Binary

by Stephanie Saulter

  ‘But they are Reversionists.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re also devout UC – more focused on piety than politics. Which is a good thing, I reckon, or their little stunt might not have been such a shambles. They went on and on about reviving what they called a culture of faith, but they don’t seem to be on the bandwagon of returning to a pre-Syndrome evolutionary model.’ She shrugged. ‘One of them recognised me, but they didn’t have a go. The more militant groups would have.’

  ‘I suppose.’ He gave her an appraising look. ‘Are you still getting a lot of that?’

  ‘Not so much any more, sir. It flares up from time to time.’

  ‘Including here?’

  She kept her face carefully impassive. ‘You mean at work, sir?’

  ‘Yes, at work. I know not all of your colleagues have been as supportive as they should.’

  That’s a bloody understatement. It took her back, unbidden, to the early days of her and Mikal’s courtship. At first the long hours she was known to spend in the Squats were put down to an admirable sense of duty, and understandable guilt for a massacre she had been unable to prevent. But it had dawned soon enough on her workmates that there was far more to her time with him than could be explained away by mere police work, and the whispers had started. They said she’d had her head turned, gone native, got kinks most folk could barely imagine and no norm would accommodate. Forgotten she was supposed to be doing the job and instead let the job do her. Lost the plot, along with any sense of propriety or chance of promotion. Some of the worst comments had come from people she’d known since her academy days, and worked with side by side ever since.

  She kept it from Mikal as long as she could, and laughed it off when he found out; knowing him well enough already to have no doubt that if he understood how bad it was before he understood how tough she was, he would walk away rather than let her go through it. And even she had not been entirely sure at first that she was tough enough. It cut her to her soul to find herself suddenly so doubted and disdained in a job she loved and was good at. She would go to him then, dazed with the hurt of it, as though to discover once more what could possibly be worth such damage; and in his warmth and wit and courage, the cleverness of his mind and gentleness of his hands and a resilience of character to match her own, find again the answer. She remembered the day she had set herself the task of deciding which she was most prepared to give up, her police career or him; and concluded in half a heartbeat that she could, and would, do neither.

  Aloud she said, ‘There was a lot of surprise when I married Mikal, but they’ve had a couple of years to get used to the idea. Plus he’s in the Council now. People have got over it, I think.’

  When we have kids, she thought suddenly, it will be back and it will be bad. She pushed the certainty away, tamping it down firmly.

  Masoud seemed to catch the edge of brisk dismissal in her tone. He echoed it as he said, ‘Good. It goes without saying, you can come to me if things ever get out of hand.’

  He glanced back at the tablet. ‘Something’s come up that needs looking into. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure at this stage whether it’s going to warrant a full investigation or not, but it’s potentially very sensitive and it would benefit from someone with your insight. With the Festival so well in hand I thought you might like to take a crack at it.’ He lifted the tablet off the stand and handed it to her. ‘See what you think.’

  She took it and started to scan, then looked back up at him almost immediately. ‘This is from a whistleblower? Any corroboration?’

  ‘Only what was attached. Keep reading.’

  It was a short but typically convoluted claim, and she could feel herself frowning as she mentally unravelled the gist of the allegation. She tapped the links to the screenshots that had been provided as proof. They proved nothing, but she could understand Masoud’s concern. She returned to the whistleblower’s fractured prose, reread a couple of lines, and handed the tablet back.

  He was watching her face. ‘Well?’

  ‘I’d be very happy to look into it, sir. Thank you for thinking of me.’

  He sighed. ‘Sharon, you are such a proper bloody cop you make me want to scream. There’s no review board here. Tell me what you think.’

  ‘I think—’ She considered again what she’d read. ‘I think half of what they’re claiming is – was – so commonplace it hardly seems worth bothering about at this point. The other half is both very serious and extremely unlikely. My understanding is that security around the central genestock archive is very tight. If there was a breach it should have triggered an urgent, official report. So on the whole the allegation looks dubious.’ She paused, working through it. ‘Which means that, if it is true, then we have three very serious problems. First, who would want this material and what might they do with it? Second, how were they able to break security to get it? And third, why are we only learning about the theft via a whistleblower?’

