Binary

by Stephanie Saulter

  ‘Thank you, Dunmore. That’ll be all for now,’ she said, and he stepped back to let the door slide shut on the two women. Alone together for the first time, they regarded each other over folded arms. It took Zavcka a moment to register the shared pose, and she dropped hers to her side. Aryel rewarded her with a faint smile, and stayed as she was.

  Zavcka cleared her throat. ‘Dunmore is our head of security. He was doubtful about asking you to meet here.’

  ‘Did he imagine I would be a threat?’

  ‘More that you might imagine yourself to be threatened. He tells me there are still gems who fear being disappeared, were they to venture within the walls of a gemtech. An outdated worry if ever there was one. I see I was right to think you wouldn’t ascribe to it.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Aryel nodded seriously. ‘There is also the fact that half of London just watched me land on your rooftop. So no, I’m not worried at all.’

  Zavcka’s nostrils flared. Aryel smiled at her sweetly. There was a soft chime and the doors swept open. Zavcka said, ‘Here we are,’ in a tone that, while still impeccably polite, had turned terse.

  They stepped into a luxurious lobby, only a couple of floors below the roof level. It swept out on either side of them to the curving glass walls of the building, which let in panoramic views of the city below. Aryel could see that the expansiveness of the room extended into perimeter walkways which appeared to run around the entire circumference of the tower.

  Zavcka walked straight ahead, however, towards another corridor which cut through the heart of the building, and was lined with more of the beautifully biocrafted wood panelling that formed the back wall of the lobby. A reception desk guarded it, manned by a fashionable young woman whose poise appeared ready to dissipate when she saw Aryel. She half stood, then sat back down again, and belatedly shut her gaping mouth with a snap as she looked from Aryel to Zavcka. An equally fashionable young man turned with exaggerated casualness from, Aryel was quite certain, only pretending to speak to the girl as he leaned against the desk. He seemed better prepared, smiling and inclining his head graciously to them both.

  Just then two more people strolled into the lobby, feigning startled looks that, as always, became genuine wonder within a microsecond. They seemed not to have planned what to do once they’d got their eyeful, and Zavcka glared at them balefully as they paused in confusion and then proceeded hastily across the lobby to disappear into one of the walkways. A high-pitched, slightly hysterical giggle sounded from that direction, swiftly muffled.

  The fashionable man shot a disapproving look after them, as Zavcka snapped at the girl.

  ‘Ms Morningstar and I will be in my office. Please see to it we’re not disturbed.’

  She nodded, speechless and scared. There was a spark of something defiant in the man’s eyes, but his tone was pure deference as he said, ‘Can I get you anything, ma’am?’

  Zavcka managed to suppress an irritated sigh. She had not, Aryel thought, intended to be quite so hospitable.

  ‘Coffee for me, Khan. Ms Morningstar?’

  ‘Tea, please.’

  She flashed a smile at the two employees as she followed Zavcka into the corridor, partly for the effect she knew it would have, partly in real sympathy. Without turning around the Bel’Natur head said, ‘I do apologise. I can’t imagine what my staff are thinking of.’

  ‘I can. Shall I tell you?’

  Zavcka glanced back at her, frowning. ‘Please.’

  ‘They’re thinking that while you’ll be displeased, you’re unlikely to dismiss or even really discipline them merely for happening to be in the lobby when I happen to walk through it. And that getting that close a look at me is worth the risk.’

  They had reached the end of the corridor. Zavcka looked narrowly at Aryel as she raised her fingers to an identipad. ‘You seem quite certain of your effect on them.’

  ‘Sadly, I’m used to it.’

  The door slid open as smoothly as had the one on the roof, and Aryel stepped into an office almost as big as the lobby they had left behind. The skywalk did not run all the way around the building after all; the rear wall was a sweeping curve of glass-barred sky. Zavcka glanced at the huge biocrafted wood desk and the straightbacked chairs before it, then appeared to make a decision. She led the way instead to a scattering of soft leather furniture and sank onto a sofa. Aryel selected a low armchair that her wings could rest over the back of. Thus raised and arched they were potent, almost a presence of their own as they shifted with her movement.

