Worldwired jc-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  And still the aliens continued their mechanistic ballet, taking no apparent notice of the cluster of spacesuited humans drifting like kewpie dolls alongside the — hull wasn't quite the right word, was it, for something whose inside and outside were delineated only by courtesy?

  Leslie glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing but the edge of his faceplate and the padded interior of the dorsal portion of his helmet. “Jen?”

  The pilot drifted up beside him, vapor trailing from her attitude jets. She stopped smartly. Of course, he thought, briefly envious of the reflexes that made her precision possible.

  He put the thought aside. Attractive, maybe, to have the speed to pick a bumblebee out of the air. But hardly necessary.

  “You rang?” she said. The lines that bound her to Jeremy came slack as the ethnolinguist drifted into the conversation.

  Leslie waved a hand at the birdcage. His suit made the gesture broad. “Do you want to make any preparations before we take the plunge?”

  He couldn't really tell through the gold-tinted shimmer of her faceplate, but he got the impression that she looked at him before she looked back at the alien ship. “I think maybe we shouldn't go all at once,” she answered.

  “I think maybe I should go alone,” Leslie offered. “I'll take my lines off.”

  “Dr. Tjakamarra, I cannot permit—” But he cut Lieutenant Peterson off with a second wave of his hand, and she fell reluctantly silent.

  “I'm unlikely to drift off into a gravity well from inside the birdcage, Lieutenant.”

  She coughed. “Your government would take it very amiss if we misplaced you, sir.”

  “I shall be most exquisitely bloody careful, sweetheart,” he said, and flashed her a dazzling smile. Which of course she had no chance of seeing.

  “I think I should go.” Not Casey, surprising him, but Charlie Forster. Leslie smiled. Charlie could no more sit on the sidelines for this than Leslie could. If the biologist were a hound, he would have been straining the leash.

  Peterson again: “Absolutely—”

  Leslie cleared his throat, making sure the suit mike was live before he did it. “Charlie? Elspeth's not here; you're in charge. What say we make it you and me, and the lieutenant and the master warrant can have our suits on override? That way, if they decide we don't know what we're doing, or if we look like we're about to go home the bloody hot way, they can yank us back on remote control?”

  Leslie was proud of himself. His voice didn't even shiver. He sounded confident and a little bit amused, and the silence that followed told him they were thinking about it seriously. He tilted his head down and counted breaths, watching the gray-smeared planet spin between his boots.

  If they'd been standing on the deck of the Montreal, Casey and Peterson would have been exchanging a long, opaque look. As it was, he was pretty sure they were burning up the private suit channels instead. He forced himself to breathe evenly — it wouldn't do him any good to pop a lung or wind up with nitrogen narcosis or… hell, he wasn't even sure what could go wrong if you were holding your breath in a space suit. And he was pretty sure he wasn't going to research it either. Some things, he was just as happy not knowing.

  “All right,” Casey said. “All right, Leslie. It's what we're here for”—and he could hear her knobby shoulders rolling in a shrug—“although I don't like you boys taking point.”

  “Somebody's got to,” Charlie said, while Leslie was still looking for the words. “And it's stupid to risk all of us. Just let us have control of the attitude jets unless it looks like we're getting into trouble. All right?”

  “Yeah,” Casey said, and Peterson said “Roger.” And Charlie turned his entire suit to look at Jeremy, as Corporal Letourneau drifted up beside him and started working the carabiners loose. “Jer? Dr. Kirkpatrick?”

  “You're goddamned welcome to it, old son,” Jeremy answered from a spot two meters behind Casey. “I'll be pleased to admit yours is bigger than mine. I'll float here and take pictures.”

  “Beauty,” Leslie answered, and unclipped the lines from his belt. The gloves made him fumble, but they hid the fact that his hands were shaking, and they kept him from having to look up, away from the spinning earth, in the direction that they were going. “Bob's your uncle. Here we go. Oh, bloody lovely, Jer; look at that.” The line still in his gauntlet, he pointed.

