by Nigel Foster
“When did I first feature in this programme?”
“Maybe featured,” he said. “At first a possibility.”
“When?”
“As Tse told it, around seventy-five years ago.” He saw the shock in her eyes. “Before we were born. There were thousands of people our good pre-cogs viewed who could save Earth, without knowing how they’d do it. You and Marc and Tatia are the end result. Five teams went into space before you. They all vanished. Tse went along to give you a better chance, knowing a greater exposure to alien pre-cogs would probably kill him. He, we, knew that Tatia had to be captured by the Cancri. That museum on their home world, where her latent abilities woke up. Now she has a particular affinity for alien pre-cogs and they for her. Somehow that leads to their destruction. The three of you couldn’t know in case it affected your behaviour. Now it’s time. You need to go Up, find Marc and Tatia and stop this chaos. Or maybe die in the attempt. Not your choice but you’re stuck with it.”
She respected his honesty. “What about you if we fail?”
“I’m dead. How’s your AI?”
“Still annoying.”
< And still functioning okay. Unlike some I could mention.
Greenaway grimaced. “The Twist says it’s going on strike for better pay and conditions. My AI’s okay. Exchange?”
Kara nodded.
> Do it, Ishmael. But be careful.
< We already did. You humans, so slow. Greenaway believes what he said about you is true. Or at least his AI believes that he believes it. Doesn’t mean it is. But he’s not lying.
“How come other AIs are going bat-shit crazy?” she asked.
“We don’t know. Any consolation, it’s not affecting AIs in the Wild. You’re looking good, Kara. Time off suits you.”
“I saved your life once.” All she could think to say.
“It’s what you do,” Greenaway said. “What I was paying you to do. But I still said thanks. Good employer—employee relationships are important. You want a medal?”
“I want food. And a drink.”
He smiled. “I brought deli from Bristol. Gorgonzola ripe enough to drink with a straw. Salami. Sicilian red. Fresh baguette and figs.”
She gazed at him challengingly. “Some pre-cog a hundred years ago say that was going to be my favourite?”
He grinned and lost five years. “It’s also mine.”
“But maybe I should be going Up sooner rather than later.”
“A Wild SUT will be ready for you by tomorrow. Wherever you want. We’ll take my jitney.” He glanced over to where her Merc SUV was parked. “No offence, but… actually, screw it. Your Merc doesn’t drive itself, and that offends me.”
“Have the SUT at Jeff’s house. Marc’s adopted uncle.”
“Why? There are safer places.”
“I’m not sure,” she said honestly. “Only that I need to go there.” A geas as strong as the one that had sent Tatia roaming the stars.
He looked curiously at her then nodded. Looked into the distance for a moment as he talked to his AI. “It’s done.”
“You made up your mind quick.”
“Like you, I don’t have much choice.” His expression didn’t change, but there was suddenly something dangerous about him. “Not if I want to see Tatia again.”
She liked the touch of humanity, albeit violent. “Any idea how I’ll find them?”
He half smiled. “You been listening to anything I said?”
“Plan. Team. Nose wiper. Hate my Merc.”
Greenaway shook his head in exasperation. “Remember when we first met?”
How could she not? The penthouse office at the top of the Twist, that impossible building in Berlin. “You showed me a vid.”
“Of you killing a Gliese, to save it from live vivisection.”
“And now we know they grow on trees. Wasted sympathy.”
“Empathy,” he corrected. “That’s your talent.”
“Sorry?”
“Your latent talent,” he corrected himself. “You could be a very powerful empath. Except you don’t want to use or develop that talent.”
“I do not want to feel anyone’s pain, and I do not want to be anyone’s weapon.”
He smiled. “You’ve caused enough pain, over the years.” He grimaced, and held his hands up, as if trying to indicate that he was searching for the right way to phrase what he wanted to say. Or that he was being open, honest.
With Greenaway, everything – every word, every gesture, every act – was calculated. Caused enough pain as in you killed a lot of people. But so had he.
