Worldwired

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Or, more precisely, I have perfect control.”

  “I, we. Which is another thing. Can't we make some hay out of PanChina having a worldwire of its own?”

  “Well . . .” he began, “what they have is not exactly a worldwire. What they've got is a bigger version of the limited networks we started off with, much more protected, not self-propagating . . .”

  “And not self-aware.”

  “We hope.”

  “Ah, Richard. I'd like to extend the offer of Canadian citizenship to you.” She raised her hand before he could comment, shaking her head so that dark curls brushed her ears and collar. “Don't jump up and say no. Think about it. For one thing, it would do wonders toward confirming your legal personhood. For another, there's the matter of our suit against China in the World Court, and the question of whether AIs can testify.”

  Richard patted his hands against his thighs to a bossa nova beat. “Wait until somebody figures out that the nanite infestation falls under the third Kyoto and the second Kiev environmental accords, and that it's a violation of both. Potentially harmful particulate contamination of international ocean waters. That's us.”

  “An environmental lawsuit is the least of our problems.” Riel rubbed her eyes and stifled a yawn. “I have to sleep if I'm going to be pretty on camera tomorrow. In thirty seconds, Richard, outline your plan of attack.”

  “Easy.” He held up his spidery fingers and ticked off goals one at a time. “One, mitigate climate changes. Two, mitigate extinctions. Three, protect individual human lives. Four, try to help the team talking to the Benefactors. Meanwhile, you set up a world government, get the Chinese under control, keep the rest of the commonwealth in line behind us, and figure out how to revitalize a collapsed world economy. Does that sound like an equitable division of labor to you, Madam Prime Minister?”

  “It sounds like I'd better get busy,” she said, and reached up to touch the connection off. Her hand hesitated a centimeter from her earpiece. “Richard. We'll have population problems if the death rate drops.”

  And the AI sighed and laced his fingers together. “The death rate's not going to drop, Constance. The trick is going to be keeping a significant percentage of humanity alive.”

  1110 hours

  Friday September 28, 2063

  HMCSS Montreal

  Earth orbit

  I'm just finishing my PT, wiping the sweat off my face onto one of the Montreal's rough, unbleached cotton towels, when Richard starts talking in my head. “Captain Wainwright would like to see you when you're free, Jen.”

  Thanks, Dick. Is this good news or bad news?

  “Ellie asked about EVA plans, as you requested, so your guess is as good as mine.”

  Your guess is as good as most people's certainty, Dick. I head for the locker room, tossing the towel overhand at the laundry chute as I go by. If the chute had a net, it would sink with a swish. The Montreal's variable, lighter-than-earth grav takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it it's pretty darn sexy. Puts a spring in your step. Except you have to work twice as hard to stay in shape. Dammit.

  “She doesn't see fit to keep the AI apprised of everything.”

  No, but she's catching on pretty quick to using you as an intercom. The locker room is empty, midwatch, except for one master corporal who is leaned into her locker, curling her hair in the mirror. I peel off my sweat-drenched tank top, kick my sweats aside, and step into the shower.

  I feel him shrug. “It costs me almost nothing in terms of resources, and if it leads her closer to accepting me, it's a very small price to pay.”

  The water's metered, but it's steamy. The hot water pipes run alongside the outflow pipes for the reactor coolant. Nothing wasted on a starship, especially not heat. I get wet, wait for the water to kick off, and lather up with a handful of gritty soap. Think she's gonna go for it?

  “I think you're going to have a fight on your hands.”

  Tell me something new about my life. I punch the button for another metered blast of spray and scrub the suds out of my hair, turning one quick pirouette to get the last of the lather off my skin. The master corporal is long gone by the time I thumb lock open my locker and dress in the crisp rifle green that makes me look like a red ant in a nest of black ones when I'm out among the air force types. There's something else that stands out about me once I'm dressed; the sidearm pressed to my right hip. Valens never rescinded his order to keep it within reach.

