Free Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire by Joel Shepherd Page B

my responsibility for your actions directs me to make you available, from time to time, for a more direct interrogation from those who consider themselves to be the CSA’s peers and colleagues, and in some cases, its oversight.”
    “You give a good lecture,” Sandy told him.
    “I do, don’t I,” said Ibrahim.
    Sandy glanced at the tabletop. “You’re right, of course. As always. But it’s not the protocol I have a problem with. It’s that I’m being asked to argue for a position I’m not sure I entirely support.” She looked up, and met his gaze. “I’m arguing for Callay and the Federation to accept further asylum applications, perhaps even encourage more high-des GIs to come, if they wish. But I really don’t know how safe it is. Maybe we’re just lucky so far, that fifty-plus have come and they’re all relatively sane. But then there was Jane . . .”
    “Yet Jane was precisely what she was intended to be,” Ibrahim countered. “From a security standpoint, it’s the unstable ones we’re concerned of. If we know what they’re going to do, we can counter it, even if those intentions are bad. It’s the ones that pledge one thing, then change their minds, that do the most damage, and we haven’t had one of those yet.”
    “But you trust me so much,” Sandy said, leaning forward on the table. “And you should, because I’m yours, I’m Callay to the bone. But I’m being taken as a representative of my kind. Of GIs. And they’re not all like me. Some of them are assholes. Others are unstable. Some have poor or non-existent moral judgment. I’ve seen it, and sometimes it’s even made me doubt myself and what I am. You got lucky with me, and maybe with these others—the very fact that they wanted to come to the Federation in search of freedom shows they’re a self-selecting group. I don’t think you’ll get that lucky with the rest.”
    “So you’d like to argue for greater restrictions,” Ibrahim suggested, with a considered frown.
    “I’d like to argue for the very, very careful processing of asylum claims. This isn’t like accepting refugee claims from some poor sods from New Torah who only want a place to raise their kids in peace. GIs can’t have kids, we don’t think in terms of society so easily. Morality and ethics are all very sketchy, and even when strongly held, they’re shallow, easily manipulated.”
    She thought of Pyeongwha, of League uplink technology that rewrote human brain function. Was it the right time to raise that fear as well?
    “Then that’s what you should argue,” said Ibrahim. “These people will welcome a considered and even-handed argument. If you argued to trust every GI ever made, they’d respect you less.”
    “And in doing so I undermine my own advocacy for current policies,” Sandy finished. “Because you don’t win a policy argument by making the other side’s case for them.”
    “Politics does have that way of dividing the issue, then polarising each side,” Ibrahim admitted. “All that I can advise you is to always stand for the truth. The truth can be difficult, but if you have faith in the decency of people, and in the rightness of your cause, then it is the only option possible.”
    Sandy smiled. It was what Ibrahim did—resolve difficult issues with an appeal to moral certainties. You’re not in control, he reminded her. You can’t play the system. Just do your best, and the rest is up to fate. Or in Ibrahim’s case, to Allah.
    “That’s good advice,” she said. “I’ll remember it.”
    She rose to get up. “Cassandra,” he said. “One more thing. I may not be Director of the CSA for very much longer.”
    “Oh, no. The circulation fanatics aren’t finally winning, are they?”
    “Circulation” was what they called the natural cycle of top officials in big organisations, as the head stepped down and was replaced by the next in line. Before Callay’s troubles had begun, it had been the way things were done—the