Crossover (10 page)

"Your continued refusals to cooperate have been noted, Captain," the big man said coldly.

"I'm very happy to respond to any questions directly relating to Callayan security," Sandy continued, addressing the Arabic judge as if her compatriot had never spoken. "My wartime record is a matter for Federal Intelligence, however, and does not directly involve Callayan security issues at all. I fear that sharing wartime information at this moment might entangle me directly in a lot of Federal politics I'd really rather avoid at this time. I appear to be in deep enough water as it is."

Guderjaal in particular, she noted, appeared to concede that argument. She guessed that, in his position, he knew a thing or two about Federal politics. He leaned forward, elbows on the bench before him, and looked at her from under serious, underlit brows.

"What have you done here, Captain?" he asked, changing the subject entirely.

The question caught her off guard. "Your Honour?"

"Here in Tanusha. What have you done here since you've arrived?"

"Well..." Still puzzled. "I believe my job interviews have already been documented by the CSA agents ..."

"No, no." Guderjaal shook his head with a faint trace of impatience. "Aside from your work. Hotel records show that you spent a great deal of time away from your room, more time than would have been required merely for your interviews. What information we have gathered about FIA activities indicates that your tail was first obtained while visiting the Tanushan Gallery of the Arts. Do you like art?"

Guderjaal had thrown her completely. It was not the line of questioning she had expected in this place. Her pulse rate accelerated and she forced herself to calm, remembering the sensor plug and the monitor readings. Civilian judges, civilian law, Federation concepts. At any second, she was in danger of straying far out of her depth in these treacherous, unfamiliar waters. It scared her.

She blinked, forcefully refocusing her attention. "Yes." Unable for a brief moment to keep the puzzlement from her face. "Yes, I do like art."

"Why?" She blinked again. Guderjaal seemed perfectly serious. He had a live, cooperative GI before him. Command level, at that. An unmissable opportunity. Fear flared, and she forced it back down. The judges, however, all looked at their monitor screens, as if on cue.

"This line of questioning disturbs you?" Guderjaal asked, looking up through narrowed eyes. It was the sensor plug. It was reading her reactions. It was unpleasant and invasive and there was nothing she could do about it.

"This entire courtroom disturbs me, Your Honour. Your probe in the back of my head disturbs me. Everything, in fact, about the past few days disturbs me very, very much." Her voice, which had been rock steady, now held the faintest of quavers.

"Why do you like art, Captain Kresnov?" Guderjaal was evidently not in any mood for mercy. His eyes bored deep, like the hidden lenses, laying her bare.

"I don't know." She took a deep breath. Focusing. "Does anyone know why they like art? I'm sure you don't either."

Guderjaal nodded, as if accepting that answer. Or at least, she realised, it was now logged on tape. That was all they wanted. A taped, recorded reference of responses. Content was secondary. "So you visited the art gallery. What else did you do?"

Sandy shrugged, forcing herself to relax further. "I went sightseeing. It's a beautiful city."

"You claim to have had sexual encounters with straight humans. Did you do so here in Tanusha?" Sandy stared at him. Remembering, suddenly, a claim she had made, talking with Vanessa. God, the ultimate xenophobia trigger. Not Vanessa's fault, that admission. But it had all been on tape.

"On one occasion, yes." Lying was not a safe option. She had no idea how far the FIA's surveillance of her had stretched, and how much of that surveillance the CSA had since recovered. If they caught her lying, in this environment, it would mean trouble. "A one-nighter."

"And he, of course, assumed you were a regular human?" Sandy managed a faint shrug. Uncertain of just how ridiculous this was going to get, or how worried she ought to be about it.

"Of course."

"This sounds to me like callous dishonesty, Captain." Guderjaal's tone was deeply disapproving. "Do you always behave in such a predatory fashion?"

"As a matter of fact, yes." Very bluntly.

