Cardenas (Findlay IV), Findlay System, Eriuman Republic.
Bellona seemed to return to her normal spirits the next day, although Sang often caught her staring at nothing, her focus turned inward, as she searched memories. Sang could not discourage her from the practice. All they could do was monitor—and worry.
As was the family practice with uncomfortable subjects, the events at the dinner party went unremarked. It was as if they had not happened. Sang considered that a reprieve.
Ten days after the dinner party, Bellona sent for Sang and ordered them to sit. “Witness mode, Sang,” she said, which forced Sang to remain silent, in a purely observation mode. They noted that the household aide designated “Dani” stood by Bellona’s divan. Its metal face was devoid of emotion.
Khalil came in wearing a frown. “The terminal in the gallery said you were looking for me.” He spent a lot of time sitting against the sun-warmed pillars there. Thinking, he said, and watching the sun on the grass.
Bellona turned from her pacing. “Dani, repeat the report back, please.”
Dani opened its mouth. “Secure Document Seven Eight Six Dash Em Three, from Archive Four Six Three, extracted from Bureau Datahouse Gamma, seal intact. Subject—”
“Stop,” Bellona ordered. She looked at Khalil. “Do you know what the subject is?”
Khalil’s gaze was on Dani. “About me, I imagine,” he said. His voice was remote.
“Yes,” Bellona said flatly. “This is a Bureau record!”
Khalil looked at her. “Use the proper name, if you must use it at all. The Wyan Oushxiu, Generation 98, of Marijus Prime.”
“I don’t care!” Bellona raged. “You’re one of the Bureau. A human computer freak.”
Khalil’s gaze shifted to Sang.
“Sang can’t talk. They’re in witness mode.”
Khalil’s shoulders fell. “You think you need a witness? With me?” The pain in his voice was vivid.
“I don’t know what to think,” Bellona shot back. “Is it true?” Then she laughed. It was a raw sound. “What am I asking? That’s a bonded, sealed document, straight out of the Bureau’s own archives on Marijus. Its authenticity is beyond dispute. It says you are a member of the Bureau, that you have been all along…” She swallowed. “Even before Ledan.”
Khalil looked at Dani once more. His expression was indecipherable, but bitterness was part of it. “The Bureau are not human computers,” he said, his voice low. “They use digital intelligence. They build it. Vast artificial minds with a power well beyond our human ability to think and process. Why does everyone not understand that? The Bureau does not hide the fact.”
“They just steal babies and seal them in with a terminal and they grow up knowing nothing about humans. They think they’re computers!”
Khalil shook his head, his expression sad. “They recruit older children, when they show the type of thinking that allows a human to interface with advanced digital minds. They become interpreters. Researchers.”
Bellona breathed heavily, stress taxing her. “The Bureau twists history, to serve its own ends.” It was a common belief.
Khalil sighed. “They predict, that is all, based upon statistical renderings of history. They are wrong as often as they are right.”
Sang made a notation. In fact, the Bureau was right far more often than it was wrong. Businesses and corporations across the known worlds used Bureau predictions to set their policies and directions, while both the Homogeny and the Republic leveraged predictions for an advantage in the war. Everyone used Bureau computers to run their lives, no matter who they were or where their allegiance lay. To use anything else was to risk losing data, functionality, time and money.
“Of course you defend them,” Bellona said. “You’re one of them.”
“Not anymore.”
For the first time, Bellona looked surprised. Her fury checked. “How can that be? Who do you answer to, if not them?”
“Since Ledan?” he asked. “No one.” He pointed at Dani. “Did you ask for the date stamp, when you were reviewing the file? How old is it?”
Doubt shadowed her face. “You were Bureau…”
Khalil rubbed the back of his neck, ruffling the shorn locks there. “Yes, but—”
“I don’t care about justifications and excuses. You lied to me.”
“Everyone has secrets, Bellona.”
“Affairs and trivialities! You knew yours would make a difference. That’s why you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t tell you because it was no longer relevant…and yes, I was afraid that if I did, you would treat me differently. One gets very tired of being looked at as if they are some sort of monster, or worse, not being seen at all.” There was bitterness in his voice.
Sang could not react. Instead, they made a notation.
“Do you know how many worlds, how many cities, the countless corporations I have dealt with, Bellona? All of them saw me as a means to an end. The great computing genius of the Bureau at their disposal, working for them, providing miraculous, life-changing answers for them!” He threw out his hand. “You didn’t look at me that way.”
