Part 17 (2/2)
”Mustafa's a Turkish name. You look African. You know why that works?”
”Not a clue.” Still stretching, eyeing her curiously.
”African Renaissance, late twenty-first century. Africa finally caught up with the rest of the world, lots of manoeuvring for trade blocks, counters to the India/China split a the Middle East's the natural sphere of African influence. Arabs and Africans became close, Islam became dominant in Africa. Cairo became the capital of the Arab/African alliance. Lots of cross-cultural moves, some Turkish or other Middle Eastern names became popular among Islamic Africans. Lots of GIs have cross-cultural names. Me, for example. I've often wondered why.”
”Does it matter?” With quizzical regard. Sandy restrained her disbelief.
”Only fools and League ask that question. You can't understand the Federation without knowing why that matters. You can't understand Callay or Ta.n.u.sha without knowing why it matters. Biotech ideology didn't just materialise, it was created by a whole host of cultural, religious and historical factors. This whole Article 42 debate is governed entirely by those factors. And in you come, the b.l.o.o.d.y know-it-all League, with your supposed tech-edge and your d.a.m.n superior, selfinflicted ignorance, and think you can fix it all. Running into sensitive sites, stealing information with all guns blazing, telling me I don't know what I'm doing trying to make a home here a what the h.e.l.l are you doing here, anyway? Hasn't Ryssa had enough of their little covert adventures? Haven't they figured what damage it causes, for them and everyone else?”
Her voice was raised beyond what she'd intended. She was losing her cool. It'd been happening with disturbing frequency lately. Ramoja's gaze showed that he'd noticed.
”Are you trying to make a home here?” he asked.
She wriggled her spine, creating tension ripples that flexed through her shoulders.
”I'm sure as h.e.l.l not going back with you.” With firm intensity.
”Not after I've been here. The claustrophobia would be stifling.”
”Claustrophobia?” Frowning.
”You don't have a clue, do you?” His return gaze was calmly uncomprehending. She shook her head faintly. ”Forget it. Life's too short.”
”We should take a walk. I have questions.”
”Yeah. Me too. I'll have the CSA make your life real difficult if you don't answer them satisfactorily, believe me.”
”My questions for yours.” Patiently. ”Quid pro quo.”
”That's Latin,” she jabbed, in determined pursuit. ”You know what it means, literally?”
”No, what?”
”I've no idea. But it's the difference between the two of us. You don't care. I do.”
”Why?” he asked calmly, eyebrows raised.
”You tell me,” she replied, her stare burning. ”I'm the product of League intentions and League designs. League wanted me this way. Capable of seeing the broader strategic implications. Know thy enemy. I'm good at that. I was so d.a.m.n good at that, I realised my enemy wasn't who I thought it was. There's a lesson in there for all of you. Until you figure it out, I'll never go back. Ever.”
Amba.s.sador Yao entered the room before Ramoja could reply. Blinked in surprise, seeing Ying seated on the chair opposite, listening with bewildered fascination. Did a fast double-take, then frowned and said something forcefully in Mandarin a something about illicit wanderings, homework and little girls who should learn to do what their parents told them a Mandarin was Sandy's best non-English language, she'd heard enough of it in the League. Ying scowled and got to her feet.
”I gotta go.” In vaguely accented English-Ryssa accent, Sandy reckoned, though it'd been a while since she'd heard it. ”Are you gonna come back and visit sometime?”
Sandy managed a lopsided smile. ”It's possible.” She held out her hand. Ying walked over and took it, and they shook. ”Nice to meet you, Ying. Don't grow up to be a fool like your elders, huh?”
”What're my chances?” Ying retorted as she left. Pa.s.sed her father, who held the door open for her. Sandy's gaze rested on the Amba.s.sador.
”That depends,” she said.
”The one thing I have never understood about straights,” Ramoja was saying as they walked slowly across the gravel drive at the back of the house, ”is why they over-protect their children.” Stones crunched beneath their feet. Sandy recognised the car that had brought her in, among the others. Several guards stood nearby, rifles in hand. Standard defensive format, the positions and angles translated reflexively in her head. ”Young Ms. Yao seems a very intelligent child. She was learning of important issues that will shape her life in years ahead. Yet the Amba.s.sador removed her, and was displeased.”
Amba.s.sador Yao had left them to their discussion, feeling that perhaps his presence would have been intruding. And perhaps it would.
”Most civilians in modern societies place a value upon childhood innocence, Major,” Sandy replied. Scanning the garden as she walked. Trees and landscaped flowerbeds. A pond and artificial stream spanned by a footbridge. Light from the house spilled golden across the broad lawns, and trees cast long shadows that fled toward the rear wall, crossed and overlapping as the night rea.s.serted itself. ”Life is so chaotic, there are so many hard truths and reasons to be cynical. People think childhood should be sacrosanct. A refuge of innocence.”