"Misleading your partners with your cover story, luring them unknowingly into a sexual encounter with a person who is not, by your own admission, even legally human? Do you think this particular young man would have chosen to perform this act with you had he been fully aware of your true nature?"

"I could not presume to speak for him, Your Honour. But I can assure you, even with such prior knowledge, it is impossible to tell the difference." She paused, her gaze very direct. "
You
would not be able to tell."

For the first time, Judge Guderjaal looked slightly unsettled. To his right, the Arabic woman may well have smiled. Or maybe not. "You feel no remorse at your deception?" he asked after a moment.

"No one was hurt," Sandy replied. Utterly bewildered at the line of attack. "Ignorance is a key element in all one-night stands."

"What if he was a conscientious objector to League biotech? What if he had lost a relative in the war and hated GIs?"

"Then I probably did him a favour." Stares from the judges. Sandy shook her head faintly. And said, because she could not help herself, "Your Honour, if more people had sex more often with more different kinds of people, the universe would be a better place, I'm sure of it." It certainly made sense to her. She had no idea why more civilians didn't agree with her.

"Why is it that you even possess such appetites, Captain?" the Arabic woman asked. "Are they not inconvenient, considering your line of work?"

Sandy exhaled shortly. "As I have explained in previous interviews, my own nervous system is in function no more and no less an imprint or copy of your own. Sexual urges are a side-effect of this replication in exactly the same way that emotions and personality traits are. Yes, they are sometimes inconvenient. But to remove them is to upset the psychological balance. Sexual urges relieve tension and stress, among other things. Without them I would be incomplete, and that would jeopardise the efficiency with which I complete my duties."

"And why are you human-like at all, Captain?" Guderjaal asked curiously. "I've heard artificial intelligence experts argue that the entire GI concept is flawed, that by imitating humans, League biotechnologists have in fact limited the capabilities of their creations."

Sandy nearly rolled her eyes. Not that old crap again.

"Your Honour ... experts deal with theory. The rest of us live in the real world." Again a smirk from the Arabic judge. "In theory, they're right, of course. In reality, experimental models are incredibly expensive and a perfectly workable model already exists — that being a normal human being. GIs are the most financially practical option, they can integrate with the existing military infrastructure without the need for major adjustment, and they don't scare the political conservatives as much as some less-human creation would ... to the extent that there is such a thing as a political conservative in the League. I'm just a human copy. Structurally, I'm just like you, nervous system included. I'm just made of different stuff."

"I put it to you, Captain," the big man said, "that your nervous system is nothing at all like my own. My nervous system does not have upward of seventy-five meta-synaptic implants and sensory branches to handle nearly a seven hundred percent additional load of combined sensory data input beyond what a normal, unaugmented human can handle." He was reading from the screen before him as he spoke, eyes hard and determined in the wash of blue computer light. "My nervous system does not have an integrated motor-skills function that is clearly biomechanical and focuses all synaptic reflex response into such a narrow perimeter field as to guarantee a completely machine-like precision in the execution of all physical activity. My own nervous system is far more erratic and imprecise in its execution of learned-response reflexes, I assure you. And neither does my nervous system possess what appears to be a dedicated data-storage/processing centre in the primary short-term memory sections that would appear to serve primarily to enhance the visualisation, recollection and computation of rapidly unfolding and chaotic tactical situations, such as are frequently found on a battlefield." He looked up. "Do you deny that your nervous system possesses these non-standard characteristics, Captain Kresnov?"

Sandy shook her head. "No, Your Honour." She could not argue those points. She was only happy that he'd missed a couple.

"And most,
most
importantly," the man continued, still looking at her, "my nervous system developed, grew and evolved naturally from a state of immature childhood to what it is today. My experiences were random, controlled only by the systematic nature of my city-bred environment, and the troubles to which my parents went to expose me to certain kinds of stimuli. I am a random personality. If I had a clone made of myself, and raised in exactly the same manner, it is nearly statistically impossible that it would turn out to be exactly like me in every degree. The randomness makes it so.