  “Les?” Jeremy slid past Jen Casey in an eddy of vapor and leaned on Leslie's shoulder. Miscalculated inertia set them spinning slowly, but Leslie grabbed Jeremy's gauntlet left-handed and got them both stable before Peterson had to intervene.

  He looked up at the astronauts and grinned, and this time he was sure they saw it, even through the helmet. “See? No worries. Piece of cake.”

  “Les, what did you see?”

  He pointed down again. “The Great Wall of China. Look.”

  The others looked, and exclaimed. “That used to be the only man-made object you could see from space, supposedly,” Jen said. “Before electric lights. Before the beanstalks.”

  “Pretty story,” Les answered.

  Charlie's chuckle cut him off. “Pity it's happy horse shit.”

  “Charles.” Leslie loaded his voice with teasing disapproval. He used his attitude jets to tilt himself forward, peering through the sunlit thin spot in the pall of dust to see if he could pick out that spider-fine thread again. He could, just barely. “It's not horse shit. It's a beginner story, is all.”

  “A beginner story?” Casey, the apt pupil. Of course.

  “A story that's part of the truth, but only the uncomplicated part,” Leslie explained. Which was a beginner story in itself, and the circularity pleased him almost as much as the tricksterish unfairness of it all.

  “Oh.” She paused, and he could almost feel her thinking. “So what else is man-made that you can see from space, then? That's not lights? Or beanstalks?”

  “The Sahara Desert,” Charlie answered. And before anybody could comment further, he moved forward, and Leslie stuck by his side as if they had planned it like that.

  Leslie already had that half-assed comparison of the birdcage to some sort of sacred site stuck in his mind when he and Charlie soared through the bars, leaving the rest of the EVA team behind. His cliché generator was ready with images of cathedrals and wild, holy places he'd seen, temples and ziggurats and the hush of mysticism, some animal part of his mind ready to be awed by the angle of sunlight through the bars of the cage.

  He couldn't have been more wrong.

  The interior of the birdcage hummed with energy, a feeling like a racetrack on Stakes day or a ship's bridge anticipating the order to fire. Electricity prickled the hairs on his arms, and for a moment he thought it was an actual static charge. He turned to see if Charlie's suit glowed blue with Saint Elmo's fire.

  Charlie had half-rotated toward Leslie, a fat white doll with a golden face, and their eyes met through the tint as if through mist. “You feel that.”

  “I feel something,” Leslie answered. “Like I stuck my finger in a light socket.”

  “Dr. Tjakamarra?” Lieutenant Peterson's voice over the suit radio, and Leslie lifted his hand to show he was all right, waved, and continued forward.

  “Something's happening,” Charlie said. “Jen, Jeremy? Do you detect any changes out there?”

  “Nothing to speak of,” Jeremy answered. “What sort of change am I looking for?”

  “It feels like we've entered some sort of an energy field,” Charlie said. Leslie tuned him out, listening to the conversation with only half an ear. “Check for anything in the electromagnetic spectrum. Any kind of leakage.”

  A silence. Leslie drifted incrementally forward, edging into the interior of the birdcage the same way he'd edge into a strange horse's paddock — slowly, calmly, but as if he had every right in the world, or out of it, to be there. The teardrop-shaped Benefactors glided soundlessly from bar to bar, some of them passing within tens of meters, and still seemed to take no notice. The prickling on h
is skin intensified. He glanced about, at the cage, the obliviously moving aliens, at the slick sheen of mercury-like substance that covered the armature of the birdcage. It was visually identical to the substance of the enormous droplet-shaped aliens, and, in fact, when they touched down on one of the beams, they became indistinguishable from it. They slid along the structure like droplets of water along the wires of a wet birdcage, and passed over and through each other like waves, whether they met moving about the armature or sailing through the space inside.

  “Nothing's leaking out this way,” Jeremy said. “I can't answer for what's going on inside the birdcage, though. The whole thing could be a sort of—”

  “Massive Faraday cage?”

  “Or something, yes.”

  “Leslie? Charlie?” Jen Casey's voice. She sounded worried; Leslie wondered if someone might be waving at Charlie and himself from their entrance point, but he wasn't about to turn around and look. Leslie craned his head back, trying to get a look directly “up,” toward the top of the armature.

