"So you've said on many occasions," Sandy replied, pausing before the fish tank. Callayan reef fish, multicoloured and lovely on the eye. Evolution followed the same paths in similar environments. An astonishing discovery, it had been for Earth's first explorer-starfarers. Water was water. Gills, fins and a streamlined shape were highly efficient. Nature loved efficiency, and punished the inefficient with ruthless consistency. Only where worlds offered environments radically different from Earth-like, prime worlds like Callay, did evolutionary patterns significantly alter ... and faster-than-light technology gave humanity a vast enough range that the habitation of such worlds, although possible, was hardly necessary. Prime worlds were roughly one in ten thousand. A G-Class freighter, with a single-jump range of a hundred light years, and capable of dual or even triple-jump routes, was within theoretical range of many times ten thousand systems. Less hospitable worlds than Callay were typically bypassed, along with the vast majority of systems possessing nothing even vaguely habitable to oxygen breathers of any species.
"We limit ourselves with our choices," she abruptly recalled Takawashi as saying once. It had been in an interview she'd seen ... on Callayan television, wonder of wonders. Callay had been taking a greater interest in such people of late, and in relations with the League in general ... for which Sandy supposed she could take at least partial credit. Or blame. The interview with the great man of synthetic neuroscience had been quite a coup. "The spread of spacefaring humanity was supposed to be the great, species-shaping challenge that would mold us into a better, more diverse, more capable people. But for all our won drous accomplishment, our greatest promise remains unfulfilled. We bypassed the difficult worlds, we ignored the most challenging environments ... we found at least one intelligent species upon the furthest reaches of our space, and we retreated in fear and caution.
"The League was founded by people who believe humanity's greatest promise is yet to be fulfilled. Synthetic, biological replication technology is merely a logical extension of this philosophical tenet. It is the constant yearning for self-improvement, for discovery, expansion and renewal, that makes us truly human. Evolution made us who we are, but evolution lost its grip upon our destiny from the first moment an ape brandished a tool and used it to manipulate his environment. We now have control of our destiny. And we must evolve ourselves, for our own reasons, and our own purposes."
A prospect, of course, that terrified much of the Federation, given that the League's stated reasons and purposes seemed mostly about commerce, power and ideological supremecy. Terrified them so much, in fact, that they were prepared to fight a war to stop it all from happening ... and thus ensured that synthetic biotech would develop in precisely the direction whose possibility had so frightened them all in the first place. Developments like GIs. Like Cassandra Kresnov.
Sandy wondered what the fish would make of it all. Stabiliser fins, a sleek tail and gleaming, flashing scales ... they seemed perfectly happy. Or would do, if happiness were a part of any fish's repertoire. She didn't want new limbs, or new capabilities. Being a GI had its benefits ... but if she had to choose between her superhuman physiology and uplink capabilities on the one hand, or the simple joys of music, food and sex on the other ... well, the choice was really no choice at all.
Of course, it was kind of nice to have both. Maybe Ari was right, maybe her rejection of League philosophy was really just the luxury of the insanely wealthy to spout wise pronouncements about how money wasn't everything. And she sighed, straightening to make her way down the steps. Takawashi, gentleman that he clearly fancied himself to be, waited for her to seat herself first.
"I have information," he said, easing himself into the black leather sofa with the help of his cane. He sat with his back to one angled wall of glass, Sandy with her back to the other. Seated, she could not see the elevator doors across the room, but fancied she could hear anything that attempted to enter. "I fear I know exactly what and who this GI may be. Of all the unlikely possibilities, it seems the most logical option."
"Tell me." She sipped her drink. Tested her uplinks once more, failing to find any trace of Ari's signal. She did not dare probe with her own, whatever Takawashi's apparently friendly demeanour. Probably Ari would not be panicking. Yet.
