Worldwired

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Exactly.”

  “Except we have another problem,” he said, as a new pattern of movement in the nanotech layer drew his attention. “I think they're taking the space suits apart.”

  “Dick? Can you do something?”

  “I'm on it, Elspeth.” And he was. Moving, his improvised—the phrase you're avoiding is “slapped together,” Dick—code compiled and ready, a best-guess and nothing he would have wanted to stake his own life on, let alone anyone else's. “Look, can you get Jeremy up there? I need the two of you to distract somebody.”

  It's always easier to get forgiveness than permission, he told himself, and woke up Jenny and Min-xue.

  The magnitude of the problem was evident when Valens walked into the prime minister's office. He read it in the set of her shoulders as she stood leaning against the wall and how her hands coiled around the mug she held like a shield before her chest.

  “Are we going to war?” Perhaps not the most politic question, but Valens's relationship with Riel had come to be characterized by a certain bluntness.

  “Not with the Chinese,” she said. “The Benefactors may be another matter. They've captured two of the researchers.”

  Valens's heart dropped into his belly, even though he knew Patty hadn't been on the EVA team. “Who?”

  “Forster and Tjakamarra.”

  “Damn. Charlie . . .” And then he paused. “Captured?”

  “That's what Richard and Alan think.”

  “It occurs to me, Prime Minister,” he said, and crossed the room to the decanter three-quarters full of Scotch, “that we're becoming entirely too dependent on ‘Richard-and-Alan-say.'”

  “That hasn't escaped my notice either, General.” Riel's voice was dry, bittersweet. He didn't turn to see her expression; he could picture it well enough. The decanter was heavy, crystal cut in a crosshatched pattern cool and rough under his fingers. He filled a tumbler, two fingers, as she continued. “You were about to comment on the capture of two of our leading scientists, unless I misread you.”

  Valens stared into the dark amber fluid, but did not taste it. “When was the last time you misread somebody, Connie?”

  “I think it was your friend Casey, now that you mention it.”

  “Casey's not my friend,” he answered, and now he did raise the glass, and ran the Scotch under his nose. It smelled of smoke and peat; it tasted like sugared fire when he touched it to his lips. “There can't be too much of this left in the world.”

  “We'll be reduced to Kentucky bourbon when it's gone,” she answered. “Enjoy it while you can.”

  “I should examine the details more closely before I jump to any conclusions regarding Charlie and Dr. Tjakamarra and the Benefactors,” he said. He turned back to face Riel, propping himself against the sideboard. She was still holding her coffee mug, staring out the window.

  “The data will be made available to you.”

  “Good. How did your meeting with Frye and the odious Mr. Hardy go?”

  She shrugged. “Toby's going to try a power play. Or perhaps just flatly sell us out to the highest bidder. Frye can still be managed, though.”

  “You're certain?”

  “Don't be foolish.” Her hands dropped to her side. She kept the mug upright, but he heard the coffee slosh. She crossed to the window, standing behind the drapes as she twitched them aside. She stared out for a moment and then turned and looked back at him, frowning. “Of course I'm not certain. But that's besides the point; she can be used, and I intend to use her. I think I have the opposition figured out, Fred.”

  “You're enough of a bitch to leave me hanging like that, too, unless I ask.” He softened it with a smile. She chuckled.

  She crossed the room and set her mug on the edge of her desk, then began re-arranging her clutter away from the access surfaces of the interface plate. “Fred, did it ever occur to you that we might lose?”

  Somehow, he knew what she meant. Not her government, not Canada. But the whole human race, Earth and everybody on it. “Some days, Connie, I think maybe we already have. Some days I think it's kinder that way, and maybe we're too dumb and self-destructive to live.”

  “And yet we keep kicking and shouting.”

  “And scheming. It's in the blood.”

