“You might be quick enough if I throw,” she said quietly. “But you’ll lose a hand, maybe an arm deflecting it. Question: were the controls also upped to increase my empathy for Keislack?”
“Not only him. Increase it in general.”
She stood, weighing the knife in her hand. “You fucked with my mind.”
“Before you were born. As was done to me.”
“Still your choice!”
“Debatable. What choice is there? In order for this, then that.”
“There’s always an alternative.”
“Only one? Try thousands. Millions. You could use that knife to slash your own throat. But you won’t. All we can do is play the reality we have.”
She stared at Greenaway for several seconds, a man consumed by his own determination. Yet there’d been a note of sadness in his voice.
“Did you love your wife?”
Greenaway looked away. “She was everything to me.”
“Could you have saved her?”
“It was her choice.”
“Could you have fucking saved her?”
“Fuck off, Kara,” his voice quiet. “That’s personal.”
She wouldn’t stop. “You gave up your daughter. Part of the same programme?”
“I went Spec Ops and then GalDiv. Tatia was better off with people who’d be there for her. It kept her safe.” His left hand clenched, the knuckles white.
“Safe until she gets to play hero. Safe to maybe die far away in the Up.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he burst out. “Think I don’t fucking care? But I do know that with you and Keislack, she’ll survive. The three of you are the best, the only way of winning through.”
Kara saw it. Greenaway was obsessed with saving Earth. As obsessions go, it was respectable, even admirable. He also wanted Kara and Marc to save Tatia for his own personal, fatherly and probably guilty-as-hell feelings. But he’d never admit it. She wasn’t angry – well, no more than before – but was relieved to have seen behind the mask. Greenaway was human. She liked him that way.
“You the puppet, Tse the master,” she said quietly. “He played all of us. Neat.”
“It’s not being played,” he insisted, now in control of himself. “It’s seeing what must happen for the right result.”
Kara couldn’t see the difference and shook her head. “But you’re no pre-cog. You have no idea if Tse told the truth. For all we know, this programme is meant to let the alien pre-cog bastards win.” She switched off the vibra-knife. “I liked Tse and understand why he suicided. All the same, you took one hell of a lot on trust. And then you present this programme as if it’s cut and dried. Checked and double checked. But it’s not, Anson. Classic commanding officer trying to appear all-knowing for the troops’ morale. But guess what? The troops never buy it. They know the commander is as fucked up and ignorant as the rest of us. No plan survives contact with the enemy, right? It’s people like me, like Marc, like Tatia who have to do the success-snatching thing. Do not ever claim some sort of super insight.” Her voice spiky with sarcasm. “That you see the big picture, have been trained to make the hard choices. Power doesn’t make you cleverer. Only more dangerous.”
His eyes were suddenly vulnerable. “What do you want?”
“Total honesty, Anson. Even the bad bits. Stop trying to play me. It’s disrespectful. And I always see it coming. Oh, and tell your AI to refresh you about the morality behind the word ‘eugenics’. There was once a man called Hitler who believed in it.”
“I know history,” he said, tight-lipped.
“Then start learning from it.”
They walked back to Marc’s house, Kara’s Merc SUV and Greenaway’s jitney in silence.
He was right about the Gorgonzola.
* * *
“You’d better tell me,” Kara said, brushing crumbs from her jeans. “Everything.” Her Merc had extended a veranda and she’d fetched an extra chair from the house. It was, she thought, as domestic a scene as she’d been in for years. “From the beginning. Whenever the hell that was.”
“There’s another bottle in the jitney. I’ve some de-alc.”
Kara nodded. She needed Greenaway’s knowledge and connections in the Wild and the Up. Food and wine had relaxed the tension between them. Kara had discovered that Greenaway could be amusing and seemed to be interested in her as a person, not just a weapon.
< You don’t need de-alc. I can metabolise any excess alcohol for you.
> I never knew that. I’m slightly freaked now that I do know.
< If I’d said before you’d have got pissed too often.
> My fucking choice.
< It affects me as well, Kara. Our fucking life. You also smoke joss. Why do you think your mind and your reflexes have been so sharp when you needed them? A pause, then: < I’m not going to tell you how many pregnancies I’ve terminated and cancers I’ve destroyed for you.
“I’ll make coffee,” Kara said hastily. “And grab a bottle of Marc’s brandy.”
“Why not live in the house?”
Her gesture took in the all-dancing Merc. “This is my home. And because I couldn’t handle so much space.”
* * *
As Greenaway explained it, the pre-cog gene could be traced back to an early Homo sapiens tribe who lived near the Altai Mountains one hundred thousand years ago. Sometime in their past they’d bred with another species of human, long since died out. The inheritance was an ability both feared and valued, and never really understood.
Few pre-cogs fully realised their potential, then or now. Some were frightened of it. Others by what normals would say. Those who did manage to understand and control the talent learned to stay in the shadows. How many kings and emperors have achieved greatness because of an advisor’s near magical advice? Only in a few cultures could pre-cogs live openly and valued, as with Native North Americans and their shamanistic cousins in Siberia. But they never ruled.
Developed pre-cogs stayed the hell away from secret societies because they are never secret for long. Someone always tells. That began to change as people travelled more, the cities grew and pre-cogs could hide in plain sight.
Then came empires. Ur, Egypt and Phoenicia, the first
