by Patty Jansen
Melati felt like telling him about Pak in her apartment, and Hermann in the unit a couple of doors down from Uncle’s rumak, but it was pointless. You could not see ghosts unless you believed in them, just as you could not be helped by God unless He was in your heart. She had never found anyone within ISF who talked about belief, or who was aware of the spirits around him. ISF people ignored the spirits, even though most of the spirits were good and could help you.
“Melati, please promise me that you will report the paper and forget about it.”
She said nothing. These people were so different from her, they didn’t get the way she was at peace with the spirit world. Such impoverished lives they led.
He continued in a milder voice, “Allion want us to panic. That’s the way they work. Then, when we’re at wits’ end and unable to solve the problem, some mysterious agent presents a ‘solution’ to those affected, which surprise, surprise, radically opposes everything we’ve been doing so far so that we discard our research. Or a solution works very well but introduces some kind of cyber bug in our systems that allows them to eavesdrop on us, or something similar. Allion are so smart at technical and social manipulation, none of their victims even know they’re being manipulated. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what they’ve done at New Pyongyang. They’ve stirred the population into revolt and withdrawn to watch the fighting.” He raised a finger. “Allion has always been like this, fighting through sneaky technology, avoiding straight conflict. Causing conflict rather than engaging in it. They don’t have soldiers. They have infiltrators and spies. Allion Aerospace were the first to put a human on Mars, the first to establish an independent space colony, and then they betrayed humanity by setting us up against each other. They were the first to start an interplanetary war, and were responsible for more loss of life than anyone else in the history of humankind, even though they never fired a shot themselves. I will never, ever, accept that anything of theirs has value, and if no one else had done this either, humanity would be a lot better off.”
Melati stared at the screen. Saying anything when a conversation turned like this was unhelpful. The career military, the ISF-born majority, were natural humans from rich merchant ships or mining families from the outer Sol system. To them, the war was a heroic thing. Defending their ancestors.
He was right in a way. It was not her personal history. She didn’t identify with events centuries ago on an Earth she’d never visit. Nor did she care about the revolt on Mars. She was with ISF because they saved her life.
She even had to admit that she looked at those old photographs of the first Mars landing with a sense of wonder. A tiny figure in a vacuum suit in a vast and lonely red landscape under a pink sky. The first human to set foot on another planet. More than a hundred and fifty years after a man stepped onto the Moon, the planet said to represent the male psyche and god of war was conquered by a woman, and one who worked for a commercial company at that. But to Melati, the most amazing thing was that Chandra Lee was, like her, small and brown.
Back then, Allion Aerospace seemed to understand something that ISF did not. ISF career soldiers were all from the richer parts of old Earth. The constructs were mostly male, and most of them were white. She had often wondered why people never created any constructs with coloured skin. It was said that most Allion people were dark-skinned; most of them were female, too. They said Allion got men to do their dirty work, and that they grew babies in vats, and that they made people who were half-human and half-machine. And if they’d done mindbase research way back when people first went to Mars, maybe all those rumours were true.
“By the way, Melati, Major-General Cocaro came to see me yesterday. She asked me about you. Apparently, she received a complaint of your interference with the enforcers’ work. They said they don’t appreciate being spied on by undercover agents. Would you care to comment on what caused them to make such a report? It concerns me.”
Totally different subject.
God, this was about last night in Uncle’s rumak. But she’d just spoken to Cocaro. Why hadn’t she said anything?
“I don’t know what’s going on in the station, but the enforcers have been going crazy. They set up checkpoints and last night they were everywhere in the B sector, constantly asking for people’s ID.”
“Because of what happened at New Pyongyang.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t know that yesterday. I don’t think they did, either. Anyway, they made everyone in the B sector nervous. Last night, I was in my family’s rumak after shift ended, off-duty. Two enforcers came in and asked for everyone’s ID. Of course it showed up my ISF employment. I didn’t try to stop them, and I wasn’t spying on them. I was off-duty, in my family’s business.”
“The report says you tried to interfere with their orders.”
“I asked them to check some men’s IDs. They were baby traders.”
He sighed, was silent for a moment, then said, “Yes, of course.” But his tone didn’t convince her. “Melati, just between us, the upper command thinks that after New Pyongyang, we’re about to become part of the war zone. They’re preparing for general lockdown and defence of the station. Now that all Allion spies have been flushed out of New Pyongyang. Many of them have likely come this way. This is not really the time to stir the pot with these sorts of issues.”
“But these issues are important to us. Most of tier 2 don’t understand the war. They don’t know why there is a war. They don’t care that there is a war. They don’t care who is fighting who and don’t care about Allion.”
“Maybe it’s time that they start caring. If they looked beyond the boundary of their sector doors, they’d see their place in the world, and how they could truly contribute to humanity.”
“Providing they follow rules set by the privileged minority. Even the constructs are worth more than us.”
