When the Sparrow Falls

by Neil Sharpson

  “Has there been any progress with the case?” I asked, gently.

  Vassily threw his hands up.

  “What do you think? She was found in a forest. She’d been dead for over a month. What do you think there’s left to find?”

  I nodded. After a month of exposure to the elements, the chances of finding any meaningful forensic evidence were almost nil. But there was still the method of her death. She had been shot point-blank range in the head. And of course, there was the place where her body had been found.

  The stepdaughter of Vassily Manukov turns up dead outside of Meghri. It was practically a shouted confession.

  “It had to be the Armenians,” I said. “SLA. Mer Hayrenik, maybe. They don’t have much of a presence in Ellulgrad though. She may have been sold to them by some of her ‘friends’ in the city.”

  He nodded.

  “Yes. Yes, you could be right. She knew some bad people, Nicky. Some very bad people.”

  There were tears once more. The sunlight through the curtains caught them, and they burned in his eyes.

  A few years passed.

  Olesya and I resumed our ritual of battle, separation and reunification. But that was all it was now. Ritual. A fire had gone out in Olesya with Zahara’s death. If I’m honest, a fire had gone out in all of us.

  Vassily made it to 2190, and then he succumbed to a quick and hungry cancer. Olesya and I were estranged at the time. We stood side by side at the funeral, we both embraced Alia, I gave Olesya Vassily’s envelope and we left in different cars.

  Then, just over a month later, I awoke one night to hear the rain hammering nails into the roof and found Olesya waiting at my doorstep with that enigmatic smile.

  And we were ready to begin again.

  Within a few weeks, she had drowned.

  In many ways, 2190 was the end of my life.

  Everything that followed was mere aftermath.

  26

  In this vein, there is the ominous possibility that if a positive singularity does occur, the resultant singleton may have precommitted to punish all potential donors who knew about existential risks but who didn’t give 100% of their disposable incomes to x-risk motivation. This would act as an incentive to get people to donate more to reducing existential risk, and thereby increase the chances of a positive singularity. This seems to be what CEV (coherent extrapolated volition of humanity) might do if it were an acausal decision-maker. So a post-singularity world may be a world of fun and plenty for the people who are currently ignoring the problem, whilst being a living hell for a significant fraction of current existential risk reducers (say, the least generous half). You could take this possibility into account and give even more to x-risk in an effort to avoid being punished. But of course, if you’re thinking like that, then the CEV-singleton is even more likely to want to punish you … nasty.

  —Excerpt from a post by “Roko” on the Less Wrong blog, 24 July 2010

  Listen to me very closely, you idiot.

  YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT SUPERINTELLIGENCES CONSIDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO BLACKMAIL YOU. THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING WHICH GIVES THEM A MOTIVE TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON THE BLACKMAIL.

  …

  You have to be really clever to come up with a genuinely dangerous thought.

  —Eliezer Yudkowsky, responding to Roko’s original post, 24 July 2010

  It was halfway through the second day of Lily Xirau’s time in Caspian that I finally made the mistake that had been hanging over us since we first met.

  “Olesya?” I asked. “Do you think…”

  I caught myself and blushed out to my ears.

  “Your wife?” She smiled. “Do I really look like her that much?”

  All right, I thought. No more games. Cards on the table.

  I reached inside my pocket and took out my wallet. I removed a small, dog-eared photograph and pushed it across the table to her.

  She picked it up and studied it curiously.

  “That’s Olesya,” I said. “My wife. Well, ex-wife. It’s, it’s a rather strange situation.”

  “She’s beautiful,” said Lily.

  But she did not seem at all surprised.

  “You don’t see it?” I asked.

  “See what?” she replied.

  “Do you know what you look like?” I said.

  “Not … really,” she admitted. “I’ve glanced at myself in a bathroom mirror a few times but I’m not really used to reading human faces. You think I look like her?”

