Isolation (2 page)

ZUOQUAN CITY, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA

June 3, 2060

S
ECURE CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
, read the phone. Heron turned on her local scrambler—a small lapel pin that would disrupt any surveillance equipment in the area, making her conversation impossible to overhear—and spoke. “Agent Six reporting.”

“Good evening, Heron,” said the familiar voice. She had never been told who her commanding officer was, and she had never asked, but she could decipher from his voice that he was old, and that he was undeniably human. Partials relied so heavily on the link for communication that without specific training, such as Heron had received, their voices carried an identifiable flatness one might call “inhuman.” That her handler was human marked him as a high-level strategist, for most of the other human soldiers and officers had already cycled out of the Isolation War and gone home. The Partial infantry fought, and the Partial generals led, but the humans still called all the shots. Her handler spoke with easy authority. “What do you have to report?”

“The generals and their retinues, including myself, have retreated safely to the munitions factory, as you planned.” She didn’t actually know that this was the plan, but dropped in the assertion as a test. Her handler confirmed it with the inflection of his response.

“Excellent, excellent. You are to be commended for your part in the operation.”

“I’m afraid I still don’t understand the operation,” said Heron. “We had soldiers in the building—I could have delayed both generals long enough for them to be captured. With an official order, I could have captured them myself. You would have had them and the satbox. Why did you instruct me to hold back?”

“We have bigger wheels in motion,” said the voice. “You keep following your orders, and those wheels will roll smoothly to victory.”

“I look forward to it,” said Heron. The voice never told her much, but he seemed to be even more mysterious lately. “Any chance you’ll let me in on my next glorious part in it?”

“I delight in talking to you, Heron,” said the voice. “You’re so much more personable than the other Partials.”

“I’ll try to take that as a compliment.”

“You should. I have a mission for you, because I know that you’re clever enough to manage it. I need a map of the munitions factory complex: all buildings, all hallways, all rooms, from the roofs all the way down to the basements and subbasements. Be sure to call out key locations and defenses. I need this information as quickly as possible.”

“Because you’re going to invade,” said Heron.

“And clever, too,” said the voice. “Get me my map. Confirm.”

“Confirm,” said Heron. It wasn’t a code word, just a protocol the officer had.
He treats me like a computer program, or a trained animal.
The thought shot through her mind, but she dismissed it. This was the way it had always been, and she had a job to do. The connection was severed, and she turned off the scrambler. She adjusted her skirt and straightened her jacket and walked out into the busy factory.

The factory complex was a hive of constant activity: five buildings already crowded with workers and machinery, now doubly crowded with soldiers trying to set up a military headquarters. The bulk of both armies, Wu’s and Bao’s, were outside, spread through the city to make them less of a target for Partial air strikes; but even so, the factory was filled with men and women in uniform, the assistants and aides and messengers of two generals’ retinues. Heron walked through the hall to the main factory floor of Building 3, where hordes of men in thick leather aprons crawled in and around the massive machinery that processed ore into bullets. China had rejected the expanded use of intelligent biotechnology on moral grounds, if not outright religious ones, and though the factory still used certain engineered bacterial cultures in the metal-cleansing process, they had nothing so advanced as a BioSynth—not a Partial, nor even a Watchdog. Their skill in robotics, on the other hand, was impressive, and Heron watched with respect as the fully automated, self-sustaining monstrosities collected the ore, refined it, and pressed it into millions of rounds of ammunition of every shape and size. Zuoquan supplied much of the northern Chinese army with their munitions, and when the Partials took the factory, it would supply them with the same. The invasion hinged on it, in a very real sense.

But why had her handler insisted that the generals get there safely? The complex would be easier to take without them, for the Chinese would defend it now more vigorously than ever. She did not like being kept in the dark, no matter how much her handler patted her on the head and called her a good little Partial.

She reached a side corner of Building 3, where a door led out into the courtyard. She stepped outside and pulled out her phone, activating one of the hidden bits of software she’d installed on the Chinese army’s otherwise standard-issue device: a GPS mapper, which worked in real time to track her movements and relay them through the Chinese’s own satellite system to the NADI Task Force and the Partial troops. She walked back through the door, and the system began building a map of every step she took. With enough walking, and if she was thorough, it would construct a 3-D map of the entire complex. She glanced at her watch and estimated that she would have enough time to map about half of Building 3 before General Wu needed her for the next strategy meeting. Heron made sure the ribbons on her jacket were in their proper position, marking her as a member of the general’s staff. No one would bother her.

