Killswitch: (Cassandra Kresnov Book 3)

T-Tie one nice thing about the summer, Sandy reflected as she paddled, was that there wasn’t much wind.

To be sure, summer meant heat and humidity (she was informed, barely noticing such things herself), a profusion of biting insects (ditto), lots of rain, lightning strikes, and more than the usual numbers of crazy, mystical types running naked down streets proclaiming to be emperors of long-lost alien civilisations. But no wind meant no ‘afternoon rubble,’ as the locals called it-the surf collapsing from its still, morning perfection as the wind came up later in the day. So summertime, all surfers knew, meant great waves.

The next set rose before her, clear and sparkling in the midday glare, and even the curling, rising face seemed to be carved from blue, polished marble. She dug in her strokes, and accelerated her board comfortably over the lip, then over and down the next two in turn. To her right, a young grommet she knew to be named Pradan went hurtling down a wave with a howl of delight, skinny brown limbs in perfect balance, long, matted hair flying out behind. She smiled to herself and continued, toward where Rami, his cameraman and his producer were getting set up with their little support boat.

‘Ready yet?’ she asked as she paddled alongside.

‘Uh, sure …’ said her favourite Tanushan TV personality. ‘Just about.’ He looked a little nervous, with the inflatable rising and falling beneath him, with each passing swell. Although the water was much deeper out this far, just beyond the sudden rise in the seabed that brought each wave to its towering crest. And utterly smooth, save for the swell, the water gleaming a deep, luminescent shade of green. Rami’s cameraman climbed onto his longboard with evident expertise, then reached as the producer handed over the camera, encased in a waterproof, black casing.

‘How deep’s the water here again?’ Rami wanted to know, sitting on the inflatable’s edge in his blue wetsuit. Only a small man, and quite unfamiliar with any body of water outside his bathtub, as he’d put it. But as handsome in real life as on a monitor, Sandy had been pleased to discover. And as pleasant.

‘Far too deep, Rami,’ said his producer. She was a cheerful, redhaired woman with freckles-and a hat, shades and lots of sunscreen. An automated camera mount monitored the whole scene from the inflatable’s bow, presumably for later screening of the most amusing bits. ‘It’s such a long way down, you can’t even see the bottom.’

‘Crawling with flatrays and razors,’ his cameraman added, sighting his lense upon Sandy and adjusting.

‘Don’t you mess with me, Angus!’ Rami snapped, breaking into one of his familiar personas. ‘I’m the most powerful man in Callayan showbusiness! I tell you I have every flesh-eating carnivore swimming along this entire beach front on contract!’ Snapping a closed fist against his palm. ‘Now I command this water to part! Part before me, ungrateful liquid substance, or you’ll never work on my show again!’

He jumped in feet first, and proceeded to make a great show of floundering and splashing like a clown until finally reaching his longboard, dragging himself on board like a half-drowned animal, and collapsing.

‘You’re now wondering if this was such a great idea, aren’t you?’ the producer suggested to Sandy, who was seated upright on her board and grinning.

,,You know,’ Sandy commented, ‘when you lie face down on the board like that-from below, to a razor, you look just like a floater squid. They eat floater squid.’

Rami scrambled to sit upright in such a hurry he fell off, and spent another thirty seconds floundering and gasping, appealing to numerous Hindu gods that regular viewers would know he regularly lampooned-not always wise, as a Muslim Indian, but Tanushans were fairly sanguine about such things, and Rami was so inoffensive, and so egalitarian in his targets (frequently including himself) that he always got away with it.

Several minutes later, with Rami precariously balanced upon his longboard, and the cameraman and producer indicating all in readiness, the interview began.

‘Now first of all,’ Rami began, ‘let me just say that I’m … incredibly honoured that of all the thousands of pathetic little media parasites that have been chasing after you for the past two years, hiding in bathrooms, bursting out of your closet in the dead of night, trying to grab an interview with the Federation’s most famous artificial person … you chose me.’ With a hand on his chest, smiling disarmingly. ‘May I have the pleasure of knowing why?’

‘You’re the most powerful man in Callayan showbusiness,’ Sandy replied.

Rami laughed. ‘Well, yes of course … but seriously?’

‘Well …’ Sandy wiped a strand of wet hair from her brow, trying not to feel too self-conscious, with the camera focused unerringly upon her face. Her natural, familiar blonde hair, now that she’d had the dye removed. She did not, she was pleased to realise, feel particularly nervous. Nerves were not a natural part of her psychological state, under any circumstance. ‘For one thing, I was instructed by the powers that be to do just one interview …’

‘Just to get everyone off your back?’

