"Buggered if I was going to let that ambulance fly me to a hospital of their choosing," she muttered then, reflecting for the first time. "Restrained and drugged. Fuck, that's what scares me-they should know me better, I don't like being restrained, least of all in a medical situation. It was like some total, outside ignoramus was giving the orders on where to take me and how to handle me ... where the fuck was Ibrahim? Or Krishnaswali? Vanessa doesn't have command authorisation or capacity to intervene there even if she wanted to ... but those two do. Couldn't they have figured what was happening, and how I'd react? The whole damn thing just feels like ... like a setup."
Now she was scaring herself. She could see from Anita's expression that she wasn't alone in that. Pushpa just looked very, very serious.
"You ..." Anita began breathlessly. "You don't think Ibrahim was involved?"
"No, I don't think that at all." She took a deep breath. Damn it, the combat-reflex wore off, and now the emotion came in a rush that threatened to reduce her to shakes. "It's just that the evidence tells me I sure as hell can't rule it out."
Ari was late, of course, arriving three hours later in a swirl of black coat and boots, darkened by brief exposure to the rain that was still falling gently outside. He strode across the wide penthouse floor toward where Sandy lay back on a reclining leather chair, hooked into various of Anita's processor systems by the slim connector cord in the back of her skull. Anita sat at her custom-designed, semicircular table, surrounded by monitor screens, a headset and goggles removing her from the immediate world.
"Hi, 'Nita!" Ari said loudly as he came over. "Don't startle, it's just me!"
"Ari," Anita replied just as loudly to hear herself above the plugs in her ears, "you could learn to be polite, you know, and ask to be admitted."
"No," said Ari, "you see, that's the first Tanushan rule of etiquette. Never ask for anything, just take it."
He bent over Sandy to kiss her on the cheek. The customary Ari Ruben worry, Sandy was surprised to see, was not evident. Just calm, businesslike concern. And he reached into his coat, pulled out an automatic pistol, and handed it to her. Sandy took it, checked the safety, dechambered a round and removed the magazine with rapid, reflex motion. It was nothing fancy-a Rohan-9, similar to what CSA Investigations used. Uplink targeting with armscomp interface and ID ... though this one's ID was blank, ready for her to imprint her own signature. She checked it all with a brief uplink, sighted along the lasertargeting, found it millimetre precise against the penthouse's far wall.
"You realise that it's a violation for a CSA or CDF agent or officer to carry any weapon without formalised signature ID?" she remarked.
"That's ... that's interesting." Ari scratched his head, a characteristic fidgety mannerism. "I actually realised, on the way over here, that all reality is the dreaming of a single subjective consciousness of which we are all a part in the broader cosmos."
"I like my realisation better," Sandy said flatly. "It's, like, relevant."
"Uninspired," Ari said with a distasteful shake of the head. "Unimaginative."
Sandy tucked the pistol into the pocket of the black jacket Anita had lent her. "Where'd you get it?"
"Why do you always want to talk shop?"
"Ari ..." Warningly.
"Sandy." Firmly. "Don't worry about it, I've got it covered. The less you know the better."
"The better for who?" Sandy muttered, gazing out at the night-lit glow of misting rain above the broad, flat bend of river. Gentle currents stirred the mirror surface, and the drizzle brushed a faint layer of static across the perfect, multicoloured reflections. Above, the overcast sky glowed shades of red, orange and white that became increasingly difficult to separate as she shifted visual spectrums. A grey overcast night was rarely grey, over Tanusha. Just as brown river waters were rarely brown, and clear, starry skies were rarely full of stars.
"Better for whom, my petal," Ari corrected, moving to look over Anita's shoulder. "Speak like a civilised person, not like a grunt."
"I am a grunt."
"Only in bed." Beneath her headset goggles, Anita grinned. Ari gave her a gentle whack on the headset. "What happened, 'Nita?"
"Whatever it was," Anita replied, "it went through her defensive barriers like butter. See here ..." she pointed to one of the display screens, "... that's all League network code. Even if you haven't upgraded for a couple of years, it's still a solid wall to any Federation infiltration basecode yet invented."
