“What do you want me to do, say pretty please?”
“You’re magnificent. Why is it that the bigger the favor you’re asking for, the more unpleasant you become?”
“You’ll get paid,” Li said. “Last time I checked, that makes it a job, not a favor.”
Cohen lit a cigarette without offering Li one and set the case and lighter on the table, carefully aligning them with the gold-leafed corner scroll.
“I think we’ll just let that one slide, shall we?” he said. “Unless you actually want to pick a fight with me?”
Li kept silent.
“Right then. The lab AI has disabled external communications. You can’t call in. You can’t get wireless access. All you can do is call out to approved numbers, and you can only do that by direct contact jack.” He smiled and tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette with a Byzantine flourish. “Which means, my dear, that you’re going under the knife.”
Li fingered her temple, where she could just feel the flat disk of the remote commsystem transmitter under her skin. She’d never gotten a direct-contact wire-to-wire jack. She’d never had to. Those were reserved for techs, like Kolodny, the people who did the real grunt work of cracking target systems—and who ran risks from which the automatic cutouts of Li’s remote interface largely protected her.
“You come up with that idea yourself?” she asked Cohen. “Or did you get help from Korchow?”
“I wouldn’t waste my time arguing about it if I were you,” Cohen said. He shot a dark stare at her over the top of his wineglass. “A jack is nothing compared to what they’re going to need to do to you to get the intraface working.”
Li bit her lip and shifted uncomfortably as her thoughts roved from semisentients to contact jacks to the several hundred meters of prototype hardware Sharifi had been carrying around in her head when she died. How had they slid into actually planning this mission without any discussion of whether or not Li was going to let Korchow test-run the intraface on her?
Had she actually made that decision herself? Or had Cohen coaxed her into it like a chess master nudging his player across the board toward the enemy? Was Nguyen right about him? And even if she wasn’t, even if his intentions were good, what did he really want from her?
“Has anyone actually tested this intraface thing?” she asked, settling on an easy, emotionally neutral question.
“I think there’s a monkey somewhere who has one.”
“Oh.” Li laughed nervously. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s crazy.”
“Cohen!”
“But there’s some indication that he was crazy to begin with. And besides, he’s a monkey.”
He pointed to the network of alleys and firewalls around the lab’s back entrance. “Right. Here’s my first brilliant idea. We do a cutout around this door that would get you past the security network.”
“Which means you have to be on-station to fiddle the main AI. Which means a second person for you to shunt through. Which means twice as much chance of getting caught.”
The more they worked through it, the shorter the list of realistic options got. Cracking Alba was like building a house of cards; each piece of the puzzle that fell into place exposed another piece, another problem, another collapse waiting to happen.
They went at it again, teasing out the problems and pitfalls until they had something that looked like a plan in front of them. At least as far as getting through the security checks and actually retrieving the data went.
But they were still left with the problem of how to get Li into Alba undetected.
“Hang on,” Li said finally, grabbing at the fleeting tail of what looked like it might just be a viable option. “Go back to that first section we looked at. Hydroponics.”
Cohen tapped back through half a dozen screens to reach it.
“What about these turrets?” She pointed to a row of ten-meter-high towers jutting through the thick pelt of guy wires, sensor lenses, and communications equipment that bristled from the outer skin of the station. “They look like vents.”
“Sure.” A look crossed Chiara’s smooth face that made Li think Cohen knew exactly where she was going with this. “Decontamination vents for the algae flats. So what?”
“So the last time I was on Alba, it was overcrowded.”
“It always is.”
“Well, what’s the daily CO2load?”
Cohen paused for a moment, searching. “Sixty thousand cubic meters. And, to anticipate your next question, they’re shipping in about 1.8 thousand of compressed oxygen every day.”
“So where’s the excess CO2going?”
“Out those turret vents, obviously.”
“Where it can get out, I can get in.”
“Not without someone inside to open the vents.”
“Korchow says he’s got an inside man.”
“Not possible,” Cohen said, scanning the plans again. “They’re using the outgoing CO2to turn the turbines that power this whole section of the solar array. And even if you get past the turbines, you’re still talking about crawling down a twenty-meter shaft in hard vacuum. And the vent diameter’s too small to take a suit and gear.” He tapped decisively on the tight print that gave the duct’s dimensions. “You can’t get in that way.”
“I could if I stashed my gear outside and went down the duct with just a pressure suit.”
“Too risky. You’re talking about crawling down an active ventilation duct in hard vacuum with no air, no heat, just a pressure suit. If anything goes wrong—even if you just run into a minor delay—you’re dead.”
Li smiled. “And you won’t have anyone to eat oysters with.”
The look Cohen gave her couldn’t have been more naked if he’d stripped his skin away. She saw fear, guilt, anger flash across his face. Then she looked away; whatever else was there, she couldn’t deal with it. Not now, anyway. She pushed her beer away from her. It left a ring on the table, but for once Cohen didn’t seem to care about the punishment her bad habits were inflicting on his furniture.
“What if I say I won’t do it?” he asked.
