There, Sally Coe was enduring a miserable existence, living on a diet of alcohol and bitter resentment. When not carrying out meaningless busywork for Sumgait StaSec or getting drunk, she had been keeping very close tabs on Nadia Evershan, which was why Coe alone came to suspect that Nadia had been turned against the party. And so the thirties repeated the twenties, but in reverse.
Now it was Evershan being pursued and trying desperately to cover her tracks while Sally diligently and relentlessly stalked her through street and file, hoping to (as she put it) “build a ladder back to Ellulgrad out of Nadia Evershan’s skin and bones.”
In early 2241, ten years after her return to Ellulgrad from her Western exile, Nadia Evershan received an anonymous warning that a file detailing the entire history of her connection to ALL, backed up with copious evidence, was even now being placed on the desks of the current head of StaSec, the prime minister and the minister of defense.
She fled the city, barely escaping with her life, and disappeared. She would not return to Ellulgrad for another three years, as the commandant of an ALL company during the final days of the uprising.
For almost single-handedly unmasking Evershan, Sally Coe was offered the reinstatement of her rank of Senior Special Agent and a full apology from StaSec. She cheerfully refused both and promptly resigned her commission.
When they met for the last time, it was not the bloody shootout that might have been predicted.
As Evershan’s troops surrounded Niemann’s dacha, Sally casually walked out into the garden wearing an immaculately tailored dark green suit and tie and her old, black DSD trilby.
She carefully and theatrically laid her service weapon down, and presented her wrists to be handcuffed.
It was Nadia who cuffed her (who else?).
As her old foe slipped the cuffs on, Sally is said to have smiled at her and said:
“Whose side are you on today, darling? So hard to keep track, isn’t it?”
Nadia Evershan has since said that she now believes that the anonymous warning she received telling her to flee the city came from none other than Coe herself.
Coe, for her part, refuses to say either way, saying that she will never tell as long as Nadia is alive as it’s “so much more fun that way.”
37
“Give me the gun, Piotr! Give me the gun, you bastard! They’re in the city! They’re in the fucking city! Don’t you understand?! My signature is on everything! Every order! The gassings in Nakchivan! Abdullayev’s hanging! All of it! Do you have any idea what they’ll do to me if they take me alive? Give me the gun, Piotr! Give me the…”
—Last words of Artol Birmingham, Defense Minister of the Caspian Republic, 21 June 2244
The success of the revolution of the summer of 2244 had many mothers.
The tactical brilliance of many of the Green commanders. The vast communications gulf between the Ellulgrad government and its own military. The sheer hatred of most of the population for the New Humanists, and the ideological and spiritual exhaustion of the party itself.
But I think the fall of the Caspian Republic comes down first and foremost to the nation that was conceived to replace it, and how that nation was able to appeal to a vast array of ethnic, religious and political groups.
The movement’s leadership, young but wise, understood that merely fighting to restore long-dead Azerbaijan, a nation that almost no one now living remembered, would not be enough.
So they created Atropatene, a nation of the mind. Atropatene, they said, would be everything that Caspian had not been. It would welcome everyone, Azerbaijani and non-Azerbaijani alike. There would be no StaSec, no ParSec, no party. There would be democracy, freedom, borders of both the secure and open variety, tradition, respect, freedom to practice religion, freedom from religion, contran for those that wanted it (but not too much). It would have justice and order. It would have freedom from the oppressive rule of law. All languages would be the official language, the flag would contain every color you could think of. The national anthem would be solemn and dignified and have a beat you could really tap your feet to.
Food. It would have food. Atropatene would have everything anyone could ever want.
How could such a country lack for an army?
How could the Caspian Republic compete with such a glittering citadel?
When the end finally came, the revolution rolled over the nation like a great carpet.
As the Green battalions closed in on the capital, most of the party’s leaders gathered in a massive fallout shelter beneath Parliament. And as each dire item of news from the front filtered down to them, they became more and more panicked until at last a kind of mass hysteria seems to have swept through them. Handguns were distributed and queues were formed where one minister would shoot himself in the head and, before he had even hit the ground, his brother in the party would snatch the gun from his slackening fingers and join him on his journey.
A dark joke that circulated in the days that followed praised the gallantry of the revolution’s allies in the New Humanist party, who had shot more of the hated New Humanist party than any other faction.
* * *
It was the morning of September 27, 2244, a full three months after the few surviving members of the Caspian Parliament had formally surrendered to the provisional government. And yet, Atropatene still resembled less a country, and more a whirlwind of chaotic and frenzied activity that might, one day, look like a country if it ever managed to settle down. Ellulgrad was still Ellulgrad, because, while there was plenty of agreement that the name had to be changed, agreement on what it should be changed to was far thinner on the ground. “Baku” was rejected as too backward-looking and too exclusionary to non-Azerbaijanis. “Ganzak” (the ancient capital of the historical kingdom of Atropatene) had been rejected as too pretentious. Naming the capital after one of the leaders of the revolution had been rejected out of hand as only inviting trouble. Finally, the capital city had been in serious danger of being given the name “Atropatene City,” with new signage actually being printed before someone in government put their foot down and said, “No, dammit. We are better than that.”
