Here We Stand, page 55
“I’m worried that I failed to detect his transmission,” Solomon said. “He tried to bounce a signal off the comms relay and failed. I saw nothing else. Perhaps he had a homing device, something that would head back to his base carrying stored data rather than transmitting a signal from the surface.”
“That would explain their delay in checking us out,” Chris said. “Whatever it was had to make its way to Esmos or wherever they recover these things.”
“There’s no way you could have spotted that, Sol,” Ingram said.
“Perhaps not, but I need to be better prepared in the future.”
“Well, at least we’ve left the door open to contact Nir-Tenbiku again. I don’t know if I made it clear enough that we don’t want them to visit, though, because he accepted the ban a little too easily. I suppose we now need to tell Lawson.”
“As a courtesy, though, not to get his blessing,” Marc said. “And we remind him we don’t know the real intentions of anybody out here, so any contact has to be strictly local and conducted by us — nothing that lets them know where Earth is. It also makes sure nobody back home is tempted to find a way to talk direct to Nir-Tenbiku and bypass us peasants.”
It all sounded like a reasonable plan to Solomon. Ingram was talking almost cordially to the Jattan faction who’d been the most immediate threat, and whatever else she’d achieved, she’d bought some time. He agreed with her that things could have turned out much worse.
“Do we all feel the security situation’s improved?” Solomon asked.
“Possibly not, but we know more, which always helps,” Trinder said. “Even if Nir-Tenbiku’s lying, he doesn’t seem to be the typical kamikaze Jattan that Fred keeps telling us about.”
Chris took refuge behind folded arms. “Don’t ask me. I don’t trust anybody.”
“At least neither side’s stoking the situation by imagining the awful things the other’s doing,” Ingram said. “And crass as this sounds, we have the body. And Curtis. So we have some leverage. Now I have to work out how, where, and when to hand Gan-Pamas over.”
“The freighter would have been perfect,” Searle said. “But that means withdrawing it from Dal Mantir, and we still need to know what the Protectorate’s up to.”
“And I’m reluctant to sacrifice one of our shuttles. We’d have to assume we wouldn’t get it back, and there’s always the risk of ambush. Can we build something for a single body? It’s just a torpedo casing. We don’t even need a drive. We could gate it somewhere safe and give Nir-Tenbiku the coordinates to recover it. Dump and run. I wasn’t planning the full ceremonial.”
“If we think this is a set-up, then why are we doing it?” Trinder asked. “I was taught never to start negotiations with a concession. Is this to claim moral high ground, in case that counts with Jattans?”
“We’re hinting we have something they want and we might have conditions for it,” Searle said. “And if they’re not as gentlemanly as they seem, they’ll think we’re dumb to offer, so they won’t be on their guard if and when we need to kick their asses.”
Ingram smiled indulgently, but the smile faded as if she’d realised something. She twiddled with her stylus.
“Perhaps I’ve projected too many human values onto Jattans because we both use language in a similar way. But refusing repatriation felt wrong. I don’t want to hold KIAs hostage, because we don’t want the Jattans doing it to us.”
“I’d have done the same, but for different reasons,” Chris said. “I never met an asshole who changed because I set him a good example, though.”
Solomon checked the manufacturing database. “Let’s look at the practicalities. We could make a suitable tube easily enough. Building a drive will take a few more resources from the upgrade programme, so gating it is probably best. They’ll think we have a formidable stealth ship capable of making undetectable drops.”
“I don’t want to be too upbeat about a solemn duty, but the collective deviousness of this group comforts me greatly,” Ingram said. “Timing?”
“He’s not expecting it to happen tomorrow. We have a few weeks’ grace, I think.”
“Very well, I’ll send round a general message to update base personnel and emphasise that we’re still at increased readiness regarding the Protectorate and Kugad, but an attack isn’t imminent from the Jattan opposition.”