‘Off the CDF’s back, I guess. And, you know …’ she shrugged, ‘… there’s such a thing as public accountability.’

‘You’d be the only Callayan official who believed that.’

‘I’m still gullible enough to believe it, maybe,’ Sandy replied with a smile. ‘And I chose you because I knew I wouldn’t like any of the usual stuffy, formal interviews. I knew you’d give me something different.’ She gestured to the ocean about them, and the waves breaking upon the sandy beach beyond. ‘And I was right.’

‘I should, um, explain this to the viewers,’ Rami added, with a gesture to the camera, ‘especially considering there’ll be a lot of people watching this beyond the … five or six who normally watch my shows. Some guests I have just aren’t studio guests … or at least, I just don’t think of them as studio guests. You know, sometimes you get actors, or other performers who just belong there, naturally. Somehow, with you …’ and he winced, trying to articulate what he saw, ‘… I just couldn’t conceive of you there. I mean, trying to turn you into a celebrity, something you seem to have been trying your level best to avoid the past two years. And it just seemed so stupid, and so fake, that I decided that I’d ask you if you wanted to do the interview someplace you felt most comfortable. And silly me, I thought maybe you’d pick the CDF grounds, or a firing range or something …’

Sandy made a face. ‘That’s not me. That’s just what I do for a living.’

‘So Cassandra … surfing.’ He patted his board, a little gingerly, as if willing it not to upend and tip him off. Again. A swell brought them rising up, then sinking down again, as the hump moved on toward the beach, where it transformed into a wave, and then a curling, breaking crest. ‘What does this place mean to you?’

‘Oh … freedom, I suppose. Happiness. All that good, corny stuff.’

‘Considering what you are, a lot of people wouldn’t naturally see freedom and happiness as being immediately important to you.’

Sandy smiled. ‘And what am I?’

Rami looked incredulous. ‘You mean you don’t know?’

He was kidding, but Sandy decided to take it seriously. ‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head somewhat glumly. ‘No, I don’t. I don’t think anyone does, about themself. Not really. Not if they’re honest with themselves.’

‘Know thyself,’ Rami said with a tone of mock-wisdom. ‘A wise man once said. Is that why you come out here? To know yourself?’

Sandy shrugged. ‘Sure. That’s a part of why anyone does anything, I suppose.’

‘And it’s a part of why you left the League in the first place?’

Sandy smiled. This was the other reason why she’d made the unlikely choice of Rami Rahim to do her first Callayan TV interview-behind the clownish persona lurked a man of insight and intellect. His best humour she found amusing because it cut its subject straight to the bone. He wouldn’t fall for the cliched rubbish much of the media liked to spout about her. ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘That was me growing up. Children have to leave home sometime. I just had further to travel when I left. And much more to run away from.’

A large swell carried them higher once more. Several kilometres to the south lay Turgesh Heads, one of numerous rocky formations along this stretch of coast, northeast of Tanusha. Further south, the Shoban Delta began to break up the firm, straight beaches with a network of river mouths and shifting sand banks. There, the ground became swampy with marsh trees and root networks. Here, a rocky foundation held the ground intact, and steered the river mouths southward. The beach here ran straight and long between the heads, a little too gravelly and rocky to be paradise, but the waves made up for it. Some people lived here, and only visited Tanusha when they had no other choice. Most commuted. Some spots were crowded, but the coastline was long, and those with access to flyers could reach the southeastern beaches too, south of the delta. Today, there were people scattered at random across the sands and the waves … but for most Tanushans it was a work day, and there was nothing approaching a crowd. Much of the CDF now had time off. Which was welcome, yet felt somehow unnatural.

‘Now, the last time the Callayan public saw you,’ Rami continued, you were at the memorial ceremony for those who died taking Nehru Station. The turnout was just enormous … did that surprise you?’

‘Surprise me? No, not really. I don’t think anything the Callayan public does surprises me any longer.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Rami deadpanned wearily.

‘I’ll tell you what impressed me, though, was the manner of them. There wasn’t any false triumphalism. People were positive; they weren’t gloomy or depressed or anything … but there was a weight there, you know? As if people had realised that things have changed, and they’re not wildly excited about it on the one hand, but not terribly depressed on the other. They’re thoughtful. That’s the feeling I got that day, anyway.’

‘I got that too,’ Rami agreed, nodding as she spoke. ‘It has been a big change for a lot of people, it’s given them a lot to think about.’

