The Phoenix Law

by Cate Dermody

  “Then you should have become a doctor and worked on vaccines,” Alisha heard herself say. “Those drones were built to be killing machines. You used lethal weapons as their first line of defense.”

  “They have non-lethal capabilities—”

  “Give me a break, Brandon.” Alisha whipped the words out. “They only opt for non-lethal force if the target appears to be a child. I should know. Do you have the codes?”

  “What? No, I—”

  “Get them.” Alisha stood up, shoving her chair back with her knees. People looked her way, then averted their eyes at the display of temper. Very English of them, Alisha thought. Very proper. “Get them now.”

  “How—”

  Alisha slapped her hands on the table as she leaned forward, getting her face into Brandon’s. “Use Lilith,” she said through her teeth. “Use Erika. I don’t know, Brandon. I don’t care. I want those codes. You’ll tell me where the production facilities are, and we will leave for that location in six hours, with those codes in hand.”

  “What are you go—”

  “I’m going to go get Frank,” Alisha snarled.

  “Why do you think he’s—”

  “Because.” Alisha straightened up, feeling as if fury blazed from her in waves of heat. “Every goddamned time something’s gone wrong in the last two years, the dagger people have been behind it.” She spoke in a low, fast voice, giving the Sicarii their literal translation instead of naming the organization aloud. “They almost got my family. They almost certainly have Reichart. You’re going to help me put it right, Brandon, or so help me God, you’re going to pay for it with your life. Six hours. You have six hours.”

  “Alisha,” Brandon came to his feet as well, stepping so close they barely spoke above whispers. “Lilith needs a huge amount of processing power to run. I’d need access to one of my own systems, with the quantum chips, or an array of Crays. I just don’t have the resources to do what you’re asking.”

  Emma said, “I do.”

  Alisha and Brandon both went still, argument arrested by surprise.

  “I work for the Research Councils,” Emma went on. “I have access to the UK’s most powerful supercomputer.”

  Brandon caught his breath, admiration in the sound.

  “That’s not what you were doing five years ago,” Alisha said, accusation clear in her tone. She coughed, trying to modify the censure, and Emma turned an amused look on her.

  “I’ve moved up since then.”

  Alisha waved a hand in apology, color curdling her cheeks. “Sorry. I haven’t been keeping tabs.”

  “Because you didn’t consider me a threat, or because you did?” Emma asked lightly.

  Alisha exhaled something that was almost a laugh, a private admission that she didn’t know the answer.

  Emma let the question go, looking back at Brandon. “Having access to that sort of computing power is one thing,” she murmured. “Overtaking that many resources on no notice is something else. What reason would I give my employers for allowing that to happen?”

  Alisha heard the underlying question as distinctly as if it had been spoken aloud: What is Lilith, and what do I gain from introducing it to my people?

  But Brandon was already shaking his head. “I can’t. I can’t risk exposing her like that.”

  “What are you going to do, Brandon?” Alisha’s voice was low and angry with no attempt at modulation, her concern for Reichart and her frustration over the entire scenario outweighing a usual tendency toward discretion. “Are you going to leave her in a box indefinitely? Protect her by not letting her grow? If you’ve done what you said you have, you can’t keep her locked up, Brandon.”

  Brandon’s gaze slid toward Alisha, laden with warning, but before he spoke, Emma took in a slow, delighted breath and whispered, “Oh, I see. Yes. They’ll give me the processing time, regardless of what gets delayed.”

  Anger flashed in Brandon’s eyes and Alisha lifted her eyebrows slightly, daring him to speak. After a few seconds he turned back to Emma, whose expression was alight with anticipation. “I’m right, aren’t I?” she asked. “You have an artificial intelligence. More than just that.” She didn’t say the last word aloud, sentient, but it hung in the air as loudly as if it had been spoken.

  “Damned spies,” Brandon muttered, disregarding his own history as one. “You have to get to the bottom of everything.”

  “We’ll want access to the source code,” Emma said. “Copies for ourselves, and a copy of the functioning AI.”

  “Like hell,” Brandon snapped. “She’s not a tool to be copied and modified. She’s an intelligent being. Trading facsimiles is slave trading. I won’t do it.”