  She raised her eyes to his, and tilted her head, her dark hair sticking and sliding across her forehead. “The PanChinese premier is being set up for a coup. His minister of war is behind it, and Tobias Hardy is bankrolling the whole damned thing.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Do you mean, can I prove it?” She walked past him and poured herself a stiff Scotch of her own, rolling the fluid around on her tongue for a moment before she swallowed. “No. It's a stone cold hunch. But I'm willing to bet Premier Xiong will be dead or in a labor camp by the end of the year. And it may very well wind up looking like Canada's fault.”

  Genie sat very quietly in her chair in the corner of the bridge, hoping Papa wouldn't notice her and send her away. Jenny had seen her, raised an eyebrow and winked on the side of her face where her scars used to be, and now seemed to be making a little game of keeping Papa's attention away from Genie, teasing him, keeping his hands busy on the console. In the ready room, on the other side of the airtight hatch, Patty was doing . . . something. Nobody had explained to Genie what was going on.

  But nobody had been able to conceal his worry either. And she did think it was weird that both pilots were hanging out by the bridge when Wainwright wasn't there. Jenny said once that out of Leah and Genie, Genie got the curiosity for both girls, and Leah got the stubborn. Genie didn't really think that Leah had been all that much more stubborn than Genie. But that was Aunt Jenny, and Genie supposed she had a right to her point of view.

  Besides, Jenny wasn't very much like a grown-up, most of the time. And often a willing coconspirator, although not as much fun as Elspeth. Still, when Genie snuck mouselike out of her chair, and Jenny's eye caught her as she turned, Genie wasn't surprised at all when Jenny cleared her throat and leaned forward to ask Papa a question about whatever he was doing with the holographic computer interface, his fingers flying like bee's wings through the projected images as he shuffled code.

  Normally, Genie loved to watch him work. He coded like some people danced, glitter-eyed concentration and confident grace and never a hesitation. But now she turned her back on him and edged toward the ready-room hatchway, and undogged it silently, and opened it just wide enough for a twig of a girl to slip through. She made sure it shut behind her without clanging, but Patty heard her, of course, just like Jenny would have, or Leah.

  Patty turned around too quickly and tripped on the carpet, but she caught herself without ever lowering her arms. Her fingers were tangled up in her hair, a comb in her teeth, and she looked like she was about to cry. She let her hair fall around her shoulders and took the comb out of her teeth and fixed Genie with a black-eyed glare. “Just tell them I'll be out in a second, would you? I can't get my damned braid to work. I should probably just cut all my hair off like Jenny—” All on a rush, and Genie thought it was only dignity that kept her from kicking the wall.

  “They didn't send me,” she said. “It's okay. Papa's busy, and Aunt Jenny's keeping him that way.”

  “So what do you want?”

  Genie blinked at the cold hostility in her tone. It didn't scare her. Instead, it sparked a warm kind of competition. She grinned exactly the grin that would have driven Leah out of her tree, and came a few steps farther into the room. She knew what Elspeth would have said, after all. Elspeth would have said that Patty was scared and worried about failing, and that she didn't mean to snap at Genie—it was just that Genie was there.

  Genie took a breath and laced her hands in front of her hips, trying to look small and not too threatening. “I came to ask if I could help you braid your hair.”

  Patty blinked at her, the comb forgotten in her hand. “Do you know how?”

  “Sure. I used to do Leah's all t
he time. Give me the comb.” She said it a little peremptorily, the way Elspeth would have, and held out her hand. Patty, a funny expression compressing the corners of her mouth, handed it over and sat down.

  When that Chinese guy tapped on the hatch cover and then peered in, Genie was just twisting the elastic around the end. Before Patty got out of the chair, Genie touched the interface port at the base of her skull. “Doesn't that hurt?” Ignoring the Chinese pilot's shiny black eyes. He didn't lean through the hatchway. If the ship's pressure dropped, the decompression doors would slam down like axes across chicken necks.

  “It feels funny,” Patty said, and stood up, and moved toward the door, but not before she grabbed Genie's hand and gave it a quick, painful squeeze.

