Irreconcilable Differences, page 3
Micki wishes she could back away. Keep on going. Me, I just wish I could breathe. I wish I could whistle. Something's going down. Something big. And whatever it is, whoever it is, they'd better be afraid of the ant hill they've kicked over. ICS looks after our IBI brothers and sisters.
Micki grows cold, and her stomach tightens, even at the memory, the dream. In the dream, she rubs her thumb over the nicotine stain on the second finger of her right hand. Tries to keep her voice level. “What, um. What does that have to do with me?”
“You know what they were investigating. Whose communications they were intercepting.”
Micki shakes her head. Looks down. At the pictures again, then looks away. But she's still wary. “No,” she says, softly. “No. I don't. I'm sorry.” And she is. I'm in a position to know.
Neil goes quiet again, and watches her. Hard, cold, blue sky of his eyes. Micki squirms in her chair. Neil exhales slowly, and draws a manilla folder from his briefcase. Opens the folder. Slides it over to her. Flips a few pages. “I think … that you do. As you can see, we've had our eyes on Midwestern cybergangs for some time. Ordinarily data crime on this level doesn't interest us, but we have had reasons to get involved, lately. That intercept office was monitoring the KanREN backbone. They were monitoring the Salina 785s. They were monitoring you.” He gives that a moment to sink in. Watches Micki draw back in her chair in surprise. That alone should tell him something. I'm sure it does. He'd have to have gone blind to miss that.
Neil goes on, “I want to know who told you they were there. I want to know who planned the operation, who carried it out, and who was involved. You're going to tell me everything you know about them. Otherwise I will not be responsible for your safety.”
Unsubtle. Even for him. But he so loves his drama. It's working. Micki's voice quavers as she speaks. “Um. I don't … I have the right to remain silent. And I'd like to talk to my lawyer, please. Now.”
Neil smiles, tightly. His teeth are vaguely yellow from smoking. The voice is calmer. More measured. Back to its original precision. “Ms. Blake, you misunderstand. Those rights are for people who are under arrest. You are merely being … detained while we determine which police agency would best handle you. We've already contacted your Mounties. They've shown little interest. They believe that operating an intercept facility without a warrant is in violation of Canadian law, and that our operators were … fair game for anyone who detected them. As for the rest of your gang's actions, as I'm sure you're aware, the RCMP refuses to get involved if the losses amount to less than a million dollars Canadian.” Neil pauses there. Lets her have hope for a moment.
“However,” he grinds that hope under his heel, “The Texican Federation's Agencia Federal de Investigacion sees things … differently.” He flips to another page. “As you can see, the bank from which you … let's call it ‘borrowed’ the money for your train ticket … is in Houston, and therefore in their jurisdiction. Did you know that?” Neil leans forward slightly to fix her eyes with his own, and to set his hand on the folder in front of her, inside her space, close enough to force her to flinch back. “I think,” he says, “that the AFI Rangers will have quite a strong case against you right here. Don't you?”
She reads. Network traces. MAC IDs. Brain pattern matches. Software comparisons. And the results of an identification viral infection installed in her deck by the bank's computers. “That's impossible,” she says. I can feel my stomach … our stomach … her stomach really. Feel it grow suddenly loose, as though she's going to pass out. It's a good thing we're sitting down, I guess. I know that feeling, though, the sudden, gut deep realization that You. Are. In. Deep. Shit. Coyote moment. Hold up your little sign that says “Mother,” Micki.
She dreams on. Not good dreams. Not happy dreams. Neil continues, “I'll take that as agreement. You are aware, of course, that in TexMex, legal expedience frequently trumps abstract qualities like … fairness … mercy … the difference between minors and adults … things like that. Should we hand you over to them, I expect you'll find yourself fetching up short at the end of a rope by Monday morning at the outside. The Texicans are quite well known for that. The podcasts of hangings have been … quite successful on the market. Particularly the ones with short drops. Would you like to see one? Say … as a rehearsal?”