‘I know,’ said Sandy. ‘But I think too that Callayan people sometimes haven’t given themselves enough credit. All these cliches about decadence and superficiality … there’s some truth in every cliche, of course, but I haven’t been seeing any of that lately.’

‘Does it make you proud?’

‘Yeah … you know, it really does. But then, I was proud before, too. I think this place has a lot to be proud of … and can do so without having to resort to hollow jingoism. I like that.’

‘There’s been some other talk lately,’ Rami continued, ‘about General Krishnaswali and whether he’s been hogging too much of the credit for the victory. Some people have leaked information to the effect that he wasn’t actually in charge of the attack, and that you and Major Rice in fact deserve most of the credit.’

Sandy smiled broadly. ‘Rami,’ she said reproachfully. ‘You should know better than to go around dealing in scuttlebutt.’

‘Are you kidding? I love scuttlebutt. Scuttlebutt has made many a great media career before, and will do so again.’

‘General Krishnaswali did a fine job,’ Sandy said firmly. ‘He was wounded during a very brave assault upon the station hub, and pressed on regardless to capture the reactor and keep the station online. He’s a first class general, and I’m very proud to serve under his command in the CDE As far as I’m concerned, everyone on that station was a hero, and not just the CDF. We couldn’t have done it without the civilians who helped us either.’

Rami grinned. ‘Darn it, I thought I had you.’

Sandy just smiled. Damn right Krishnaswali was hogging more than his share of the credit. Damn sure people were pissed at him. But equally damn sure she wasn’t about to undermine the CDF and Callay’s achievement in a fit of political backbiting over the spoils. Politics was politics, and would always be so. And you either dealt with it, as calmly and rationally as possible, or it dealt with you. Besides all of which, when Krishnaswali had emerged from the two-arm elevator with his squad, exhausted, sweaty and cradling a wounded arm, having against all the odds secured the reactor core with no further fatalities, she’d pumped her fist in the air and yelled with all the rest of them. If Krishnaswali wanted the credit, let him have it. Of the CDF’s three senior commanders, he was the only one who actually wanted it, anyhow …

‘So tell me,’ Rami pressed, moving to lean meaningly forward upon his board … and almost losing his balance as the board tipped. Sandy restrained her amusement. ‘Whose stupid idea was this anyway?’ Rami muttered as he recovered.

‘That would be yours,’ Sandy told him.

‘Ah.’ He resettled the board between wetsuited legs. In the bright midday sun, the wetsuit was becoming quite hot … yet the water here was verging on cold, with strong northerly currents hauling it down from the poles. Cold by warm Tanushan standards, anyhow. Sandy’s artificial muscles preferred heat to cold, and she always wore a wetsuit while surfing, whatever the sunlight, least she stiffen and cramp for days to follow. And besides, she was determined that people the day after this interview was broadcast would be talking about the content of her words, and not the proportions of her figure as revealed by the kind of skimpy swimsuit Rhian favoured.

‘You were going to say?’ she reminded him.

‘Going to say what?’ Rami looked baffled.

‘I don’t know. What?’

‘What what?’ He double-blinked, looking more baffled. Sandy repressed a grin. There was something in the delivery, with comics. They made anything funny. ‘Oh yes. The memorial service. Some people were very emotional. I got very emotional, I don’t mind admitting … and I don’t consider myself to be militaristic in any way, nor the kind of flag-waving patriot we’re starting to see crawling from the woodwork. How should we respond to what happened, do you think?’

Sandy recalled the memorial service, just six days ago-two weeks following the departure of the remaining Fifth Fleet ships. It had taken place in a broad park, out in the new Herat district, within sight of the enormous domes and construction cranes of the new Grand Council buildings. Previously intended as a general purpose recreation area, some rapid redesign had paved a pedestrian avenue between existing gardens and trees, with the names of each of the thirty-six Callayan soldiers who had died engraved upon small headstones along the way. It all led to a monument within a raised, paved circle-not a stone or other carved edifice, but a native banyal tree, with enormous spreading branches and thick foliage. This one was already two hundred C-years old. The good ones lived to be a thousand, on average, and frequently much more.

Sandy recalled reflecting upon the symbolism, as the CDF honour guard had assembled beneath its shady branches following the entire force’s march from the Grand Council buildings to the memorial. They had planted something that would grow, not merely protected something already old. A future for a Federation run by its own people, not ruled by special interests from afar. It did mean something to her, and as she’d gazed out upon the tens of thousands of Callayans gathered in a human sea across the park, it was clear that it meant something to them, too. More than the uniforms and the chestful of shiny new medals. Something that would last for generations. Centuries, in one form or another. A legacy, in the truest sense of the term, to be enjoyed by billions of people across countless light years. And for the first time in her life, she’d felt truly, unashamedly proud of what she was, both as a soldier, and as a person.