“You’re worth a lot to me, Melati. You’re a good worker and we’d be more than happy to have more tier 2 employees.”
No, he wouldn’t. Not people like Ari or Rina. People they would see as unreliable and dishonest. ISF didn’t get it, not even a little bit. “You know, sometimes I wonder why you saved me.”
He looked up, and the light from his screen reflected as little dots in his eyes. “If you wonder that, you know me poorly.”
Yes, he had told her many times; he couldn’t very well leave her to die in the office at the docks where she’d collapsed trying to reach medical aid, help that she probably would have been denied anyway.
He was, underneath that severe appearance and his distant, godless ways, a good person, and he helped her a lot, but that still didn’t mean he understood her situation. He assumed that she should be unconditionally grateful; and she was grateful, to an extent, but . . .
No one cared about the barang-barang. No one.
“Just . . .” he said and hesitated. “I don’t want any harm to come to you. I do care, even though you may think I don’t. And I want to know how you are coping, because I know a lot of people in your family give you a hard time.”
Melati swallowed a brief burst of emotion welling up in her. How easy would it be just to cry and let him in on her troubles with her family and the way Rina would not listen to her, the way she was afraid that Ari would end up dead or in jail, or both. But Uncle hadn’t raised her that way. “I’m fine, really. Nothing untoward happened last night, nothing whatsoever. The enforcers seemed nervous more than anything. They were ones I haven’t seen before. I think a new batch arrived on-station, and that made the nervous situation even worse.”
“You have the right to ask them for ID, you know.”
“I know.” But it was easy for him to say when he was not small and brown, and not tier 2, and not facing someone with a weapon.
“We’ll take care of you,” he said again, and squeezed her shoulder.
And that was the bit he didn’t understand. When he said “you” he meant just her; to Melati it meant her and her family or what was left of it, Un
cle, Ari and Rina, Grandmother and the aunties, with all their faults. They were part of her and whatever fortune or misfortune was theirs was also hers.
Chapter 13
* * *
MELATI TOOK THE BOYS back to the Learning Unit. They walked hand in hand and talked and giggled so much that she had to tell them to be quiet—finally, a good sign.
In the corridors they passed, the lessons of the A shift were in full swing. Behind the doors of units on either side, she could hear the voices of other teachers.
The boys were still talking by the time they arrived at the unit, and Melati set them to work. While they were doing their words, she updated the cohort log, a record of their development; but she spent more time thinking than writing. Her diary of events made for depressing reading.
Tika sat staring into the distance. She went to his table, and he quickly wiped whatever had been on his screen.
“What were you looking at? Is there anything you’d like to ask?” She had not yet introduced them to any of the low-level simulation games that they would play in the course of their training—usually games that required the player to replace electronic parts within a certain time. Those were the type of things that distracted construct boys.
Tika’s cheeks flushed with red. “Does every brother, everyone like us, have an original?” He was looking at the photo of Stephen Grimshaw, which was still on the wall.
His voice had been low, but when he spoke all the others stopped their work and looked up.
“All the Grimshaws are related to him,” Melati said. “In mind, at least. You share the same standard mindbase, just like all the other stocks have their own originals.” Stephen Grimshaw had been the first person to have his entire mindbase copied into the computer for the ISF construct program. She wondered sometimes what his life had been like, which his personality copied thousands of times. Apparently he’d been selected from a long list of volunteers.
“There was Josie Kessler,” Zax said.
“Mannie Pfitzinger.”
“Mary Heslop.”
“Stephen Grimshaw is the best,” Simo said.
There were nods of agreement.
“What about Kali Landau?” Tika asked.
At that name they all fell silent. Shan whistled by sucking in air.
Heavens, what had he been looking at?
The Landau stock had never had a natural born original. Developed by the redhaired Charlotte West—the red mother, as the leader of the Taurus Army was known—when she still worked for ISF, Landau combined the best characteristics from other construct stock.
The boys stared around the room with starry-eyed gazes.
Zax said, “Kali Landau is the best.”
If teachers weren’t careful, cohorts worshiped their originals with god-like reverence, which could interfere with their learning. However, worshiping other originals not their own would lead to poor confidence and confusion. If that happened, the cohort would fail the assessment at the end of their education.
Melati desperately tried to steer the conversation to lesson topics, such as the places and functions of the ISF bases, but, like typical Grimshaws, they were single-minded and kept bringing up the topic of originals, and she could see little alternative but to answer their questions hoping that they would move on from the subject once their curiosity had been satisfied.
Yes, there were Landaus at the station. No, none were in the ISF base, but they were in StatOp. Yes, she had met some of them. The boys would not stop their questions. They hung onto every word she said, and no matter how much she tried to get them to do their work, they always returned to the same subject.
Melati tried saying things like, “If you want to be like Stephen or Kali, you need to learn your letters and numbers, and you need to know where we are, and about things that happened in the past and why.”