“On Ledan, when I didn’t know who you were,” Bellona said flatly.
“You did know!” His frustration made him shift on his feet. “Review your memories! I was Ari, but I was Bureau, there to rebuild computers. You didn’t care.”
Bellona swallowed. “Why did I not remember that?” Her anger was diminishing.
“None of your memories from then have any strong emotion. They don’t recur because there is nothing to remind you of them.”
“Then how is it you remember them?”
“Because you were there!”
Bellona whirled away, a sharp movement, putting her back to him. “You told me you were from a free state.”
“You think the Bureau only recruits Karassians and Eriumans?” Khalil asked. “I was on Atticus. I was eleven and I was alone. They offered comfort and shelter and a better education than I was getting from the homeless there. I took their offer, Bellona, even though they did not hide that they were Bureau.”
Sang made another notation. The world that Khalil had described, the one that the scent of a plant had evoked, had looked nothing like the industrial complexes of Atticus…and Khalil had not been alone in that place. There had been family there, too. No one with leisure and health to roam the fields and stare at the mountains was without loved ones.
Bellona did not move. She did not react. Sang could not see her face, either.
“I understand digital minds, Bellona,” Khalil said. “That’s why they took me. The vast power at the Bureau’s disposal, the huge minds—they need…friends. Guidance. Especially when they’re young. Then the Bureau realized I was as comfortable dealing with humans as I was with computers and I became a field agent, providing a human face for their biggest transactions.”
“A salesman?” Bellona asked. Her tone was one of disinterest.
“A representative. You have to understand, Bellona. Some of the humans that the Bureau recruit really are freaks. They can no more interface with human society than the intelligences they build. Yet I can. I still look human.”
Bellona turned then, startled. Sang made another notation, for later consideration. “Then they are monsters.”
“Monsters are something to be afraid of. You would not be afraid of the Bureau’s oldest humans, if you were permitted to see them. They would be pitiable, if they thought themselves unfortunate, only they do not. They are happy, even though most of them can no longer walk because their legs have atrophied. They are isolated and difficult to understand because they rarely use human speech. Within the Bureau they have an acceptance they could find nowhere else.”
“That is where you will end up?” Bellona asked, horror in her eyes.
“I am not an interpreter,” Khalil said. “I never would have been. Now, I am not even a member of the Bureau.”
Bellona considered that. “Why did you leave?”
“Because of you.”
She shook her head. “You would not voluntarily leave that which gave you meaning.”
“Unless I found meaning somewhere else.”
“Then why not tell me who you really were?”
“Because I wasn’t that man anymore.”
“Pedantry!”
“You want truth, Bellona? You won’t like it.”
“I would rather hate you for your true qualities than hate the mask you hold up.”
Khalil closed his eyes, absorbing it. “Very well,” he said softly. He sighed and opened his eyes once more. In recording mode as they were, Sang found it all too easy to decipher the defeat in the angle of his shoulders. Khalil knew he had lost everything. “At least, let Sang be themselves,” he said softly. “That robotic stare is unsettling. Sang will still remember everything later.”
“You would prefer no formal record, then,” Bellona surmised.
“Not for this,” he said flatly.
Bellona looked at Sang. “End witness mode,” she told them.
Sang breathed deeply, blinking. “Thank you.”
Bellona looked at Khalil. “Speak,” she said coldly.
Instead, he walked about in a tight circle, building himself to it.
“Know that nothing you say will restore my faith in you, Khalil Ready,” Bellona added. “All you can do now is redeem your character, if you can.”
He nodded. “I will be content with that. The words are difficult, though. Outsiders do not understand that world, the life.”
“Try,” she urged him.
“I was a field agent. That means more than it appears. For the inner levels of the Bureau, everything has to be brokered—the acquisition of human food, the purchase of raw materials for building components, arranging housekeeping, medical care, even something as simple as clothing had to be arranged via someone like me, who could move about in the world and deal with humans. I have been given tasks in my time that seemed puny and meaningless, until I remembered that the task-giver was incapable of completing it for themselves.”
Sang remembered the water and the cloth that had been left for them.
“You were assigned to follow me?” Bellona demanded.
“I was told to assess a potential hero.”
Sang felt as though they were gawping just as Bellona was.
Khalil sighed again. “The Bureau has known for more than ten years that a war is coming. A real one, not this informal slap exchange between the Homogeny and the Republic. A war that will draw in everyone in the known worlds, that will change the direction of life itself. When the neural mind declared the coming of the war, the Bureau set themselves the tasks of finding the hero that the war would produce.”