  Masoud was nodding. ‘My concerns exactly. Which is why I want someone sensible, who understands the ramifications, to determine whether there’s anything to it. It could turn out to be a waste of time. Most whistleblowers are just delusional ex-employees with an axe to grind.’

  ‘I know, sir.’ She paused. ‘But there’s something about this, don’t you think? In amongst all of the guff, it feels sort of … tangible.’

  ‘I thought so too. I hope I’m wrong.’ His fingers slipped across the tablet. ‘I’m transferring it to you for follow-up, with a resource allocation. Find out what you can as quickly as you can. And quietly.’ He looked up. ‘I won’t say I don’t expect you to mention it to your husband—’

  ‘Of course not, sir—’

  ‘—because I do expect you to.’ Sharon blinked at him in surprise. ‘I’m not naïve enough to think otherwise, and I understand that his input might be helpful. I’m sure Mikal will be just as aware of the potential fallout from this as you or me.’

  He detached a memtab and handed it to her. ‘Give him my best, won’t you?’

  She took the memtab, slipped it onto an intake port on her own tablet. She felt a shiver down her spine as she stood up, as if the tiny, malleable chit of file memory were somehow infectious. ‘Be happy to, sir.’

  *

  She spent an hour closely reading the file, committing the details to memory and cross-checking what she could against police and public records. The exercise left her feeling no easier.

  Genetype hacks had not been uncommon in the old days of intense competition and industrial espionage between gemtechs. Genestock thefts were a different matter. Closely guarded, traded only rarely and at great expense, genestock was the stuff of engineered life itself. A few shadowy tales of internecine robberies and slick substitutions had circulated back in the days before the Declaration; she’d heard them as a young officer, filtering into the post-shift pub gossip via those who’d left the force to work corporate security. But that was before the creation of human beings for profit had been outlawed, and all genestock confiscated by the federated governments. Emancipation had made it both commercially valueless, and virtually inaccessible.

  So, at any rate, went the theory.

  She pondered the alleged link between the alleged hacks and the alleged heist, hoping to spot some glaring inconsistency that would allow her to dismiss the whole thing with a clear conscience. The more she picked through it the further away that prospect drifted. She checked again for any clue as to who the whistleblower was, but he – or she – had chosen anonymity, and been careful to follow all the protocols that would keep their identity secret even from the police. So, no way of making a judgement based on the credibility of the source. All she knew was that the report had, indeed, originated from behind the firewall of the European Genestock Archive.

  There were risks to going in hard, not least the blowback if it all proved a false alarm, or, worse yet, a hoax. But if the story was true, too soft an approach might give the perpetrator time to cover their tracks, or to
flee. She considered the probabilities there, calculating the least worst option, and fleetingly thought a curse at Masoud. Then she flicked her tablet awake, and began the laborious process of requesting a warrant.

  INHERITANCE

  He is old and she is still young when they realise that something is wrong.

  They did not think it possible at first. Her birthright had been a blessing, a triumph. Its extent was unknown, its implications unclear, but the potential! The power! She feels like the princess she has always known she is, he like the mage he has always dreamt of being. They keep it a secret while they try to understand how it works and whether it will last, though she must sometimes suppress the impulse to throw it in the faces of spiteful friends and inconstant suitors.

  Later on she has cause to be grateful for her father’s stern admonitions never to indulge so petty a whim.

  But that is after he is gone and she is left, as he feared, to make her way in the world alone. Before that they have many years together; more than enough time for him to comprehend, with growing dismay, the consequences of his legacy.

  He promises to fix it. He will mend what is broken, he will make it right. He has the knowledge and the resources, his best people are on it – though they themselves do not really understand what it is they are tasked with. That does not matter because he does understand, and he is brilliant, and he will pull the disparate pieces together and find a solution.