  Look like her? Yes. Just a mite. A passing identicality.

  I said nothing, and simply held out my hand. She gently passed the picture back and I carefully replaced it in my wallet.

  “Nikolai,” she said softly. “What happened?”

  I took a deep breath that lasted a year or so.

  “We were happy. For a time,” I said. “I was starting out in StaSec, she worked in the Ministry of Culture. We were comfortable. Had a very nice little home together. And we were very much in love. I adored her. I absolutely adored her. I loved her mind, her passion. Her fearlessness. But I was still StaSec. And StaSec in those days … It was very different. Much more ideological. Much more aggressive. ParSec before there was ParSec. And quite possibly worse. But that was the job. And I did my job. And Olesya was becoming increasingly unhappy with where we were going.”

  “As a couple?” Lily asked.

  “As a nation,” I said. “But also, yes.”

  Lily nodded and gave a sad, sympathetic smile.

  “And slowly, slowly we were just pried apart,” I said. “Oh, there were other things as well, of course. It’s never just politics. Little slights, little cruelties. There was a boy in Sumgait she had a fling with. And then after one row she left for … four months or so. And I thought, well, that’s it. But then she came back. Showed up at my doorstep in the middle of the night in the pouring rain with a sad smile on her face and a look of defiance in her eyes. Not ready to give up just yet. And so we sat down in the kitchen over cups of coffee and wrote out our manifesto, announcing a brand-new day. A glorious dawn. ‘I will never, I promise to, we shall always…’ all the new rules. Wrote them out, and stuck them on the fridge. And we did it. We were happy again. We had put ourselves back together.”

  I buried my face in my hands. Come now, South.

  Crying in front of the Machine. What would Koslova think?

  I felt her hand on my shoulder. I felt like Mendelssohn must have when he knew that he loved Xirau. I felt her soul. I felt her goodness. The Machine had looked upon me, and saw my pain and wished to console me. Whatever reason Paulo Xirau had left this woman for, I knew that he was a fool.

  “What happened?” she said softly.

  “She used to go swimming with this club of hers,” I said. “Out on the Caspian Sea. I watched them from the shore. There was a freak storm. Came out of nowhere, vanished as quickly as it came. I’ve never seen the like. It was over in … moments. Calm. Chaos. Calm. But … she … somehow. She was knocked unconscious or…”

  A silence formed. And the longer it went on, the more impenetrable it felt until at last the words broke out of me.

  “She drowned.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lily said.

  “I tried to resuscitate her. For two hours, on that beach I tried to bring her back, but she was gone, she was gone.…”

  Lily held me as I shook.

  “I’m here,” she whispered.

  I returned the embrace. I could hear her heartbeat. I didn’t want to let go. But finally, I found the strength and released her.

  “Yes. Well,” I said, drying my eyes. “It was the day after the funeral. I hadn’t slept for three days by this point. Just replaying every last second of my marriage over and over in my mind. Just trying to hold on to it. And of course, only remembering the good parts. The wonderful moments. And I heard something being posted through the letter box and I went to open it and…”

  “Go on,” said Lily.
r />   I took a deep breath, and steeled myself.

  “She had … she had filed for divorce. Before she died. Before, in fact, she had shown up that night in the rain. She had … planned it. She had wanted me to think that everything was fine. That we would be together forever. She had … she had done it to hurt me.…”

  “Oh…,” said Lily, as if in physical pain. “Oh Nikolai, that’s … that’s … I don’t know what to say.”

  “Neither do I,” I told her. “I’ve never known. I’ve never known why…”

  I stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” Lily asked. “South?”

  I was in a waking nightmare.

  Dates were arranging themselves into a pattern in my mind, and the picture was too awful to look at.

  I could hear my own heartbeat ringing in my ears.

  Like gunshots.

  Zahara was found in a forest in mid-October 2184.

  She had been shot. And her death was estimated as having occurred a month prior.

