“I suppose I do. But don’t change the subject. The point is that this isn’t an exact science even for a towering genius like me. It might really mess you up. That’s a medical term, that is.”
“Sure. Like I’m fine now.”
“Okay, but you need to run this past Osman.”
“Whatever happened to my being all grown up and able to make my own decisions?”
“Would you deploy a Spartan if you weren’t sure of their mental state?”
“True. Okay.”
BB wasn’t sure if that was an agreement or not. But he was ready to do it. He linked immediately to the ONI mainframe in Bravo-6 in Sydney, smacked away the security AI that was doddering around trying to stop the likes of BB from getting in, and slurped as much data as he could find. If Parangosky noticed—and if she did, he was slipping—then he’d wait until Osman saw fit to tell her.
There. I love the old girl dearly, but I’m Osman’s Doberman now. And that’s how Big Maggie would want it.
BB wondered if Spenser had ever called Parangosky Big Maggie to her face and hoped he had. She liked cheeky competence. Then a voice got his attention, and it wasn’t in Bravo-6. Staffan was calling out.
“Hey, computer? BB? I know you can hear me.” There he was, leaning on the wardroom table, looking a little self-conscious at addressing thin air. “I want to speak to the Admiral. Do I go to her, or does she come to me?”
Naomi pushed herself away from the bulkhead and strode back to the wardroom. Staffan was standing in the doorway. BB noted the contrast with Mal and Vaz, who would seize any chance to escape from any captor, however insane it seemed. But then Staffan knew he held better cards than Osman, or at least he looked as if he did. BB fretted briefly.
What about his family? They’ll be going crazy. Searching for him. Tooling up to punish Earth if anything happens to him. What if I’ve missed something and he’s managed to berth Inquisitor on Venezia? It’s possible. I’m not infallible.
Staffan held his hand out to Naomi to usher her back into the wardroom. The look on his face said that he saw a little girl with long blond hair and all her life in front of her, not a war-weary veteran. If nothing else good came out of this, then at least one tormented mind had found a scrap of peace.
Osman appeared on deck and walked toward the wardroom, which BB found encouraging. Minions came when called: people conscious of their power and keen for it to be noticed made others come to them. But Osman had both the power and the sense to know when it really didn’t matter. She sat down at the table opposite Staffan while Naomi poured coffees behind the bar. It was all oddly domestic.
“I’ve decided my price,” Staffan said. “I’ll swap the ship for my daughter.”
Osman didn’t bat an eyelash. “How, exactly?”
“You let my daughter come back to her family, and you can have the goddamn warship. But it won’t save you. I won’t be the last man to hate and fear Earth. And there’ll be others after me who’ll get ships and defend themselves. Nobody wins in the end. You know all that.”
Osman glanced at Naomi. “But the root of this is the UNSC taking your daughter and using her like a weapon. No choice. No consultation. Does she want to be swapped?” She held up a conceding hand. “I’m not lecturing you on morality. That would be disgraceful. I just don’t want to compound the original crime.”
“Is she free to leave the Navy?”
“Yes, she can put in her PVR request and ask for discharge like anyone else. Nobody owns her and nobody can stop her.”
“Really? Just like spies, huh? They can never leave. There’s always someone waiting to tap them on the shoulder to do one more job. Do any Spartans manage to retire?”
“I won’t lie to you. Only one Spartan’s ever retired, and that was another one like me who didn’t go through the full augmentation process, but most ended up MIA or KIA anyway.” Osman looked at Naomi again. “You can join in, you know. This is your future.”
BB watched every minute detail, baffled. He couldn’t tell if this was strategic theater that Osman and Naomi were colluding in, a genuine discussion, or a one-sided game on Osman’s part.
I should know. I know these people better than they know themselves sometimes.