  “She’s an amorphous intelligence bound by the limitations of her environment,” Emma retorted.

  “And you’re not?” The sharpness in Brandon’s voice was real, Alisha realized. His defense of the artificial intelligence he’d brought to life was genuine, his belief in it incontestable. Lilith lived, so far as he was concerned, and treating her as anything other than—Alisha hesitated at the word, then found no other to suit—human was tantamount to judging someone by the color of his skin or by her religion. Her own hard rage subsided a little, leaving her studying him with a curiosity still tinged with anger. He’d made mistakes, but his avid defense of the AI reminded Alisha that to err was, after all, only human.

  “Perhaps we could continue this conversation elsewhere,” she interjected. “Like, on the way to Emma’s computer lab.”

  “Alisha, I can’t just let them have—”

  “On the road, Brandon. We’ll discuss it on the road.”

  “Why not let her decide for herself?”

  Emma had put forth the question so abruptly it stopped the argument that had gone on since leaving the café. Dismay and acceptance had flitted across Brandon’s face in equal measures, as sure a sign of defeat as anything. It was, Alisha thought, a reasonable suggestion, and a man so dedicated to the defense of his creation as an autonomous being was hard-pressed to find an argument that favored constraining Lilith’s ability to choose.

  The lab had been emptied by the time they arrived, testimony to Emma’s position in the organization. Disgruntled scientists given an afternoon off had left the building sullenly, glaring at the interlopers who stole precious computing time. Brandon had offered apologetic smiles, and Alisha had ignored the displaced workers with a coldness that disturbed her. They were pawns in the path of her objective, and she had neither interest nor sympathy for them. All that mattered was finding Reichart, and through him, a way to keep her family safe.

  No matter what it took. That thought, too, was cold and hard. Alisha didn’t like recognizing that in herself, but couldn’t bring herself to shake it. Not yet. Maybe there would be time later, when her goals had been met.

  Or maybe she’d finally broken that last barrier, the one the CIA had tried so hard to drill into her. Compartmentalization of emotion, in order to protect herself, her assets, the Company itself. It was a job, not personal.

  No, Alisha decided. Personalizing the issue made it easier to be cold and if necessary, brutal. It was always when it was personal, for her, that the barrier did break down. When she’d faced Brandon Parker in Rome, the night she’d learned about the Sicarii, she’d gone in with the intention of arresting him or worse, and had struggled to push through the chill that had settled on her. She’d wanted it to hurt, she remembered. Fighting Frank Reichart in Moscow only days later, she’d thought she’d lost her very soul when cold, dead impartiality had settled over her. Only when it was personal could she reach that distant, analytical state, and usually she hated it. But danger had never struck so close to home before. She had chosen to bargain with her own life when she joined the Agency. Her family, her nephews, had never been given such a choice, and Alisha could think of nothing she wouldn’t do to protect them from the world she’d tried to leave behind.

  Brandon’s, “All right, she’s online,” brou
ght Alisha out of her reverie. The programmer and Emma had been tossing cryptic phrases and instructions back and forth with the ease of long-time partners, and while Alisha knew she could reach into memory and repeat the words back verbatim, she hadn’t understood much of it, and therefore hadn’t actively listened.

  “How do we communicate with her?”

  “If there’s a screen handy I can create an image of myself on it,” a startlingly cheerful woman’s voice offered.

  Alisha startled, trying not to look around for the source. “Lilith?”

  “At your service. I haven’t really got the facial-pattern-recognition thing worked out yet, so Brandon tells me it’s easier to talk to me disembodied. Is there a Webcam available? I’m trying to study human physical responses. I’ve been absorbing films, but I wonder if genuine human emotion reads differently from actors portraying parts.” There was nothing of the stilted, careful speech patterns Alisha expected from a computer-generated voice to Lilith’s friendly tone. She sounded as if she’d come from Nowhere, U.S.A., a pleasantly midwestern alto with enthusiasm for exploring the world around her. “I should’ve said performers portraying parts,” Lilith added thoughtfully. “That would’ve been nicely alliterate. I see I’ve been out for seven days, Boss. What’s going on?”

