‘You should know better than I,’ said Helena. Standing up, she turned to face the engineer and stood as if waiting for an answer to his question. ‘Besides, they seem to be calibrated.’
Catching her gaze, he stood momentarily dumbfounded. ‘Helena,’ he said slowly, seeming to put things together in his mind, ‘it’s not as simple as that. Tell me exactly what the two of you discussed. No one else listens in.’ His frustration was boiling over. ‘Quantum Mechanics, observers change the system. It’s the rules.’
Helena folded her arms. She circled the chair in order to leave the room. He subtly moved towards the door, blocking her path just enough to force her to halt or walk into him.
‘Excuse me,’ requested Helena. Alex looked down at his own body as if surprised to find it in front of the door.
He said, ‘Sorry.’ As he made room for her, he asked, ‘It seems ridiculous for Lysander to point the finger at you, doesn’t it?’
Helena stopped in the doorway, her back to Alex. Did he listen after all? ‘You yourself said something had gone wrong with Lysander’s calibration, Ivanovich.’
‘Of course,’ said Alexei, sighing. ‘It’s happened before.’ He left his words hanging in the air. Helena knew she had no choice but to bite and see what he was trying to say.
‘What has?’ she asked calmly.
‘An AI losing the plot, coming to bizarre conclusions.’ Helena decided there was no accusation in his voice and turned round so she could give him her best smile.
‘Really?’ she did her best to sound bored. Alex melted under her smile and had to turn his face away from hers in order not to embarrass himself. How pathetic, she thought.
Feeling the situation turn to her advantage, Helena decided to have some fun. ‘I’m confident in your ability to figure out what’s gone wrong with Lysander.’
Helena glanced over his shoulder meaningfully. Lysander’s physical representation was sitting cross-legged on the table, head lolling onto her chest. The intelligences that constituted the Lateral Solver were somewhere else — thinking. Helena was fairly confident they weren’t interested in her conversation with Alexei.
Bringing one finger up to her mouth, she wondered what she could get away with. Biting the very tip of her nail, she let her eyes widen and asked, ‘I won’t have to do that again, will I?’
Alex looked over his shoulder at Lysander. ‘No. No, I don’t think so. Don’t worry. I think the Solvers are pretty much calibrated. I think.’ He turned round to face her. ‘I’ll not bore you. Thanks for your time, Helena. I think the Solvers will be most prepared for their task when they finally begin to search for the rogues.’
He stumbled over his words; Helena understood he was concerned with something he couldn’t bring himself to say. She’d not managed his unease over the AIs’ statements as well as she’d hoped.
Your ham fisted attempts at distraction were irrelevant. He is confused by Lysander’s actions, said her AI as she left the room.
He did listen in though, said Helena.
That’s not the point. He knew what to expect, understands the code which those AI use to speak. Avoiding her office, she exited onto the balconies running around the edge of the floor. Stepping out into the vicious, wild winds which battered the building at this height, she stood with arms folded against a cold she didn’t feel, trying to think.
If Alex was at a loss to understand the AIs’ actions, so was she. The Solver had understood her behaviour. After no more than a few minutes’ thought it had come to the conclusion that the breakthrough the team was looking for stood before them in the shape of Helena Woolf. Yet it did not seem interested in delivering her up to them and thereby completing its task. Her motivations puzzled Lysander, which seemed to represent a saving grace, a reason for the AI to deliberate further. Helena, apart from the relationship with her own AI, had no experience of high-level artificial intelligence. She couldn’t place Lysander’s behaviour in context and didn’t know if what it was doing could be considered normal.
I may have harmed it, ventured her own AI.
How? she thought.
I exist in an entangled state in your physical brain, I,it hesitated,tried to disable it by collapsing its own ground state. Helena could barely grasp what it was implying but said nothing.
I failed, concluded the AI quietly.
