Divisions (48 page)
Authors: Ken MacLeod
Logan looked uncomfortable. ‘Not exactly, no, I’m not saying that. We have—well, naturally we have sympathisers, we get reports—’
‘And so do we,’ she said. ‘Some of them from the same comrades as you do.’ She wasn’t entirely certain of this—need-to-know, again—but it would give him something to think about. ‘Who actually knows about the nukes?’
‘Valentina Kozlova,’ said Logan. ‘And your ex-husband, Georgi Davidov.’ If Logan noticed Myra’s involuntary start at this news, he gave no sign. ‘And me, obviously. That’s it. The only people who know. Unless there’s been a leak.’
‘Hmm,’ said Myra. ‘Reid doesn’t seem to know about them—he knows we have nukes in space, but he thinks they’re all in Earth orbit.’ She paused. ‘Wait a fucking minute. If you’re the only person up here who knows about them, then the request from the Party a couple of years ago was in fact a request from you. You, personally.’
‘Well, yeah,’ Logan said. He didn’t seem bothered at all. ‘In my capacity as Party Secretary for the space fraction, that is.’
‘You took it upon yourself to do
that
? What the fuck was on your
mind
?’ God, she thought, there I go again with the incredulous screech. She added, in a flat, steady voice, ‘Besides, what gave you the right to interfere in my section, and in my section’s state?’
that
? What the fuck was on your
mind
?’ God, she thought, there I go again with the incredulous screech. She added, in a flat, steady voice, ‘Besides, what gave you the right to interfere in my section, and in my section’s state?’
Logan squirmed, like someone shifting uncomfortably in an invisible chair. ‘I had a valid instruction to do it. From the military org.’
‘Ah! So there
is
someone else who knows about it!’
is
someone else who knows about it!’
‘Not as such,’ said Logan. ‘The military org is …’ He hesitated.
‘Like you said, a small cadre?’ Myra prompted.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Logan. He looked as though he was steeling himself for an admission. ‘It’s an AI.’
Myra felt her back thump against the back of her chair—she was literally thrown by this statement. She took a deep breath.
‘Let’s scroll this past us again, shall we? Tell me if I’ve got this right. Two years ago, at the Sputnik centenary, Val gets a message from you, asking for part of our stash of nukes. It’s a valid Party request, she decides I don’t need to know, and she blithely complies. And the reason this happened is because
you
got a request from a fucking
computer
?’
you
got a request from a fucking
computer
?’
‘An AI military expert system,’ Logan said pedantically. ‘But yeah, that’s about the size of it.’
Myra groped blindly for a cigarette, lit it shakily.
‘And just how long has the Fourth International been taking military advice from an AI?’
Logan did some mental arithmetic.
‘About forty years,’ he said.
It was no big secret, Myra learned. Just one of those things she’d never needed to know. The AI had originated as an economic and logistic planning system devised by a Trotskyist software expert in the British Labour Party. This planning mechanism had been used by the United Republic of Great Britain, and inherited by its self-proclaimed successor, the underground Army of the New Republic, after Britain had been occupied, and its monarchy restored, by the Yanks in the Third World War. It had acquired significant upgrades, not all of them intended, during the twenty-year guerilla war that followed, and had played some disputed role in the British national insurrection during the Fall Revolution in 2045. Its central software routines had been smuggled into space by a refugee from the New Republic’s postvictory consolidation. It had been expanding its capacities, and its activities, ever since.
‘Most people call it the General,’ Logan told her. ‘Aces the Turing, no sweat.’
‘But what’s it doing?’ Myra asked. ‘If it’s such a shit-hot adviser, why aren’t we winning?’
‘Depends what you mean by “we”,’ Logan said. ‘And what you mean by “winning”.’
Myra had, she realised, no answer to that. Perhaps the AI adviser had picked up on the
Analysis
analysis, and agreed that the situation was hopeless.
Analysis
analysis, and agreed that the situation was hopeless.
Logan was looking at her with sympathetic curiosity, a sort of reversed mirror-image of the hostile bafflement she was directing at him. He must have gone native up there; he’d got used to this situation, and to this style of work, over the decades, and had forgotten the common courtesies of even their notional comradeship.