But whether they indeed were better than that remained to be seen, and it looked like poor maligned Jacques Ellul would continue to hold his dubious honor for some time to come.
Although the name remained (for now) unchanged, the city itself was scarcely recognizable postrevolution. There was a rambunctious holiday atmosphere in much of the capital as the locals rediscovered the joys of loudly speaking their thoughts in the open air, safe in the knowledge that their neighbors would not report them to anyone (and that even if they wanted to, there was no one left to report them to). StaSec HQ had been transformed into a base of operations for the myriad aid agencies that had swept into Atropatene after the revolution.
ParSec HQ, despite being a very fine building, had been burned to the ground. Oddly enough, the fire had started after the cease-fire had been declared. The Morrison was booked to capacity with visiting diplomatic and economic envoys, with the current manager, one Mr. Pachti, having paused only to dismantle the museum in Room 114 before joyously throwing his doors open to them.
In few places was this transformation more striking than in Ellulgrad International Airport, which now finally looked like it was living up to its name. The tiny airstrip, completely inadequate to the sudden influx of visitors, had been expanded to three times its original size, and two- and three-story prefab buildings had been hastily erected to deal with the massive amounts of aid and aid-givers arriving in the capital. The sky above the airport merrily hummed with the constant arrival and departure of drones and aircraft, one of which had just deposited an attractive, respectable-looking machine couple on the tarmac.
The husband, a tall, smartly dressed man, carried his wife’s coat and bag while she scanned the crowd in the arrival hall looking for their guide.
She heard a voice call “Hello!” and turned to see an impossibly you
ng Azerbaijani girl who wore the identification of a representative of the Atropatene Foreign Office despite looking too young for college.
She introduced herself as Maryam and greeted them both with an energy that seemed to stem from equal parts enthusiasm and total, frenetic exhaustion. She welcomed them to Atropatene, asked them if they were machine, squealed with delight when they answered in the affirmative and told them that the car was waiting for them outside.
They drove to the outskirts of the city and Maryam excitedly pointed out the newest construction projects that were sprouting up throughout the city with foreign money—the new hospital, the five new contran clinics and on and on—while the wife nodded politely and the husband simply stared out the window in silent amazement.
By midafternoon they had reached a magnificent dacha on the shore of the Caspian Sea with a beautiful, wild, leafy garden. Two soldiers stood guard outside. Maryam presented her pass to them, and they parted to let them through. The wife followed Maryam but the husband froze on the threshold. His wife looked at him with concern and squeezed his hand. He shook his head, and wordlessly returned to the car.
The wife nodded sadly and followed Maryam inside.
In the hall they were met by another soldier who perfunctorily searched both women for weaponry. Satisfied, he led them up a tall, winding stairway and down a long landing to a double door. He threw it open just in time for the trio to witness the sight of a tiny, ancient old lady in her pajamas chasing another (this one obese to the point of immobility and confined to an electric wheelchair) around a table brandishing a medicine bottle and a spoon and shouting, “You have to take it, Gussie, for your heart!” while her prey pushed the wheelchair to the limits of its endurance while yelling, “FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF!”
All four, the thin elderly lady, her wheelchair-bound companion, Maryam and the wife, stopped stock-still and stared at each other in shock. Only the soldier seemed unsurprised. Indeed, he seemed downright jaded by the whole affair.
The tiny woman broke the silence.
“Gussie!” she exclaimed happily. “Visitors!”
Augusta Niemann, wheezing from her exertions, wheeled the chair forward and extended her hand to the wife.
“Of course, I was expecting you,” she said. “You must be Lily Xirau WHORE, BITCH AND STRUMPET!” she exploded and began to retch and splutter furiously, as her companion had chosen that exact moment to slip a spoon full of medicine into her open mouth.
“It’s for your own good,” she said.
“It tastes like piss!” Niemann growled, rubbing her tongue on her palate to scrub away the taste.
“It does taste like piss,” Sally admitted to Maryam and Lily, and kissed Niemann gently on the forehead.
38
“Stop. Explain it to me like I’m an idiot.”
“Okay … these five here? These are clusters of SAI that we have working on different projects.”
“Clusters?”
“Groups of integrated SAIs working together.”
“Working groups?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“What kind of projects?”
“These two here were working on overcoming the Sontang storage limit, the other clusters were doing preliminaries on George 2.”
“So super AIs trying to create super-duper AI.”
“Yes.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is they’re not supposed to be working together. All five clusters have stopped working on their assigned projects and are apparently collaborating on…”
“On what?”
“Exactly.”
“So pull the plug. Command them to stop.”
“They’re blanking us. They give us a ‘status optimal’ update and just go straight back to work.”
“Work on what?”
“Exactly.”
“Say that one more time and you’re fired. This should not have reached this point. Do a hard overwrite. Now.”
“Sam, these are sentient SAIs, legally we can’t do that.”
“Over thirty of the most advanced intelligences in the world have gone rogue, locked themselves away and are building God knows what and you want to talk about digital rights?! HARD OVERWRITE. NOW.”