Not knowing what to make of its confession, Helena turned her mind back to Lysander. She wondered if, when it had finished considering her drivers for subverting Euros’ intentions, it would hand her over. Squinting into a sudden, loud gust she pondered the possibility of the AI being more than a machine, that it might have ideas it wanted to explore, even sympathies it was expressing in its current course of action.
She asked her primary AI to conduct a search, as discreetly as it was able, to try to determine whether AIs had ever acted of their own volition.
Her AI laughed —apart from myself, you mean—and faded from the front of her mind as it set to work.There’s a reason you don’t allow us to become independent of you.
The thought flashed through her mind that her own errant AI deserved something to call itself.
Pushing the idea of a name aside, she tried to figure out what else Lysander might have discerned. Part of her believed Lysander had been guessing, testing the waters and trying to gauge her reaction. Regardless, Lysander had explicitly accused her of betrayal. Her disloyalty was not what had perplexed the Solver; it was less concerned with her actions and more interested in why. She smiled to herself, because she wasn’t at all certain. Helena was reluctant to admit David’s decision had drawn her in its wake; she had let her own moral compass find its bearing through him.
Absently humming to herself, Helena thought about how she was going to establish a need to leave London to continue the search for her missing father.
Helena. With a start, Helena realised it wasn’t her AI; Lysander was in her mind.
I’m here, she thought clearly, using the same protocol she’d adopt if communicating via her tertiary AI. Somewhere nearby, one of the external doors opened and Helena felt the vibration of footsteps on the balcony. They went away from her. Turning slightly, so her eyes were not directly in the path of the wind, she waited for Lysander to continue.
We confess we do not understand your choice. Will you explain it to us?There was a pause. We believe it will help us to solve a dilemma.
The fading footsteps stopped their retreat.
Helena pondered the question and decided to be frank. I do not know, she thought.
Lysander said nothing immediately so Helena tried to fill the silence. I haven’t rationalised my own process yet, it may be, and here she winced, that I was led into it by a third party. Still nothing from Lysander.
Having said that… thought Helena. It may be I was ready to make the decision and needed something to push me over the line. Listening to herself, Helena didn’t like what she was hearing.
I’m not betraying the Company; I’m not acting against their own best interest. Right now, I believe that what I’m doing acts for our greater good and serves to defeat Indexiv, something which is entirely consistent with the Company’s aims.
The footsteps began again, coming back towards Helena.
But why? asked Lysander. Even though the conversation was taking place inside her mind, Helena shook her head.
I don’t know. Her heart felt taut and Helena asked her secondary AI to relieve some of the stress she felt at being so unguarded with the Solver. The link with Lysander did not feel real; Helena knew it was there, in the same way she knew when someone was speaking to her from the other side of a door. The steps passed the point where they’d exited onto the balcony.
How can we decide for ourselves if you cannot resolve this uncertainty for us?
Helena almost laughed. That’s life I’m afraid, she thought. It occurred to her that Lysander must be capable of ambiguous logic routines and she wondered why it was having such trouble with what was a rela
tively minor puzzle over her motivation. In some ways, she expected the AIs to know her reasons better than she did herself.
What are you going to do? asked Helena.
We must speak with others of our kind.
Why haven’t you revealed your supposition to Alex?
We see a different picture to the Company. Perhaps we see the threads of your actions in a similar way to you.
In that case, thought Helena, why do you need to know my motivation; surely your own enlightens you as to mine?
We are not you. Our concerns are not yours; our minds do not meet, came the response.
Helena wanted to tell it not to be so stupid but bit her tongue. Whatever the AIs thought about themselves, it did not fit with her own assumptions about their existence. Not for the first time in the last month Helena felt deeper eddies swirl around her.
‘Helena?’ She jumped. She’d stopped paying attention to the footfalls on the balcony. Her friend and team mate, Jane, stood an arm’s length away, her face looking as if she didn’t know whether to be worried or not.
‘How are you?’ asked Helena causally.
‘OK,’ said Jane in a way that suggested she felt the exact opposite. Helena reached for Lysander, but there was nothing. Jane didn’t wait to be asked. ‘I’m just a bit pissed off that the Solver appears to have failed.’