She cursed mildly, wishing she’d worn more comfortable shoes. She would be walking for hours.

The glamorous life of a spy.

PARAGEN BIOSYNTH GROWTH AND TRAINING FACILITY, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

October 7, 2058

“A
gain!” called the instructor, and the girl stood up on thin, shaky legs. She might look nineteen, but she’d only been out of the vat for two weeks. “Go!” The other side of the room seemed so far away, but some of the other Partials were already moving toward it, and she refused to be left behind. She walked as quickly as she could, still stiff, keeping her eyes on the opposite row of chairs. She passed one boy, then another. A few rows down from her a boy was nearly running, too eager to win the race, and when he overreached and fell, he took his two neighbors with him. The girl ignored them, hobbling to the front of the pack and touching her chair first. She paused, turning slowly, savoring the victory before flopping down into the chair. Her muscles were still too atrophied to stand for long, but they were growing quickly. The instructor blew his whistle when the last Partial sat down; even ignoring the ones who’d fallen, she’d beaten the last-place racer by nearly five seconds.

“Heron wins again,” said the instructor, marking it on his clipboard. The name had been assigned to her, along with everything else she owned: two sets of clothes, one pair of shoes, three textbooks, and an elastic for her hair. The other females in this training pod had had their hair cut, but Heron’s was left long; this was, the instructors said, because the other girls were pilots and Heron was espionage, but Heron didn’t know yet what that meant. The basics, at least, she was clear on: When they completed their first month of classes—the Level One subjects like language and math and physical fitness—they would go their separate ways, beginning their first levels of specialized training. The boys were all infantry, and would be sent to something called combat training. The girls, all except Heron, were pilots, and as near as she could figure out, that meant they got to ride in carts instead of walk everywhere. That hardly seemed fair to Heron, but she suspected there was more to it than that: If they never had to walk, why were they learning to do it?

Heron still didn’t know what “espionage” was, but she did know that it gave her a class the others didn’t have to take; during afternoon PE she had a separate class, with other espionage girls from other training pods, in which they learned something called Chinese. Apparently there was more than one word for each thing, and the espionage girls were the only ones who got to know what the extra words were. That didn’t seem fair to Heron either, but it was unfair in her favor, and she wasn’t going to argue it. As far as she was concerned, the more she knew the better.

“And again!” shouted the instructor. “One more race and then we move to the ellipticals. On your feet, let’s move.” Heron was tired; they’d been walking for nearly an hour, in one form or another, and the prospect of moving to the elliptical machines for another hour after this was anything but a reward. She could feel the others thinking the same thing, their exhaustion nearly tangible through the link. She wished she could just stay sitting and let the other Partials walk.

And then it occurred to her that if she didn’t stand up, that’s exactly what would happen.

“Go!” shouted the instructor, and the line of Partials hobbled back toward the other side of the room. They had come out of the vats the same day as Heron, and after two weeks of exercise they still looked stupid—their legs were skin and bones, their muscles atrophied from months of disuse in the vats. The instructors told them they were doing well, that walking at all, even poorly, only two weeks after being born was impressive, but Heron wasn’t impressed. If she looked as horrible as the rest of them did, she was glad she wasn’t walking.

One of the other Partials, a soldier named Grant, saw her still sitting and paused in his race. The others made it about fifteen more feet before the instructor blew his whistle. “Stop!” he said. “Everybody stop. Heron, Grant, why aren’t you walking?”

Grant said nothing, looking down at the floor. Heron considered a moment, weighing the words carefully before answering—after all, she’d only been talking for two weeks as well, and her vocabulary was limited, her pronunciation unpracticed. “I don’t want to.” Her voice was still soft and lispy, her mouth unaccustomed to forming the sounds.

The instructor stopped, his eyes wide. “Excuse me?”

Heron examined the sentence again, certain that she’d said it right. Maybe he hadn’t understood her voice? She tried again, enunciating clearly. “I don’t want to.”

“Soldier, that’s not a choice you get to make.”

“I’m not a soldier,” she said. “I’m espionage.” It was one of the harder words she’d learned, and she was pleased with how well she’d pronounced it.