  Genie followed her out, far enough behind that anybody watching Patty walk toward the black leather pilot's chair wouldn't see her. Her luck didn't hold; Papa's blue eyes fastened on her, and a half-distracted frown tugged the sides of his mouth, but he didn't say anything. She dogged the door very carefully, and he looked away, watching Aunt Jenny strap Patty into the pilot's chair and seat the two snakelike control cables at the base of her spine and at the back of her neck.

  Patty went limp in Jenny's arms when the cords were plugged in, and Jenny very carefully closed her eyelids so that her eyes wouldn't dry out. She laid Patty back in the chair and swung her feet up so her blood would circulate evenly—Genie knew the reasons for all of it; Jenny had started teaching her, a little, and Leah had already taught her a little more.

  And Patty's voice, or something sort of like Patty's voice, but different from it in the same way Genie's own voice sounded different in her head as opposed to how it sounded in a tape recorder, said softly over the bridge speakers, “I'm inside, ma'am. And Alan's right here with me. We're ready when you are.”

  “Where's the captain?” Papa said, looking up only long enough to chase Genie into an observer's seat with his eyes.

  “In her cabin, Mr. Castaign.” That was Alan's voice, cooler and less inflected than Richard's, almost chilly. “And the first officer is in conference with Dr. Kirkpatrick and Dr. Dunsany, as arranged. We should have at least a fifty-minute window, unless he catches on too fast.”

  “Finally,” Aunt Jenny said, glancing up, catching Papa's eyes across the open floor space between them. “An advantage to the skeleton crew we've been running on since December.”

  “We had to find one some time, chérie. Has it occurred to you that you're making a career of hijacking starships?”

  Aunt Jenny snorted, looking down at her hands. The smile that crinkled the corners of Papa's eyes made Genie feel weird inside, and she looked at Patty instead. That didn't help any; Patty was so still she was barely breathing. Jenny reached down and smoothed the braid over Patty's shoulder, stroking it one extra time as if to be sure it was going to lay flat. “Okay, Patty,” she said, and looked at Min-xue, who was standing by the main hatch to the bridge. “Hit it, girl.”

  Giving up, Genie looked at the big holoscreen front and center in the bridge displays, instead. And swallowed hard.

  Because the Montreal was moving, her sails unfurling like wind-taut kites to catch sunlight—and laser light from the antimeteor protocols of the orbital platforms—gliding toward the birdcage ship, a shark cutting water without a ripple or a flicker of fin.

  Patty let the Montreal's solar sails unfold, light striking their golden mesh surfaces with a sensation remarkably like a stiff breeze tugging her sleeves, if she held her arms like a tall ship's bowsprit and leaned into the wind. The birdcage grew in perspective slowly; her enhanced reflexes triggered when she linked to the Montreal's VR systems, and she was thinking nearly as fast as Alan now. It made the unwired world drag.

  “Perhaps a slight exaggeration, Patricia,” he said in her ear, in cool tones that went with the swirl of blues and greens that comprised his icon.

  She conjured her own avatar to stand beside him in the virtual space of the Montreal's core. Her icon was the golden robot-girl, like a suit of armor with softly glowing blue-green eyes, perfectly invulnerable. “Maybe just a little.”

  Alan didn't laugh the way Richard did, or have a face to crinkle up in delighted lines, but his colors shifted in the manner she'd learned meant amusement. She felt more comfortable with his inhuman icon, in any case. Richard's semblance of being a real person made her as jittery as she would have been in the presence of any older, smarter man.