  I slick my damp hair back—neat and under control— and stuff the comb into the vinyl hanging pocket beside a mirror small enough to only show half my face at a time. Damn, I'm still not used to wearing this face. You'd think I would be, by now. It's been almost a year.

  Richard's presence shifts in my head. “You want to get out there as badly as I do,” he says.

  “Do you think it's worth the risk, Dick?” Out loud, provoking a smile in spite of myself. I unholster my sidearm and check the plastic loads, designed to squish flat against the Montreal's hull instead of punching a hole and letting the vacuum outside in. Or the air inside out, more accurately.

  “What risk?”

  The risk of provoking the Benefactors somehow? The pistol's weirdly light in my hand. I replace the clip, make sure the safety's latched, and slide the weapon back into its holster, securing the snap. I can't look at it anymore without remembering Captain Wainwright pointing one very much like it at me. Without remembering Gabe's daughter Leah, and the fury I feel that I can't even pretend her death was the kind of stupid goddamned waste that kids dead in war are supposed to be. Goddamn it.

  If it's futile, at least you don't feel guilty getting mad.

  My hand falls away from the holster. If I never have to touch a weapon again, it will be too fucking soon.

  Richard rubs his long, gaunt hands together, fingers mobile as the sticks of a fan. “That's the thing, Jen. We stand just as much of a chance of infuriating them by doing nothing as we do by wandering over and knocking on the door. We just can't know.”

  Besides. We're both going nuts sitting on our asses.

  “Correction. You are going nuts sitting on your ass. I am shoveling like Hercules in the Aegean stable, and to about as much effect.”

  Maybe you need to divert a river.

  I feel him pause. That never happens. Richard exists on a level of teraflops per femtowhatsit, words that Gabe throws around like they mean something, but which promptly fall out of my head and go splat all over the floor. Whatever, Dick thinks a hell of a lot faster than I do, even with my amped-up brain—although Dick will be the first to claim he doesn't necessarily think better. The practical application is that when Richard pauses in conversation, it's to be polite, or to seem human, or to give us meat types a chance to catch up.

  This is different. He's hit a dead halt, and he's thinking. I can feel it. Feel the seconds ticking over like boulders gathering momentum down a hill. Dick? What did I say?

  “A river,” he says, that topographic smile rearranging his face like plate tectonics. This one's at least a 6.5. “Ma'am, I do believe you've just given me an idea.”

  And you're going to sit there and look smug about it, too, aren't you?

  “I want to run some simulations first.” The sensation of his virtual hug is like a passing breeze brushing my shoulders. “I've been looking at the problem the wrong way. When change is inevitable, the solution isn't to fight it, but to work inside the new system and learn to live in the world that's changed.”

  I've heard cruder versions of that sentiment.

  He laughs, twisting his head on his long papery neck. “You look beautiful. Now go beard the captain in her den.”

  “Great, the AI's blind as well as insane.” But he can feel my grin as I can feel his, and together we move spinwise and in-wheel, toward the captain's conference room.

  Wainwright looks up, glowering, as I duck through the hatch and dog it behind me. Momma bear with only one cub, and I square myself inside the door and wait
for her to indicate my next move.

  We have a funny relationship, Captain Wainwright and me.

  She shuffles papers across her interface panel and stows them in a transparent folder mounted on her desk. You never can tell if the gravity will last from minute to minute, or so they say, although I've never seen it fail. She sighs and stands up, coming around the desk, as starched and pressed as me and eight inches shorter. “I want to thank you for not springing your radical idea on me in front of the scientists, ma'am.”

  “I think Elspeth and Richard deserve equal credit, ma'am.”

  Arms folded over her chest ruin the line of her uniform. She tilts her head back to stare me in the eye. It doesn't cost her a fraction of her authority. “I'm sharp enough to know who the suicidal lunatic on my ship is, Master Warrant Officer.”

  Eyes fixed straight ahead, pretending I can't see the little curl twitching the corner of her lip. “Yes, ma'am.”