  Zavcka watched her settle, elbow propped on the arm of the sofa, chin on fist. She looked deeply reflective suddenly, as though considering the import of Aryel’s words, but there was still something avid in her gaze.

  ‘Yes, I expect you are. But do you really regret your celebrity?’

  ‘Given the circumstances that led to it,’ Aryel said evenly, ‘it’s a small price to pay. But would I have preferred other circumstances, ones that would have allowed me to remain fairly anonymous? Yes, and for far greater reasons than my own privacy.’

  That was cutting very close to the bone. Aryel watched her reaction keenly. Zavcka could hardly have expected less, not on this subject, but she still looked away. It was almost a flinch of embarrassment.

  ‘I … of course. The circumstances were shocking. A horrendous loss of life.’

  Aryel wondered for an astounded moment if it was an oblique apology; if Zavcka Klist really intended, really had the nerve, to sit here and offer condolences for those bloodstained days. She thought of Callan and all he had lost; of the damage to Bal and Gaela and Gabriel, and the friends they had had to bury. Her mind finally fixed on Donal, another battle-scarred survivor, and imagined the abuse he would be screaming if only he could hear this conversation. She held on to the picture, channelling her own anger into her mental image of his, and felt it leave her calm, cool, clear-headed. It was a trick Reginald had taught her, long ago.

  Zavcka was back to her own cool stare, as though awaiting a response. Aryel sat and stared back, letting the tension build, until there was a soft tap at the door. Khan came in, busied himself pouring and serving, and departed with evident regret. Zavcka regarded Aryel over the rim of her cup, and began without further preamble.

  ‘You must have inferred that my offer to Herran has to do with our infotech programme.’

  Aryel sipped before answering. The tea was good, hot and strong. ‘We did. Although neither Herran nor I could infer quite what you had in mind. Or why you would imagine he would consent to helping you.’

  ‘Let’s deal with the what first. I believe the why will become evident.’

  A touch there of the old arrogance. She was onto more comfortable ground, now. Never look back, eh, Zavcka? The past is another country, a big one, full of peril. If you keep moving forward fast enough maybe it won’t catch up with you.

  ‘Virtually all of our current infotech applications require a manual interface,’ said Zavcka. ‘The most common technologies – tablets, security systems, aircraft and ground vehicles – all of them rely on us to transmit our instructions via some intermediate mechanism like touchscreen or audio input or motion-capture. That requirement is a fundamental limitation.’

  She looked at Aryel as if anticipating disagreement. Aryel sipped her tea and said nothing.

  ‘We think we should be able to do away with most of the intermediate hardware, if we can work out how to set up a direct neural link.’

  She paused again, expectantly, and Aryel shrugged. ‘I assumed as much from your announcement. But you’d still need an interface.’

  ‘We’ve made great progress there already – we’re working on a cranial band that’s as light and unobtrusive as an earset. You’d simply think it on, do what you want to do, and think it off again. You could work on the fly, as it were.’

  Aryel managed to smile at the pun. ‘I rather like not working while flying. As it were. What does this have to do with Herran?’

  ‘Ah.’ Zavc
ka nodded. ‘Well. Herran is, as we both know, very special. The core challenge of the work I’ve just described is the accurate translation of detailed information between binary code and synaptic signalling. And we’re pretty sure that Herran is as close to a walking digital–neural dictionary as has ever been.’

  ‘And you think that because?’

  Zavcka’s lips compressed. Aryel sensed that another flash of temper, like the one she’d seen out in the lobby, was being firmly suppressed.