  “I hear you, Jen.” Charlie sounded a little odd, too, which wasn't surprising, if his skin was responding to the same storm-prickle Leslie felt. “What's wrong?”

  “Richard says the nanite chatter is increasing. I think maybe you should come back.”

  They turned to each other again, Leslie and Charlie, and Leslie saw the question in Charlie's eyes. Leslie's hands spread reflexively inside his gauntlets as another shiver slithered up his back.

  “We've already made history,” Charlie said.

  “And so what if we have? We haven't learned anything yet.”

  The flash of Charlie's teeth showed through the tint in his faceplate. “Jen,” he said, “we're going to head out to the middle of this thing at least—”

  “Charlie, that's another klick. Maybe a klick and a half.”

  “Nothing ventured,” Leslie said, and gave Charlie a thumbs-up before he kicked his maneuvering jets on. “Jen, remind me on the way back out—”

  “If you get back out,” she interrupted, but he heard grudging approval in her tone.

  “Hey, this is your harebrained scheme, sweetheart.”

  She laughed. “All right, Les. Remind you what?”

  “Remind me to get a sample of the fluid on the birdcage when we pass by it again, would you? Maybe have Corporal Letourneau run back to the Buffy Sainte-Marie and pick up some sort of sterile containment vessel?” He turned, watching another raindrop slide along another wire. He had to remind himself that the scale was skyscraper beams and elephants at a kilometer or better, and not spiderwebs wet with dew that he could reach out and brush away with his gauntleted hand.

  “We had a probe try that, remember? Hydrogen and nanites.”

  “Oh, right.” He rolled his eyes at his own obtuseness.

  A pause, as if Jenny discussed the problem of samples with Letourneau over local channels, and then the crackle of her voice. “We'll try a magnetic bottle this time; maybe it'll make a difference. Hey guys, are you noticing a lot of static on this channel all of a sudden?”

  “I'm noticing more lightning-storm skin prickles, too,” Charlie said. “I wonder if it's true that you can feel lightning ionizing a path before it hits you.”

  “Doctors.” The lieutenant again. “I really think the Benefactor activity is picking up. I would feel much better if you two came back—”

  And then Jenny's voice, sharp with fear, urgent and clipped. “Putain! Charlie, move. That thing's coming right at you!”

  Leslie's head snapped up, not that it helped him in the slightest. He turned in the suit, faster than the gyros could handle, and reached for Charlie's arm. His grab failed; instead, he sent himself tumbling, and slapped hard at the autostabilize button on his chest, hoping the suit's gyroscopes would suffice to level him out. Spread out. Make yourself broad and flat. Don't scrunch up; it will just make you spin faster—

  It was working. He tried to catch a glimpse of Charlie and could only see rippling silver, one of the teardrop aliens, close enough that its fluid side towered like a battleship overhead. Whatever Casey shouted dissolved into the deafening crackle of static. Ionization prickled over his skin, sharp enough to sting.

  He closed his eyes so he wouldn't struggle against the suit in panic or by reflex, spread-eagled himself against the void, and allowed his inertial systems to bring him safely to rest. He couldn't hear anything but static over the radio, and then even the static cut off, leaving him in silence. But at least he hadn't bounced off the birdcage's superstructure. Yet. And he thought he had stopped tumbling.

  Cautiously, Leslie opened his eyes.

  And a bloody good thing, too, because there was Charlie, not too far off, spread-eagled just as Leslie was and coming toward him much too fast and on a direct collision course. Leslie raised his hand, reached for the other emergency switch — the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here one — and froze as the other spacesuited figure echoed the gesture precisely.

  Oh, bloody hell.

  His own reflection, in the side of a bubble of liquid silver, broke over him with the force of a ten-foot wave.

  Tobias Hardy probably had two hundred different fifteen-thousand-dollar suits, and Constance Riel hated every single goddamned one of them. She hated the way he had them tailored to make his shoulders look broader, and she hated the complicated manner in which somebody was paid to fold the handkerchief that always matched his tie.

  If he had an image consultant, the man should be fired.