“We go forward with another AI,” she said, pushing down the thought that it might not be true.
“You’d be insane to try it without me.”
“It’ll be harder without you,” Li admitted, but that was as far as she was willing to go.
“Have you thought about what happens if you get caught?”
Li looked at the dark night beyond the tall windows. If she got caught, it would be treason. And treason had been a firing-squad crime since the outbreak of the Syndicate Wars. That was assuming that the Corps would let the hero of Gilead come up on treason charges. A quick shot to the head and a cover story about a “regrettable training accident” seemed more likely. It was what Li herself would do faced with such a betrayal.
“You could at least tell me why,” Cohen said.
“What do you care? You want the intraface. I’m showing you how to get it.”
“I don’t want it that much. And I doubt you’re helping me get it out of the goodness of your heart. What did Nguyen suck you into?”
“Nguyen has nothing to do with it.”
“Really, Catherine.” Someone who knew Cohen less well would have seen only the bemused smile on his face, but Li could hear the angry bite in his voice. “If you’re going to lie, at least have the respect to lie about things I can’t check up on.”
Li kicked at the table leg and was pleased to see she’d put a dent in it. “You’re in no position to accuse me of lying. Or anything else.”
“I think,” Cohen said slowly, “the time has come to discuss Metz.” A dark flame flickered behind Chiara’s eyes, and there was a rehearsed quality to the words that made Li wonder how long Cohen had been working his nerve up for this conversation.
“I’ve said everything I have to say about it,” Li told him.
Chiara’s long-lashed eyes narrowed. “You shelved it, didn’t you?”<
br />
It wasn’t a question. And even if it had been, it wasn’t one Li planned to answer. After a moment he shrugged and tried another line of attack.
“All right, then. This run. It’s too dangerous. And you’re not a traitor. So why?”
“ Whyisn’t your business. I want a job done, and I’m paying for it. Paying with something I know you want. Let’s stick to that. Then at least I’ll know what you’re after. And when I can expect you to walk out and leave me twisting in the wind.”
“I thought we were done talking about Metz,” he said. “And anyone can make a mistake, Catherine.”
“Anyone didn’t kill Kolodny for a damn piece of circuitry.”
Cohen went so still he might have turned to wax. He stared at her, mouth slightly open, until the only movement in the room was the play of a breeze from the garden over Chiara’s brown curls. Cohen looked like the stuffing had gone out of him. A pretty doll abandoned in the corner by children grown too old to play with toys.
“That’s not you talking,” he said at last. “What else did Helen whisper in your ear about me?”
“None of your goddamn business.”
Cohen huffed out a little breath that Li might have thought was a laugh in different circumstances. Then he stared into the air above her head, as if he were trying to access a hard-to-find piece of data.
“Oh,” he said, when he found it. “So that’s it. What a nasty little piece of work she is, when you scratch the nice manners and the freshly pressed uniform.” He leaned forward across the table, pinning Li with a hard stare. “I’ve gotten over being surprised that you believe the things she says about me, but for what it’s worth the link cut out because of an internal malfunction. Or so I thought, anyway. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’m putting two and two together and finally getting four instead of three.”
Cohen paused until Li began to wonder if he was going to say anything more at all. “When did you start planning the Metz raid?” he asked at last. “About four months ago? Something like that?”
Li nodded.
“Well, I took on a new associate around then. A newly emerged sentient from the Toffoli Group. His main recommendation was that he’d done a contract job for Nguyen.”
Li stirred impatiently, not sure where this was leading.
“Anyway,” Cohen went on, “he had a beast of a feedback loop. Far worse than the mandatory program and running on a brute force, everything but the kitchen sink program that was impossible to work with. I was negotiating with Toffoli to put him on my global compliance program. They kept delaying, for reasons that seemed… well… less than reasonable. And the problems on Metz, I am almost certain, came from that feedback loop.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything, Cohen.”
“Don’t you? Nguyen holds the purse strings for all the TechComm R D. She has Toffoli’s research division in her pocket. The Toffoli AI was her spy all along. He’s how she was able to cut me off on Metz.”
Li stared. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I’ve already done it,” Cohen said. “He’s gone.”
“But what if he talks to someone—”
Cohen looked at her out of Chiara’s guileless eyes. “I said he was gone. I meant it.”
Li looked away. Cohen started to speak, then stopped. For a moment they both sat staring at the floor, at the books, at the pictures on the walls. At anything but each other.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“I tell you that Nguyen was planning to cut me out of the shunt at Metz before we even shipped out for the mission, and you have nothing to say about it? What are you thinking?”
“That I don’t know who to believe, you or Nguyen.”
“You believe the one you trust,” Cohen said.
“And why the hell should I trust you?”
He shrugged. “There’s no should about it. You either do or you don’t. You have a lot to learn about life if you think people have to earn your trust.”
“You can’t talk your way around this one, Cohen.”