  Bang.

  “I couldn’t save her, Nicky. I tried. I tried. You must believe me.”

  Bang.

  “She knew some bad people, Nicky. Some very bad people.”

  Bang.

  “Where’s SSA Manukov?” “He went home. Sick or something.”

  Bang.

  “Which misery do you prefer?” “This. I prefer this.”

  Bang.

  “It’s never just politics.”

  Bang.

  “It’s never just politics.”

  Bang.

  “I couldn’t save her, Nicky. I tried.”

  I couldn’t save her, Vassily. I tried.

  “Mrs. Xirau,” I said. “Would you please excuse me for a moment?”

  As I stepped outside the room, I gestured to Lubnick.

  He looked at me curiously, but he was not the kind of StaSec agent who asks another why he has clearly been crying.

  “I need to make a phone call, could you please sit in with Mrs. Xirau until I return?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Lubnick went in and sat down on one of the chairs, looking like an adult sitting on a child’s stool.

  I hurried down the stairs until I reached my desk. Grier was out, and the floor was almost empty.

  I took out a card from my pocket that showed a phone number and nothing else. I dialed and waited, not sure which I dreaded more; that the phone would be answered, or that it wouldn’t.

  There was a click.

  “Coe,” said a voice.

  “Special Agent Coe,” I said. “This is Nikolai South.”

  “South?” she said, surprised. “What is it? Is Mrs. Xirau all right?”

  “I…” I took a deep shuddering breath. “I need your help.”

  “What’s wrong, Nicky?” she asked.

  “You said … you said there were no secrets between the class of ’84. I need to talk to you about that night. Please.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Not on the phone,” she said at last. “I’m in the middle of something at the moment. Give me half an hour and I’ll drop over. All right?”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “See you soon.”

  Her voice had become softer, and almost afraid. She sounded like she had twenty-six years ago when she had stood opposite us in the floodlights.

  We’re finished. We can go home.

  I set down the phone and leaned on my desk with my head hanging between my shoulders. My brow was sweating and I felt far too hot. I loosened my tie, and then practically tore the damn thing off.

  I was wrong. I was wrong. I had to be. Coe would straighten the whole thing out.

  I went to the bathroom and filled the sink with water and dunked my head until I was half drowned.

  Then I dried myself as best as I could with the threadbare blue towel and went to the urinal to relieve myself.

  I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing at all.

  Behind me, over the gentle hiss of my stream hitting the porcelain, I heard the door creaking open.

  My eyes shot open as I felt a hand on my shoulder and the cold, firm bite of the barrel of a gun in my lower back.

  “Brother South,” said Nard Wernham in my ear. “Might I have a word?”

  I felt his hand reaching around and slowly relieving me of my service pistol.

  I swallowed nervously and slowly raised my hands over my head.

  “It’s a lovely day,” Wernham continued. “I thought we might have a chat on the roof?”

  “Of course, Nard,” I said quietly. “Might I please pull up my fly, first?”

  It was, indeed, a lovely day but it certainly didn’t feel it as I emerged blinking into the cool sunlight on the roof of StaSec HQ with Wernham’s gun prodding me forward.

  Wernham gave me a shove and I staggered into the center of the roof and turned to look at him.

  In the sunlight, the bruise on his face was even more livid, and I noticed that he had broken a tooth as well.

  Wernham turned tricks for ParSec, I remembered.

  “Very nasty,” I said, gesturing to his face. “Lily Xirau is stronger than she looks. Isn’t she, Wernham?”

  He said nothing, but the flash of hatred across his face answered loud and clear.

  He was the one who had tried to snatch Lily from her hotel room.

  “So what happens now?” I asked him.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  “Can’t shoot me face-to-face?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to shoot you, Brother,” he said. “Not unless you make me. Turn around.”

  Slowly, I turned.