  ‘Let’s be candid with each other, shall we? I think we both know that Herran can access and alter data in ways that no human – gem or norm – should be capable of. In retrospect I suppose it’s not all that surprising. He was designed to test the thesis that the human brain could be rewired to mimic an artificial processor. Why you would want to change the most subtle and powerful computing device known to humanity into something fundamentally inferior is another question entirely, and part of the reason the programme was cancelled. But we know that Herran had by far the most promising test profile. What he didn’t appear to have – then – was anything remotely like normal human cognition, although it now seems his handlers simply didn’t recognise his full range of competence. I suppose you know that his … departure … coincided with a mysterious failure at every level of a complex security protocol, from the sequential disabling of locks and alarms to unauthorised changes in the guard rota.’

  She paused for breath and to glare at Aryel, who was smiling gently.

  ‘There was no trace of how that was accomplished. Nothing in the edit logs, no sign of a hack. The forensics team had never seen anything like it. Until three years ago, when they reported to me on how you had apparently hacked a datastream within this company that was so secret and so encrypted only a handful of people even knew of its existence.’

  She held up a hand, though Aryel had made no move to speak. ‘I’ve no quarrel with you over the information you accessed, but I wanted to know how you’d done it. And they couldn’t tell me. Once again there was no trace. But at least this time they’d seen something like it before. So we looked for what the two events had in common, and the most probable answer was Herran.’

  Aryel regarded her for a moment, then put her empty cup down on the low table with a clink. ‘That is all very interesting. It doesn’t explain precisely what you want Herran to do for you, or why you expect him to agree.’

  ‘We want him to help us. He’s got a brain that speaks binary as well as human. We want to work out how he does it, so we can create a translation matrix to replicate it. We won’t harm him in any way, or make the process at all unpleasant for him. I said it would be rewarding, and I meant it. We’ll pay extremely well for his services.’

  ‘Herran doesn’t care about money. He has what he needs. He particularly won’t care about helping you make more of it.’

  Zavcka nodded briskly to show she had expected this answer. ‘At the moment, what we’ve deduced about his abilities is known only to me and a few of my most senior staff. At the moment, we have no intention of revealing that information to anyone else. Which is fortunate, don’t you think? The consternation there would be at the thought of a gem who can infiltrate any data, news or socialstream undetected, find out anything, alter anything, create anything, and leave no trail whatsoever would be – well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. The gemtech argument for registration and control of potentially dangerous gems would be back from the dead.’

  ‘That,’ said Aryel softly, ‘was your argument.’

  ‘It was. It isn’t any longer, but there are plenty of others still carrying the flag. And while some people might be comforted by the notion that his expeditions within the streams are likely directed by you, many, I suggest to you, will not be. They’ll finally have a credible reason to be suspicious of you. They’ll wonder who else you’ve had him spy on. They’ll wonder whether Herran, who Bel’Natur records suggest is severely autistic and probably incapable of moral judgement, goes off exploring without your guidance. They’ll want him controlled and cut off.’

  Aryel leaned back in the chair and resisted the urge to flex her wings in irritation. Instead she looked thoughtfully around the room.

  ‘Was this Felix Carrington’s office?’

  Zavcka blinked in surprise at the non sequitur. ‘It was, yes.’

  ‘It suits you very well.’ She caught Zavcka’s eyes. Her own had gone hard as an August sky. ‘That secret datastream you referred to earlier. Surprising how few other people did know about it. The only subscribers besides Carrington had already disappeared or been incarcerated. Of course that’s not what he said at the trial. He mentioned your name quite a lot.’

  The other woman was watching her with a sort of intense calm. There was a note of practised boredom in her tone. ‘By then he was trying to implicate anyone he could. Personally, I think he’d become delusional. You know very well there was no evidence in the files you accessed, nor in what the prosecution forensics uncovered later, to suggest I knew anything about it.’

  ‘That’s not quite right.’ Aryel shook her head gravely. ‘The forensics report represents the best efforts of the investigating officers. The files I released represent my best judgement. Which is open to revision.’

  She paused just long enough to let the meaning come clear, and watched Zavcka’s eyes widen and her relaxed posture become rigid.

