The Inhuman Peace Read online

  ‘Has the Office run out of psychohistorians?’

  ‘They all pointed me to you, Professor,’ said Drake. ‘Something to the effect of your theories laying the foundations of their work, so I thought I’d save us a lot of time and come straight to the source. I’m authorized to tell you that there will be an offer made to you tomorrow, and should you accept and turn out successful, you might be making enough to retire in comfort the moment you return. You might even have an entire field to write about – I’m sure none of your colleagues have as yet been involved in mechanical warfare. Should you excel, tenure and your own department at any college of your choosing could be arranged. The Crown is never ungrateful.’

  Bengali saw the Dean’s face turn into a comical mask of surprise. He kept his own very still. The Office often recruited civilians, but not for such reasons.

  ‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘You came to me, a non-specialist. Which means your other practicing psychohistorians are either incompetent, too specialized or employed elsewhere. You could have run short of practitioners, but that’s unlikely.’

  ‘True.’

  He cycled through the names and places he knew. Psychohistorians were ferociously protective of their domains; he would have heard some noise if so much as a consultation was happening on someone else’s turf. ‘Not the Russian or German fronts; you’ve got Canard and Walker there. Can’t be the American colonies, or the Spanish, or the Portuguese … there’s du Marek and three others in the Royal Society for that. This can’t be China or India. What is it? Something new?’

  Drake smirked, as if satisfied. ‘Close, but no cigar, as our American cousins say,’ he said mysteriously. ‘We do need your expertise, however, and it is a place untouched by your colleagues. We’re … ah, hoping that your Indian connection might serve a purpose. I’ll see you on Thursday.’

  Bengali watched him go, curious. ‘Strange man,’ he said to the Dean. ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘Sometimes, a man needs friends in low places,’ said the Dean. ‘Bengali?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You can do whatever you want with this chance,’ said the Dean. ‘In fact, I’d advise you to take it. Get out of the classroom a bit, do some new research, publish something new for God’s sake, before you’re buried under people doing all the fancy footwork with your theories. But be very, very careful what you say to a Drake.’ He leaned closer, and whispered, ‘Don’t behave as though you’re their equal.’

  That evening, Jacob Bengali sat awake, reading the letter over and over again. He looked around his little apartment. Shelves of books lined every wall – actual paper, heavy books with titles like China and Hong Kong: Predictions for 2054 or Indian Wartime Simulations. All of them written by fellow psychohistorians – some of them former students – who had greedily gobbled up bits and pieces of his work and applied them to countries that could make their name. They added a weight to the darkness that had little to do with their actual size on the shelves.

  He had a love-hate relationship with his field. It was their lot to live at the very edges of history, economics, sociology and mathematics, and more often than not the work they did was more science fiction than actual predictions. They oversimplified complex systems, fell in love with their own narratives and waved away the truth with wordplay. A lot of the books on his wall did exactly this. There were very few he could take down and be satisfied with.

  Be rigorous, he’d tell his students over and over. Question the stories you weave out of the data. Remember that we often get it wrong.

  And yet, they were fortune-tellers, prophets, all these men and women on his wall. If they missed the mark of prediction, they generally missed it less than others; and to those who failed by a only small margin came all the spoils of the man who can tell a government, ‘I told you something like this would happen.’

  He could have shared the fame. He could have taken the lead, gone out on to the field and actually made some predictions instead of sitting around and thinking about those things in the abstract, waiting for a rigor that would never exist in the subject. He was just a citation at the back of these books, earning nothing save a pittance at the university.

  There was a time, he thought … fresh out of school, top marks. Pride of the Goa Mathematical and Military University – the first real roboticist India had cranked out. He had written his thesis on the machines from the Russian and German fronts. Walker, who had designed said machines, read his work and wrote to the Royal Society, praising this promising young Da Vinci.

  He had been particularly blunt: I consider it a mere accident of birth that Bengali was born Indian rather than British; surely it falls to us to correct God’s error in this matter.