”Amazing.” Ramoja smiled faintly to himself. ”Such a broad universe, and so much to learn. I often wonder why people don't take more pride in themselves and their capabilities. At being able to cope with the universe, and understand it properly. Yet they call it cynicism, and s.h.i.+eld their children from it, thus creating unrealistic expectations and adding to the weight of disillusionment when it does finally arrive with adulthood.” They left the gravel, feet suddenly soft on springy gra.s.s. ”So much modern civilisation in the Federation seems built on regret and self doubt. Regret that they ever achieved modernity in the first place, and self doubt at failing to live up to the standards lauded in the common mythology of pre-modernity, glorifying some bygone era that never truly existed in the first place.”
Inexplicably, Sandy found herself fighting back a smile, and turned her head to make sure Ramoja didn't see it. Fancy a GI making such ruminations. It was also unsettling. She had no idea why it suddenly struck her as funny. Perhaps she was thinking of her team, back in Dark Star, and the blank stares they'd given her when she'd indulged in similar ponderings herself.
”I can feel a League diatribe coming on,” she volunteered dryly, cycling through spectrums to see the patterned distortion caused by a local laser-grid detection system hidden nearby, laid flat barely millimetres above the gra.s.s between trees. Easy to spot, if you knew what to look for a with super-enhanced vision, of course.
”It is a League advantage,” Ramoja said, unperturbed. His methodical approach was all GI, and all military. His voice was melodious, and often thoughtful. His manner was always calm. A more bookish, studious version of herself, she guessed. That was unsettling too. ”Less of the old, mythological baggage means a fresher, more realistic view of the universe, and of humans generally. The Federation is always being bound up in cultural mores that are increasingly meaningless in a modern society, whether it's engagement with the Talee or other nearby alien civilisations, or the pursuit of synthetic replication biotech, or the labyrinth of mostly conflicting legislation surrounding the protection of genetic coding data a the whole Birthfile accreditation system is a bureaucratic nightmare and a security sieve. The Federation will never catch up with the League as long as these kinds of basic progress continue to be held back.”
”Who won the war?” Sandy reminded him.
”Size is no indication of moral righteousness.”
”Yes it is. It indicates that the vast majority of humanity are not yet ready for the kinds of advances that the League espouses. That's democracy.”
”The League is no part of Federation democracy, what right does the Federation have to impose its will on the League?”
”Every right, since the League always claims to be acting in the best interests of the species. With a hand on their heart and the anthem playing in the background, a tear of patriotic humanism spilling down each rosy cheek.”
”I can't believe,” Ramoja said, fixing her with a hard sideways look, ”that you could possibly find yourself identifying with a set of philosophies that actively deny your right to even exist.”
Sandy snorted, running a hand through loose, more-than-regulation-length hair. Beside Ramoja and his African shave-cut, she felt smugly unregulation. She liked it. She felt herself.
”What do I have to do with it? If a policy's wrong, it's wrong. Where I happen to fit into the equation is irrelevant.”
”You really went Federation?” Eyes narrowed, some of his bookish, distant intellectualism lost for the moment. A military GI once again, blunt and dangerous. ”You really switched? Or are you just angry, looking for vengeance?”
”You think you'd be alive if I were?” Not bothering to look at him and dignify that remark. The flowerbeds beneath the spreading trees to their left held concealed scanners, ankle-level tripwires that deactivated with measured stagger as they approached.
”I do.” With typical military confidence. ”You're no better than me. Today proved that.”
”If you're so sure, Major, you've got a problem. Yes, I went Federation. I'd been leaning that way for a long time. It took drastic circ.u.mstances to make me realise it.”
For a moment, Ramoja didn't say anything. The murmur of night traffic was louder, from ground traffic on the front road to the repet.i.tive, drifting whine of aircars overhead, small spots of light moving across the darkened sky, the occasional brighter, faster flash of a lower alt.i.tude lane.
”I know what happened to your team. It was inexcusable, those responsible have been punished.” Yeah, right. She was surprised at her own level of cool on the matter. She was not, she knew, over it. She was just in no mood to blow her stack about it. Ramoja would believe what he believed, she knew better than to think a fit of temper could change that where logic had failed. ”You have my sympathies.”
”I don't understand,” she replied coolly, ”how someone who knows what his own side is responsible for, and how little respect they truly have for the artificial lives they've created, could continue to serve so unswervingly.”
”No bureaucratic system is perfect, Captain,” Ramoja replied, with cool, effortless efficiency. ”As a temporarily a.s.signed recruit of the CSA, you can obviously understand that.”
”The CSA makes honest mistakes, Major. They're caused by too many checks and balances, too much bureaucratic supervision, the usual civilian red tape. It prevents excess. It irritated me at first. But then I realised what it prevents. Far better to have a morally centred gridlock than seamlessly efficient f.u.c.king fascist murder.”
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