Veteran (51 page)

‘And that’s the thing, isn’t it?’ Mudge said. ‘God, can you bring the images of the Cabal up on the screen?’ On the viz screen the images we’d seen earlier appeared. They were almost all fat old white guys being kept alive by drugs and machinery that probably cost thousands every day if not every hour. Presumably they communicated through the net but I don’t think they were jacked in at the moment, unsurprisingly. ‘All this is for them?’ Mudge asked. ‘What the fuck have these vampires got to do with the rest of us? Why are they even living, if you call that living, off of us? Anybody else want to die for them?’

‘They worked for the power they have and deserve to be rewarded for it,’ Cronin said, though I wasn’t sure even he believed that. He seemed very uncomfortable with the images of the sleeping members of the Cabal.

‘These people had their time; now it’s over they all should’ve died a long time ago. This is deeply unnatural,’ Mudge said in disgust.

Cronin shook his head. ‘This is irrelevant, a fantasy. What proof have you got of us harvesting Them biotechnology? Even your God seems to struggle to fabricate evidence.’

‘Because you used Demiurge to purge your systems,’ Morag spat with a surprising amount of hatred in her voice.

‘There’s me, there’s my last year of being a fucking test bed for you after Rolleston exposed the Wild Boys to a Ninja in the hope that one of us would be infected. What were you doing then?’ Gregor asked. His voice had become nearly a whisper. Cronin concentrated as if he was receiving data.

‘Rolleston ordered you to hunt and kill one of Their assassination bioborgs, not an unreasonable order to give an SAS patrol. When you were exposed, you were isolated to be studied so we could find a way of more effectively combating Them. You’re fabricating a fantasy out of little strands of the truth,’ Cronin snapped.

Gregor was pointing at Cronin. ‘No, you are!’ he shouted. Even to me it sounded weak.

Cronin leaned into the screen. He looked angry now. ‘And in the absence of any credible evidence it is your word against mine, and one of us isn’t currently possessed by an alien! What have we done? Nothing! Except try and study you, even see if we could help you.’

‘Oh, that’s bullshit!’

‘You people, on the other hand, have just single-handedly destroyed our economy and our security apparatus. People have access to information that is dangerous to them. Now everyone in the world can learn how to manufacture nuclear weapons, biological and chemical weapons, genetically targeted weapons and concrete-eating microbes. You’ve just released all the information on banned genetic engineering and cloning processes, processes that were considered to be immoral by the UN. Now people have access to black bio and cyberware, sequestrination cyberware. Or are you going to tell us that you didn’t think of any of this?’ It was quiet again. I felt like I’d been scolded and the answer was no, I hadn’t thought it through. The thing is, there were smarter people than me here. Had they thought it through? ‘You say that we’re the enemies of humanity and then you go and do all this. I trust the comparison with Pandora isn’t lost on you.’

‘You’re right,’ Pagan said. I looked over at him. Surely he must’ve thought of all this. I was beginning to wonder if we’d been very stupid. ‘We have made all that information available, do you know where from?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘From the likes of you and your friends. God, all the things that you just mentioned, can you provide evidence for their manufacture and use in, say, the last ten years?’ Text, audio, and audiovisual information began scrolling down the screen. I wondered how many people accessed it. ‘See, it hadn’t gone away. The information was still there. What you’re pissed off about is that we’ve taken it out of the hands of people like you.’

‘Yes, congratulations on proliferation. That’ll help,’ Cronin said.

‘How will it proliferate? Every time someone accesses this information everyone in the system has the potential to know about it. Surely that’ll make it easier to police?’ Pagan said. He seemed to have recovered from his earlier despondency. It was obvious he had thought of this and he had a counter-argument; the trouble was, I wasn’t sure if it was enough. I didn’t like the idea of genetically targeted viruses or slave cyberware available to anyone. I wondered if this was the part of me that liked the idea of other people making the decisions, making things safe, looking after us. The trouble was we were here because they weren’t doing a very good job. In fact they had become abusive.

‘Surely you’ve made every hacker in the world unemployed?’ Cronin said sardonically.

‘I’m sure we’ll find something to do,’ Morag said.

‘I’ve always fancied farming,’ Pagan said, looking slightly wistful.