  Bengali still had Walker’s letter. He had pictured himself, like Shelley’s Frankenstein (but not as timid, no!), standing back from a sparking bench and screaming out his triumph to the world.

  But no. A recommendation like that could only get you so far. Sooner or later, it would come down to you standing in the London cold with the Secretary of the Royal Society of Roboticists giving you that brittle, condescending smile; that code for ‘You’re a little too dark for this, son, but I’m not supposed to say it, so could you finish your tea and get out of my office and shut the door behind you? There’s a good lad.’

  So he had taken the next thing that came along: the University. A career built on doing the teaching that Canard, Walker, du Marek, Trembliss were too important to do.

  He flipped the invitation over and over and over in his hands, watching the message flow smoothly to keep itself pointed at him. Dr. Bengali, it said. Ceylon. Will you accept?

  But there was something that needed checking up on first.

  It was impossibly hot outside. Bengali, having carefully locked his door, checked himself – spectacles, testicles, wallet – all there – and walked through the thronged roads, inhaling both the sea breeze and the slight smell of rubbish that came with it, his white shirt sticking to his skin. Buildings melted before him, the strange Goa air turning them all into one looming Indian-Portuguese-British protobuilding that lined every road and sidewalk, and blocked out the trees that lay beyond. Every so often, a glass spire rose, skirted in sloped roofs.

  The human tide pushed him and he pushed back, making his way to the nondescript building that housed the local chapter of the general staff of the Indian Army – specifically, the intelligence operations. Very few civilians were supposed to know where it was. Naturally, this meant everyone knew everything about it.

  The C.O. looked up as he walked in. ‘Ah, Dr. Bengali. Here, take that chair, go sit under the air conditioner.’

  The air conditioner rattled and sang and cooled him. They waited a bit. This was India: everyone waited a bit. Finally, the C.O. looked at his hopeful face, and said as gently as he could, ‘I’m afraid we’ve had to turn down your application again, Doctor.’

  Bengali could feel his face sag. ‘Who made the cut this time, sir?’

  ‘Emerson. Good chap. Solid.’

  But Emerson was terrible at his job. He knew it. The C.O. knew it. The only qualification he had was that he had been born to the right people, in the right country, with the one passport that trumped them all. Something small inside him broke.

  ‘It’s been three years.’

  ‘There’s concern about your expertise.’

  ‘I speak four languages. I’ve literally written the bloody book on the subject. My PhD was at Oxford. And—’

  The CO, who was British, but not an unkind man, listened gravely and let him run out of steam. ‘Not my call, Doctor,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you can bulk your resume a bit. Make up for your—’

  Nationality, went the unspoken word between them.

  ‘There’s a small assignment in Ceylon. Field op. Straight from Lord Drake. I recommended you to him. Won’t hurt to get in with the right people, what?’

  Bengali, crestfallen, looked down at his feet. Joining the general staff could
have been his one way out, the one ticket to something more than just … sitting there, writing theory, doing all the hard work and then having others steal his thunder.

  He mumbled something and left the office with his fists clenched. His feet went on autopilot, taking him out of the office. Out into the madding crowd. Out, out, out, past the holograms of Christ and Vishnu, past the park, past the faces. His legs trod the known path back to the university and parked him in his office. The rest of the day went by in a blur; it was dark by the time he looked up from his papers.

  He sent for the driver. ‘Bar,’ he said.

  The driver, who everyone called Pindulu, looked at Bengali and sympathetically offered him a small half-bottle of arrack. Ceylonese stuff. Pindulu’s beady eyes tracked his swig anxiously and looked relieved when he stopped at just two shots.

  The alcohol was excellent. It dissolved into his bloodstream, setting off a dull, burning fire in his heart.

  What was the point, he thought as Goa flashed by in silence, neon lights and holograms emerging from the dull white buildings. What was the point of being capable, of being educated, of publishing some of the greatest breakthroughs in the field, of never failing to salute the right way, when all it got you was this far, and no further? What was the point when some East London reject could waltz in and take your throne?