“It’s about being connected, Kara. Sensing how people are even if they’re a long, long way away. Like quantum entanglement, but weirder. And very few other people can do it.”
She’d go with him for now. “And this helps you how?”
“Helps us, Kara. Always us. It means you know, you sense where the people you’re connected to are. The direction to take. How close...”
Pieces of memory fell into place. “Son of a bitch. You really played me.”
“Don’t feel exclusive. You’re special, not unique.”
“So because I care, I’ll find 'em. Den mother, that’s me.” And a voice in her head said yes, this is exactly how it is.
“You don’t have to care. Only be connected emotionally or physically, like with that Gliese. Maybe there’s an object can act as a connection. What they used to call a keepsake.” He cocked his head to one side. “Talking of objects – is that a vibra-knife in your right hand?”
Kara took both hands from her pockets, leaving the knife behind. “Was it?”
“You’re not carrying a gun. You’re right handed. There has to be a weapon somewhere. Your right shoulder was more tense than your left.”
“I like the way it feels.” Unsaid but somehow hanging between them was the unspoken coda: sliding it into someone’s chest and through their ribcage. She thought of the piece of wood she’d pushed into Marc’s hand, and how she knew he was still alive. Was being a super-empath any stranger than being entranced by an elemental on Dartmoor, or Marc spending the night with one in Scotland? Kara felt a sudden and sickening revulsion for aliens, GalDiv and most humanity. But running away wouldn’t bring her people home “Call me Kara the Blade.”
He glanced at her. “Problem?”
“Only you.” He was about to speak. She cut him short. “Do not say to pull myself together. Do not be understanding. Accept that I’m pissed off. With you, with the world, with the universe itself.” She paused, then: “That simulity training. I’d used it before. This was different.”
“It had been adjusted,” Greenaway said casually. Too casually. “You’d used it with other Special Ops soldiers. But Keislack needed a crash military course. So the techs turned the dials up to eleven. Why? Were you living in each other’s heads?”
She moved a little away from him. The vibra-knife was suddenly in her hand. Kara smiled as it extended with a slight buzz. The blade was a blur extending from the hilt.
Greenaway stood very still.
“You might be quick enough if I throw,” she said quietly. “But you’ll lose a hand, maybe an arm deflecting it. Question: were the controls also upped to increase my empathy for Keislack?”
“Not only him. Increase it in general.”
She stood, weighing the knife in her hand. “You fucked with my mind.”
“Before you were born. As was done to me.”
“Still your choice!”
“Debatable. What choice is there? In order for this, then that.”
“There’s always an alternative.”
“Only one? Try thousands. Millions. You could use that knife to slash your own throat. But you won’t. All we can do is play the reality we have.”
She stared at Greenaway for several seconds, a man consumed by his own determination. Yet there’d been a note of sadness in his voice.
“Did you love your wife?”
Greenaway looke
d away. “She was everything to me.”
“Could you have saved her?”
“It was her choice.”
“Could you have fucking saved her?”
“Fuck off, Kara,” his voice quiet. “That’s personal.”
She wouldn’t stop. “You gave up your daughter. Part of the same programme?”
“I went Spec Ops and then GalDiv. Tatia was better off with people who’d be there for her. It kept her safe.” His left hand clenched, the knuckles white.
“Safe until she gets to play hero. Safe to maybe die far away in the Up.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he burst out. “Think I don’t fucking care? But I do know that with you and Keislack, she’ll survive. The three of you are the best, the only way of winning through.”
Kara saw it. Greenaway was obsessed with saving Earth. As obsessions go, it was respectable, even admirable. He also wanted Kara and Marc to save Tatia for his own personal, fatherly and probably guilty-as-hell feelings. But he’d never admit it. She wasn’t angry – well, no more than before – but was relieved to have seen behind the mask. Greenaway was human. She liked him that way.