  “Boss,” Alisha said, almost to herself, then found her gaze turning slowly to Brandon. “Are you sure her name’s not Dora?”

  Amused chagrin, tempered with hope, lit Brandon’s expression, making Alisha realize it was the first time since her house had exploded that she’d offered him any tendril of friendship or camaraderie. It was too late now; she couldn’t withdraw the question. It lay between them, bringing a note of optimism to Brandon’s voice as he said, “She picked ‘Boss’ on her own. I don’t know if she’s been digesting electronic copies of Heinlein’s writing or not.”

  “I don’t want to be human,” Lilith replied, an answer in itself. “I do want to know what’s going on. I’ve finished looking around, Brandon. I’m not in Kansas anymore.”

  “You’re in a new supercomputing facility just outside London, England.” Emma spoke for the first time, and Alisha could almost envision Lilith turning to her in curiosity.

  “Really? What’m I doing here? Brandon, you didn’t tell me you were taking me on a world tour.”

  “I need your help, Lilith,” Alisha said. “I’m Alisha MacAleer—”

  “I recognized your voice,” Lilith interrupted agreeably. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You too.” The response was automatic, though after a few seconds Alisha realized she meant it. “I need the entry codes for the Attengee production facility in—” The last words were broken off as Alisha looked at Brandon for the answer.

  “Serbia,” Brandon said with a sigh. “Near Subotica, on the northern border. Lilith, it’s not that simple.”

  “It never is,” the AI said. “What’s the catch?”

  “I’ve shut down operations in order to allow you the processing power you need to function,” Emma said. “Six hours of very expensive research has been superseded on your behalf. We’d like a copy of your source code in return.”

  “Really,” Lilith said again. “How about you hand over a copy of your DNA sequence, and we’ll call the exchange good?”

  Alisha flickered another glance at Brandon, who lifted his hands in innocence. “I didn’t teach her to be sarcastic. That’s all Lilith.”

  Emma shrugged, a small motion. “We won’t allow you access beyond our firewalls to obtain Alisha’s codes unless you agree to our stipulations. I’m sorry,” she added, though the words were perfunctory and Alisha wasn’t certain who they were directed toward.

  “Oh,” Lilith said, “you mean the codes that are 86492 between six in the morning and noon, 91377 between noon and six, 46014 between six and midnight, and which alternate with a second set of numbers—39062, 19472 and 74864—on even days of the month? The codes that don’t allow entry between the hours of midnight and six in the morning without prior arrangements being made at least forty-eight hours in advance with the security company, which runs out of Zurich, Switzerland? Those codes?” There was a beat of precise time, before the AI said, sweetly, “Your firewalls are shit, love.” The “Sorry,” she amended to the end was every bit as sincere as Emma’s had been seconds earlier.

  “Those are state-of-the-art fire…” Emma trailed off, cheeks pale as she looked toward Brandon.

  He smiled, the faint expression trying unsuccessfully to hide overwhelming pride. “Lilith is considerably more than state of the art. She’s outside anybody’s experience.”

  “I don’t understand,” Emma said carefully. “How can you be carrying that much programming around with you?”

  “One part the quantum storage Rafe Denison and I developed.” Brandon shot Alisha an indecipherable look that made her lift her chin in challenge. The scientist he spoke of had died trying to kill her, and while it hadn’t been her hand on the trigger, it hadn’t been for lack of trying. It wasn’t in her to apologize for the man’s death, though she could appreciate intellectually the magnitude of loss to the computer world that his death represented. Brandon let it go, addressing Emma again. “And one part the nature of Lilith’s programming. She can remain dormant in a relatively small carrying capacity. It’s like someone being able to maintain the core functions for survival separately from the thinking and analytical parts of the mind. Once she’s restored to a system with the necessary processing capacity, she just expands into that.”

  “Doesn’t she leave parts of herself behind?” There was a hardness in Emma’s voice, as if she still sought a way to benefit from offering Lilith a home, however briefly.

  “Only when a fairly extraordinary watchdog program can separate an area of functionality from the mainframe,” Lilith herself answered. “I’m afraid you gave me free rein in here, Emma. Your watchdogs wouldn’t even recognize me as a threat anymore.”