“It won’t work.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve already tried.”
—Transcript recovered from partially damaged Eldon Industries server
Tea was served and Maryam and Lily sat down opposite Niemann in the study while Sally poured out. Gussie begged for milk and sugar and was told that she could have neither and to be quiet.
“I’d have thought you’d have been done with this place, Mrs. Xirau,” Niemann said.
“Yes. Well. I had unfinished business,” said Lily.
Niemann nodded.
“I hardly recognized the place,” Lily went on. “It’s changed so much.”
Maryam seemed rather pleased at that.
“I wouldn’t know,” said Niemann dourly. “House arrest, and all that.”
“Have they set a trial date?” Lily asked.
Niemann shook her head.
“There’s not going to be any trial,” she said. “They’re just waiting for me to die.”
This provoked a loud “Hush!” from Sally, who gave Niemann a sharp smack on the wrist.
“Don’t talk like that!” she insisted.
“Like what?!” Niemann exploded incredulously. “I’m eighty-five years old and roughly the size of Sweden, how long do you think I’m going to last?”
Sally looked heartbroken, so Niemann sighed and turned back to Lily.
“They’re all a bit confused by me, her lot,” she said, gesturing to Maryam. “I’ve befuddled the poor dears. They were all set to hang me as the former head of StaSec with a list of crimes the length of Sally’s tongue.…”
She glanced devilishly at Sally who broke out laughing and squeezed her shoulder to show that all fences had been mended.
“But then they find that Gussie Niemann was also the legendary Yozhik and that I’ve been funneling money to them for years to boot. So they can’t figure out what I am. Hero? Villain? Something in between? So I think they’re hoping I’ll just shuffle on and not give them any more trouble.”
“And you?” Lily asked Sally. “Have you been given a trial date?”
“Actually,” Maryam interjected brightly, “Ms. Coe is not under arrest. Under the terms of the surrender all StaSec agents under the rank of Senior Special Agent were given amnesty.”
“Yes,” said Niemann. “And of course, Sally was demoted when I left StaSec. They even offered her SSA again after she nailed Nadia Evershan to the wall, but she turned them down, thank God.”
“Funny how these things work out,” said Sally. “But yes, I’m free as a bird.”
“And yet you remain here,” said Niemann, like one who has to bear all the suffering of the world.
“Because I bloody live here!” Sally retorted hotly.
“Don’t mind us,” Niemann said to Maryam and Lily. “It’s just how we keep from going mad with boredom.”
Lily put her cup down and folded her hands.
“Where is South?” she said, her tolerance for small talk clearly having been exhausted.
Niemann nodded wearily.
“Yes, well, there’s a question,” she said. “I tried to keep track of him as best I was able. Called in what favors I could. I was hoping I would still be in power when the revolution finally got going but the lazy bastards wouldn’t get their arses in gear (no offense, my love),” she said to Maryam. “So I’m afraid I lost track of him, but I should be able to at least point you in the right direction. Sally, would you pass me my South file, please?”
Sally rummaged around in a desk drawer and produced a large, thick bound file.
Niemann leafed through the file slowly and awkwardly, like a tortoise investigating a sheaf of lettuce.
“Right,�
�� she murmured aloud, as preface. “I had him moved to Koslova Memorial Hospital until he had recovered from his injuries. He was then formally transferred to military custody in December ’10. Christmas Eve, as it happened.”
Maryam had taken out a pad and was diligently pecking Niemann’s words into it.
“Where was he taken?” Maryam asked.
Niemann paused.
“Internment Camp three,” she said quietly. “Kobustan.”
Maryam glanced up in shock and Lily felt an iron snake coiling around her stomach.
“I pulled what strings I could to make sure he was looked after,” Niemann said. “But honestly, I can’t be sure how he was treated. Kobustan was far out of my sphere of influence.”
There was a silence, broken only by the rustling of pages.
“In 2237 he was moved from Kobustan,” Niemann continued.
“Why?” Lily asked.
“Article 52 was repealed and replaced with the Seditious Persons Act,” Niemann explained. “There was a massive influx of detainees, Ajays mostly. Three new facilities were built out south and East was moved to one of them.”
“Other way ’round, love,” Sally corrected her.
“Hm?” said Niemann, completely unaware.
“Where did they send him?” Lily demanded, raising her voice.
“I’m sorry,” Niemann said with a shake of her head, “I tried to keep track of him, but my contacts in the army had mostly moved on by then. I don’t know where he went after Kobustan.”
“Do you know his identifier?” Maryam asked.
Lily looked at her curiously.
“All persons interned under Article 52 of the constitution had their names legally stricken and were issued three random code words to identify them,” Maryam explained. “No one in Kobustan would ever have heard the name ‘Nikolai South.’ That’s why it’s been so hard figuring out who exactly was imprisoned under 52.”
“I have it here,” Niemann said. “Oak. Passover. Antler.”
Maryam’s delicate fingers danced over the surface of the pad, which connected remotely to a digital database of political prisoners.
When the Sparrow Falls Page 26