  “So what do you think sending astronauts over there will accomplish that our drones and probes haven't?”

  I shrug. “Pique their interest, ma'am? It's not so much about information retrieval—we've done and can do that remotely. It's about letting them know we do want to talk to them.”

  She doesn't answer; just looks at me, and then looks down and plays with the stuff on her desk. “You're going to go out there and make me proud in front of our new guests. Aren't you?”

  “Yes. Ma'am.”

  “Good.” She steps back, her hands dropping to her sides, standing tall. “At ease, Casey. I'm done yelling at you.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” But this time I let her hear the humor in it.

  She nods, then shakes her head and taps her knuckle on her chin. “Casey, you're a shit disturber. You know that?”

  “It's a gift, ma'am.” As I let my shoulders relax, my hands curl naturally against my thighs.

  She sighs and rubs her palms together. “You've proved your instincts to me—”

  “But?” The hesitation is implicit in the lift-and-drop of her gaze. She doesn't quite meet mine directly. We're thinking of the same thing; me refusing a direct order, at gunpoint, and making that refusal stick. And I was right, dammit. And she knows I was right. And I think she's grateful I was right, deep down in the light-starch, creased-trouser depths of her military soul.

  But it kind of fucks up the superior/subordinate thing, and we're both still working our asses off trying to pretend it doesn't matter. “There is no but,” she says, after a longer wait than I'm comfortable with. “As long as I know I can trust you.”

  “You can trust me to take good care of your ship, ma'am. And your crew.”

  “And Canada?”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “Consider it said anyway.” She's working up to something. She looks at me again, and this time doesn't look away. “I think Genie Castaign should enter the pilot program,” she says. “She's already partially acclimated to the Benefactor tech, her unaugmented reflexes are at least as good as her sister's, she gets along with the Feynman AI, and she's bright. I want you to talk to her father. He'll take it better from you.”

  “Captain—”

  “I didn't ask for your opinion, Casey.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” The ship's spinning. And all I can feel is Leah, there in my arms and then gone.

  They used to say give one child to the army, one to the priesthood, and try to keep one alive. Gabriel only has one daughter left. Wainwright's gaze doesn't drop from mine. “Yes, ma'am.” I know I'm stammering. Know there's nothing else I can say. And Gabe won't even hate me for it, because he's army, too, and because Gabe knows. “She's too young still to induct.”

  “Get her started on the training. We'll take her when she's fourteen.” She stretches, and ruthlessness falls off her shoulders like a feather dancer's cloak. “Come on. It's time for the meeting. Let's go see if there are any canapés.”

  Toronto Evacuation Zone

  Ontario, Canada

  Friday 28 September 2063

  1100 hours

  Snow is supposed to be a benediction. A veil of white like a wedding dress, concealing whatever sins lie beneath.

  Frost on the chopper's window melted under Valens's touch. He leaned against the glass, his shoulder to Constance Riel, who sat similarly silent and hunched on the port side. They both looked down, ignoring the pilot and the other passengers.

  The snow covering the remains of Toronto lay not like a veil, but like a winding-sheet—one landscape that even winter couldn't do much for. He stared at it, trying not to see it, careful never quite to focus his eyes.

  The prime minister stirred. She shifted closer to Valens, closer to the center of the helicopter, as if unconsciously seeking warmth. He glanced at her. Her trained politician's smile had thinned to a hard line in her bloodless face, and her head oscillated just enough that her hair shifted against her neck.

  “It doesn't look any better than it did at Christmas. I thought it would look better by now.” She glanced first at him and then down. She retrieved her purse from the seat, dug for a stick of gum he didn't think she really wanted, offered him one that he didn't accept. She folded hers into her mouth and sat back. “Did you feel it in Hartford, Fred?”

  “I felt the floor jump,” he said, carefully looking out the window and not at Riel. “It woke me. The sound came seconds later. It sounded like—” Words failed. Like a mortar.

  You never hear the one that gets you.