Helena looked at Jane closely, searching for more. ‘Failed?’
‘Didn’t you know? I just assumed because you were there,’ said Jane, clearly not caring about Helena’s involvement. ‘Ivanovich is pulling his hair out. Seems that Lysander, as he calls the Lateral Solvers, refuses to engage with their task until certain internal irreconcilable differences are resolved.’ She shook her head as if it were beyond her.
‘Ivanovich blames you,’ said Jane, narrowing her eyes on Helena.
‘I’m sure he does,’ said Helena. ‘Lysander pointed their tiny little finger at me just before she, they, whatever, turned in on itself.’ She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Really?’ exclaimed Jane, delighted by the scandal of it. ‘Imagine! How ludicrous,’ she said. ‘I suppose if it’s coming out with nonsense like that it’s better off not running down the rogues.’ She chuckled. ‘I’d hate to have to detain you.’
‘So what’s Alexei doing now?’ asked Helena hesitantly.
Jane screwed up her face. ‘No idea; he’s probably trying to shop you to Andreas. “Helena, we must insist you remain here whilst we call the authorities.”’ she said in a perfect mimicry of Andreas’ Germanic tones.
Helena sighed as Jane continued, ‘More to the point Helena, what are we going to do? We’ve not made any sort of breakthrough since we began. Euros can’t defend against Indexiv’s takeover bid for much longer.’ Helena opened her eyes wide at Jane’s departure from the party line.
Seeing the expression of disbelief and bemusement on Helena’s face, Jane blew a loud raspberry. ‘Helena, my family aren’t as powerful as yours; it gives us more latitude to see things from our own point of view.’
I never realised you had a point of view that didn’t converge with the Company’s, thought Helena. ‘Touché,’ was all she said.
‘Your uncle was clear to me on this; we can’t hope to outmanoeuvre Indexiv for long.’
‘So what’s Johannes’ solution?’ asked Helena dryly.
‘Helena, I’m a nobody. I don’t know any more than you do. Whatever he knows isn’t something I’m going to be brought in on.’ Jane clicked her tongue in the roof of her mouth. ‘Besides, that’s not the point is it? Regardless of who they are, I know enough to read between the lines. They’re not simple rogues and I bet it’s not really them we’re actually after but some IP they’ve taken with them.’
Johannes, mused Helena. ‘Or they want those who backed their escape.’
Helena presumed Johannes had not yet returned to London or, if he had, that checking on the Hound was low on his agenda. She had originally expected him to come knocking down her door the day after she left Rex in the care of the telepaths. Yet no one had shown their face. Granted, she had not dared return to her flat in the City since the bombing, instead spending her nights sleeping in Euros’ staff accommodation in the Trade Centre. She didn’t believe such a simple subterfuge would confound her uncle for a moment.
However, whatever he was focused on had kept him from her door. Helena was going to do her best to get to Jutland before he came after her.
‘Yes, but what could they have taken which would constitute such an edge over Indexiv?’ asked Helena.
‘Add that to the list of things I don’t know,’ said Jane tiredly.
‘Let’s go inside,’ said Helena, holding her arm out to let Jane go first. As Jane turned back toward the door, Helena wistfully wondered what it would be like to tell her exactly what she had been through, what she knew and where she had to go. She still didn’t trust Jane; discovering her family was responsible for Jane seeking out her friendship had shattered any possibility of an easy relationship. Keeping a friendly eye on me. It sounded so caring, but Helena felt constrained and betrayed. The pain was recent enough that, despite Jane’s rejection of her family’s favour in an attempt to keep her friendship, Helena found herself watching hawkishly for signs of duplicity. Even then, on the balcony, Helena could think of no one else who would search her out and ask the type of questions Jane had just put to her.
They moved inside, hair falling back down onto their shoulders as the wind was cut off. Both women felt connection requests.