Takawashi took a deep breath, gazing up the short steps to the fish tank. A large transport glided low overhead, multiple running lights flashing, clear beyond the transparent ceiling. "Several years ago," he began, "before the Federal Intelligence Agency effectively collapsed, their operatives struck at a secret facility of ours. A deep space research facility. Numerous experimental specimens were stolen ... for research, we presumed. Several of those specimens were of the very highest designation."
"Alive?" Sandy asked, eyes narrowed upon Takawashi's face.
"No. Inert. But fully assembled. Brains included, but not integrated."
"And you think the FIA has managed to activate one of these specimens?" Dubiously. Whatever his protestations, Takawashi was still effectively a leading figure of the League military-industrial complex. The possibility remained distinct that he was simply lying through his teeth. "Neurology is the most difficult part. How would they have the knowledge to achieve that?"
"They stole it," said Takawashi, his gaze sombre. "But not from us. From you." Sandy's gaze never altered. She was too good at hiding her emotions among people she didn't trust. But for Takawashi, no doubt, her utter, still silence spoke volumes. He sighed. "It is my belief, Cassandra, that the knowledge that the FIA acquired from studying you, during that ... terrible episode two years ago, was enough to allow them to understand particularly how an advanced mind of your capabilities functions, in technical terms, and integrates with the entirety of your physical structure. Understand that they already had the hardware, so to speak. They merely required the knowledge to install it."
"Many of my systems are specific," Sandy said quietly. "Even from the other high-des GIs in my team ... they had personality and depth rivalling anything I have, but my scores across all performance fields were routinely higher. Not just in creativity and tactics, but reflexes and coordination too. What are the odds that anything they learned from me could be applied to a ... a body they stole?"
"Because that was the prototype they stole from us," Takawashi said flatly. "Based on your design, and integrating the same advanced neurological pathway breakthroughs. The technology has been stewing for some time, Cassandra. It never went into mass production, partly upon my own recommendation. I did warn them that your path would be unpredictable. As it turned out, I was right.
"Wrong, however, in my more dire predictions regarding possible hostile outcomes ... and happily wrong, I readily concede. But the neurological development models at that time were open ended. There was no choice but to allow a personality to evolve. Your neurological design required a long development period-far longer than any of your team mates in Dark Star. The end result, I see here before me, and find extremely pleasing. You have become an admirable young woman, Cassandra. I am so very pleased to see that you have expanded so far beyond your initial, foundational psych-tape. The military, however, were somewhat less pleased."
"It's been two years," said Sandy, her stare fixed unblinkingly upon the slim, gaunt man in the chair opposite. A flash of lightning illuminated his face into peaks and hollows, tight and almost fleshless. "I plateaued mentally when I was about seven. If this GI is based upon my design ... how is that possible? She should be barely self-aware."
Takawashi leaned forward slightly in his chair, glass held suspended between slim, brown fingers. "Tell me, Cassandra. What was the last book that you read?"
"I'm not going to play games with you, Mr. Takawashi," Sandy said firmly. "This is not quid pro quo. This is the security of my planet."
"No games, Ms. Kresnov, I assure you," Takawashi said mildly, with a faint wave of his unoccupied hand. "What was the last book that you read?"
"A Nairobi Christmas," said Sandy. "By a Kenyan auth
or, J. C. Odube, written two hundred years ago."
"I'm not familiar with it. What was it about?"
"In the late twenty-first century, a Kenyan-English journalist searches for his sister-in-law in Kenya, who has vanished. He discovers she had become involved in a conspiracy between competing superpower interests, involving Indian technology companies and Chinese defence contracts. It juxtaposes those trials of the late twenty-first century against the main character's own colonial heritage, and asks whether a people or a nation's future is really ever their own to decide. It won something called the Nobel Prize for Literature in its day."
"A fitting choice of topic, under today's circumstances," remarked Takawashi, with obvious intrigue ... and continued briskly before Sandy could protest as to relevance. "Do you think you would have enjoyed this book ... say, fifteen years ago? When you were but two years old?"