‘And what about the financial markets? Money and commodities are moved around as information all the time. Now anyone can access this.’

‘You’d be surprised how few people that affects. Well maybe you wouldn’t. For most of us it’s still cash under the mattress or illegal credit chips. God?’ Pagan said expectantly.

‘While all information is available, security systems are still functioning. Money and other commodities still cannot be moved except by the authorised person, though now it is a lot easier to check that person’s authorisation,’ God said. I noticed that Pagan was momentarily tranced in but he was back by the end of God’s explanation.

‘That said, it’s now a lot easier to see how much money people have. Wow! You’re rich, Mr Cronin,’ Pagan said. There was something of the teen-punk hacker about him at this moment. He was enjoying himself. ‘How did you make your money, I wonder?’ Pagan continued. There was all sorts of information scrolling down the screen.

‘This is an obscene breach of privacy,’ Cronin said, looking less than pleased.

‘I would argue that this information is relevant to the populace as it seems to affect them directly,’ Pagan said, somewhat distracted as he studied the information he’d found. ‘Hmm, a cursory glance would suggest that you’ve made a lot of money from arms and have recently been investing in biotechnology. I wonder why?’

‘Do you not understand that your alien computer virus of total truth is a weapon you’ve wielded against humanity? Lies protect humanity as well as deceive them. What if every lie you were ever told was suddenly revealed, would it do more harm than good? From "Yes, you do look fat in that" to Pearl Harbor, we exist in a web of lies, and not all of them are bad. The truth can be a destructive force, as your attempt to pull humanity apart is proving,’ Cronin said, changing tack.

‘But why
your
lies? Why do
you
get to decide what lies we hear?’ Mudge asked.

‘Because we are allowed to, because we worked hard to get ourselves into positions that allow us to make these decisions, because we are strong enough to do so. This is how our system works: it rewards success and it rewards strength. This is how things are supposed to be. Who else is going to lead? You?’ I had to smile at the guy’s balls.

‘What about democracy?’ Mudge asked. I almost scoffed. The word seemed a joke, but Mudge was deadly serious: this was important to him. I saw Cronin’s eyes narrow around his custom lenses, designed to look like real eyes, the designer logo just about visible on the large viz screen. I think he was trying to gauge how serious Mudge was.

‘We work within the framework of democracy,’ Cronin said carefully. I think he saw a trap. Democracy was a joke to people like this, almost meaningless. He knew it and we knew it, but he couldn’t openly say that.

‘Do you think we would’ve voted for the war?’ Mudge asked.

‘This is a ridiculous argument. You’re being naive and you know it. The governments that you voted into place allowed us the latitude to make certain moves.’

‘Like starting a war?’

‘I didn’t start the war,’ he repeated, sounding slightly exasperated. ‘We’re going round in circles.’

‘Should governments act on the will of the people?’

‘They do when they are elected, but despite your attempt to simplify it you know that for security reasons the populace cannot be privy to some information and the decisions that come about as a result of them. Through their votes they delegate their trust to their elected officials, who act for them.’

‘In their best interests?’ Mudge asked.

‘You’re setting up a straw man,’ Cronin said. ‘You want us to be a secret government-controlling conspiracy. You give us prosaic names like the Cabal so you can find a scapegoat. Find someone to blame for your own sense of dissatisfaction because you’d rather attack than actually do anything constructive to help.’

‘How is the war—’ Mudge began.

‘I didn’t start the war, Mr Mudgie, now let me finish. What you don’t understand is this is the way of things. We exist within the framework of our society as a necessity. We manage the difficult decisions, the decisions where victories involve sacrifice. We are always going to look bad. You want to punish us but all you’re doing is fighting the momentum of your own society. You want to blame us for the start of the war but its beginnings are a lot more complicated than you’re allowing for, and the sad fact is the war began because of the weight of society bearing down on that point in history. What you call the Cabal was acting on what humanity required at that point.’

‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘Fancy words aside, the war started because someone who you work for ordered a passive alien organism to be attacked by an RASF ship.’

‘Someone has to lead because so many people will not take responsibility for themselves,’ he said.

‘Because people have had it driven into them by the likes of you that there’s nothing they can do, that they’re helpless and they can’t make a difference. That’s not true,’ Morag said.