“You are all soldiers,” said the instructor, walking slowly toward her. “No matter what your role is on the battlefield, you are all soldiers, and you answer to me. I am your superior officer.” He stopped in front of her. “What do we do to a superior, Heron?”

She couldn’t read him on the link; she couldn’t read any of the instructors, only the Partials. The instructors were something called humans, and all Heron knew about them was that they were better at nearly everything—they could walk, they could run, they were stronger, they knew more, and most powerful of all, they could hide their emotions from the link. You never knew what they were thinking, or what they were going to do. The Partials in the room watched with fear, wondering what would happen, and Heron felt their fear through the link like a hammer. She answered carefully.

“We obey our superiors.”

“That is exactly right,” said the instructor. “You obey—it’s the very first thing you learned on the very first day you fell out of your vats. Not ‘obey your superior if you want to,’ but ‘obey your superior no matter what.’ You obey immediately, you obey completely, and when I tell you to stand up, you damn well stand up. Heron, stand up.”

She thought about staying in her chair, but he was right—he was her superior, and she had to obey. She rose to her feet.

“Very good,” said the instructor. “Now, I want you to demonstrate something for me. Grant, come over here.”

Grant hobbled toward them. The instructor addressed the class in a loud voice. “The link that connects you can also be used by your leaders; it enforces obedience, should a soldier ever be so horrible as to disobey again. Espionage models have a small bit of authority over soldier models, so we’re going to use Heron for this. Grant, I want you to put your finger on your nose, and keep it there no matter what Heron says, okay?”

Grant nodded. The instructor turned to Heron. “Tell him to move his finger.”

Heron looked at Grant. “Move your finger.”

He moved his finger.

The instructor laughed. “Come on, Grant; I told you not to move it. Put it back and keep it there. Try really hard this time.”

Grant put his finger on his nose and stared at Heron, daring her to do her worst. She could feel his determination through the link, a giant wall ready to keep his finger motionless. She said it again. “Move your finger.”

The data went out through the link, creeping into his mind; his hand shook as his body tried to move his finger and hold it in place at the same time. His face turned red with the effort, and finally his hand came down.

The instructor smiled. “See how this works? You do what you’re told because you are designed to do it. You can’t help yourselves, so don’t bother trying. Now, Grant, tell Heron to touch her finger to her nose.”

Grant appeared confused but looked at Heron anyway. “Touch your finger to your nose.”

Heron waited for the power of the link, but nothing came; she felt the emotions behind his request, the desire with just a bit of confusion about what would happen, but she didn’t feel the force of command. She remembered what the instructor had said a moment earlier, about espionage models having some authority over soldiers. Apparently the soldier models had no authority over her, and she didn’t have to obey them. Instead of moving her hand, she spoke softly. “No.”

The instructor smiled again. “Very good. We obey our superiors, and a Theta model spy is superior to almost everyone in this room. Good job, Heron.” She smiled back, pleased that she had done so well and earned his praise. He spoke again. “The only person who outranks a Theta is a Delta, the generals of the Partial army. They are superior to all of you, and you will obey them explicitly. And who do you think the generals obey?”

The Partials didn’t answer. Heron racked her brain, trying to think of someone who would outrank a general, and then it hit her. She looked up. “A human.”

The instructor rested a hand on her shoulder. “That’s exactly right.” He turned to the class. “See how smart the Thetas are? You obey your generals, and your generals obey me. I am your superior in every way. Try it: Order me to do something.” There was a moment of hesitation, and then Grant told him to touch his nose. The instructor said no. Other Partials started telling him to do things—to stand on one leg, to close his eyes, to clap his hands—and every time he refused, smiling and laughing. Even Heron got into it, hoping her added authority might make a difference, but it didn’t. He ignored them completely. “Now stop,” he said, and the Partials fell silent. “Very good. I’m glad Heron brought this up today, because I want you to understand how this works—to see firsthand how the chain of command flows. The link binds you to your superiors, but humans are completely immune to it. We are your ultimate superiors. The smallest, weakest human being is still superior to every Partial in the world. Is that clear?”

Heron and the other Partials nodded, murmuring their agreement.

“Excellent,” said the instructor. “Now everyone get back in line; we’re going to run this again.” He blew a sharp note on his whistle and walked back to his position on the side of the gym. The Partials shuffled back into line. Heron was still tired and still didn’t want to line up again, but she did it anyway. She understood now.

He was her superior, and she would obey him.