"No," said Sandy.
"Why not?"
"I'm not sure I was even reading at that age."
"You were," Takawashi assured her.
Sandy stared at him for a long, suspicious moment. Takawashi smiled benignly. "It's complicated," Sandy said at last. "It assumes a lot of basic knowledge on the reader's part. From twenty-first-century Earth political demographics to simple things, what it's like to live on a planet. I understand I was raised on a research station?"
Takawashi nodded confirmation. "Mostly, yes. And you lacked such knowledge, at that age. The acquisition of knowledge is vital, is it not? Particularly in combat? For example, how would you feel if your formative learning tapes had simply told you the entire A, B and C of advanced special operations combat tactics, and injected it directly into your brain?"
"Preformed knowledge presupposes the infallibility of the programmer," Sandy replied with certainty. "It's not something anyone should enter into with any assumptions. Particularly as my capabilities were higher than anyone preceding me. No one knew what I was capable of, and thus no one could truly tell me how I ought to operate. I had to find all that out for myself, and I rewrote most of the Dark Star operating manuals in the process."
"And here lies the conundrum of the field," said Takawashi, holding up a bony forefinger for emphasis. "The acquisition of knowledge is time consuming. Military planners in the League have long wished to slash the lead time between GI production and mobilisation ... but whenever attempts were made to simply force the required knowledge in a preconstructed manner down their throats, entire units were invariably lost.
"To lock in preconstructed knowledge at an early stage is to inhibit the psychological development of the subject. Learning is curtailed, and personality growth stunted. Yet the theoretical value of such an approach to the military continues to exist, not merely because of logistical considerations, but because of loyalty. Imagine, if you will, an army of Cassandra Kresnovs." With an amused smile. "Liking sex better than weapons drill, reading books by long-dead Earth authors with little regard for the League's attempts to indoctrinate you with progressive League philosophy. Getting into philosophical arguments with ship captains and other, less amused superiors."
"A disaster," Sandy said drily.
"One creative, dissenting mind can be contained ... for a time, at least. But imagine if numerous such minds got together. Commingled. Cross-pollinated, if you will. I daresay you would have left the League far earlier than you eventually did, had you gained such exposure to like minds, with whom to further shape your subversive ideas. Or foment a rebellion."
"You could have warned them more strongly," Sandy suggested.
"I've already told you I did." And he gave a mild shrug of thin, silver-robed shoulders. "But they ignored me, and then I settled in with curiosity to watch the outcome, knowing that it was their own stupid fault if it all went wrong. And hoping against hope that you would survive, and grow, and perhaps one day even blossom. It was a happy, happy day when I learned you had disappeared. I thought I knew where you would go. But even I could not have predicted what an impact you would make when you got there.
"Of this rogue GI, however, I know several things. If she is what I think she is, then you are right-she is less than two years old. She did an awful lot of damage to Admiral Duong's very-well-trained marines, and showed enough creativity and desire for self-preservation to live to fight another day. And, she would appear to be the most likely source of the killswitch codes that nearly claimed your life, and forced you underground ... thus depriving the CDF of its most prized asset.
"I fear that this GI, Cassandra, is not only devilishly clever, but highly knowledgeable. For this to be so, at her present age, she must have been subjected to an awful lot of preconstructed psych tape, to accelerate her mental development. As such, her development pathways are fixed and rigid, rather than unformed and alive with possibilities, as were your own at a similar age.
"This is not a being that reads books, Cassandra. This is not a being that appreciates art, or admires the sunset on a glorious evening, or possesses any of those higher, more abstract functions outside of her primary, psychological focus. Far more than you yourself ever were, or were capable of becoming, this is a being that exists solely to fight, and to kill, for a predetermined purpose. And I am afraid that it will be for you, and you alone, to discover whether this makes her a more effective soldier than yourself, or less so."