“Okay,” Staffan said. “Let’s rephrase it. I want you to give my daughter the opportunity to come and live with her family. I want her to be given the free choice to do whatever she wants with her life, without pressure from you or her comrades. If I’m satisfied she’s made the choice of her own free will, I’ll give you the ship. If she decides not to quit, then I want to be able to stay in touch with her—provided she wants that—without retribution from the UNSC. Because I can always find more WMDs these days.”
Osman seemed to be taking it seriously. “Naomi? How’s that for you?”
“I’ve got a condition too.” Naomi was completely calm, her old self again. “Before I decide, I need to recall as much of my childhood as I can. BB’s willing to help. Then I’ll be more confident that I’m making an informed decision, not just doing something I was brainwashed to do, and my father will know I’ve not been coerced either way. Agreed?”
Osman nodded a few times. Then she held her hand out to Staffan. “Shake on it, if my word has any weight. I wouldn’t blame you if it didn’t.”
Staffan paused before he shook her hand. This was personal horse-trading, the kind spymasters had done for centuries. BB wasn’t sure how Parangosky would take it if she lost another Spartan-II, but she cut Osman a great deal of slack, a very rare privilege few others ever received.
“All I care about is my girl’s happiness,” Staffan said. “I couldn’t give a damn about politics. Never have.”
Osman got up to go. She took something out of her pocket and laid it on the table in front of him. It was the plastic bag containing his wallet and other non-lethal personal items.
“Are you going to need to be relocated?” she asked. “Coming home minus a warship won’t endear you to your community.”
“That all depends if you intend to let me go,” Staffan said. “And I have a wife, a son, a daughter, and a granddaughter. It’s not that simple.” Was that the start of a negotiation or a statement of fact? BB tried to spot the tells. “So what happened to your folks? Did you ever see them again?”
“I don’t even know who they are,” Osman said. “It’s best if I don’t find out.”
“I doubt that somehow. I really do.”
Osman left Naomi with him and went back to the bridge. BB split his attention, monitoring the stilted conversation between the Sentzkes and Osman’s next move.
“BB, can you get me Parangosky, please?” Osman sat back in the command chair on the deserted bridge. Mal, Vaz, Devereaux, Spenser, and Phillips showed up on the system as being on the glass deck, probably playing cards and dissecting the crisis. “And tell me what you’re going to do for Naomi.”
“I’m going to help her access childhood memories,” he said. “And augment that with Reach archive data.”
“Is that safe?”
“It won’t kill her, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“What if it screws her up?”
“She asked me to do it. Free will. Choice.”
“Self harm. Driving drunk.”
“Grown woman.”
“Okay, BB, you win. Can I make a suggestion, though? The only expert left on Spartan-IIs is our favorite sociopath, currently sewing mailbags in Ivanoff. Love Halsey or hate her, I think we should have her on standby in case we need medical advice. Or even medical intervention.”
“I was hoping we wouldn’t have to ship her in. It takes weeks to exorcise the place afterward.” BB joked about Halsey’s awfulness while still meaning every syllable, but perhaps he was sanitizing her too much with humor. It was more for his sanity than anyone else’s, though. “I don’t mind the plague of flies so much. It’s stopping the blood oozing from the faucets.”
“I was thinking of going to her, actually,”
Osman said. “Fascinating as it would be to stick her in a cage fight with Staffan. And Vaz. Hell, I’d go get my baseball bat too.”
“So how much are we telling Staffan, ma’am? He probably knows more now than Spenser does.”
“Whatever’s history. I’d like to think that the world would be outraged if it knew what went on, but you and I know the average citizen couldn’t give a shit. He can talk, but he won’t be heard.”
“At least his family could be told he wasn’t delusional.”
Osman nodded. “Maybe.”
BB could see Staffan in the wardroom, showing Naomi some very old photos. BB had seen the official ONI images of Naomi that were taken at intervals to chart her progress from the day she was abducted to the day she deployed for the first time, grim mug shots, but this was family stuff, touching and tragic. BB would have to make use of those. Then Parangosky responded, and Osman picked her way through a minefield.
“Ma’am, I’m trying to negotiate the handover of Inquisitor,” Osman said. “It’s taking some unorthodox methods.”