“You the puppet, Tse the master,” she said quietly. “He played all of us. Neat.”
“It’s not being played,” he insisted, now in control of himself. “It’s seeing what must happen for the right result.”
Kara couldn’t see the difference and shook her head. “But you’re no pre-cog. You have no idea if Tse told the truth. For all we know, this programme is meant to let the alien pre-cog bastards win.” She switched off the vibra-knife. “I liked Tse and understand why he suicided. All the same, you took one hell of a lot on trust. And then you present this programme as if it’s cut and dried. Checked and double checked. But it’s not, Anson. Classic commanding officer trying to appear all-knowing for the troops’ morale. But guess what? The troops never buy it. They know the commander is as fucked up and ignorant as the rest of us. No plan survives contact with the enemy, right? It’s people like me, like Marc, like Tatia who have to do the success-snatching thing. Do not ever claim some sort of super insight.” Her voice spiky with sarcasm. “That you see the big picture, have been trained to make the hard choices. Power doesn’t make you cleverer. Only more dangerous.”
His eyes were suddenly vulnerable. “What do you want?”
“Total honesty, Anson. Even the bad bits. Stop trying to play me. It’s disrespectful. And I always see it coming. Oh, and tell your AI to refresh you about the morality behind the word ‘eugenics’. There was once a man called Hitler who believed in it.”
“I know history,” he said, tight-lipped.
“Then start learning from it.”
They walked back to Marc’s house, Kara’s Merc SUV and Greenaway’s jitney in silence.
He was right about the Gorgonzola.
* * *
“You’d better tell me,” Kara said, brushing crumbs from her jeans. “Everything.” Her Merc had extended a veranda and she’d fetched an extra chair from the house. It was, she thought, as domestic a scene as she’d been in for years. “From the beginning. Whenever the hell that was.”
“There’s another bottle in the jitney. I’ve some de-alc.”
Kara nodded. She needed Greenaway’s knowledge and connections in the Wild and the Up. Food and wine had relaxed the tension between them. Kara had discovered that Greenaway could be amusing and seemed to be interested in her as a person, not just a weapon.
< You don’t need de-alc. I can metabolise any excess alcohol for you.
> I never knew that. I’m slightly freaked now that I do know.
< If I’d said before you’d have got pissed too often.
> My fucking choice.
< It affects me as well, Kara. Our fucking life. You also smoke joss. Why do you think your mind and your reflexes have been so sharp when you needed them? A pause, then: < I’m not going to tell you how many pregnancies I’ve terminated and cancers I’ve destroyed for you.
“I’ll make coffee,” Kara said hastily. “And grab a bottle of Marc’s brandy.”
“Why not live in the house?”
Her gesture took in the all-dancing Merc. “This is my home. And because I couldn’t handle so much space.”
* * *
As Greenaway explained it, the pre-cog gene could be traced back to an early Homo sapiens tribe who lived near the Altai Mountains one hundred thousand years ago. Sometime in their past they’d bred with another species of human, long since died out. The inheritance was an ability both feared and valued, and never really understood.
Few pre-cogs fully realised their potential, then or now. Some were frightened of it. Others by what normals would say. Those who did manage to understand and control the talent learned to stay in the shadows. How many kings and emperors have achieved greatness because of an advisor’s near magical advice? Only in a few cultures could pre-cogs live openly and valued, as with Native North Americans and their shamanistic cousins in Siberia. But they never ruled.
Developed pre-cogs stayed the hell away from secret societies because they are never secret for long. Someone always tells. That began to change as people travelled more, the cities grew and pre-cogs could hide in plain sight.
Then came empires. Ur, Egypt and Phoenicia, the first to include a sea under its aegis. Later Persian, Greek, Macedonian, Roman, Viking, British, Spanish, French, Dutch… Empire gave the pre-cogs – or the Developed, as they had begun to call themselves – the opportunity to meet and discuss the two questions that dominated their lives: Why are we this way? How best can we use our powers?