They would work briefly, but then one of the boys would make a remark that set them off again. They thought they failed Keb. They thought Esse was sick because of something they had said. Tyro broke into tears twice, and Melati had to comfort him. The second time, he buried his face in her uniform. She ruffled his hair and looked over his shoulder, feeling a rush of despair. He was so young and so vulnerable. The cohort was on course for a ravine and nothing she did seemed to stop them or even slow them down.
He sniffed. “I want Keb to come back.”
“He’ll be back soon enough.” In what state she had no idea.
He shook his head. “The boy in the hospital is not Keb. That boy is angry and scary. He says things I don’t understand. Keb is not like that. Keb is nice.”
Some boys nodded.
“Then if that’s not Keb, where do you think Keb is?”
Tika didn’t hesitate to answer that one. “He got left behind in Before.” His eyes were so large and open that she didn’t dare say anything about Before being not real. Then again, to them it was real. Then another thought.
“It’s probably a silly question, but if you were in Before, would you recognise him in there?”
“Yes, that’s a silly question. Of course we would. He’s now wandering around in there, looking for us. We should go back and find him.”
More nods.
“I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” Melati said.
“It is easy,” Simo said. “We just go back and find him.”
Melati hesitated, but decided there was nothing to be lost by simply telling the truth. Her regular program was failing these boys miserably. “You may think going back is easy, but the things you remember are memories the people in the lab made. I wrote the scenario. Someone programmed it.” She’d watched a lot of recordings of Earth settings, and had often wondered if she could create a scenario that was typically Indonesian. Palm trees, a village market, durians.
“But there’s a playground and a lot of other things.”
“Yes, I made them up.”
He frowned. “So you also made up the man who was watching us?”
He had a point there. She took a deep breath. In and out. “That is the part we don’t understand. Where the man came from and what he was doing there. Simo, when you were in there, did you ever leave the playground?”
He thought for a while, scratching his nose. “Just to come here.”
But Tyro said, “I went behind the bushes. There is sand on the other side. And water.”
“It’s a beach, silly,” Abe said.
“What is on the other side of the beach?” Drops of sweat collected on Melati’s upper lip.
Tyro knotted his eyebrows together.
But Tika said, “There are rocks, and then there is another beach, with a little creek, and there’s a house.”
“Did you go there?” He should not have known anything other than the playground and the beach, certainly not a house on the beach.
“Just once. I was looking at the water and how it makes a noise and does the foamy thing, and I saw Keb at that end of the beach. I went after him but by the time I got there, he was gone, so I climbed up the rocks and I found the other beach and the house. I went to the house and looked in through the windows. No one was there, not even Keb.”
God. That wasn’t in any of the memories Melati and Dr Chee had prepared.
Then another thought: this couldn’t possibly be the first time that the constructs made up new experiences before they had even been activated. Probably no one had noticed because no one had reported any mindbase problems with cohorts. How long had constructs been developing this ability? She felt cold. Back at the start of the construct program, a single copy fault had led to the split of a large group of constructs from ISF and creation of the mercenary Taurus Army. If she wasn’t careful, this would lead to a similar disaster.
“So, Tika, tell me, if you were to go back there, do you think you could find Keb?”
He bolted upright, his eyes widening. “Could I go? Really?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Once the constructs awakened they were rarely deac
tivated, unless major problems existed, and that hardly ever happened. On the other hand, the mindbase exchange did a lot of similar work, and it was a safe procedure.
She could probably have one of the boys deactivated, but what good would it do? He’d just be a large file of stored data on a computer. Not even Dr Selinger’s paper—which she had no intention of reporting or destroying—suggested that autonomous mindbases could do anything as complex as searching out and recognising another mindbase, so no matter what the boys thought, sending one to look for a missing brother was frankly ludicrous.
Furthermore, deactivating one of the brothers would damage the cohort even more.
Then: an idea.
The logs she kept on cohorts would be run through software that extracted thought patterns and typical behaviour that was unique to the cohort to devise a cohort key, a code sequence that could be used to identify the group.
With the seven functional brothers, she could calculate a rough cohort key. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as accurate as her regular calculations based on months of data and nine children, but it might be good enough to find the missing mindbase, if it was indeed somewhere in the system where it shouldn’t be. Come to think of it, she didn’t understand why the coding lab hadn’t suggested this, unless they were convinced that the rogue material had merely appended itself to the mindbase which had been transferred. But if that were the case, the boy should show much more serious behaviour problems.
She said, slowly, “Boys. I think I know a way we might find Keb.”
They all looked at her with hopeful expressions, and she decided to hell with the prescribed learning program. These boys deserved the truth.
She explained that the program made statistical analyses of the boys’ micro-behaviour to form a picture of the cohort’s mental make-up. This involved things such as how they were likely to react to certain impulses, what they were likely to think and how statements affected them.
“The cohort key definition gets better with each bit of data we feed into it. The more we know about you, the more likely we can find Keb’s mindbase.”