"Your nervous system, Captain Kresnov, had no such developmental process. You came into the world fully formed and structured in most respects, except for your lack of direct worldly experience. This experience was replicated on tape, to be fed into your brain with a precision completely unknown in everyday experience, and completely lacking that random, unpredictable quality that has shaped each and every one of the 57 million people who live in this city. Your developmental experience, Captain, was constructed, purified and controlled by the agencies of League military science in order to create exactly the finished product that we see sitting here in this courtroom today.

"You, Captain Kresnov, are purpose built, and purpose designed, by the will of a government that has already shown the greatest disrespect for the most basic of human dignities and moral values. I put it to you that you are, and have always been, exactly what they wanted you to be. This, when combined with your evident martial capabilities, should fill any sane, law-abiding citizen of Tanusha or anywhere within the Democratic Confederacy, with dread."

Sandy gazed blankly at the front of the judges' bench. There was no identifying symbol on the front of that bench, as she had seen in the courtroom TV dramas. Just bare wood, plain and functional.

She could see where this was headed. The cameras were rolling. The spectators had gathered. The various sides and interests would have their say. This was more than a trial. This was a hearing, where positions could be set out, opinions stated, recorded and marked for future reference. These people here before her, these judges — they were the mouthpieces, nothing more. This entire courtroom was little more than a glorified, camera-infested soapbox. Or a pulpit.

And so ... what was the debate all about? This man was arguing ... what? For her unsuitability for integration into common society? For her continued incarceration? She knew from Naidu and CSA Intel that the judges had viewed all her interview tapes, and had been briefed on what she'd revealed of League and FIA biotech machinations. She knew there was a push from sections of the CSA, particularly Intel, to keep her on Callay, where she was useful.

They hadn't told her how much resistance that concept was meeting in the corridors of political power. Somehow they had always found a way to be evasive when she had asked. Now she was coming to understand why.

She looked up and found all three judges awaiting her response. The cameras were rolling.

"Then why am I here?" she answered the big man's assertions very softly. The big man shifted in his seat.

"That is what we are here to determine," he replied.

And that, Sandy nearly replied, is bullshit. But she didn't say it. She didn't want to frighten anyone.

"Ten to fifteen years ago," she said instead, "what you describe may well have been true. I ask you to understand that ten to fifteen years can change a person beyond recognition, particularly when lived at the intensity that I have experienced. Those, more than the foundation tapes that you describe, were my formative years. That was my childhood." She paused, as the thought crystallised in her mind for the very first time. And looked Judge Guderjaal calmly in the eye.

"Now," she said, "I have grown up."

There was a pause. Glances dropped to monitor screens. Attention diverted, briefly, receiving a fresh input of data. Sandy sat and watched, shoulders and back beginning to ache from the sustained upright posture. The bandages felt especially tight about her middle, restricting her breathing. She recrossed her legs, settling herself to wait. The Arabic woman looked up first.

"Your childhood has been filled with the horrors of war, Captain Kresnov," she said. "For most of your life, you have known only violence, and violent death. You claim that this formative experience has made you a better person. How can this be?"

"I know the true value of life." Sandy's voice was very quiet. "I know the true value of beauty. Judge Guderjaal asked me earlier why I liked art. I think that I like art because it has little purpose other than the simple pleasure of its own existence. I do not mind political art, but I prefer simple, pleasurable art. A great comedic writer named Oscar Wilde once said that all the best art was essentially useless. I think I agree with him." There was a brief, slightly mortified silence.

Judge Guderjaal leaned forward. "You are familiar with Oscar Wilde?" Disbelievingly.

Sandy gave a faint smile. "I discovered 'The Importance of Being Ernest' in a Naval library archive when I was nine years old. At the time, I had never laughed so hard in my life." Which was, she realised as she said it, not saying very much. But it was true.

"Your superiors allowed you access to such works?" Guderjaal seemed to be having great difficulty with this.