‘Actually it is. Few people have the will or the ability to make a difference. You have to remember the majority of people will not collude with the implacable enemy of their race and put an alien parasite in their head,’ Cronin said. Morag just glared at him but didn’t respond to the cheap shot.

‘Even if that were true, then the strong have an obligation to lead responsibly and try and foster that strength in others,’ I said.

‘We are making humanity stronger,’ he said.

‘Oh, you are so full of crap,’ I said. There were sounds of disbelief from the others.

‘He’s right. Conflict breeds strength,’ Balor said. I looked up at him. Cronin was looking smug on the viz screen.

‘What humanity?’ I asked. Suddenly I was on the screen. I was being shot through Mudge’s eyes again. I felt uncomfortable, I looked at my features writ large on the viz screen. Some of my discomfort stemmed from looking like I was dying of radiation poisoning.

‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Cronin said.

‘Less than a third of my body is the original biological material,’ I said. ‘They want to wage war on my humanity, where will they start, my testicles?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, the flesh isn’t—’ Cronin began.

‘Look at Balor, does he look human, sound human?’ I asked Cronin.

‘Appearances ...’ Cronin began.

‘It goes beyond looks. He had neurosurgery to make himself less human, didn’t you?’ I asked Balor. Now it was Balor on the screen. He looked magnificent and nothing whatsoever to do with humanity.

‘I had neurosurgery done on myself to weed out weakness,’ Balor said impassively. I wondered with this talk of strong leadership who Balor actually sympathised with.

‘The actions of one man—’ Cronin began again but I interrupted him again.

‘It’s not one man, though, is it? We’re making our own aliens. Do you know how many cases of cybernetic-induced psychosis I’ve seen put out of their misery? Even if we win we lose, and if we don’t stop soon there won’t be any humanity left, just sick machines.’ Cronin looked like he was about to start talking again but something else occurred to me. ‘See, you and yours may have something invested in turning us into machines but I don’t and neither, I guess, would the majority of other people in the world. I was a member of the SAS, an elite. In theory all the machinery, training and experience should make me one of the strongest people on the planet. I don’t feel strong; I feel dead, I feel horrified with what I’ve done and seen.’ I said it earnestly enough and I believed it, but I also knew there would be a group of men and women in Hereford throwing things at their viz screens - that at least made me smile.

‘It made me strong,’ Balor insisted.

‘It made you a freak,’ Buck sang along with the music he was playing. I’d become so used to the soundtrack I’d all but stopped noticing it. Balor glared at the guitarist.

‘Actually these two are a good example,’ Mudge said. ‘God, can you draw up the recruitment information on Buck and Gibby and make their entry photos big on the screen?’ he asked. I saw where this was going; it was something of a cheap shot. Buck and Gibby’s recruitment photos came up. We saw images of them as two young clean-cut recruits on their way to basic training.

‘Compare and contrast,’ Mudge said. Buck and Gibby as they were today in all their cyberbilly splendour appeared on the screen. Buck decided to use his moment in the spotlight to start a guitar solo. ‘Congratulations, Cronin, the sum result of the Cabal’s machinations to date is to create a degenerate junkie hillbilly making machine.’

‘Yeeehaaa!’ Buck screamed.

‘Face facts. We’re the elite of your so-called strength and we’re a bunch of weirdos. I mean look at how Mudge dresses,’ I said.

‘Hey, I’m a fucking serious journalist!’ Mudge complained.

‘So, who leads? We do after all work with most governments in the world. You appear to be intent on overthrowing democracy as well as everything else you’ve attacked,’ Cronin said.

‘We haven’t touched the infrastructure of government, though I don’t doubt there will be the world’s largest and most transparent...’ Mudge began.

‘Witch hunt?’ Cronin suggested.

‘Corruption investigation,’ Mudge finished. ‘But we can help governments. See, through God we have the capability to reveal as much truth as is technologically possible.’

‘How very Orwellian,’ Cronin sneered.

‘Orwellian how?’ Pagan asked. I had no idea what they were talking about. ‘We didn’t create the Panopticon.’ I still didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. ‘The mechanism for near-total surveillance was already in place. We’re just taking it out of your hands and making it open to everyone. So we can watch you as well.’