  The view was breathtaking, and in different circumstances I would have been quite happy to stand there and take it in. Straight ahead was the canal, which ran past StaSec HQ on its way to the Caspian Sea. To the left, the sea itself, beautiful and calm in the sunlight. And to the right was Neftchilar Avenue and a beautiful vista of Ellulgrad.

  But I did not look at any of them. Instead, my attention was focused on a small table that had been set up on the roof, upon which rested a small wooden box.

  “Stand beside the table,” Wernham instructed.

  Slowly, I did so.

  Carefully, I turned around to see Wernham, with the gun trained on my stomach.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Catch,” he said, reaching into his pocket and producing a small, thin, black object, which he flung to me.

  Instinctively, I caught it and then almost dropped it in shock.

  It was a rectangle, plastic and glossy, around an eighth of an inch thick.

  I recognized it from films and descriptions in old books but I’d never seen one in real life before.

  It was a smartphone, of the kind that had been in common use over two centuries ago but which had not been legal in Caspian for almost eight decades.

  I looked at Wernham incredulously.

  He smiled, like a gap-toothed weasel.

  Suddenly I almost dropped the phone again as it began to vibrate in my hands. The screen came to life with a flashing green icon that resembled the handset of a rotary phone.

  “Press it with your thumb and slide right,” Wernham ordered.

  I did so.

  “Now put it to your ear and listen. You can listen, can’t you, Brother?”

  Trembling, I did as I was told.

  A voice spoke to me. It was not a voice made by a human being. It was harsh, mechanical. It was a voice like none I had ever heard before. And it chilled me to my bones.

  “Is this … Agent … Nikolai … Andreivich … South?” the voice asked with a strange staccato cadence.

  “It is,” I replied. “To whom am I speaking?”

  “This…,” the voice replied, “is Director … Samuel … Papalazarou … Junior.…”

  27

  You have the army, Sister. But I have the spies.

  —Doctor Simon Augustine Emmanuel Dasc
alu

  For a moment, I actually thought that Wernham was playing an insanely elaborate practical joke.

  Samuel Papalazarou Junior was indeed the Director of State Security. But he was also eighty-one years old and eight years out from a massive, debilitating stroke that had left him bedridden and (it was widely believed if rarely discussed) vegetative.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I do not understand how that can be possible. Sir.”

  “Reports … of my death … have been exaggerated.… Niemann … has taken … StaSec … from … me.… I intend … to take it … back.…”

  He was using a text-to-speech machine, I realized. Unlike the smartphone, it was not technically illegal to use such a device. But it would be very difficult to get your hands on one with the embargo. But then, one imagined that the Director of State Security had his ways.

  “So Wernham is working for you?” I asked, fixing him with a steely glare.

  Wernham blew me a kiss.

  “You are … all … working … for me…,” the voice responded.

  He had a point. If this was indeed Papalazarou, and he was indeed conscious and able to communicate coherently, I had a duty to obey his orders. Even over Niemann’s.

  “Wernham … is helping me … escape.…”

  “Are you a prisoner, sir?” I asked.

  “Niemann … and her … damn … doxy … have me … imprisoned … in my … home…,” the voice continued. “My house … is full of … her … DSD thugs.… She’ll kill me … if she finds out … what I’ve been up to.… She must be … removed.…”

  “What’s that got to do with Lily Xirau?” I asked. “Why did you try to abduct her?”

  I remembered how Sally Coe had warned me about assuming that the attempted kidnapping at the Morrison had been ParSec.

  “It could be anyone at all. Rogue ParSec. Rogue army. Hell, rogue us?”

  It had been “rogue us,” after all. A tiny cell within StaSec, that just happened to be headed by the director of StaSec.

  “Kill the code.… Niemann will be ousted … as the incompetent … who brought the country … to the brink … of war.… Her whole … edifice … destroyed … and I … retake … StaSec.…”

  I would have thrown the phone over the edge of the building in fury if I had not known that Wernham would kill me for it.