  Unfortunately, unlike Riel's ability to keep her job, Hardy's ability to keep his wasn't dictated by any arcane metric of approachability multiplied by sober respectability and personal charisma. Which was a pity; the world might be a nicer place if “corporate raider” were a popularity contest.

  Still, Riel had to credit Hardy with a certain piranha-like honesty. He was exactly what he seemed to be, shiny scales and teeth and a voracious appetite, with the power to stuff just about anything that he chose into his maw.

  General Janet Frye was a more complicated matter. And one far more likely to make Riel's lip curl. Because Frye should have been an ally and instead she'd placed herself firmly on the other side of the equation.

  No matter how Frye justified herself, if she even bothered with justifications anymore. Riel hung considerable pride on her ability to read people, to understand what their prices were, what they thought their prices were, and what their pride demanded they pretend while they were selling themselves. And right now, eyeing Frye levelly over her own folded hands, leaning both elbows on her salvaged desk, Constance Riel was 70 percent certain that Frye had already sold her self-respect. She just wished she knew for what.

  Riel contemplated her for several seconds, waiting to see if Frye would glance down or blush. Hardy shifted from one foot to the other, the gesture of a man who is not accustomed to being kept waiting, and so Riel gave him another fifteen seconds before she let her gaze flick to meet his. She leaned back in her chair and offered him her most professional, most soulless smile. “Mr. Hardy. You seem determined to force me to utter words I never in my wildest imagination supposed that I would say.”

  The little suppressed twitch of his lips showed her that he thought he'd won a concession, even if he didn't know which one yet, and she let him coast on the assumption. “Does that mean you'll consider my offer to buy Canada out of the Vancouver?”

  Riel gripped the edge of her desk and stood. “Calisse de chrisse. No, Toby. It means dealing with you makes me miss Alberta fucking Holmes. I'm not giving you the Vancouver. I'm certainly not giving you any pilots that aren't under government oversight, even when we do get some more trained.”

  She came around her desk, daring Frye not to give ground before her. Frye stepped out of the way, the hunch of her shoulders ruining the line of her coat.

  “The simple fact of the matter, Mr. Hardy, is that Unitek needs Canada more than Canada needs Unitek.” And thank you for that small mercy, Richard. Thank you very much.r />
  Frye cleared her throat. “You can't run Canada like a dictatorship, Prime Minister. Parliament has a say in our course of actions. Especially when your ill-conceived meddling in international affairs has left us on the brink of war.”

  “Just because we're not shooting, General, doesn't mean we're not over the brink already. I'd think that was a mistake you would be unlikely to make.” It was too early for Scotch, unfortunately, because the dusty crystal decanter on the sideboard had never looked so good. Resolutely, Riel turned her back on it. “You're right about one thing—”

  Frye's head tilted, light catching on her hair.

  “—I'm not a dictator. In fact, I'm not even a president. So why don't you see if you can't get with a coalition and arrange to get my ass kicked downstairs, and you can warm that chair over there yourself. And then if you want to hand PanChina the keys to the castle, you can do it on your own watch.”

  Frye paused, settled back on her heels, and Riel propped her ass against the desk, crossed her ankles and her arms, and gave the opposition that smooth-faced smile one more goddamned time, thinking careful, Connie, or your face might freeze that way.

  “Ma'am. You know I can't do that.”

  “Yes. I know that very well.” Riel didn't look down, and neither did the general.

  Hardy stood beside them, his brow furrowed at being balked. He shot Frye a glance that spoke volumes. She never flickered. Unitek — Tobias Hardy — could buy and sell Canada. Hell, could buy and sell most of the commonwealth, when it came right down to it. But, goddamn it, it was still Canada that made the laws.

  “Janet.” Riel softened her voice, created a framework that brought Frye in and pushed Hardy out, even as he came forward as if to shoulder between the two women. The stare that locked them was too much for him to break, however, and he fell back.

  “Prime Minister?”

  “I'm going to declare war on China if they cannot be made to pay restitution and admit wrongdoing. I will give the process a chance, you understand, and I pray to God that we figure out how to talk to the Benefactors first. But I want you to understand.”