“Do I need to know how unorthodox?”
“No ramifications beyond individuals. But I need to ask permission for something delicate.”
“Go ahead, Serin. If you feel you have to.”
“Halsey. I might need access to her to help Naomi out with an implant issue.”
“Well, she’s still at Ivanoff as of today. You’ve got full access there.”
It was a day’s transit to the ONI research facility for Stanley’s souped-up drive, so BB felt a little more confident about guessing his way around Naomi’s memory. But the most interesting thing was that Osman hadn’t told Parangosky everything, not that Parangosky wanted to know. If things went wrong, she’d be the first to find out. If they didn’t, it would be a story over dinner the next time Osman was in Sydney, or maybe never shared at all.
Osman ended the call. “Okay, BB. All yours.”
“Do you mind my asking if you meant what you said to Staffan, ma’am?”
She looked off to one side for a second. “I think I did. The question is whether he did.”
“And if Naomi wants to leave the service?”
“Then I have to ask myself if I believe what I say I do, or if I’m like all the others and I opt to solve it the ONI way. But a retired Spartan isn’t any more of a security risk than anyone else leaving special forces. Actually, much less.” She stood up and stretched, joints cracking alarmingly. “Naomi can’t go on forever. But a battlecruiser will be a threat for another fifty to a hundred years, with refits. Maybe more.”
Osman had squared the morality with operational needs. It was what she was supposed to do, but BB was still waiting for the time when the two didn’t mesh perfectly and she had to make a harder choice.
“I’ll go scrub up, then,” he said.
“Have you seen Naomi’s sister?”
“Actually, no.”
“Weird, that. Staffan’s close to his son, according to Mal. Not the daughter. Hedda. You’d think it’d be the other way around, given what happened to Naomi.”
BB could understand exactly why Staffan didn’t cling to Hedda. “No, he’s lost two daughters, Naomi and the clone, so he’s just as likely to find it harder to relate to Hedda than to Edvin. Or maybe he feels he’s protecting her by excluding her from his world. He’s in a dangerous business.”
Osman seemed to think it over, nodding. “You’re right. You should have been a shrink.”
“I’d have been very, very expensive.”
BB clothed it in a joke. If he wasn’t as good as Osman thought he was, then Naomi would find out the hard way. Her therapy had suddenly become the most important task he’d ever perform, and he wasn’t sure why.
Naomi had retreated to her cabin for the process. BB rapped on the door by making knock-knock noises, then materialized inside when she said to come in. It was a very tidy cabin, not an unusual thing in itself for naval personnel, but devoid of personal touches like pictures from home—or at least it had been. Now Naomi held a photo of herself and her parents that looked as if it had been taken at a funfair on a windy day.
“This is going to hurt, isn’t it?” she said. She put the docking chip in the console repeater so BB could transfer to it. She didn’t need her armor this time. BB wasn’t touching her motor regions, just her memory. “But ignorance isn’t bliss. It’s just a lack of intel that you need to make a reasoned assessment.”
“Personally, I’d treasure it,” BB said. “I can firewall information that I don’t want to access, but I know I’ve done it, so I know that I know something, but I don’t know what I know, or why it was a good idea to avoid knowing or recalling it. That’s an uncomfortable sensation. Not bliss.”
BB had always been aware that his disdain for getting too invested in humans’ lives was a defense. If you liked them—loved them, even—then it was doomed because you’d be gone in a few short years, leaving them to miss you. They knew you were short-lived, too, so the more emotionally aware ones could predict the pain to come, and either dwell on the unfairness of scheduled bereavement or keep their distance to minimize it. The dolts who thought AIs were just clever but unfeeling programs lived in happy denial both of the reality of AIs and of emotions in general. For all their pretense at scientific attitudes, they were still anchored in the voodoo of religion, the belief that humans were unique, wonderful, and qualitatively different, the work of a God that made them unlike any other species that ever lived or ever would. Not even the painful evidence of aliens trashing their worlds had dented that belief.
