her ego by being the one to find it, on her fifth try. She still had to let Emily operate it, though, since she understood the making of popcorn only in theory.
“Anastasia, can I ask you something? Are your… what are those, um, things on your slippers?”
“They are Domo,” Anastasia said helpfully, pointing at them. “These are Domo slippers.”
“I see,” Emily blinked. “They’re cute. Where did you get them?”
“Same place I get everything,” Anastasia said with a shrug. “Tokyo. I have Svetlana take me there every so often so that I can go shopping in Shinjuku. They have all the cutest stuff, and my build,” Anastasia said, grimacing, “is common in Japan. That makes shopping easy.”
“That’s amazing,” Emily said, raising her voice above the whirring motor of the air popper. “I can’t believe you go all the way around the world to go shopping. That sounds so cool.”
“Would you like to go?” Anastasia asked, searching cabinets for salt. “We could go sometime during break. Sveta can take us.”
“Could we?” Emily asked, excited. “Of course I’d love to go! I don’t have any money, but it would be fun to see. I haven’t really been anywhere exciting before this.” Emily waited until the popcorn was finished, and Anastasia returned with a saltshaker, before she went on. “Anastasia, it isn’t that I don’t appreciate it, but I have to ask — why are you being so nice to me?”
“Am I? I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps it is because you are the first people from outside of my family or cartel to visit this place, and I want you to get a good impression.”
“Maybe,” Emily said, looking dubious. “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”
Anastasia nodded and headed toward the room with the giant television in it.
“Yes, but probably not the same one you want to watch…”
Negotiations followed. They settled on Heavenly Creatures, because they were both feeling maudlin. Emily cried a little, near the end, but Anastasia remembered it being better.
“I would appreciate it if we could have a frank conversation, Evelyn.”
The woman rubbed her wrists and looked befuddled by her surroundings. Gaul tried to remember Rebecca’s warnings about the relative humanity and the possible falseness of their emotions, but it was hard. The woman seemed genuinely distressed, and he didn’t like being a party to it. The room they were in was sterile white except for the bare wooden table they sat at and the plastic chairs they occupied. It looked like a disused meeting room, not an interrogation chamber, but Gaul still felt like an inquisitor. Normally, he thought resentfully, he had people for this sort of thing.
“Whatever you want,” Evelyn said, nodding accommodatingly. “I always cooperate. You don’t have to force me.”
“I hadn’t planned to,” Gaul said distastefully. “Can you tell me, please, Evelyn, your relative position in the Witch hierarchy?”
Evelyn ran a hand across a head made bare, and Gaul felt a dull guilt.
“I can, but you won’t like the answer,” Evelyn said flatly, looking at the table. “I’m nobody special. I don’t know how to make a comparison to your standards, but I’m about as low as our totem pole gets, without being like you people.”
“Then what would the relative worth of a captured Operator be?”
“It depends what they are using them for,” Evelyn explained dully. “If they took them prisoner, and they are still alive for you to recover, chances are they wouldn’t trade to get me back because they have some specific use for them. Otherwise, they would have gotten rid of them a long time ago. There’d be no precedent for something like an exchange, anyway. We are expected to hold our own.”
“Is there someone I could talk to? Someone who might be concerned about your wellbeing? Or might want to see you returned on the basis of security?”
Evelyn shook her head hesitantly.
“A superior? A central organization?”
“You don’t understand,” she said, with something that sounded like pity, as impossible as that was. “You couldn’t possibly understand. We aren’t organized that way. I told you all right from the start, but none of you believed me. We have a… an awareness of each other. There is no word to describe it. Nothing that you have done has restricted, in any way, my connection with them. You may as well be talking to them directly when you speak to me. They do not care what happens to me. Understand this, please — I am very, very afraid. I do not want any more bad things to happen to me. But they do not care.”
Gaul sat back from the table and pushed his glasses back up.
“I see. Interesting. So, are some Witches more valuable than others?”
“Certainly. Older, wiser, more powerful Witches command more respect. Those who control the cattle, the humans. Those successful in the war against your kind. All of them, they are above me,” Evelyn explained, her voice wandering and distant. “But there is no hierarchy as you understand it, no leader for you to speak to. There are those among us who would listen to what you had to say out of curiosity, but they would be no more able to sway our society as a whole than you would.”
“So, if I understand you correctly,” Gaul said tiredly, “There is no way to negotiate with your kind. Not even to secure your own release.”
Evelyn looked him in the eyes, her expression desperate but not quite, he thought, defeated.
“Not even to surrender,” she said flatly. “We have some understanding of your concepts of diplomacy. But we do not agree with the philosophy behind it.”
“That is… unfortunate,” Gaul said reluctantly. “That would require one side or the other to be completely wiped out for the conflict to end.”
Evelyn nodded mutely.
“The intelligence you provided us has proved valid,” Gaul said woodenly, consulting the Etheric Network. “Empathic and telepathic probes, as well as basic self interest, indicate that you are being honest with us, as far as that goes.”
“Of course,” Evelyn said shakily. “What would I gain with lies? I am dead to my people as it is. Even if I were somehow to escape, they would kill me out of distrust. I have been contaminated by you people.”
Gaul’s frown tightened.
“One of my associates has made a rather alarming suggestion. She claims that your emotions are manufactured,” Gaul said, his voice returning to normal as he regarded her critically, observing her through the filter of the empathic protocol that he had downloaded. “She claims that you have fabricated a persona, complete with the kind of emotional responses to stimuli that we would expect, for the sole purpose of feigning humanity, and appealing to our own.”
Gaul waited and watched while Evelyn fidgeted and twitched, but nothing came of it. He hated downloading empathic protocols; it was all too touchy-feely for him. He always felt dirty afterward, as if he gotten too close and caught something.
“Well? Is it true?”
Evelyn spoke slowly when she responded, as if she were under tremendous pressure, as if the words were torn from deep within her, and only at a grievous personal cost.
“If my persona is manufactured, then I would have no more awareness of it than you would. Do you understand? I would not be able to differentiate between the persona and my own identity. For all intents and purposes, an implanted persona completely replaces the preexisting personality when it is installed.”
“And this would be true if a human was implanted with a persona?”
“Certainly,” Evelyn said, with a muted nod.
“An Operator?”
“If that is possible, then yes.”
“Evelyn, when the Auditors took you, were you working for the Anathema? With Anathema? With any Operators at all?”
“No,” Evelyn said, shaking her head vigorously. “As far as we are concerned there is no difference between you and them. An Operator is an Operator, regardless of your petty disputes. We do not engage in alliances. We have slaves, but we do not have allies.”
“Then why is it,” Gaul asked, leaning forward, “that we keep finding Witches and Operators working together
