Killswitch (51 page)

"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 Ari, 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.

Ari 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 Ari 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!"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

oel Shepherd was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1974, but when he was seven his family moved to Perth in Western Australia. He studied film and television at Curtin University but realised that what he really wanted to do was write stories. His first manuscript was shortlisted for the George Turner Prize in 1998, and Crossover (the first Cassandra Kresnov novel) was shortlisted in 1999.

Apart from writing, Joel helps in his mother's business, selling Australian books to international schools in Asia and beyond. This has given him the opportunity to travel widely in Asia and other parts of the world. Joel also writes about women's basketball for an American Internet magazine.

Joel currently lives in Adelaide.