Bellona shook her head. “Heroes aren’t made just by wars.”
“They are made by pressure, which wars provide. Overwhelming pressure provokes extreme response and the right response, for the right reasons, creates a hero. Such a hero can effect great change, especially for those who follow him.”
Bellona crossed her arms. “The Bureau thought I was this hero?” She seemed amused.
“I’ve already told them you are not,” Khalil replied.
Her arms loosened and dropped. “I’m not?”
Khalil shook his head. “The Bureau has been looking for signs of a hero emerging across the known worlds. Hundreds of field agents have been sent out to investigate potentials. I was assigned to assess Xenia.” He shrugged. “Xenia is no more. She was a Karassian construct, that is all. Now, the Bureau knows that, too.”
“Wait,” Sang said quickly. “The only way to fully assess a subject in the way you are describing is to meet them and talk to them.”
“Yes.”
“But…” Bellona said slowly, “…I was in the Ledan compound.”
“Yes,” Khalil repeated.
“You got yourself deliberately captured, just to talk to Bellona?” Sang asked.
“The Bureau have known and understood the true nature of Ledania and Appurtenance Services Inc. since before it was established. They had to know. They were paid to build the AIs that ran the memory programming. The Bureau is neutral, neither for nor against the Homogeny, as long as the money is good.”
“Have you considered that that is why people think of the Bureau as monsters?” Bellona asked dryly.
“I know it is why,” Khalil said flatly. “The Bureau arranged for the networks in the compound to show instabilities. I was already on Kachmar. They briefed me on the situation two hours before I was taken to the island to complete the contract.”
“The Bureau knew the Karassians would wipe your memory,” Sang said. “That is why you had the recall module implanted.”
Bellona glanced at Sang, surprised.
“That was their precaution, not mine,” Khalil said. “Of course the Karassians didn’t kill me, because they cannot live without Bureau services and murdering Bureau agents is a quick way to lose all client privileges. However, the memory wipe was standard. Every other agent put in there for service work was treated the same way. The Bureau implanted the module in me so that my memories would be retained and I could therefore report back on my findings about Xenia.” He blew out his breath. “Which I did, as soon as we arrived in orbit over Maggar, along with my resignation.”
Bellona studied him. “Why is the Bureau looking for a hero? Do they think they will control the poor man?”
“The Bureau will be a part of the coming war,” Khalil said quietly. “No one will get to sit it out, whether they want to or not. The Bureau wants to know who the hero is, so they can predict what happens next.”
“You mean, so they can pick the right side?” Bellona shot back.
“Their explanation sounded far more altruistic,” Khalil said. “Yet, I think that behind all the fancy explanations, the Bureau is scared. They’re looking to survive, that is all.”
“Their tactics do not paint them in flattering colors,” Bellona said.
“Survival often is ugly.”
“Why did you reach out to Bellona’s family?” Sang asked. “When the module recovered your memories, that is the first thing you did.”
Khalil’s smile was rueful. “Even on the Bureau’s home world, we heard about the disappearance of Bellona Cardenas. When I matched the DNA and realized who Xenia really was, I was shocked. Yet I was just an agent. The Bureau were going to reassign me. There was nothing I could do about it myself, so I sent the message. Then you showed up, Sang, when I had been braced for a fleet of Eriuman cruisers descending upon Kachmar.”
“The Bureau will know you are here,” Sang pointed out. “You told them Xenia is not the one they seek, yet you followed her into the heart of Erium. They will not find that suspicious?”
“The Bureau know why I did it,” Khalil said flatly. “Even they have not lost sight of the meaning of love.”
Bellona looked away.
Khalil turned to face Bellona squarely. “That just leaves one question of my own, if you care to give me that much.”
She lifted her chin and looked back at him steadily. “Ask.”
“Who gave you the Bureau report?”
Bellona didn’t answer.
Khalil nodded. “Then your father has succeeded in ejecting me from your life. I should congratulate him. Truth can be a slippery tool.”
“I will not forget his role in this,” Bellona said. Her voice was low. Controlled.
“I will have to be content with that.” Khalil moved closer to her. He touched her cheek. Bellona was unmoved by his caress. “There has only ever been one direct lie between us,” he said softly. “You asked who I answer to now I have left the Bureau. I told you no one. That was the lie.” He bent and kissed her cheek. “I answered to you.”
Bellona didn’t move, even after he shut the door behind him, leaving Sang alone with her.