He shook his head and went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “You don’t trust people because they’re a sure bet or even a good risk. You trust them because the risk that you’ll lose them is worse than the risk that they’ll hurt you. That took me a few centuries to learn, Catherine, but I did learn it. And you’d better catch on faster than I did. The way things are going right now, I don’t think you have a century to spare.”
Li stood up without answering, walked across the room, and stepped into the garden. It was night in Zona Angel. A moist breeze played across her face, carrying the smell of earth and wet leaves. Frogs and a few night birds sang in the green branches. All the little live things Cohen loved so much. A bird warbled from some hidden refuge in the wall above her, and her oracle identified it as a whippoorwill. It’s beautiful, she thought—and wondered if she would still have thought so if she hadn’t known its name.
Cohen came up to stand behind her, so close that she could smell the fresh-scrubbed scent of Chiara’s skin.
“I can’t imagine living in the Ring,” Li said. “How can people live somewhere where every time you look up at the sky, you see your biggest mistake staring right back at you?”
“Some people would say that being forced to examine one’s mistakes is a good thing.”
“Not when it’s too late to fix them.”
“It’s not too late. And they are fixing it.”
Li threw an exasperated look at Cohen. “That’s a story for schoolkids. They’re still killing each other down there. Christ, my own mother went to Ireland to fight. She had chronic vitamin A deficiency from living underground. Now why the hell would people fight to keep a country they can’t even survive in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I do. Because they like fighting. Too much to give it up, even when there’s nothing left to fight for.”
She walked farther into the darkness, eyes on the snowbound planet above them. “I don’t want you involved in this,” she said. “It’s not worth it. I don’t even know what I’m doing it for.”
“I do,” Cohen said. “I know everything.”
She started to turn around, but he put a soft hand on her shoulder to stop her. “I know about the gene work. I’ve known for years, Catherine. Or Caitlyn. Or whatever your name is. I dug that skeleton up long, long before Korchow tumbled to it.”
Li stood among the living shadows of his garden and thought of all the questions he carefully hadn’t asked, all the times he could have said he knew and hadn’t.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.
“Should I have? I wasn’t going to tell anyone else, and I certainly didn’t care, so what difference if I knew or not?”
“No.” She felt angry suddenly, betrayed and cheated. “I know you. You were waiting to see if I’d tell you myself. You were keeping it up your sleeve, using it like a goddamn caliper. How far does she trust me? How far is she going to let me in this time? It’s all just one big test for you!”
“That’s pure paranoia.”
“Is it?”
“And even if you’re right, so what? I certainly didn’t get an answer that made me happy. Just the same old thing. Li against the world, and anyone who touches you is going to get his hand chewed off and spat back in his face.”
“You know it’s not that way.”
“What way is it then?”
Li shrugged, suddenly tired.
“Tell me,” Cohen said.
“What is there to tell if you already know everything?”
“You have a choice, Catherine. What’s the worst that could happen to you? Losing your commission?
Are you really ready to throw your life away for lousy pay and an even lousier pension?”
Li laughed. “I’ve been risking my life for that lousy pension every day of the last fifteen years. What�
��s so special about this time?”
“This time it’s treason. Listen, Catherine. I meant what I said the other day about offering you a job.”
“I’m not a hanger-on, Cohen. Joining your primate collection doesn’t appeal to me.”
“It wouldn’t be like that. Not with you.”
“Don’t tell me bedtime stories,” she said, and stared at him until his eyes finally fell away from hers.
“Have you thought about Metz?” he asked. “You said it yourself. Whoever wired Sharifi would have had to plan it for years, get hold of the genesets, splice them, tank them. What are the odds that Sharifi and the officer investigating her death would have been tanked in the same lab, from the same geneset? What are the odds that we end up like this, with you playing Sharifi’s part, me stepping into the field AI’s shoes?”
“No,” Li whispered.
“Why not? If Korchow uncovered your secret, why couldn’t Nguyen uncover it too?”
“She doesn’t know. No one knows.”
“How sure are you of that?”
“I’d bet my life on it.”
“That’s exactly what you’re about to do, isn’t it?”
The moon had set while they were talking, and there was a cold breeze blowing. Li looked into the black shadows under the trees and shivered.
“Let me help you,” Cohen said, pleading with her.
“No.”
“That’s it? Just no?”
“Just no.”
Cohen came around to look into her face. Even in the faint light, he looked spent and defeated, a gambler who had put the one thing he couldn’t afford to lose on the table and watched the house take every hand. “If it’s about money—”
“It’s not about money. It’s about my life. About what I’ve earned. And what they want to take away from me. For nothing. Because of what some piece of paper says about me.”
“And you’d throw away your life for that?”
Li saw the ghost of a tremor around his mouth as he spoke, a suspicious shimmer in the hazel eyes. No, she told herself, squashing her reflexive response. Chiara’s mouth. Chiara’s eyes. Whatever she thought she saw in those eyes was mere physiological sleight of hand. A parlor trick generated by a code-driven superstructure and shot through a state-of-the-art biointerface. It didn’t mean anything. You might as well ask what rain meant.
Spin State Page 35