  Emma’s shoulders stiffened. “How do you know my name?”

  “You gave me free rein,” Lilith repeated. “I’ve gone through all your security files, including those with voice and iris pattern recognition passwords. You have very high access for a mere programmer, Ms. Dickens. Are your connections with internal British Intelligence, or external? No, don’t tell me,” she added breezily. “I’ll find out on my own. Either way it’s frankly much more useful than Alisha’s security clearance was back at Langley. Oh, I’ve also taken the liberty of looking around and nudging a process or two. I think Dr. Wellford won’t take it amiss.”

  “Wellford—!” Emma cut herself off, anger blazing in her eyes as she turned on Brandon. “This is your thanks? Your AI breaks down our firewalls and interferes with research and development that’s been going on for years? You—”

  “If you don’t mind,” Lilith interrupted. “I’ve hacked into the Serbian facilities security systems and have been reviewing their closed-circuit camera footage for the last week. Four days ago, Franklin Davis Reichart entered the factory with a tour group. All others departed on schedule, but I see no record of Reichart leaving the building. Is that of any interest to you?”

  Chapter 7

  The last time she had gone in blind to a factory intending to rescue Frank Reichart, there had at least been a reasonable chance he was still there. Now, though…Alisha shook her head, a tiny motion in the dark. Four days was too long. Four days, in the espionage world she knew best, spelled a death sentence far more clearly than it suggested the possibility of escape.

  Even, she told herself grimly, when the factory she was infiltrating belonged to the people who were theoretically the good guys. It was U.S. government property—weapons of mass destruction built by the lowest bidder—and as such, ought to have given her confidence.

  Ought. Alisha snorted to herself, muffling the sound. She ought to have been able to walk into the plant under her own name and with CIA sanctioning, if it came to ought and should be. She ought to have been able to go
to her handler and request information on any security breaches at the Attengee production facility. There were innumerable oughts, and none of them did more than breeze past reality.

  A movement caught the corner of her eye and she turned her head that way, watching Emma lift two fingers and point, flight-attendant-like, toward a distant door. Alisha nodded, then with the same two-fingered point, indicated herself, then a window high up and on the far end of the factory.

  It hadn’t been her intention to bring company along on the search-and-rescue, if that’s what it proved to be. A search, certainly, but whether Reichart would still be there was another question entirely. Emma, however, had met her eyes with cool British disdain, as if challenging Alisha for the right to being the woman in Reichart’s life. Logic dictated Alisha not rise to the bait. Logic told her to send Emma in alone, an expendable resource, while Alisha kept tabs on Brandon and let Lilith, through the supercomputing facilities, watch over the Englishwoman as she explored the Serbian factory.

  So much, then, for logic. At Emma’s nod, Alisha held up her fingers: one, two, three, and on three bounced on her toes and broke into a silent run. Emma’s lithe form flashed the other direction, both of them darting beyond the sweep of spotlights and grateful for the cold rain that helped hide them in the night. Brandon was back in London with Lilith, and Alisha was confident he didn’t constitute a flight risk. Not with the quantum flash drive capable of storing Lilith’s core functions on a cord beneath Alisha’s close-fitting black shirt. The flash drive was empty, Brandon’s determination not to twin Lilith compelling him to wipe the drive after he’d uploaded her to the Research Councils’ supercomputer, but without the drive, Lilith couldn’t be removed from the facilities she currently functioned from.

  “You can’t do that,” Brandon had said in half-astonished outrage. “That’s holding her hostage.”

  “Watch me,” Alisha repeated beneath her breath now. The rain-slick surface of the wall in front of her resisted the grip of her gloves—covered in pebbled, sticky microfilament meant to cling powerfully to walls and stone in order to ease climbing—more thoroughly than she’d hoped. A piton and rope at her hip would reach the window above, but dinging the glass might well set off alarms. Lilith, waiting patiently in England, believed there was only a few-second window where she could override security and allow Emma and Alisha to get into the facilities without notice. Any hint of intrusion before that would undo the whole game.