She’d solved his second requirement, too – the kill switch. She could send a blank file as a kill command and swap out the behaviour models for entire tribes in minutes – they’d go right back to being tabula rasas with just two lines of code. This she demonstrated on the test models.
‘I call it blanking,’ she said proudly. ‘We can wipe them from here.’
Bengali gave her a round of applause and signed. ‘Done!’ he proclaimed, like a man getting a huge weight off his chest. ‘Done, done and done! I can bloody well put the office stamp on this now. I didn’t put this in writing, but good job, really.’
‘Dinner’s on you,’ she said. ‘And you wear that black shirt Mrs. Wijeratne sent you.’
She was warming up to the man. He was quite smart once you got him to focus.
He smiled. ‘I’ll wear a tutu if it means I get access and a third date, but Mrs. Wijeratne seems to be angling for information,’ he said, and brought out the arrack shot glasses that he had very carefully hidden while the engineer was there. ‘I have to finish this report today. Red tape and all that. Tomorrow? You can take me shopping and I’ll feel like I won’t have to pay social calls to that woman. She sets my teeth on edge.’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, and they toasted each other.
The towers were working. And the update system. That was another Bengali intervention. He had mentioned how a colleague of his had developed something called the Viral Mesh after being inspired by a cold – a network of units that could talk to each other, maintain a log of changes, request each other for updates and keep their software in repair, even in the face of cyberattacks. The technology, he had said, had turned out to be critical on the Russian warfront.
She had read the paper and it didn’t seem that complex; a week or so of code and she had a fairly rudimentary version of it running. She dared admit to Hewage that she might even have improved it. She had worked out a way where bots could transmit compare differences in their software versions and just sent the changes to each other, saving on bandwidth; all that was needed was a complex – but not impossible – recompiler that could paste the right code into the right places and reboot with the changes. Hewage had given her a curious look and asked her to write a paper on it. It was quite obvious that he’d never thought about practical things like this.
‘Later,’ she had said. ‘We’ve got to get the damned thing running first.’
And now, the damned thing was running.
‘Alright,’ said Bengali, stretching. ‘Meeting with Hewage, Penhaligon, Grimme next. Field assessment.’
‘Break a leg,’ she said. ‘Let me know if you finish early.’
The next day, Jacob Bengali got into the black car with a nagging feeling at the back of his mind. He felt that he should have rehearsed his lines. Something clear, sharp, suitably impressive for the occasion.
He lit a cigarette, making sure he didn’t ash on the delicate printouts he carried. Real paper, of course.
He should have felt proud of the delicate balance he had negotiated. Instead, he just felt tired. And his mind kept drifting. To machine learning. To Hewage and his silence. To Kushlani de Almeida, who would, and probably deserved to be, crowned the hero of this chapter. To Eliott Grimme, that freak prototype, who probably didn’t deserve it, but would get it anyway.
Today, the Watchtower was a grinding, clanking mess – every lab running at full speed and the reception packed to the brim with hired hands in lab coats. Pre-production. They were getting the basic stuff sorted for when the bots came in. Printed circuit boards, spare parts … and most of all, synthskin. The stench of it hit him like a wave – heat, sweat, the stink of machine oil, the sounds of a hospital and machine shop combined.
And there was Hewage, watching everything from a corner. Crumpled grey shirt, and, Jacob noticed, a cane. He couldn’t have looked more isolated if he tried. Hewage saw him, nodded towards a little boardroom in the corner, where Bengali laid out his assessment.
Hewage read it with satisfaction. ‘Good work,’ he said at last, almost to himself. ‘She’ll be ready to take over from me soon.’
‘Thinking of retiring?’
‘That and other things,’ said Hewage. ‘Trying to get the family back together. Get a better house. All sorts of shit you don’t think about when you’re working here twelve hours a day.’
‘I thought you’d have made some serious cash by now,’ joked Bengali.
Hewage’s face clouded over. ‘Nobody in the government here makes “serious cash”, Bengali. Not if you’re paying rent and buying all the shit you need to eat and stay alive. The only way anyone makes money in this town is if their parents made money and spoonfed them their groceries. Go ask Kushlani.’ He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Okay, that was unfair. I’m tired. Let’s get this over with.’