  Then she went on, quiet and relentless, ‘What you have to consider, Ms Klist, is that if Herran is capable of everything you claim, one must assume – as indeed you’ve suggested the public would assume – that there are other things he will have discovered as well. And if he is indeed my datastream spy and fixer, it would stand to reason that anything he knows, I know. Your own skills are remarkable; I’m not surprised the authorities failed to pick up your trail. Herran is, as you say, in a different league.’

  Zavcka fought for composure, staring back at her like a cornered cat. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. If you had found anything to implicate me in the Gabriel affair you’d have included it. I’d be in prison too. You have no reason to protect me.’

  ‘True. You are merely a beneficiary of the situation you outlined a moment ago. If I exposed something the authorities couldn’t corroborate independently I’d have to prove that I hadn’t simply invented it. And how could I have done that?’

  ‘By … oh. You couldn’t have explained without bringing Herran into it. Of course.’

  Zavcka sat back and drew a deep breath, calming herself, although her nails clicked unconsciously against the arm of the sofa and a tic appeared to ghost across her pale face. The dark eyes were bitter, and Aryel could see the fear flickering behind them. But her voice was steady as she finally said, ‘Well. We appear to have achieved a stalemate.’

  She looked around the office, as though a way out might appear.

  Aryel looked past her, at the wide sky beyond the glass, and longed to be gone. She sighed. ‘Yes, but all that means is neither of us can threaten the other into anything. Which is as it should be. I have plenty of reasons to doubt your integrity, but you now have a reason to exercise some. I’ll talk to Herran about the project and your offer, and see what he says. It’s not for me to decide whether he takes you up on it.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No it isn’t. I don’t have servants or staff, Ms Klist. I have friends.’ That did produce a flinch. It was, Aryel thought, the very least she deserved. ‘But we had better be clear right now that, in the unlikely event he agrees to work with you, there are going to be conditions.’

  8

  Sharon Varsi pressed three fingers to an identipad and announced herself, once again running the morning’s briefing on the first full day of the Festival over in her head. Everything had run fairly smoothly so far, and if the ragtag troupe from the night before was the worst they’d have to deal with the Met could count themselves fortunate. She could not think what else this summons might be abo
ut. The door slid back, and she stepped inside.

  The man who had asked to see her was rising from his chair, swinging the tablet on its angled stand to the side, although his eyes still lingered for a moment on whatever he had been reading there. Commander Masoud of the Metropolitan Police shook her hand.

  ‘DI Varsi. All right?’

  ‘Very good, thank you, sir.’

  He waved her to a seat. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘The Festival? It’s early days of course, sir, but there’ve been no real problems yet. A few hackbot swipes at the infostream, a couple of noise complaints. The usual. There was a disturbance at the concert last night that’s got some attention.’ Might as well be the one to bring it up. ‘The speakers were hacked for a couple of minutes. It was sorted out fairly quickly.’

  He looked amused. ‘I’ve seen that onstream, along with your report of the incident. Very well handled, I have to say.’

  ‘I wish I could take the credit, sir. By the time I got to them it was pretty much over and done with.’

  ‘The young woman who faced them down. Friend of the family?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, though we’d only just met. She’s Reginald Morgan’s foster daughter.’ Sharon wondered if, despite his overall tone of approval, Masoud had called her in to have a word about allowing Gwen to confront the Reversionists. ‘By rights it should have been left to the professionals – I told her so, after – but she reacted very quickly. By the time I realised what she was going to do, she’d already done it. I thought it best to let her finish the song, rather than disrupt the event further.’

  ‘Mmm. Well.’ Masoud gestured vaguely, dismissing her concern. ‘You’re right of course, though I got the feeling, watching, that she could probably handle herself. And she made them look ridiculous, which is more than we could have managed without blowback from the public. Any worry about repercussions?’

  ‘You mean to her? No, I don’t think so. Not from them anyway. They were gobsmacked, but they didn’t seem to mind her being a gem. I don’t think they’re serious troublemakers.’