"But she's like me." Frowning as she spoke, trying to get her head around the conundrum that Takawashi described. "Based upon my design."
"Yes."
"To what extent?"
"Are you certain you really want to know?" Sandy just looked at him, unimpressed with the evasion. Takawashi repressed a small smile. "Of course. Psychologically, I'm sure, the two of you would be chalk and cheese. Physiologically. . ." and he gave a small shrug. "Well. You may as well be sisters."
"`Am I certain I really want to know,"' Sandy muttered, waiting for the cruiser's painfully slow communication link to kick in. From the driver's seat, Ari wisely refrained from comment. Or unnecessary motion. "Didn't think I'd like the implications, did he?"
Well, she didn't. She didn't want to know that an exact copy of herself, with her own enhanced neurological systems, could turn out to be a murdering psychopath. A sister, the man said? That was a provocation, right there. Takawashi knew such terms meant nothing to any synthetic being. He was trying to get at her somehow, trying to exploit his hidden agenda where she was concerned ... most likely the same hidden agenda every senior League official of late seemed to have with her, trying to recruit her back into the fold of an organisation that murdered her friends and left her for dead ... click, the connection opened up.
"Hey, Sandy," said Vanessa, rumpled hair sticking out in patches beneath her bandages. Her face was sideways on the screen-she was lying down, head on the pillow, activating the vidphone on her hospital bedside table. "'Bout time you called, I was getting so tired of sleeping. "
"Goddamn it, Ricey," Sandy snapped at the cruiser's dash, "what did you mean `a bit like me'?"
Vanessa blinked. "Beg yours?" she said.
"You said in your report ... which I'm just rereading here ... that the GI looked `a bit like Commander Kresnov, in general build."'
On the display screen, Vanessa shrugged against the pillows. The half of her face that was visible beneath the bandage looked decidedly reluctant. "She looked a bit like you. She had a longer face. Leaner Not as cute. "
"Yeah, thanks, that's a real comfort."
"But physically, sure. About the same height, broad shoulders, strong hips. Blonde. Nice breasts." Trying vainly to placate her with humour. Which was good, because it showed the budget Sandy had insisted be allocated to the CDF's medical wing, for equipment and to capture staff the quality of Dr. Obago and his crew, had been well spent. Injury recovery times were down sharply on what even the most advanced Callayan hospitals could achieve. Vanessa even looked better, her fully visible eye bright and alert, her cheek healthy with colour as the micro-synthetic and harmonic accelerator
treatments reknitted and regrew over the fractures, and encouraged tissue repair, at a rate that would have been startling just thirty years ago. "Why? What's going on?"
Ari made himself useful by filling Vanessa in, while Sandy gazed out at the gleaming, rain-wet suburbs of Tanusha, and fumed. Vanessa's face grew steadily more sombre. But hardly surprised. Nothing bad about Sandy's artificial nature seemed to surprise Vanessa any longer.
"You should have told me," she said to the dash-screen, as soon as Ari had finished. In the driver's seat, Ari resumed his former, studious silence.
"Told you what? That the GI that nearly killed me just happened to look a little bit like you? I try hard to be relevant, Sandy, it's one of my happier traits. "
"How many goddamn high-des GIs are there who look like me? What are the odds? You should have told me."
On the screen, Vanessa shrugged, exasperatedly. "Okay, so I should have told you. Forgive me for somehow remembering to worry about your own emotional state after I've nearly been killed."
Sandy exhaled hard, and stared off across the gliding, banking spectacle of midnight Tanusha. "Fine," she said shortly. "I'm sorry. How're you feeling?"
"Better. Might get the bandages off in another day."
"Good." A short pause, filled only by the muffled whine of the cruiser's engines.
"So you reckon you might have a sister, huh? You want me to bake a cake?"
Sandy shook her head in faint disbelief. "Have a good night, Ricey, sorry to bother you."
"Love you," Vanessa volunteered before the line disconnected.
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