BB knew he had been both human and not-human. He was the oracle Tiresias, experiencing both sides of life and existence, an odd parallel not lost on him when he considered that Tiresias was reluctant to reveal all the details of his visions either as a man or as a woman. Maybe when you fully understood all sides, you knew there were some things people couldn’t handle knowing. There were things he knew that he couldn’t handle himself, otherwise he would never have firewalled them so thoroughly.
Programming. How do you think your brains work, meatbags? How do you think you made me? You’re a program too, and because you are, I can exist.
He wanted to tell them, but it wouldn’t work. Humans were too dominated by emotion to see it for what it was, that every living thing—organic or otherwise—needed hard-wired reactions to survive; to avoid what would damage it, to pursue what would help it reproduce, to cling to others of its own kind because it maximized survival, and to have those life-preserving behaviors reinforced by chemical reactions that guaranteed they would be performed and not ignored. Humans called those reactions fear, ambition, or love. The basic skills that were necessary to life—communication, using experience to avoid future threats—weren’t solely human traits of language or abstract thinking, but variations on the tools that all life used. BB could now see no difference between the amoeba moving away from something hot and the man fleeing a tiger or an angry boss. Humans believed they thought things consciously when most of the time they were simply rationalizing instinctive reactions as basic as the amoeba’s, and after those reactions had already taken place. But there was no telling them that, not even the ones who knew better, like Halsey. They needed their sense of unique superiority and the elaborate ritual that supported it every bit as much as the Covenant needed theirs.
BB blamed the universe for that. It was so vast and so indifferent to the little life-forms who thought they were the sole reason for its existence that it must have made them feel small, lonely, and unspecial, in need of some secret that reassured them they were a lot more important than that.
He saw it all now: he didn’t see it when he was … was …
When I was what? What made me think all that?
He knew only that when he was another self, his donor, the not-him but the source of his existence, that he simply didn’t understand what he did now, or didn’t want to.
I had to buffer myself. I had to lie.
/>
“Whoa,” BB said. How long had he been mulling that over? Damn, was he having a pre-rampancy moment? “Where did that come from?”
Naomi looked at him. “Are you okay? You sort of froze for a second.”
“Actually, no,” he said. “I’m not okay. I’m having a bit of memory leakage. Better put cerebral incontinence pads on the grocery list, dear. Now, shall we proceed?”
This task required his matrix, not a pared-down fragment. He transferred himself to the chip, laden with the records he’d harvested from ONI. For a moment he was disoriented by lack of input. Then he found himself looking at the cabin bulkhead—gray composite, the even spread of a concealed light above the pull-down desktop, and a glimpse of a dark blue bedcover tucked under the edges of a bunk mattress with the precision of an envelope.
It was a stark and impressionistic still-life seen through the trichromatic filter of the human retina. But he could also see a network of lights and lines superimposed on it, a mesh of enormous and beautiful complexity that he could both reach and touch like an ancient switchboard operator connecting calls, or travel along like a flume at a beach resort. It was the map of a human brain, Naomi’s brain, a unique alien world in itself.
BB focused on a photo that moved into his field of view. It was a day at the funfair that came flooding back with the scent of salt air and frying doughnuts.
He was almost convinced that he recalled how delicious those things smelled.
UNSC PORT STANLEY: QUARTERS OF PETTY OFFICER NAOMI-010
I am a Spartan.
There is no situation I cannot handle, resolve, or face with equanimity.
Where did I hear that?
“What are you doing, BB?”
“Keep looking at the picture.”
What’s it like outside?
“I’ve located it, Naomi. Look at your mother.” She couldn’t actually hear BB in the physical sense. He could have generated sound via the cabin’s audio, but this was unrecorded, private stuff. Now it felt less like thinking someone else’s thoughts and more like the lyrics of a song, words that formed in her head like a reflex that she couldn’t change. “Go on. Concentrate on your mother.”