She cast a gaze now toward the beach, as she considered Rami’s question. Vanessa was seated over there somewhere, watching these proceedings with interest. Sandy wasn’t sure that Vanessa felt quite as she did. Vanessa had always been proud of her role in Callay’s security, and had nothing in her past to be ashamed of. Rather than being an uplifting moment, the battle of Nehru Station had come down on her rather hard. The loss of Zago and Sharma from old SWAT Four in particular had struck with force, although many others, too, she had known well and helped to train, in recent years. She’d been strong, despite several nights of unashamed sobbing-getting it out of her system, she’d called it, and had seemed somewhat better the following mornings. But somehow, standing to attention beneath the banyal tree’s branches before the gaze of Federation-wide media, Sandy hadn’t been able to escape the feeling that Vanessa’s uniform hat sat somehow too high upon her head, and the collar too loose, as if the polished dress uniform were refusing to fit her properly … or she, it.

As for Rhian and An, well … if she trailed her eyes along the shoreline, she could catch a brief glimpse, in a break through the rolling waves, of Rhian playing in the shallows with Vanessa’s niece and nephew, Isabelle and Yves, five and seven years old respectively. Jumping the broken wash as it rolled the final few metres toward the sandy shore, and sometimes trying to bodysurf, with Rhian’s assistance and encouragement. Rhian, as Vanessa had observed, was indestructible. Nothing seemed to get her down for long, and where others saw clouds, Rhian saw only silver linings. No wonder she identified so readily with children … and children, so readily with her.

An of course remained, in his own words, ‘unbeachable.’ Probably he was somewhere with friends, below ground or otherwise far from sunlight’s treacherous reach, discussing some latest network configuration, or the processing speed of the latest nano-routers. The Fifth Fleet’s departure had allowed him some return to those other aspects of his life to which Sandy continued to feel somewhat remote, despite his enthusiastic attempts to convey its obvious fascinations to her. She’d seen enough technology in her life, and lived in enough gloomy, artificial places, that she really didn’t need that whole scene right now. And so she continued to see Anita, Pushpa, Tojo and others, as chance and scheduling would allow … but right now, she wanted sunlight, space and natural beauty whenever possible. Just the other night she’d dragged An along to an open-air concert in a beautiful, garden amphitheatre. CDF privileges had obtained front row seats for them, and Ari had actually seemed to enjoy it, despite his initial reluctance. So maybe there was hope for him yet. And hope for them, together, as an ongoing concern. Time, as always, would tell that story.

‘I can’t speak for other people,’ she replied at last to Rami’s question. ‘I only know what I feel. I think the new patriotism is warranted. I think some people are probably overdoing it … but you’ll get that anywhere. But the most important thing is that people are now thinking and talking about stuff that previously wouldn’t have crossed their minds. And when that happens, it makes everyone safer, in every way.’

‘There are a lot of pacifists,’ Rami countered, ‘as you’ll know, who said we should never have ended the blockade with force. That there were other ways, and it needn’t have cost those lives.’

Sandy shrugged. ‘Inaction can have awful consequences too. Earth conservative elements were becoming emboldened by their apparent success. If they’d kept pushing, we could have had a full blown civil war at some point, with God knows how many deaths. Now, that’s not going to happen. People die during periods of instability. That’s just a cold, hard fact. The best policy is to limit those periods of instability to the shortest timeframe possible, because that’s the best way of limiting the total number of casualties.’

‘So you think we did the right thing?’

‘I do.’

‘And the charges that you’ve succeeded in militarising a civilised, Gandhian utopia don’t bother you?’

Sandy shrugged again. ‘In civilised society, ideologies do battle. We figure which ones are best by watching how they can be applied to changing circumstances. There are people today who are unhappy because their ideology was proven relatively ineffectual. Maybe, in different circumstances, their ideology would have worked better. In this one, it didn’t. That’s life.’

Rami smiled broadly, as some private humour occurred to him. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘this does feel slightly surreal. Sitting out here, talking with you about such serious, philosophical things …’

‘I’m quite impressed,’ Sandy remarked, swishing her feet in the cold water, attempting to keep the creeping stiffness at bay. ‘You’ve been more or less serious for the past two minutes straight.’