It was the Chinese who discovered a castrated pre-cog had greater and more focused abilities. Something to do with the fact that testosterone seemed to suppress the effect. Not the entire works, only the testicles. They could have sex but no children.
“Oh, please,” Kara said, “not a neuter society of secrets. It’s just too…” She shrugged. “Over-dramatic?” She poured them both more brandy, a thirty-year-old Hine, pleased that Marc had such good taste in booze.
< It was given him, Ishmael said.
> Another illusion shattered. And don’t keep me too sober, okay? She smiled at Greenaway to take the sting from her last words to him.
Greenaway shook his head. “Never that organised. The Vatican did the same with castrati singers.” He paused, listening to his AI, eyes distant. Then sighed, “Shit. Venice and Ankara are at war. Five colony worlds have declared independence, as has the Belt. The Paris AI just froze the Metro – thousands of people are trapped in tunnels. City states have begun blaming the Wild. It’s getting worse.”
“Only the start of it. Go on.”
He shrugged. “Pre-cogs are naturally long lived, we don’t know why. The castration added even more years.”
She saw his eyes narrow and remembered that Tse had been his friend. Possibly the only person Greenaway trusted. “Did they have any choice?”
Greenaway shook his head. “Only happened to a few, but no. Had to be done just after puberty.”
“So much for a breeding programme.” Too bad if Tse and Greenaway had been friends. She was entitled to the occasional crack. “Wait. There couldn’t be one. All the most powerful pre-cogs were castrated.”
“Just after puberty. Time for the poor sod to father a child. Anyway, Tse was the last one. No need after him, they knew the threat and how to defeat it.”
“Who’s they?”
“The good pre-cogs and some families who’ve been trading with aliens for centuries.” He shot brandy into Kara’s glass, half smiling at her shocked expression. “Aliens have been visiting and trading for a long, long time. Remember that warehouse you guys found? Mostly Cancri, particularly fascinated by humans. They had enough sense to restrict their dealings to a select few. Or the select few made damn sure they did. Safer for all. Big surprise when the Gliese pulled that paint-the-moon number, but luckily there were enough people who knew the truth to prevent total
collapse.”
“So these families...”
“Got very rich over the years. But never had the resources to get as much from alien tech as we do now.”
“Are pre-cogs all male?”
“No. Women may also do empathy, like you. And emotional control over others. Getting pregnant doesn’t affect the talent.”
Kara was quiet for a moment as it sank in. “You mean my ancestors...”
“Came from the Altai,” he finished. “You’re a direct descendant.”
Something to be explored later. Kara passed him the brandy bottle. “So where do the Wild and city states fit in?”
“You haven’t figured it out?”
“Something about ‘someone has to carry out the trash’?”
He half smiled. “Pretty much. You know, until you and your team discovered that warehouse, we had no idea how long the alien pre-cogs had known about Earth. Now it seems to be fifty thousand Earth years. There’s a prime alien pre-cog race, a few super-intelligent allies like the Originators and their not-so-smart allies, like the Cancri. And their go-fors like the Gliese. Question: why not wipe us out? Answer: we have no idea. They’re aliens, remember? But we can’t rule it out. Which is why we have to destroy the prime pre-cogs. If they go we’ve a fighting chance.”
He’d avoided her question. She tried again. “And the Wild?”
“The city states went one way: traditional government on local, tribal lines; large urban area; obviously tech driven, facilitated by AIs. The Wild went for a civilisation based on common values and shared effort.” He shrugged. “The Wild has its own colonies out amongst the stars. Worst comes to worst, humanity could keep going through them.” He yawned, a little too elaborately. “Early start in the morning.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Ask your AI?”
“Not the same. I need to hear it from you.”
He sighed. “It’s about humanity. Look, we could lose Earth to the aliens. It’s a possibility. But that doesn’t mean humanity dies. Not any more.”
Kara got it. “The space colonies.”