‘Anyways,’ he was saying, ‘you can ask it all that yourself.’ He poked, absently, at the control-panel between his feet; looked up; said, ‘Putting you through.’
Before Myra could so much as open her mouth, Logan had vanished, and had been replaced by the military AI. She’d had a mental picture of it, ever since Logan had first mentioned it: something like the
Jane’s
software, a VR gizmo of lines and lights. At best a piece of simulant automation, like Parvus.
Jane’s
software, a VR gizmo of lines and lights. At best a piece of simulant automation, like Parvus.
He was a young man in sweat-stained camos, sitting casually on a rock in a clearing in temperate woodland: lichen and birch-bark, sound of water, birdsong, leaf-shadow, a wisp of woodsmoke. It looked like he’d paused here, perhaps was considering setting up a camp. The man looked every inch the commandante—his long, wavy black hair and his black stubble and dark eyes projected something of the glamour of Guevara, the arrogance of Trotsky. He also reminded Myra, disturbingly, of Georgi—enough to make her suspect that the image she saw was keyed to her personality; that it had been precisely tuned to give her this overwhelming impression of presence, of charisma.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Myra.’
She opened her hands. ‘You could have called.’
‘No doubt I would have done, quite soon.’ The entity smiled. ‘I prefer that people come to me. It avoids subsequent misunderstandings. Anyway—I understand you have two concerns: the nukes at Lagrange, and the space-movement coup. Regarding the first—the nukes are still under your control. Your Defence Minister still has the access codes. I requested that the weapons themselves be moved here for security.’ He shrugged, and smiled again. ‘They’re all yours. So are the weapons in Earth orbit—which are, of course, more immediately accessible, and usable. This brings me to your other concern—the coup. It is imminent.’
‘How imminent?’
‘In the next few days. They’ll ram through the vote on reorganisation of the ReUN, and the new Security Council will issue orders to seize the battlesats. They have the forces to do it.’
He paused, looking at her, or through her. ‘But we have the forces to stop it. I can assure you, Myra, it’s all in hand.’
She shook her head. ‘That isn’t what our intelligence indicates. I’ve checked, my Defence and Foreign ministries have checked. We have agents in the battlesats, as you must know—hell, some of them must be in your own military org!
If
such a thing exists.’ She wished she had read some of those mailings.
If
such a thing exists.’ She wished she had read some of those mailings.
‘It most certainly does exist,’ the General said firmly. ‘And it’s been feeding you disinformation.’
‘What?’
The entity stood up and stepped towards her in its virtual space. It spread its hands and assumed an apologetic expression, but with a sly conspiratorial gleam in its eyes.
‘Forgive me, Comrade Davidova. This was not done against you. It was done against our common enemy: Reid’s faction of the space movement.’
‘How—’ she began, but she saw, she saw.
‘I’m telling you this now,’ the General said, ‘because today you lost your last disloyal Commissar. Alexander Sherman has been passing on information to Reid for months. He wasn’t the first, but he was the last.’
‘Who were the others?’
The General moved his hand in a smoothing gesture. ‘I can’t tell you that without compromising current operations. That particular information is of no further use to you anyway.’
‘I suppose not,’ Myra concurred reluctantly. She wished she knew who the traitors were, all the same; hoped Tatanya and Michael hadn’t been among them. She’d quite liked those two …
‘So you used them—and
us
—as a conduit for disinformation?’
us
—as a conduit for disinformation?’
The General nodded. ‘And for information going the other way—your updates to
Jane’s
have been most helpful.’
Jane’s
have been most helpful.’
‘Jeez.’ Her reactions to this were interestingly complicated, she thought distantly. On the one hand she felt sore at having been used, having been lied to; on the other, she could admire the stagecraft of the deception. Above all she felt relieved that the gloomily negative assessments she’d worried over were all wrong.
Unless the situation was even
worse
than she’d thought—
worse
than she’d thought—
‘The situation is better than you think, by far,’ said the General. ‘We have our people in place—the battlesats won’t be taken without a struggle, which in most cases we expect to win.’