The car took them to a house hidden far away from prying eyes behind high stonewalls and ridges. A sea of fake grass met their eyes, and in the middle of it was a bungalow with red banners hanging from it. It would have looked quaint if the original facade hadn’t been painted over with bulletproof paint and the windows tinted an odd red. A butler, dark-skinned and dressed in a rich scarlet, met and escorted them inside to a private room. Bengali saw panels of rich wood with paintings of British and Sinhalese men looking terribly uncomfortable in the dress of the day. The panels twisted and turned, and a study emerged, draped in a kind of rich darkness.
He let his eyes rove around the room, comparing its rich decadence with the last time he had seen rooms like this. India. Hong Kong. There was a fundamental Britishness that had barely changed, despite the differences in country and time. The wood. The style of furniture. But also, perhaps, in the way things were arranged – a subtle but fixed pattern that was remarkably persistent. An identity that was strangely enduring yet stifling. Unevolving; too fixed to be flexible.
There was a monk sitting there. And old one, by the looks of it. Hewage said something to the monk, sounding oddly gentle and subservient, gave Bengali a look, and said, ‘Looks like this’ll be a private meeting. I’ll be outside if you need a smoke.’
The monk said something to Bengali.
‘Swaamin-wahansey,’ he tried to say, ‘Mata thaama mey baasaawa kathaakaranna amaarui.’ Forgive me, Venerable One. I still find this language difficult to speak.
‘Then we shall speak in the Queen’s English,’ the monk said, his voice accented, the words deliberate, rolling, every consonant low, every vowel stretched. ‘How are you today, Dr. Bengali, I presume? Mr. Grimme is here.’
And blast him if that dark shadow unfolding from the corner wasn’t Eliott Grimme, clutching a military bag of some kind. The Reaper was taller in person than on the screen, and narrower; his skin, not entirely covered by the unmarked Army uniform he wore, looked like someone had taken a cheesgrater to it.
‘Mr. Grimme,’ he tried, extending a hand. ‘I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you on the television.’
Both Grimme and the monk stared at the hand until Bengali withdrew it.
‘Will, ah, Kushlani be joining us?’
‘Nobody from the Ministry will be here for this first briefing,’ said Eliott, with a thinly disguised impatience.
Servants emerged, and the butler snapped orders at them to bring tea and biscuits. Bengali, trying not to gawk, wondered why the other servants looked at the butler with such resentment.
‘Do you understand why the servants dislike the man who commands them?’ the monk was saying. ‘You see, they are Sinhala, Dr. Bengali, and he is Tamil. They are the majority in this country, and he the minority. They know this country is theirs by birthright, whereas he has been brought in from India, or Jaffna, or such places up North. A different culture, a different man. His authority has been given to him because the British believe that as long as these two groups can keep hating each other, they will have little hate to spare for the Empire. Classic divide and conquer. Of all the things the British did, I think this might be
the most devastating. But I can see from your eyes that you understand these nuances.’
Confused, Bengali watched Eliott Grimme open his bag and begin pulling out bot heads. One. Two. Three. Five.
‘Are you in the habit of collecting trophies?’ said the monk.
‘Research, Venerable One,’ said Grimme.
‘As is necessary, no doubt,’ the monk said. He looked thoughtful. ‘We all do what we are here to do, Mr. Grimme.’
‘Just so, Venerable One. Is there any way I can help you?’
The monk smiled placidly. ‘I am just waiting for our mutual friend, Mr. Penhaligon,’ he said. ‘I am told that we have promised you certain things in exchange for your aid. Perhaps find a home of your own, somewhere you can see the sky. Maybe settle down with a good Sinhala woman. We will see to it that karma will forgive you for your sins.’
‘I didn’t realize karma worked that way,’ said Grimme. Bengali thought he heard a hint of annoyance in the pale man’s tone.
The monk’s face split in a wry smile.