She's sobbing in the dream now, and her guts twist up in the memory. She's asleep. She probably can't feel it. I can. “I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Please, Mr. Neil, I'll do anything you want,” she tells him.
Neil steeples his fingers. He's won. “This is what I want. Tell me about the attack on the intercept office, Ms Blake. Tell me everything you know.”
But she doesn't know anything. She tells him the truth, and he just lets her cry. He doesn't believe her. I can't even look away. When Robert and I first started with Covert, we sometimes worked interrogations together. He always had to be bad cop to my good cop. “A woman should always be a symbol of hope, Santana,” he would say. “And a man a symbol of damnation.” Or sometimes just, “Look what happened last time I played good cop.” I think he believed it, too. But I'm still just an inspector. A basic field investigator. Just a copy of a field investigator, I remind myself; I don't even know if original me is still alive or what she's doing. It's been two years since copy me was made. Robert Neil, by contrast, is the director of the whole Covert Services Bureau. So yeah. It's not even his job to interrogate Micki. He just does it when he thinks an investigation is going too slowly. Mostly he does it because he enjoys it. Wants to keep his tools sharp. Control for its own sake. I'm all too familiar with that. I have to wonder if I was dumb enough to go back to him, out there in the real world. I've done dumber things in my life. You never actually know.
He's talking again, in Micki's dream, but it's starting to fall apart in the sensations of the moment. Random bits of memory fly like glitter in front of a camera. She's dropping out of REM sleep, and into the deeper, stranger landscapes below, again. “Ms. Blake, I am going to offer you … a deal.” He leans close, and the cigarette stink on his breath makes her want to turn away. And yet. Her mouth waters, too. I can feel the tickle in her salivary glands, even now.
I let Micki sleep. I know what happened after that. I can guess. She signed the paperwork and got set up with a carrier agent. Somatropin hormonal implant to beef up her bones. Without it, though, the pervasive neurofiber system's reflex speed and muscle contraction sequencing would ruin her joints, overstress her tendons, all that fun stuff. Pervasive neurofiber implants. Four small incisions along her spine, and hours and hours of the vague slithering feeling as neurofibers embrace your nerves, your muscles, your senses. All the meat of your body. What else is there?
Hmm? Oh. Flicker of memory dream from Micki, at the clinic, when they came to get her the last time. She's standing, looking out over La Jolla Cove, watching the tide rise over the foundations of wrecked houses. “I finally got to California. I even got to the beach,” she thinks. “And all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” Her eyes are full and wet when they put her on the gurney.
I remember that thought from the first touch of her mind. She was still thinking it when they downloaded me, this self, this copy, into Micki's brand new neurofiber net. Crying. Bitter. I didn't introduce myself right then, but her body arched as they sent data-me through, and I felt it. She knew she was being invaded. She knows I'm here. A machine ghost, that's me, hiding under Micki's skin. Carrier agent. As far under cover as it gets.
Chapter 3
The warning signs in the train car light up, and begin a countdown. “Attention, all passengers disembarking at Kansas City's Union Station. Please return to your seats. Your cars will be forking from the Southwest Chief in ten minutes. Please be sure all luggage is stowed, and your seat backs and tray tables are in their full, upright, and locked positions prior to forking. Thank you.” So polite, these robot trains. But it saves me waking Micki up. She blinks, a little disoriented. Wipes her eyes. Looks at her hand, as though surprised it's responding to her again. Murmurs to herself. “You're still in there, aren't you?” Disgusted. Accusing. I can feel it from her.
I open a very superficial connection to her brain. It's no deeper than if we were in a gestalt on the net somewhere together. I can go deeper, but there's no need right now. And I don't need to remember her memories as my own, or have her remember mine that way. She needs to pass as herself for the cover. But I can feel her, and she can, presumably, feel me. Like being alone in a two-man tent with someone. Closer than being lovers. You know instinctively what kind of mood the other person is in. I'm used to gestalts. Been in them often enough.