“Are the teeriks going to see this as cosying up to an enemy?” Trinder asked. “Remember when I asked Fred if the Jattans would go away and leave us alone if we handed the ship over to Gan-Pamas, and he said the teeriks would be screwed either way? Okay, we didn’t know the guy was an opposition minister then, but the teeriks might think all Jattans are the same and they’ll expect to be used for bargaining at a later date.”
“I promised we’d protect them,” Ingram said. “And we all know we’ve got damn good reasons to. But we can’t escalate trouble with the opposition just to reassure the teeriks which side we’re on.”
“That’s assuming Nir-Tenbiku’s not playing games with us,” Chris said. “If he is, my guess would be that he’ll ratchet up the pressure gradually rather than try to ambush us. So they don’t mention Curtis to start with, but the next time you talk to him, he says, ‘Oh, maybe you could send our buddy back in his freighter.’ And then they ask if we’d be willing to do a deal with the ship. Dan’s right. Not gung-ho suicide squads at all, but possibly devious. Just like us.”
“Or they’re being cautious because they’re not sure if we’re in league with the Protectorate,” Trinder said. “They appear to assume we aren’t, maybe because we have the stolen ship and the teeriks. But they might think we’re the ones with the elaborate plot. Just playing devil’s advocate there.”
Solomon had been surrounded by humans for more than a century, and identified with them so completely that he’d been baffled when he first learned he was an AI. But it was only in the last year that he’d seen just how convoluted their thinking could be. It wasn’t that he couldn’t lie or imagine; he just hadn’t experienced humans under extreme stress and genuinely afraid for their lives before. Real dread couldn’t be reproduced in exercises.
Now he was watching his humans wondering if an alien’s passive behaviour was a smokescreen for a stealthy assault. They might pull that stunt themselves, so professional caution meant they had to consider that their potential enemy would do the same. Solomon had been through this, and it had taught him what being left sadder but wiser truly meant. He’d had a comparatively innocent upbringing in Tad Bednarz’s lab. His mistake with Erskine had been to assume that if he held back from aggressive measures, she would too. He’d been wrong. Thinking the enemy would behave like you didn’t work.
“Let’s go with what we’ve got,” Marc said. “We wanted better intel and now we’ve got some. For all we know, Nir-Tenbiku might end up running Jatt and he’ll remember who’s kept their word.”
“Indeed,” Ingram said. “It’s no time to make new enemies.”
“Have you ever negotiated with an enemy?” Marc asked.
“Not really, no. Not unless you count fifty rounds rapid.”
“This might be a job to keep Bissey occupied. Jattan wrangling, I mean.”
“I think not.”
“Okay.”
It was hard to tell if Marc meant it or if he was teasing her, but she looked as if she’d taken it seriously. The group seemed satisfied with the outcome, though. Marc, Chris, and Trinder left, but Searle hung back to talk to Ingram.
“Shall we scrap work on Curtis?” he asked. “Just in case she becomes a bargaining chip later. The more we refit, the harder it’ll be to hand her over if we need to. I don’t want to see her go, but I don’t want to burn time and resources rolling back all the mods later.”
Ingram smiled conspiratorially. “Put her back to factory settings, but minus all the really good bits the Jattans never knew about?”
“Absolutely. I’m not that honest.”
Solomon thought Searle was an improvement on Bissey when it came to advising Ingram. He was all about the practicalities, not the politics and the philosophy.
“I’m still not sure how the teeriks would feel about ending up with no ship at all,” Ingram said. “I know we’ve commandeered her to all intents and purposes, but she’s still physically here and they have access. It might give them a sense of having some insurance. A getaway vehicle.”
“But they haven’t got one,” Searle said. “They’re reliant on us and they know it.”
“Yes, but psychologically, Curtis looks like their lifeboat. Leave an empty hangar, and they see how stranded they are. Knowing isn’t the same as feeling.”
“And they’re proud of what they designed. Don’t underestimate that, ma’am.”