  He does not.

  At the end there are moments when he turns bitter, and jealous, and rages at her youth and strength and beauty. Then he weeps, and is full of apology and sorrow. Then the pain takes him and he wishes again for what she has. She would share it if she could, gladly, though the slow years of his ageing and the indignity of his death slay in her any desire to relinquish it completely. When his eyes turn dark and he leaves for the last time, she can feel only relief that she will not know the same fate.

  9

  Rhys sat on the stool, trying to make sense of what Herran was telling him. At the edge of his vision he could just see Callan, lounging on a worn, comfortable-looking chairbag, and he found he was having to work hard not to be distracted.

  ‘Parse streams,’ said Herran again, patiently. ‘Little bits, lots and lots of little bits. I do,’ he shrugged. ‘Not easy, not too hard. Okay. You do, lots and lots of work. Not get sick.’

  ‘Ri-ight,’ Rhys said slowly, looking again at the auxiliary screens where Herran was demonstrating his recommendation. ‘So you drop behind the output to the machine code, and drop behind that to the base code, and read the output in binary. In real time? Herran, that’s unbelievable.’

  Herran blinked and rocked a little. It appeared to be his default gesture, taking the place of smiles of acknowledgement and shakes of the head and raised eyebrows. His glowing scarlet curls twinkled. Rhys had never before given much thought to the fact that their onstream friendship had been conducted mostly by text instead of vid or voice. He was now, as Aryel had predicted, coming to terms with the challenges of direct communication.

  ‘Believable,’ Herran said. ‘I do.’

  ‘But what’s the point?’

  Herran just stared at him. Behind them Callan said quietly, ‘Herran? Why do you parse the streams? What for?’

  ‘To see,’ Herran replied promptly. ‘Sometimes fix.’ He glanced at Callan. ‘Only if Aryel says okay. Promise.’

  ‘To fix?’ asked Rhys, feeling as if the thing he had just about grasped was slipping out of his reach again. ‘Fix what?’

  ‘Let’s leave the fixing alone for a minute.’ Callan sat up on the chairbag. ‘The point is that Herran mostly parses the streams, as he puts it, just for fun. He likes to process the same information in different formats. Doesn’t really matter what the information is. Have I got that right, Herran?’

  Emphatic nod-rocking. ‘Fun. Lots to see.’

  ‘For instance, he’s been quite taken with the light sculpture informatics they’ve put up for the Festival. Not the displays themselves – he hasn’t been to see them – but the datastreams that carry the content. He spends ages hacking the feeds and disaggregating them.’

  ‘Not ages,’ said Herran. ‘Quick quick.’

  ‘Why bother?’ said Rhys. ‘Once you get into the base code the information is still the same.’

  ‘Yes, but transmitting it that way requires a far more complicated algorithm than 2D or even 3D fixed geometry, and that’s what Herran finds fun. It’s not the information itself but the data-form that conveys it that he likes to drill down into.’

  ‘So—’ said Rhys. He had turned on the stool so he could see both of them without squinting. ‘—so he processes all this information, but he’s mostly not concerned with its meaning? Or context?’

  ‘No,’ said Callan.

  ‘Mostly not important,’ said Herran.

  Callan chuckled. ‘When Bel’Natur put me through primary language training they used a similar technique. They’d scroll the same text in different languages across the screen, three at a time. They’d be linguistically unrelated, so I couldn’t rely on similarities to help me remember – I might get Mandarin and German and Urdu together, but never Italian and Spanish and Portuguese, for example. But the big difference between that and what Herran’s suggesting is that for me, and I suspect for you, it’s all about meaning. I wouldn’t have become fluent if all I took in was the vocabulary and sentence structure. It was understanding the content that was important.’

  ‘What was?’ asked Herran.

  ‘Understanding the content—’ Rhys began, but Callan shook his head.