Just then, Penhaligon swept in, flanked by two Inquisitors. Bengali felt some satisfaction at Penhaligon’s start upon seeing the neat rows of child-like faces on his lovely wooden desk. The servants, having temporarily forgotten about race relations, scurried out of the room. Penhaligon, with a glance, led the monk out of the room.
Whispers of their conversation bounced back, reflecting off the wood.
‘… your job to keep them distracted …’
‘… very little to be done, Penhaligon, when boys come back with bullet holes …’
‘… I don’t know, distract them. This is your job …’
‘… keep your voice down.’
Penhaligon came back, alone and thoughtful. He looked at the heads. ‘Report, then. You first, Bengali.’
Well. Now was the time. He got his tongue unstuck and began describing his assessment. ‘Here’, he passed over the papers, ‘you should have no trouble with the Foreign Office once everything is signed for.’
‘Mr. Grimme, your opinion?’
Eliott leaned over to read. ‘I see you have in place an update system that—’
‘Yes, de Almeida’s idea. Obviously, we’ll be fitting hardware into the bots that can support network capabilities … not a lot of bandwidth, but just enough—’
The pale man read in silence and looked up at Penhaligon. ‘What do you want me to say? It’s two layers of security. Eventually, it’ll break. Eventually, everything breaks.’ He dangled the bot heads in front of Penhaligon. ‘Fuck the security, Penhaligon. You should be looking at this. They’re supposed to be simple systems, probably some junk code wired on top. Whatever was in there had a conversation with me. Or tried to. Even before that, they adapted too damn fast. We took a lot more damage than we expected – they didn’t fight the way they were supposed to. They’ve got some sort of phalanx manoeuvre now, using shields and spears. We lost a few dozen local lads.’
‘That must be Hewage’s machine learning,’ said Bengali. ‘Don’t look at me, I only have a vague idea of how that works. It’s supposed to be that way.’
‘I know about supposed to, Dr. Bengali,’ said Grimme. ‘I know they’re supposed to act like bloody tribes massacring each other. I’m telling you that by the end they were ambushing soldiers, Penhaligon. Now that might be because your boys are shit, but something with a spear and a two-foot height disadvantage has no business giving us as much trouble as these things did.’
Penhaligon swept a hand over his face. Bengali noticed the faintest tremor in those long fingertips. ‘I’m not the architect of this system, gentlemen, nor am I the person who commissioned it. I’m just a civil servant trying to sweep up the mess.’
Grimme tapped Bengali’s paper. ‘I don’t see a code analysis here.’
‘Well, blame Hewage for that,’ said Bengali. ‘Actually, Mr. Penhaligon, you should explain.’
‘Don’t get smart with me, Bengali,’ snapped Penhaligon. ‘This is the Crofton Institute and bread and fucking circuses with Hewage and Drake and whatever other madness they have planned. We make money, the bloody country has enough to eat, you sign the bloody papers. Grimme, no code analysis. I need to report this mess as done and buried. There are people here who are going to be very, very unhappy when the rest of your troops get here, Grimme, and it turns out our wonderful finale came at the cost of good Kandyan boys. Bengali, you set the seal on this new system being secure? And you’ve talked to the staff and think they’re competent enough to keep it that way?’
A white cat disentangled itself from a rug and padded slowly across the room, watching him warily. He stared back at it. Five, perhaps six years. Some damage to the left paw – a fighter.
‘Kushlani de Almeida seems to know what she’s doing,’ he said.
‘And Grimme, you’ve given her all the bot corpses in Colombo?’
‘They’re all on their way here. Except the heads on your table.’
‘Then, gentlemen, we’ve done all we can,’ said Penhaligon. ‘You’ll get paid whatever you were promised. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a smoke. There’s been too much talk today and not enough nicotine.’
Eliott waited until Bengali left, then followed Penhaligon outside.
‘You knew, didn’t you,’ he said quietly. ‘You knew all this. What they are. What they can do. That’s why you brought me out.’
Penhaligon lit a cigarette. It took him more tries than it should have. His face was a study in harsh lines. ‘I suspected.’