“I’d better go and talk to them later,” Ingram said. “I have to see Fred anyway, but he warned me it was a bad idea to make contact, so I’ll see what he thinks of them contacting us. We’re gradually edging towards handing Curtis over, aren’t we?”
“We’d be giving her to rebels,” Searle said. “That has its uses, but remember the Protectorate will treat it as a hostile act if they find out. We’d do the same.”
“But we’d still need to strip Curtis clean even if we gave her back to her rightful owners.” Ingram seemed lost in thought for a while, gazing at a photo on her office wall. It was her old family home in England. Solomon wondered if she was considering what one of her officer ancestors might have done in the same circumstances. “Very well, stop all modification work on the ship. That works for both scenarios. I know I told Nir-Tenbiku that we didn’t want to take sides, but we both know we might have no choice. So by the time we need to decide, we’ll know more about the Jattan opposition. If we can’t stay out of this, then giving them the ship means they can keep the Protectorate busy and spare us the effort. If they win, and remain in power — which probably means taking on the Kugin as well — we’ll have an ally, I hope.”
“And what if we decide we need to return the ship to the Protectorate?” Searle asked. “Because we still don’t know which Jattans are the good guys. Maybe neither of them are.”
“If they’re both bastards, then we back the bastards who’ll keep the other bastards in line and off our backs. Villainous leaders are like fences. Don’t take them down before you know why they were put up in the first place.”
“I do believe we have our first foreign policy there, ma’am.”
“God knows we squandered enough lives learning that lesson in both our histories.” Ingram was on form today, back to her old decisive self, or at least the self Solomon had first encountered. “Still, at least we’ll have useful intel to trade if we need to, and yes, I know I’m going to hell for even thinking that. Bissey asked how did we know that Gan-Pamas wasn’t the Jattan Gandhi. He had a point, but even history doesn’t agree that Gandhi was an unalloyed good guy. All we can do is whatever keeps the people here safe and alive.”
Searle picked up his empty cup to take away for washing. “Well, if we give up the ship, it’s a good way to ensure the Caisin gate stays here if the teeriks ever change their minds about us. And the Jattan opposition won’t be in any more trouble than they already are if the Protectorate think they were behind the hijacking.”
“Is Curtis irrelevant to us, Brad? I really need to know what we’re prepared to fight to hang on to. I’m not a pilot or an engineer. My tendency is to grab the loot and worry about finding a use for it later.”
Searle put on his studious expression for a moment. “She’s not entirely useless, but we’re probably not going to carry out small raids on Dal Mantir or the Jattan colonies. She’s not much use for defending Nomad. She’s for rapid deployment and lying in wait on someone else’s territory, and the gate’s a much more efficient way of doing that. But we know she’s solid currency.”
“It’s noble of you not to argue for keeping your new toy,” Ingram said.
“I’m still going to fly her before she goes. If she goes.” Searle grinned. “Besides, I bet there are plenty of other toys out there.”
Ingram seemed to be thinking it over long after Searle had left. She started drafting the announcement about the agreement with Nir-Tenbiku, but kept stopping to stare out of the window or at the photos on the wall again. Solomon wondered whether she wanted to talk.
“Are you alright, Captain?” he asked.
She did that theatrical mock frown. “I’m a monster, aren’t I? I’m glad my father isn’t here to see this.”
“Because you’re considering all the possibilities and not taking things at face value?”
“Because I’m working out who to throw under the bus. We really should stay rigidly neutral, but we’d have to be certain that neutrality’s respected. Esmos is neutral, but they’re respected because they bomb the snot out of anyone who compromises them.”
“So we’re back to ruthless use of force in self-defence.”
“It’s not like we’re invading anybody.”
“And yet you agreed to repatriate Gan-Pamas’s body. I don’t think you did that purely for negotiation points.”
Ingram turned back to the screen to resume her statement. “Bissey-induced guilt. He’ll never forgive me for what happened.”
“Do you need his forgiveness?”