"I do upgrade," Sandy replied, gazing out at the vista of lights. "I've got my own evolution formulas, I play with things occasionally. Borrow stuff from here and there to keep it fresh, sometimes invent my own. I wasn't infiltrated because my barriers are obsolete or anything."
"And you borrow stuff from Rhian, don't you?" Ari added. Sandy knew him well enough to recognise the note of disapproval immediately.
"Rhi's fine, Ari. She gets the latest League codes, it's more compatible."
"For someone who defected from the League, you've become very unquestioning of League assistance lately."
"You're not the only suspicious person in the galaxy, Ari," Sandy replied. "I check everything."
"It had to be League code," said Anita, flipping up her goggles to gaze at the actual readout displays, abandoning the mobile viewpoint for a moment. "And it doesn't seem to have left any traces that I can see. Nothing we can give you that might give warning."
"Which means I'm vulnerable pretty much everywhere," Sandy confirmed. "If they know it's me, and can establish a two-way connection, I can get killed."
"Well ..." Anita chewed on her lip, thinking it over. "Theoretically maybe. But a breaker code that powerful can't just operate off a mobile or independent source. And GI barriers are still incredible ... I mean shit, I'm looking at your schematic here, Sandy, and considering that it's all League military-grade code supported by the most powerful neural interface known to biotech science, I'm totally screwed if I can see any way past it. Even independently designed League code work would struggle. No, in order to cut through these kind of defences so quickly, whatever that infiltration code was must have been designed on a parallel-track with your own network barriers, Sandy ... and those had to be designed at the time you were being designed. Your brain, I mean ... well, that is the only part of you that really counts. I mean, the one that makes you different from other GIs. Special. You know what I mean."
At another time, Sandy might have raised a semantic argument. "Sure," she said instead.
"You're saying," Ari said with a frown, "that she was initially designed, from conception, with a pathway integrated into the basecodes of her network defences that would allow for ... for ... instant infiltration?"
"Of a parallel-designed infiltrator, yes," Anita said with a short, certain nod.
"Don't make a poison without an antidote," Sandy said mildly. Ari and Anita just looked at her.
"Anyway," Anita resumed, "assassins can't just launch killer infiltrators blind down the network, unless they're very messy. And if these guys are political, then they can't afford to make too many mistakes, right? So they'll need to absolutely, clearly identify you. So the first thing we can do is confuse your ID signature, change your communication codes, that kind of thing. Make them wonder if it's really you, that should make them think twice.
"The other thing is that you shouldn't stay uplinked to the same connection for too long, that's just asking for them to find you. And be aware of the signatures around you-like I said, an infiltrator this powerful must operate off a powerful hardware system. Those big signatures are the ones you look out for, I doubt you'd be in danger from smaller systems. But if connecting to a smaller system, make sure it's not proxy-rigged or otherwise location-tracked to another, foreign system. That could just be bait, to lure you out."
"Or," said Ari, "you could hark back to the many, many centuries of human civilisation when people didn't have direct neural uplinks, and just not use them. People did manage it, I'm told, fo
r entire lifetimes without going insane or withering mentally away ..
"They're lying," Anita retorted. "History's always written to make past ages look quaint and romantic. Life without neural uplinks must have sucked, Ari. You of all people should know that."
Pushpa emerged from the bedroom, pushing loose straggles of dark hair back into place. "Hi, Am"
"Hi, Push. What's the neighbourhood look like?"
"No sign of it yet, news has yet to hit the media." She folded her arms, stopping at Ari's side to gaze at the hemispherical arrangement of screens. "I'd say you've got three hours, maybe four, tops. That long for the media to do their research, and then go basically nuts."
Ari looked concerned. "Why so soon? What's out there?"
"Independent reports of some commotion up the top of Prasad Tower," said Pushpa, with a critical eye at Sandy's reclining seat before the broad windows. "Some security guards chasing a blonde woman into the carpark mechanism."
All three of them raised their eyebrows at Sandy. Sandy gazed out the windows.