‘But you understand, don’t you, that this isn’t a walk in the park?’ It was important that they all got this. ‘We have an unidentified degree of complexity here. This might end up like Hong Kong all over again.’
‘Well, for my sake and yours, it’s done,’ said Penhaligon. In his eyes, Eliott saw a mixture of fear and exhaustion. ‘Come on, I’m not spending more time inside.’
Outside, the sky was an infinite thing of grey that stretched on into the sunset. And below, stretching out like a blanket over the hills, was the city; lights had begun to glimmer here and there. Eliott looked down and immediately felt the threatening pull of vertigo. A bell rang in the distance and a flock of white birds took flight.
‘Pearl of the Indian Ocean,’ said Penhaligon, puffing. ‘Centre point of all trade with the Chinese. A long time ago, when they sent me here as a reward for my services, the Queen herself gave me a very important command– to maintain the status quo. To keep this place stable. Stability, Grimme, is the heart of empire. It is what lets us trade and communicate and do all of these things as civilized men. And this place, you understand, needs to be more stable than most –this is our hub of trade with the great and terrible Chinese empire and all lands beyond the Bamboo Curtain.
‘And so I did. I kept the peace. I indulged the whims of the people here – anything to keep them happy and stable, you understand. I even brokered a deal between our esteemed Crofton Institute and the government to get some use out of the ruins. These people were so used to princes and kings and petty backstabbing politics that they needed a certain amount of chaos and oppression in their daily lives, and as much as I disliked it, I let them have it. And it all ran like clockwork, until one day, a bunch of bloody idiots rose up and started punching my whole enterprise in the gut.’
‘I take it this is the LKRF,’ said Eliott. ‘Heard talk of them in Gampaha.’
Penhaligon puffed some more. ‘We may be heading into a bit of a fight. Gampaha might just be a whole can of worms. Fucking monks stirring up shit. The Chinese, in their infinite wisdom, are stoking the fires just so they can wring another concession out of the British Raj. And somewhere in Whitehall, that fucker Drake is in search of a scapegoat for all this. Some civil servant who’ll conveniently bend over and take it in the name of Queen and country.’ The waxen face was looking out at the birds. ‘After a while, you see devils in every shadow.’
‘If you hadn’t put me down, you wouldn’t be here,’ Elio
tt reminded him. ‘Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’
Penhaligon smirked.
‘So, what next?’ asked Eliott.
‘Well, I have no intention of moving gently into that good night. This country is used to kings and princes.’ Penhaligon peered at him, his eyes glimmering on the waxwork face. ‘I now have armies I need to train. Supply chains to manage. Weapons to retrofit and improve. Protection, too.’
‘You need an errand boy.’
‘I need Death.’
‘Death is supposed to retire,’ said Eliott. ‘I was supposed to leave you in pieces. You keep your side of the bargain.’
‘Conditional,’ said the Inquisitor. ‘House, servants, the lot. In exchange for the occasional job here and there’
‘I don’t do private security.’
‘At least help me overhaul the police,’ said Penhaligon. ‘I need some reason to keep you here. Part of being in the country, Grimme. Admit it, it’s still better than being stuck in Ireland. You’ve got the locals impressed, might as well use it.’
Eliott sighed. Then, he went back and picked up the bot heads. One, two, three. And the most important – the girl-bot. The commander. The one who had spoken to him.
He stared at it for a while – the cracked mask, the wires trailing into the cheap synthetic flesh reduced to nothing. Such a small thing. Such an important thing. Enough to provoke the anger of the Port City.
He thought of himself, and Gregory Mars, and Charlotte Plague. He wondered if these machines had their own Gregories and Charlottes and Eliotts, locked their own private dramas, sowing destiny and tragedy in their wake. Forced to dance for masters who built them and held them and cut their strings when they became too inconvenient.
Eliott tucked the head under his arm and went outside, where Mason waited. No, Mahasen; the kid had told him his real name on the way back.
The young Inquisitor held himself with a kind of weariness. The thin face was now skeletal, the bronze strips almost peeling off his skin.
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