‘
Most cases
won’t be enough. Even one battlesat—’
Most cases
won’t be enough. Even one battlesat—’
‘Indeed. Which is where your orbital weaponry comes in. The lasers, the EMP bursters, the smart pebbles, the hunter-killers, the kinetic-energy weapons …’
Myra hadn’t known her arsenal was so extensive. (God, to think that stockpile had once belonged to the Pope! Well, to the Swiss Guards, anyway—quite possibly His Holiness had been discreetly left out of the loop on that one.) She shivered in her wrap, tugged it around her shoulders, lit another cigarette. She didn’t know what to say; she felt her cheeks burning under the General’s increasingly quizzical regard.
‘What do you want us to do with them?’ she asked at last.
‘I’m sure you can work that out,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘But—’
He gave her a smile; heartbreaking, satanic.
‘I hope I see you again,’ he said. He reached out a hand and made some fine adjustment to the air. The link went down.
Myra took off her eyeband and rubbed her eyes. Then she walked unsteadily to the kitchen and made some tea, and sat drinking it and smoking for about ten minutes, staring blankly into the virtual spaces of her mind. She supposed she should do something, or tell someone, but she couldn’t think what to do, or whom to tell.
Time enough in the morning, she decided.
Her bedroom was small, a couple of metres’ clearance on three sides of the double bed giving barely enough space for a wardrobe and dressingtable. Over the years the room had accumulated a smothering snowfall of soft furnishings, needlework and ornaments; pretty things she’d bought on impulse and never had the heart to throw out. The process was a natural selection for an embarrassingly large collection of grannyish clutter. Now and again—as now—it infuriated her in its discrepancy with the rest of her life, her style, her look. And then, on reflection, she’d figure that the incongruity of the room’s appearance was what made it a place where she could forget all care, and sleep.
In the morning it seemed like a dream.
All the more so, Myra realised as she struggled up to consciousness through the layers of sleep and hangover and tangled, sweat-clammy bedding, because she
had
dreamed about the General. She felt vaguely ashamed about that, embarrassed in front of her waking self; not because the dream had been erotic—though it had been—but because it had been besotted, devoted,
servile
; like those dreams the Brits used to have about Royalty. She sat up in the bed and pushed back the pillow, leaned back and tried to think about it rationally.
had
dreamed about the General. She felt vaguely ashamed about that, embarrassed in front of her waking self; not because the dream had been erotic—though it had been—but because it had been besotted, devoted,
servile
; like those dreams the Brits used to have about Royalty. She sat up in the bed and pushed back the pillow, leaned back and tried to think about it rationally.
The entity, the military AI, would have had God only knew how many software generations to evolve an intimate knowledge of humanity. It had had time to become what the Japanese called an
idoru
, a software representation that was better than the real thing, smarter and sexier than any possible human mind or form, like those wide-eyed, faux-innocent anime brats or the simulated stars of pornography and romance. Sex wasn’t the half of it—there were other codes, other keys, in the semiotics of charm: the subtle suggestions of wisdom, the casual hints at a capacity for violence, the assumed
readiness to command, the mirroring glance of empathy; all the elements that went to make up an image of a man that men would die for and women would fall for.
idoru
, a software representation that was better than the real thing, smarter and sexier than any possible human mind or form, like those wide-eyed, faux-innocent anime brats or the simulated stars of pornography and romance. Sex wasn’t the half of it—there were other codes, other keys, in the semiotics of charm: the subtle suggestions of wisdom, the casual hints at a capacity for violence, the assumed
readiness to command, the mirroring glance of empathy; all the elements that went to make up an image of a man that men would die for and women would fall for.
So, she told herself, she wasn’t such a pathetic case, after all. Happens to the best of us. As she reached for her medical kit and clicked out the tablets to fix the hangover, she caught herself smiling at the memory of the General’s smile. Annoyed with herself again, she got out of bed and padded to the kitchen in her fluffy slippers and fuzzy nightgown, and gulped cold water while the coffee percolated. She added a MoodLift tab to her ReSolve dose and her daily intake of anti-ageing supplements and knocked them back all at once. She felt better.
The time was 8 o’clock. She put her contacts in and flicked on a television tile and watched it while spooning muesli and yogurt and listening to the murmured morning briefing from Parvus. The news, as usual, was bad, but no worse than usual. No martial music or ballet on all channels—that was enough to count as good news. After a coffee and a cigarette she felt almost human. She supposed she might as well get up and go to work.
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