"Then someone several net-loggers presumed to be the same woman leaping from the top of the carpark exit," Pushpa continued. Eyebrows raised higher. "And then I did a broad sweep that found someone chatting about, like "holy shit, this person fell out of the sky and landed on our express elevator coming down the side of Prasad Tower this evening! Then jumped off and ran away as we reached the ground!" Several more clever people appeared to be putting two and two together. Straight humans don't jump out of towers very often. And live, anyway."
All three were now looking at Sandy with varying degrees of amazement, concern, or in Ari's case, mild exasperation.
"Poor Sandy," Ari remarked. "It's just no damn fun being a GI, is it, Sandy?"
"Shut up, Ari," Sandy sighed. "I was trying to get away clean, break from the network. I didn't see another way."
"Landing on an elevator full of people on the way down. Very inconspicuous."
"Damn it," Sandy retorted, "word would have got out about the attack in the maintenance bay anyway, I would have had to go underground at some point. This just accelerates the process a few days. I don't mind the media. I think it might help."
"The media? Help?" Ari looked incredulous, and walked around to the front of Sandy's reclining chair to look her in the face. Sandy looked up, reluctantly. "This is Tanusha, Sandy. The media don't help! Ever! You don't think maybe the hysteria of having some mad GI loose in the city will play right into the hands of all the conservative morons who said we should have locked you away and shipped you off to Earth when we had the chance?"
"They don't know for sure it's me," Sandy said calmly.
"There just aren't that many blonde, female GIs in League service in this city, Sandy ..."
"Ari," she cut him off, "the population's gotten wiser than you think. Certainly the analysts have. There's old-guard League active too, we don't know if they have the odd GI about. Or it might have been new-guard League GIs behaving badly and running around outside the embassy. People will be concerned. They will contact the government, and the CDF, to check on my whereabouts and status. To which Krishnaswali and co. can either outright lie," she ticked off a finger on her good hand, "or they can obfuscate and mislead, thus creating even more confusion and questions of what they have to hide, or they can tell the truth-that they don't know, and that someone tried to kill me.
"There are people in the general public out there who actually like me, Ari. They'll question why the government can't protect me, why I felt I had to go totally underground ..."
"They won't know that, Sandy, no one will know anything about where the hell you are."
"I'll make a statement." Flatly. Ari was frowning hard, arms folded. A dark, stylish figure, radiating disapproval. "To everyone-government, CSA and CDF. If they don't relay it, I'll tell it straight to the media."
"Damn it, Sandy ... you'd ... you'd break the chain of command?"
"When did Mr. Anti-Establishment get so damn conservative?" she asked him with a faint, creeping smile. Ari blinked in disconcertion ... partly at her words, she guessed, but partly at the smile, too. She knew what that smile looked like, when she was in this mood. It was neither cuddly, nor amused. "The establishment is the problem, Ari, you said it yourself. As long as I played by their rules, I was a sitting duck and they'd have the upper hand. I'm going to let them know that the old rules no longer apply. Let them sweat. Maybe push them a little. Make them wonder just how far I'll go. Maybe they'll make a mistake."
"And how far will you go?"
Sandy reclined back into her seat, and let her gaze slide back over the broad stretch of river. "As far as I need to," she said.
Click, and the line opened. Connection established, with Anita's new ID signatures to confuse the receiver. Sandy waited, reclined on her chair by the penthouse windows, eyes fixed upon the flatscreen wall TV. Rami Rahim was doing his usual show, handsome and flamboyant, in cool clothes on a colourful set. The audience howled at a joke, beyond her immediate attention.
"Hello." A cautious voice at the other end of the connection. A real voice, vocal cords and all, not a simulated formulation.
"Vanessa. It's me." She spoke aloud herself. Internal formulations could be simulated. Vocals could be too, of course, but good friends could tell the difference in the tones and inflections. Theoretically. Tojo's fingers massaged her wet hair, the towel about her neck keeping water from running down her spine.
"Sure it's you. A little proof please."
"I still think you were wrong to dump Rudy. He had potential. You're just obsessive about small personal details."
"Sure, I heard that once upon a time they believed in electro-shock therapy, maybe that'd cure a compulsive dullard. Do you need anything?"