  ‘No, he means what was the content. Different things, Herran. Most often children’s stories at the beginning – twenty-one versions of “The Princess and the Pea” or “Jack Russell’s Dog”, all translated so that they were culturally appropriate as well as linguistically accurate. Then newstream reports, classroom lessons, stuff like that.’

  ‘You care?’

  ‘Not really. But it was important anyway. The content had to be coherent, to have meaning, for me to be able to grasp the form that conveys it. I know it sounds strange, but it’s what my kind of brain needs in order to engage with information.’

  Herran made a sound that was as close to a sigh as Rhys had heard from him. His wide, pale eyes contemplated them both.

  ‘Rhys has brain like you?’

  ‘Umm.’ Callan looked down for a moment, smiling. His flaming hair fell forward over his face and he absentmindedly pushed it back.

  Rhys felt himself swallow.

  ‘I think Rhys’ brain is a lot like mine,’ Callan said slowly. The smile still played around the corners of his mouth. ‘Though in some ways it’s like yours too, Herran. He can process a great deal of information very quickly, just like you can. But maybe not in quite the same way.’

  Herran’s rocking nod seemed disappointed. ‘Okay. Sorry not help.’

  ‘What? No, you have.’ Rhys waved at the screens, feeling unaccountably flushed. ‘This … what you do … it’s amazing.’

  ‘No good for you. Not find genetype either. Not help.’

  ‘No, you have helped, Herran. I thought maybe I’d missed something, but if even you can’t find our genetypes then I know they’re nowhere to be found.’

  ‘Somewhere. Offstream.’

  Rhys shrugged. ‘Maybe, but if we don’t know where and we can’t get to them they might as well not exist. So I have to find the answer some other way.’

  ‘Find quick. Before get sick again.’

  ‘For all I know, I may not ever be ill again. All this worry might be for nothing.’ He kept his eyes fixed on Herran, although he could feel Callan’s steady gaze from the chairbag. ‘I haven’t been able to work out exactly what triggers it, or even if there is a trigger. It sort of seems like when my brain has a lot of hard, analytical work to do – hacking, solving puzzles, whatever – I’m less likely to have an … episode, but I’m not sure if that isn’t just coincidence. And sometimes
before one comes on I feel upset, or angry, but I don’t know if that causes whatever’s happening in my brain, or is caused by it. Not knowing is almost worse than the thing itself. You can’t imagine.’

  He doesn’t imagine, he thought to himself. It was a sudden, despairing flash of insight, and it damped the warm thrill that had gusted through him a moment before as effectively as a plunge into an icy mountain stream. That’s as hard for him as what he does would be for anyone else. That’s what they took away.

  Herran stared back at him, impassive as ever. ‘Like Syndrome?’

  ‘I – I guess … it took them a long time to work out what was causing the Syndrome …’

  Callan cleared his throat gently. That was not what Herran was asking, and they both knew it. Rhys shot a glance at Callan, knowing he should have explained more last night, wishing he did not have to explain at all. He had nurtured a giddy hope during the long walk home along the river that if he said little and stayed well there would be no need for further detail. But in the hard light of day, in the face of Herran’s blunt, guileless questioning, he was forced to conclude that it would neither be possible nor fair to hide the truth of his situation.

  He drew a deep breath. ‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘Most people who had the Syndrome had very mild symptoms to start with, but they were regular, and the damage accumulated over time. What happens to me is … I mean it can be, it isn’t always like this … generally it’s more …’ He hesitated. ‘More violent,’ he said finally. ‘It leaves me tired and achy – I can feel it when I’ve had a seizure, which a lot of the Syndrome patients couldn’t. And it comes and goes. I’ll get two attacks in a week and then none for three months. I had one a few days ago – that’s why everyone was fussing so much yesterday. But when it goes, it’s gone.’ He spread his hands as though to demonstrate. ‘I’m completely fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Callan quietly.

  ‘No.’ He felt as though the words were being dragged out of him. ‘No, not entirely. That’s part of what I’m here to find out. Ari got me fast-tracked into the National Neurology Centre, and they’ve come up with a series of tests to try and work out what’s going on.