  The cab veered off the main road and onto a side street by the beach, and Pindulu, bless his heart, let him have one more sip before he got out. The flag of the British Raj glittered in the night sky: the Union Jack and the Star of India in an ugly compromise. Underneath it, men and women partied, lit by neon, the dull thump of the beat creeping over his mind. Tourists swirled and laughed.

  And thus it was that Jacob Bengali, bitter and disillusioned, decided to go to Ceylon.

  THREE

  In the films, of course, the hero, having decided his course of action, dashes off. One scene sees him pensive and brooding; the other sees him descending into a market several thousand miles away with a smile on his face and adventure in his eyes.

  Real life required a lot more documentation.

  Drake the Third, having taken it upon himself to occupy Bengali’s office, began by handing him a stack of gazettes.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d use this much paper,’ said Bengali.

  ‘Bureaucracies are slow monsters, Dr. Bengali,’ said Drake. ‘Very few of these documents were ever digitized. Whiskey?’

  ‘Not this early, thank you,’ said Bengali politely. Drake seemed to inhabit the room in a way that he found profoundly intrusive. Perhaps it was the fact that Drake had clearly fiddled with everything, and to no apparent purpose. The coat-rack was in a slightly different place; the chairs had been swapped; the little Ganesh figurine on the desk placed next to the computer terminal instead of on top of it. It made Bengali feel like an alien in his own domain.

  He shuffled the papers over the desk and began to read. All were of Ceylonese origin. One, dated 2010, declared that the domains of the former city of Colombo were to be handed over to the Kandyan government. The next declared that the Kandyan government would partner with the Crofton Institute to form a new organization that would oversee the development of ‘The Colombo Entertainment Zone’, whatever that meant. The third shuffled this Crofton–Kandy instrument and its management under a large body called the Ministry of Reconciliation.

  ‘Largely created to fund the local Inquisition and run re-education camps after the Yarl rebellion,’ said Drake. ‘Most of their job is to put down ethnic dissent.’

  The fourth gave this supposed Ministry some very odd broadcast and licensing permissions.

  Crofton. Anyone worth their salt knew that name. The Crofton Institute was a military-science kingdom masquerading as a corporation. Its labs took the cutting-edge work of the finest roboticists – people like Walker – and perverted and commodified the hell out of it. Specialized one-off regimental units became cheap cannon fodder unleashed in the Balkans. Minesweeper bots built in the Ottoman theatre turned into vacuum cleaner designs. Bengali had had no idea they worked in Ceylon, too. Odd.

  Next came a series of financial statements from this Ministry of Reconciliation. Whatever this thing was, there was plenty of money in it – more than tea.

  ‘What do you make of it?’ asked Drake, peering at Bengali over a pair of gold spectacles.

  Bengali puzzled over the documents. They appeared to be hastily assembled; a trail of political minutae that seemed at odds with the finances and the actual nature of the operation. He told Drake so.

  ‘Good, at least you’re paying attention,’ said Drake. ‘Ever heard of a chap called Don Hewage? Roboticist.’

  ‘Hewage. Hewage. Wait. The self-learning machines guy? The crackpot?’

  ‘Precisely. On paper, Dr. Bengali, the request is simple. After Colombo got the shit bombed out of it, Hewage got some funding from the Crofton Institute and started tinkering. Set up a gladiatorial show using some old commodity bot designs that nobody was really using. Turned that into a public entertainment spectacle; it’s been running for a few years now under the government, and they make quite a bit of tax money from the broadcast. They’re having some code issues. They want an expert to help redesign their software, make sure it measures up to the safety standards.