“Yeah, I'm here,” I tell her. “Talk to me in the gestalt. Nobody's supposed to know I'm here.”
It takes her a couple tries to speak in the gestalt. Using neurowired interfaces is a little different than induction interfaces, I guess. Never used an induction interface voluntarily. She finally gets words out, and after a moment or two, she can do it without moving her lips in the real world. “What the hell are we supposed to do now? They just sent me home? How am I supposed to explain all this?”
“Don't. Don't say anything about it.”
“I was gone for four days. I have a quad-port in the back of my neck that wasn't there before. And of course, you're here. How am I supposed to explain all that?”
“You don't talk about me. Nobody can see me. I'm not obvious.”
“Yeah, but the hardware? They can see that. And I wasn't back in school when I should have been.”
“So what?”
“So, what am I supposed to tell people? Fucking psycho didn't tell me what I'm supposed to do at all. He said you'd know.”
Pause to think about it. Mission background database. I get the bare bones of the cover story. “Tell them the truth. You went to get your jack installed, but there were complications.”
She snorts. “Complications. Kidnapped by a secret branch of Interpol, implanted with heaven knows what, and now I have voices in my head, and you want me to call it complications?”
“Don't argue with me. Just do it. This is our cover story. You went to San Diego to get your jack installed, and you had complications.”
“Fuck off. I'm going to the cops.”
“Don't,” I tell her. “Don't even think about it.”
“Why not?” she demands.
“You signed on for a mission, kid. You're gonna go through with it. And if you even think about blowing my cover, you'll regret it.”
“Yeah? Why? What can you do?”
“I'm wired into your brain stem, kid. Do the math. I can shut down your heart and lungs.”
“Yeah, but that doesn't help you much, now does it?” she demands.
“Try this on for size, then. Imagine Robert Neil finds out you blabbed. If you think there's any way you wouldn't wind up in TexMex with a rope around your neck, you don't know the man. And you'd be there alone. He likes me better than that.” Or … he used to. It's not a safe bet anymore, I suppose. But I don't let Micki in on that.
She sags. “He told you about that, huh?”
“I know about it. That's all that's important.”
“Fucker.“
“We don't have time to argue about this anymore. Do it my way.”
She's quiet, sullen, in the no-man's land between rage and tears. She finally speaks. “Fine. But nobody's going to believe I could afford all this. Just a quad-jack alone costs more than a house. I've never even heard of the kind of wiring you guys put in me.”
“Hardware ID will show up as a NeuroGen Research N4-5000. Expensive, but not ridiculous. Cover story says you sold one of your ovaries for it.” I try to make it sound casual.
She rubs her hand over her stomach and down over her abdomen. Winces at a rogue twinge down there. “Did I?”
I check the mission briefing. “That's what the mission briefing says.”
“Fuckers.”
“You only need one. Now get over it, kid. We've got a mission. That's more important than anything else, you understand?”
She's starting to cry again. “Don't call me kid, you fucking AI. My name's Micki.”
“Whatever.”
Angry silence. I'm the one who breaks it. “I'm not a machine, Micki. I'm a copy of a real person.”
“What?”
“I'm a copy of a real person. My name is Rachel.”
“A copy? They can do that?” She's curious, despite herself. Hackergirl. I need to keep that in mind.
“Yeah.”
“Very flash. Snap.” The praise is grudging, at best. Ironic at worst.
Nod a little in the gestalt. “Very. Also very classified. You're into the deep black now, kiddo. Don't fuck up.”
“Stop calling me kid. I'm sixteen.”
“I know.”
“So why do you keep calling me kid?”
“Because you are.”
She's quiet again, and I can feel her starting to cry.
“Oh come on, Micki. There's no time for this. Suck it up. We have a mission, remember? Grow up. Grow the fuck up. Crying is no way out.” Sergeant McNally's words from boot camp come out of my mouth.