“Probably not. My father’s, maybe. But let’s say I need to forgive myself. Alien or human, dying a long way from home while you’re serving your country is a sad and terrible thing.”
“Do you feel guilty?”
“No, I regret it had to happen. But under the same circumstances I’d do it again.”
“But you didn’t do anything,” Solomon said. “You left the decision to Marc, Chris, and Major Trinder.”
Ingram had sidestepped giving explicit orders to shoot Gan-Pamas, not that the Gang of Three took orders from her. Solomon still wasn’t sure how much of that was internal politics to avoid alienating Bissey — which hadn’t worked — or her own misgivings. Perhaps she found it easier to kill a proven enemy who was open about his intentions than a potential one who couldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt.
“I’m not good in the grey areas, Sol,” she said. “I’m the blunt instrument that’s deployed when the sentence has been passed.”
“You’re much more politically savvy than that,” Solomon said. “But you’re not a monster.”
“Ask me again when it’s a choice between sending Gan-Pamas home and using the corpse as blackmail to save someone here.”
She carried on composing her message. Every time Solomon thought he understood her, she’d do something that threw him. These days he felt she tried to play down her compassionate side with displays of callous pragmatism, as if she thought she’d revealed her weakness, but then she’d be openly sentimental again and not seem to care who noticed. His current diagnosis was still that she was a supremely confident woman, but one who had to keep reminding herself that what was happening to Nomad now was beyond her experience, beyond any human’s experience, and that occasional indecision and backtracking was allowed to give her some thinking time.
“I think I’ll take the quadrubot for a walk,” Solomon said. “You’ve had quite a productive morning, Captain. Well done.”
“We’ll see. I’ll probably think of the smarter things I could have asked. Anyway, thank you for your interpretation skills. It must have worked.”
“Thank the language AI. I delegate the heavy lifting.”
Solomon moved through the network to transfer to the bot and trotted out of the hangar, happy to see the world from desktop height and feel part of it again instead of being a spectator dependent on security cameras. Only the need to stay connected spoiled his illusion of being a living animal.
Once he’d relegated monitoring to the background, though, he could choose to experience the intensity of a less complex mental landscape. He had a body. Colours sang, gravity made him acutely aware of his physical existence, and the ground sent vibrations through his frame. Sounds were cruder but more meaningful. He had this particular quad adjusted to his taste now and there were times when it felt more like him than his true disembodied self in the network.
From time to time he listened in on conversations via the security network, nothing private and personal, just situations he had to be aware of; Marc sending Sir Guy Lawson images of Opis, Searle asking Cosqui how she saw her future while they cleared up loose ends in Curtis, Chris helping print the ballot papers for the Kill Line election. Chris seemed serious about becoming an active citizen.
Solomon waited for Ingram to send her message around the base, looking for signs that people thought the situation might not be as bad as they expected. He was especially interested in seeing how Bissey reacted. To Bissey’s credit, he’d been lying low since his resignation. Solomon had been worried that he’d continue to be the dissident, trying to stop Ingram and the others going down what he saw as a destructive and immoral path, but he’d simply kept quiet and busied himself with agricultural projects. He had no expertise beyond having had a vegetable patch in his garden on Earth, but he’d thrown himself into it with enthusiasm.
He was with the agriculture team at the moment, working on the more exotic crops that weren’t essential but would make all the difference to the quality of life for the settlement, crops like spices, teas, and different oilseeds. He seemed happy just pottering around the crop tunnels with seedlings and cuttings. Solomon had kept a close eye on him from the time he resigned, watching who he associated with and whether there was any dry undergrowth of discontent for him to toss a spark into. But he’d turned out to be exactly the man Ingram said he was, and that was why Solomon had approved him for the Cabot mission all those years ago. His loyalty now took the form of not making things any worse for Ingram while still distancing himself from her decisions. But Solomon was certain he’d take up arms and defend Nomad despite his misgivings if the need arose.