  And then, unbidden, Georges wouldn't have felt anything at all. He nodded, remembering the rise and fall of solid earth, the thump of the bedframe jolting against the wall. “It woke me.”

  “I was closer,” she said. “It knocked me down. I saw the fireball first, of course. If I'd had any sense, I would have sat down.” She shrugged. “You're not really looking, are you, Fred?”

  “Of course I am.” And so he wouldn't be lying, he forced himself to look. To really look, at the unseasonable snow that lay in dirty swirls and hummocks over what looked at first glance like a rock field, at the truncated root of the CN Tower rising on the waterfront like the stump of a lightning-struck tree. Surprisingly, the tower had survived the earthquake, according to the forensic report of the engineers who had toured the Evac during the recovery phase. It had not survived the tsunami, nor the bombardment with meter-wide chunks of debris. Around it, lesser structures had been leveled to ragged piles of broken masonry and jutting pieces of steel.

  Valens lifted his gaze as the chopper came around, and frowned toward the horizon. The frozen water of Lake Ontario would have been blinding in the sun, if the light that fell through the haze weren't watery and wan, and if the ice itself weren't streaked brown and gray like agate with ejecta. “A park,” he said, looking down at his hands. He folded his fingers together. He never had worn a wedding band; rings annoyed him. “What on earth makes you think you can turn this into a park?”

  “What the hell else do we do with it?” She turned over her shoulder. An aide and two Mounties sat in the next row back, so hushed with the terrible awe of the Impact that Valens had almost forgotten them. “Coffee, please? Fred, how about you?”

  He shook his head as the aide poured steaming fluid from a thermos, filling the helicopter with the rich, acidic smell. He didn't know how she could stomach anything, but judging by the gauntness of her face she needed it for medicinal purposes as much as the comfort of something warm.

  Valens chafed his hands against his uniform, trying to warm them. Riel glanced over, but sipped her coffee rather than comment. She repeated herself, not a rhetorical question this time. “What the hell else are we going to do with it?”

  “Rebuild,” Valens answered, though his gut twisted. “It's . . .” He shrugged. “Hiroshima, Mumbai, Dresden—”

  “You're saying you don't just pack it in and go home?”

  “Something like that. Besides, every city needs a nice big park.” Dryly enough that she chuckled before she caught herself. He tipped his head
and lowered his voice, but kept talking. “Constance, do you know who Tobias Hardy is?”

  “Yes,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning down. “Your old boss Alberta Holmes's old boss. Christ, I thought we had Unitek's fingers out of the Montreal's pie.”

  “You could always seize it—” He shifted against the side panel of the helicopter. It dug painfully into his shoulder, and he was stiff from sitting. He wasn't as young as he used to be.

  “I could,” she answered. “But we need Unitek's money, frankly, and their Mars base. And we don't need them running off to play with PanChina or PanMalaysia or the Latin American Union or the European Union because Canada and the commonwealth took our puck and sticks and went home.”

  “You think they would?” Her gaze met his archly. She didn't inconvenience herself to reply, and Valens rolled his lower lip between his teeth before he nodded. “It's not the done thing to say so, Prime Minister. But I want some kind of retribution for that.” He gestured to the wasteland, but his gesture meant more—PanChina, Unitek, sabotage, and betrayal. “That's not the kind of blow you can turn the other cheek on and maintain credibility.”

  Her sigh ruffled the oily black surface of her coffee, chasing broken rainbows across it. “I know. We try the legal route first.”

  “Forgive an old soldier's skepticism.”

  She gave him an eyebrow and turned again, looking out the window, leaning away from whatever she saw under the snow. “You're not the only one who's skeptical. But we're showing we're civilized. And we've managed to stall the hell out of their space program, since they can't know how limited Richard's ability to hack their network is. So we have the jump on them when it comes to getting a colony ship launched . . . once we figure out if we can get one past the Benefactors without them blowing it to bits.”

  “We could try a Polish mine detector.”