“Nobody takes me seriously. Not even you. But here I am, in serious shit anyway. They've screwed with my body so much that nothing feels right. They've taken part of me away. They've stuffed me full of classified hardware and stuck you inside me, and I'm supposed to just suck it up and carry on? You must be fucking stupid if you think they're gonna let me live after this.”
Now I'm angry. That sudden tautness in the stomach, hotness behind the eyes. Don't know whether it's her or me, and at this point, I don't care. “Wouldn't be the first time I've been called that, Micki. But don't make a habit of it.”
“Well it's true. They're gonna kill me when this is over, aren't they?” She snaps back at me, just as angry. “Well, aren't they?“ She's waiting for me to lie to her. I'm quiet for a few moments. Thinking what to do. What to say. Fine. I just tell her the truth. “They might. Micki. It's possible.”
“Certain.”
“No, it's not certain. This hardware is beaucoup expensive, and we don't recycle the stuff. If you play ball, you might be useful enough to keep around.” Yeah, I've heard that before too. Feel that sinking feeling in the stomach.
She's quiet. “You're not gonna tell me it's all going to be okay, or some bullshit like that?”
“Why bother? You wouldn't believe me if I did.”
“No, I wouldn't,” she says.
“So what's the point of lying to you about it, then? So I can have more of your bullshit?”
She looks at me in the gestalt. Makes eye contact. No engaging the enemy here, no distancing onesself through rifle sights. No setting bombs and getting away. This is as personal as it gets without crossing the line into her mind. “Promise me that,” she says.
Glare at her. “What?”
“Promise me you'll tell me the truth. No matter how bad.”
“I'll tell you what I think you need to know. Anything else, you're better off not knowing.”
“You'll tell me everything. That's what I want.”
“Micki, this is an undercover operation. I can't tell you everything that's going on. For that matter, I doubt I know everything that's going on. These things aren't about a free flow of information and trust. Just do what I tell you, and we'll get through this.”
“No,” she says. “I won't. You can't keep me in the dark like this.”
“Sure I can.”
“You need me. Or they wouldn't have bothered with all this undercover stuff. I don't know what on Earth you need me for, but you need me.”
I think about it. I can kill us both. Sure. Shut down her heartbeat. No problem. But it doesn't get the mission done. And to get the mission done, I need her to hide behind. I can't do this without her help. Smart girl. She's figured it out. That's just great. “All right. All right. Promise me something first, Micki.”
“What?”
“If I say I can't talk about something, let it drop. I'll tell you straight as much as I can. I'll answer your questions if there's time, but there's stuff I just can't talk about, and it would put you in more danger if I did. Don't pick at it, don't try and figure it out, and most especially, when I have to open connectivity up and let your nerves synch with more of the neurofiber net to use whatever functionality we need, don't go fishing in my memory. Promise me, and I promise I won't lie to you.”
Micki's quiet again. She finally murmurs “I promise. I'll do my best not to.”
“Fair enough.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise, Micki.” I just know I'm going to regret this. It would help if I couldn't feel her smirking.
The announcement system clicks on. “All passengers. This car is forking from the Southwest Chief in one minute. We will arrive at the platform at Kansas City's Union Station shortly. Please, take your seats and fasten your seatbelts.” The car lurches a little as the magnetic couplers detach and the train spreads itself out on the track. Does every train station on the continent have to be called Union Station? Shit. Even a hundred-fifty years ago, people were so fucking lazy about naming things.
“You okay?” she asks me.
No, I'm brooding, actually. With a side order of cranky. The precision of this mission just took an order of magnitude drop with this compromise. Why a sixteen-year-old, Robert? Why?
“Fine. Fuck you, Rachel,” she says.
“Call me Rae, Micki. I went by that when I was your age.”
“Why?”
“Oh. It was back when anime was cool.”
She snorts. “Lame.” But it's halfhearted. I let it go. She continues on, after a few moments, “What makes you think Director Psychoboy won't pull you out and send me off to Juarez to get hanged, after all this is done?