‘Well, it’s serious stuff,’ Rami protested offhandedly. ‘I’m a Callayan, and I’m concerned like …’ and gave a start, staring downward into the shimmering green water. ‘Something brushed past my leg. Something brushed past my leg!’

‘Of course it did,’ Sandy said calmly.

‘Of course …’ he shot her a rapid, alarmed look. ‘What do you mean of course it did?’

‘I mean it wouldn’t go after me. I’m artificial, I wouldn’t taste good.’

‘It?’ With wide-eyed hysteria. ‘What do you mean it?!’ And to the invisible razorfish, doubtless circling somewhere nearby, ‘I’ll sue! Do you hear me, you big, ugly, stupid critter?! One bite of me and I’ll sue your arse off!’

‘You know the best defence against razors?’ Sandy added conversationally.

‘No! No, what?!’

‘Make certain there’s at least one person in your group who’s a slower swimmer than you are.’ Rami stared at her for a moment. Then the eyes widened as he realised the implication.

‘You’re a GI?’ Pointing nervously to Sandy.

‘I am.’

‘And you’re a regular swimmer?’ Pointing to his cameraman.

The cameraman nodded, moving the lense up and down so any viewer could see. ‘That’s right.’

Rami plunged for the inflatable, splashing frantically, yelling and cursing of conspiracies and treacherous underlings, while everyone fell about laughing. It took another minute to get things settled back down again, and for the interview to resume. This time, with recent, serious stuff out of the way, the mood was lighter. They talked for a while about personal tastes, what kind of music she liked, what kind of places she’d been to across Callay, her opinion on various light, inconsequential, Callayan things. Sandy was unsure how much of it would end up going to air, but thought it would probably be a lot, given the anticipation for this interview. She kept her answers brief where possible, and didn’t try to compete with Rami for amusement value.

After a while, Rami smiled, and said, ‘You seem like a really nice person.’ With a very warm sincerity. ‘How is that possible? Given what you are, and what you were made for?’

Sandy smiled back. ‘I realised the alternative,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

‘You have some friends over there,’ Rami said, casting his eyes across to the shoreline. It was slightly closer now, the current having pulled them in a little. The next swell heaved them higher than the last, but they remained a safe distance from the break zone yet. ‘They came out with you today with a few family members and a couple of very noisy children I met earlier, who didn’t seem to believe I was a famous media personality …’ sounding very miffed. Sandy smiled, scratching at a salt-itch above one eyebrow. ‘How important are friends to you?’

‘Oh. . .’ Sandy made a face, considering. ‘They’re pretty much everything, I think.’

‘Why?’ It seemed an honest question. ‘I mean, some people need friends because they’re insecure, others because they just love company and people, and others because they’ve been lonely a lot in their lives, and value relationships more than other people might?’

‘The latter, mostly,’ Sandy conceded. ‘Although it’s more than that. There’s no such thing as absolute self-knowledge. I think the only way to know anything, including about ourselves, is by relative comparison. Relationships hold up a mirror to ourselves. They tell us who we are. And so I think what my friends give me, aside from love, is just … the sure knowledge that I’m something more than just a bundle of parts. Somewhere along the line, they’ve become my anchor. And I just can’t imagine living without that.’

A glance across to the shore showed Rhian now bounding from the water, the children in tow, headed for Auntie Vanessa with mischief on their minds. There appeared to be a jellyfish involved. Vanessa sprang from her towel and retaliated, which resulted, inevitably, in noisy children being grabbed, restrained, and tickled mercilessly.

‘And besides that,’ she added to her previous answer, ‘there’s just love. And even rational, stuffy old me doesn’t have a sensible explanation for that.’

‘And so now,’ Rami said, with some theatrics, ‘we come to the great, climactic, money question. This is the one where I demonstrate all my intellectual acumen as a probing interviewer of great repute, and not just the silly bugger who makes a fool of himself in front of a planetary audience … trust me, this question will really blow your socks off. I was up all night working on it …’

Sandy’s attention, meanwhile, had been drawn toward deeper water, where a particularly large, building swell was just screaming for attention as it approached. She pivoted her board on an impulse, pointing toward the shore. ‘Sorry,’ she interrupted, ‘can it wait just two minutes?’

And began paddling with fast, explosive thrusts of her arms, accelerating at a speed no merely human surfer could ever hope to match.

‘Wait!’ Rami yelled after her, in great indignation. ‘What about my question?!’

‘I’ll be back!’ Sandy shouted over her shoulder, powering toward the break zone ahead. The swell reached the inflatable, lifting it, Rami and cameraman gloriously high above the neutral water mark. ‘I just have to catch this wave!’