"I'm fine, thanks. How secure is this reception?"
"It complies with Ari's specifications." With dry irony. "Sorry I took so long to set up, it's been a little crazy around here. Krishnaswali tried to keep me out of it, but Hitoru told me about the ambulance, and then your new secretary Private Zhang let me hook into his loop. " Sandy blinked in astonishment. Maybe the kid really would have his uses. Certainly he had guts, Krishnaswali could have busted him down to storeroom duty if he'd found out. "Then Naidu let slip about the whole thing at Prasad Tower. Apparently his buddy Chandaram told him some interesting things about what you'd said before the skydiving act ... I had a look at the map and guessed where you'd end up.
"Sandy, Krishnaswali dragged me into his office and chewed me out real good. He ordered me to tell you to return to duty at once, knew damn well you'd contact me. Wasn't stupid enough to ask me to turn you in if you refused, though. "
Vanessa's calm, rational tone filled Sandy with relief. She'd been half-expecting the occasionally irrational, emotional Vanessa Rice, filled with concern and worry. But Vanessa Rice, she sometimes forgot, was also the third-in-command of the CDF.
"What do you think about Krishnaswali?" she asked Vanessa.
"Damn, I don't know. That's one of those nasty political questions, right?"
"Isn't everything?"
"Fucking nightmare," Vanessa muttered. On the TV screen, Rami Rahim was now doing his Fleet Admiral Duong impersonation ... something about having had lunch with him just the other day, only to find he couldn't have any baartroot on his daal and rice, because the Fleet deemed baartroot too progressive. Most of Rahim's routines began with "I did lunch with such-and-such the other day." Tanushans always "did" lunch, even with family. The mostly young audience were in stitches. "Krishnaswali's so busy crawling up various politicians' arseholes it's difficult to tell what his actual opinion is."
"We can't trust him?"
"Silly question. Sandy, I got a call from your buddy Sudasarno, wanting to know what the hell's going on. Apparently your friendly President is very concerned. She has a meeting with Admiral Duong and Secretary General Benale in two days' time, and both of them are going to want to know what's going on with you. Ironic.
I know, since those two bastards are among the prime suspects who'd want you dead, but I've yet to see a political operator in this city who couldn't talk bullshit with a straight face."
"I don't know that they're the prime suspects, that list is too long to start picking favourites at this stage." Rahim was now in a pitched battle across the lunch table with the Admiral over the baartroot grinder. Admiral Duong pulled a gun and shot the baartroot stone dead. "Look, I've got a few of the usual suspects here helping check leads for me."
"That's nice of them." A little warily. Vanessa liked Ari, Anita and that particular crowd just as much as Sandy did. They'd certainly been frequent enough visitors at the house over the last two years. But, like Sandy, she had her own suspicions about motivations on matters like this.
"Yeah, well, you know this lot, they like their fun and games. Ricey, here's a couple of things. First, you take care. If people are after me, we can't assume they won't make the connection between me and you, which would make you target number two."
"I know, I'm at Hitoru's apartment now. I've told everyone concerned about the Canas security ... it's caused quite a stir, some VIPs are suddenly wondering if they should sleep in their own beds tonight. "
"I know, we're watching that too. Interesting to see which VIPs are concerned and which aren't. Those that aren't might know something."
"Good thinking. "
"Ari's idea. So you haven't been home? What about Jean-Pierre?"
"Oh no, I brought him too! You wouldn't think I'd abandon my baby, would you?" Sandy smiled. On the screen, Rami had launched into a frothing Fleet Admiral diatribe about the evils of baartroot, tight pants and VR pornography, the right hand occasionally snapping up in a Nazi salute, to be dragged hastily back down by the left hand, apparently without Rami's notice. Amazing how something as old as Nazism remained an historical reference point so many centuries later. Time faded some memories, and enhanced others, it seemed. His audience, having doubtless bottled up much fear and confusion in recent months about the Fleet presence in orbit, were letting all the tension out in a rush-some of them were nearly falling out of their chairs laughing. It was, Sandy observed, a curious civilian reaction to stress. And a much preferable one to some of the alternatives.
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