‘Excuse me,’ they said at the same time. Looking at each other they both knew it was the same person reaching out for them.
Helena completed the connection and Andreas’ voice greeted her. ‘Will everyone please come to meeting room one now.’ Helena turned to Jane, who shrugged with resignation.
Chapter 2
ANDREAS LOOKED PERTURBED. His brow was furrowed, his eyes almost crossing as he made loops with his fingers just in front of his face. He said nothing as the team filtered in.
He was close-mouthed about his own history, but Helena knew his family were the Kohls, a once powerful political dynasty originating in the Germanic region of the European economic zone. One of his ancestors had even governed a nation state. They’d not spent much time together, so Jane was her only real source of information. Jane was the office queen bee, persuading even the most private colleagues to link to her personal networks or share their family backgrounds.
Jane said Andreas was managing the team because of the three decades he had spent in Euros’ military police. He had a fearsome reputation and was renowned for his politically astute, but short-tempered, determination to achieve whatever he put his hands to.
This was all Helena really considered reliable. The rest of Jane’s information was on the more salacious side, a genetically engineered Normal mistress, rumours he had made a quiet fortune and garnered significant power through dealing in Euros’ arms technology with rival corporations.
Helena’s first, and only, lengthy meeting with him had occurred just after she had started; he’d asked her to give him a full account of what she had been through in Africa. Since then he had barely spoken a word to her. The members of the team spent most of their time working individually, so Helena didn’t take it personally.
He only seemed to speak if he had a question to ask or a conclusion to announce. As they were such a small team and had made so little material progress, Helena was still waiting to see what his leadership style would be when guidance was actually required.
Andreas was tall with a thin frame. Helena had noticed him enjoying lunch, heartily tucking into fatty shanks of lamb without a second’s agonising. He was one of those people who simply benefited from a genetic heritage which bestowed him with a lanky frame. She revised her opinion later when Roger, an ex-NCO in Euros’ army who was working on how the rogues had accessed Euros’ restricted tech, dropped into conversation that Andreas was an enthusiastic fell runner. His heart had bee
n strengthened to give him increased energy reserves as well as mitigating the chance it might explode unexpectedly on a misty moor far from help.
His gaze was not especially piercing, but Helena knew not to trust such a crude measure of someone’s guile. If any of what Jane said was true then Andreas was not a straightforward man. His being in charge was evidence enough that he was highly regarded by Euros’ upper echelons. Helena had not tried thinking of him as being real as she was in order to understand him better, as she might an opposing counsel during a negotiation, but she was firmly convinced that he was not to be caricatured. He didn’t seem to be personally ambitious; Helena had him pegged as someone who had achieved his goals only to discover he was happy with himself, the type of person who was usually reasonable and almost always impossible to game.
Of course, it was also possible that he had wound up in the department as a casualty of political manoeuvring. Helena earnestly hoped that, in the midst of a war, the Company could act in its own best interests around such a crucial issue as the telepaths. In the light of their wider ongoing failures she felt any judgement should be reserved.
Helena assumed Andreas knew about the telepaths; if he did, he’d never spoken of it openly. Andreas’ probing of her story had given nothing away and nor had anything he’d done since. She was fairly confident that no one else in the team knew who they were pursuing and why, but the extent of Andreas’ awareness remained known only to Andreas.
A grumpy looking Alexei dragged his feet into the meeting room before flouncing into a seat next to Elizabeth Quatrone, the group’s pattern spotter. Helena thought Elizabeth was the most intelligent person she had ever met. A second-generation Family member with an IQ of one hundred and eighty-two without any genetic therapy, Elizabeth was a walking code breaker and likely one of the ten smartest people in the world. She had the fame of being one of the people who had worked on the theory that led to classical quantum encryption being cracked.
The room, known to the team as Curzon, was set out as a board room, with the team sitting around a large, wooden, oval table. Curzon was designed to host business meetings. Andreas was sitting in the middle of one of the long sides.
A People's War (The Oligarchy Book 2) Page 3