotechnology had improved. She recalled the familiar, antiseptic stench, remembering previous occasions when she had smelt the same ... she had to cope with it. She had no other choice but to cope. She was a GI, after all, and unlike a regular human she could deal with such things. Physically, at least. Mentally ... was another question. But she knew her physical nature. She knew she could endure, and recover. She knew that even the physical scars would be gone in time. She held to that thought with firm determination and resolved to be what she was and do what she knew best. To be a soldier, and cope.
The procession of CSA interrogators had receded at last, finally convinced she had nothing left to tell them. Which was good, because she didn't. She stood now, legs wide apart and cautious of her balance, before the apartment windows. She ached. A strange, all-over ache that throbbed and pulsed through her very bones. That was good. Very good, in fact—it meant that the systems were knitting together once more, responding to each other as any organism's would in full health. If she shifted balance from one leg to the other too fast she would get a shooting pain through a knee, or a hip, sometimes racing with electric reflex up her spine and shoulders. But that was good too. Dr Djohan told her so. And she believed him.
Outside, it was another stunningly clear, blue-skied, sunny day. She was located, she'd gathered, in the district of Largos, just south of mid-western Tanusha. One district looked more or less like another, however. Only the bends in nearby river tributaries and the location of distinctive building landmarks told the difference. Her building was just beyond the periphery of a business-district hub, she'd gathered, but facing outwards. Before her sprawled an unobstructed view across open, low-density suburbia swathed in spreading greenery. Several kilometres beyond, another hub, a rising cluster of buildings haphazardly flanking a huge, gleaming mega-rise. Mid-rises sprawled about more
built-up urbanity, following a river course, and another soaring mega-rise, then gave way to suburbia again. And on and on the patterns stretched, across all the visible cityscape. There was a lot of cityscape visible. In Tanusha there always was.
The questioning had been intense. She reflected over the day's interrogation, since her revelations to Thiaw and Rafasan yesterday. Evidently she'd made some people nervous. And right that they should be. But even she did not know what was coming. If anything. It was all a mystery to her too, this covert ops—as she'd told Thiaw and Rafasan, and all subsequent interviewers, she only knew as much as she'd gathered from a distance. And a disinterested distance at that. She'd had better things to worry about back in Dark Star. Like keeping her team alive from one mission to the next.
She needed to move. Desperately. Thankfully, someone had set up an exercise bike further along the windows for exactly that purpose. She slipped carefully out of her bathrobe and into the comfortable tracksuit that that same person had thoughtfully slung across the bike seat, then climbed on.
She was still pedalling a half hour later when Naidu walked in.
"Cassandra," he announced, loudly over the noise of the African rhythms thumping from the stereo, "I need to talk to you."
"Sure." Leaning on the handlebars, legs going round in steady circles in time with the rhythm. "Turn the music down if you like." Naidu went and did that—some straights had hearing augmentation, she knew, but it usually failed to reach her extremes. The music faded and Naidu walked back over. He looked as rumpled as ever, jacket open, longish hair straggling about the collar. Age was of course always difficult to tell, thanks to technology. She judged he could be at least eighty. He had that slightly worn, weathered look about his broad, brown features. He stopped by the sofa, arms folded as he gave her a critical looking-over.
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