  ‘The unofficial request is the kind that cannot be sent in writing. Hewage made a breakthrough. It was funded by us, through the Crofton Institute, with the highest levels of authorization. To see if we could train machines that can learn, adapt, fight under all circumstances, approximating human behaviour, especially for urban warfare scenarios. A ruined city just so happens to be the perfect training ground for urban warfare.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of this.’

  ‘Your clearance has never been high enough for you to hear of it,’ said Drake. ‘Look at the screen. We’ve got some footage.’

  A file. Locally stored from a SingNet location. Grainy footage of a group of young boys dressed in rags. They ran towards each other in what looked like a blasted and shelled out neighborhood, screaming. Many carried crude spears.

  As Bengali watched, the boys impaled each other on the spears. No, not boys; now he could see the metal beneath. Transfixed, he watched them hack, stab and cut each other to pieces, often picking up whatever was around – rocks, fallen weapons, even their own severed limbs – to smash at each other.

  ‘Studies conducted with terrorist groups showed that they were less likely to fire if they thought they were fighting children,’ said Drake. ‘Empathy. The human brain has too much of it sometimes. Turns out they were right. Hewage’s operation has been broadcasting the training process this entire time. Turned it into reality TV. The income alone is enough to pay for the labs. Two birds, one stone. Bread and circuses in one go.’

  There was a pregnant pause.

  ‘Those were fully automated?’ asked Bengali.

  ‘Fully.’

  ‘I’ve never seen machines move like that.’

  ‘Even more progress has been made,’ said Drake. ‘Six months ago, two, just two of these bots broke out of the test environment in Colombo, made it all the way to the Ceylonese capital, navigating entirely on their own, and encountered humans. There were … casualties. Twelve civilians, a small squad of Ceylonese soldiers killed. To those of us who set this experiment in motion, this is unexpected progress. To those on the receiving end, that is the locals, this is an unfavourable outcome, so they need reassurance. Experts were called in to make the right noises and write the right kinds of reports. The Ceylonese set great faith in foreign experts. Which, Doctor, is where I’d like you to come in.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Bengali. ‘This has to be a trick. Some code hack.’

  Drake ignored him. ‘What I want you to do is simple. Forget the safety standards. I’d like you to evaluate their capabilities. Conduct for us an independent audit, if you would, benchmarked against our most public hardware on your Tibetian scenarios, set A through F
. We understand they’re considered the best in the field.’

  ‘I’ll need the source code, of course.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to obtain it yourself. Hewage is a bit of a tight bugger and isn’t exactly communicative on this stuff. Our understanding is that he feels a bit stiffed by the Royal Society and is waiting to publish through Crofton, and make a name for himself there.’

  I know how that feels, thought Bengali.

  ‘Obviously, we want to see if this has military applications first, given that half the funding is ours,’ Drake continued. ‘You’re the expert, of course, so I trust you’ll be able to tell us what we’ve paid for. I’m sending one of my men to help you. I think you’ll find him more than satisfactory.’

  ‘This isn’t exactly ethical, is it?’

  Drake paused. ‘War isn’t ethical, Bengali. You think Walker became who he is by pondering the ethics of the machines he built? You think du Marek has clean hands?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘In an ideal world, men would treat each other with kindness, guns would be nothing more than forgotten doodles by mad inventors and we would all hold hands and live happily ever after. But we don’t live in an ideal world, do we? This world works because violent people stand ready to deal death on those who would do our countrymen harm. Cigarette? I know you smoke.’

  Bengali hesitated, then broke his tradition of not smoking in the office. ‘And there’s nobody else?’

  ‘You happen to be the closest on this one and I’d rather not waste time,’ said Drake. ‘This is a real situation, Bengali. If this experiment works out, we’re talking about a new age in warfare. Beyond the sawhorses and bloody bones jobs we’ve got right now. There’s a limit to the human, and we mean to go beyond it. It’s critical that Hewage be left alone to continue his work, but also critical that we get the current tech he’s working with. You understand, of course.’

  ‘No,’ he said, thinking fast. A way in. ‘I mean, yes. I’m in.’