  The coolest thing about being the Montreal's pilot was the way the ship became her body, long and smooth and powerful. She could worry about support and angle of thrust and oxygen ratios and carbon cycles and the balance of nutrients needed to keep the nanomachines functioning throughout the big ship's systems, and the fact that Alan was only half-done rewiring the ship's systems and it made things a little funky, working through the worldwire rather than over the hardlines as she'd been trained. She could worry about those things, and not whether she was too tall or too fat or her hair was too frizzy or if the zit beside her nose was as big as it felt, or—

  She focused down, orchestrating the Montreal's motion with the same kinetic sense she used to control her own body leaping or twisting. She shoved the thought of Genie's giant bright lost eyes into the same box where she kept the memories of Leah, Carver, her mother and father, and Papa Georges. Her mother would have said it wasn't good to dwell. Her mother would have said—

  Her mother would have said to concentrate on her work, and on the important thing, which was saving Charlie and Dr. Tjakamarra. And Papa Fred would have grinned at her sideways, in that way he had of grinning without moving his mouth, and winked, and she would have known that he thought she could do it.

  Well, Jenny thought she could do it. And Mr. Castaign did, too. And if Papa Fred were here . . .

  Well, if Papa Fred were here, he'd probably have a gun out and be arresting everybody on the bridge. “Mr. Castaign?” she asked, careful to key the loudspeakers only on the bridge. “We'll be reaching the birdcage in approximately fifteen minutes. I'm using the solar sails to brake us; the Benefactor ship's own orbital momentum will carry it ‘under' us, and we can dump our relative vee and sort of . . . hang just ‘behind' it. Is that cool?”

  She flinched inwardly. Way to sound like a kid, Patty. And when she'd been doing so well.

  “That's perfect, Patty. Stand by to flash the Benefactor nanites—Alan? Or Dick?”

  “We're both here, Gabriel. On your signal.”

  Jenny Casey and Min-xue had already left the bridge; they hustled through the Montreal's passages. Alan and Patty tracked them through security motes and information relayed to the worldwire by their own bodies. Patty unlocked the air lock to the shuttlecraft Ashley MacIsaac a few meters in advance of them. They shinnied into the shuttle, Casey manually uncoupling her from the Montreal while Min-xue ran for the controls. The Montreal was still braking; the Ashley MacIsaac drifted forward, free of the starship. The mote sensors networking the Montreal's hull reported a flush of heat when the Ashley MacIsaac began her burn, still meters inside the recommended safety envelope. Patty flicked the Montreal's sails out of harm's way, braking harder, the gawky dragonfly vanes furiously unlikely for their task.

  Neither Casey nor Min-xue was suited yet, which worried Patty, but there was nothing she could do about it from inside the Montreal. And she wasn't going to think about that nothing she could do. Wasn't going to think about Carver or Mom . . .

  The pilots had another ten minutes before they reached the birdcage. Drill was to be suited and sealed in three.

  Drill was also to suit before you took a shuttlecraft out of dock, but this was an emergency.

  Patty was grateful that she couldn't feel her body. She couldn't feel her heart tighten in her chest when she refused to think about how Min-xue might get hurt either. That's what Leah would do. Leah would do the job and she would do it well and she'd protect everybody else while she was doing it. And if Leah could do it, Patty could do it, too. She imagined he
rself clothed in the armor of the ship, a golden robot-girl and not a flesh and blood girl at all, and didn't worry about whether her heart was racing. She picked up Mr. Castaign's voice through the bridge ears, and spared him a little attention. It was just keeping the Montreal pointed, now. “Dick, how are we doing?”

  Alan's avatar winked green-purple, and Richard's voice rang from the speakers. “Your window in five, Gabe—four, three—”

  Patty giggled inside her head, where nobody but she and Alan could hear it and it didn't matter if she sounded hysterical.

  There's nothing quite as much fun as squirming into a space suit while fighting gees from an erratic maneuvering burn, but I've got the damned thing up to my waist, and I'm struggling with the seals across the chest when Richard starts counting.

  “—two, one—” Richard counts in my ear, with that flatness of tone that tells me he's half-Alan, currently. Always weird to be reminded that a good friend isn't human.

  “We're not in position to catch yet, Dick.” I say it out loud, for Gabe's benefit. Patty and Min-xue don't need to be told; they're on the worldwire with me, tight as sharing a skin.

  “Don't worry. Plenty of time before anything breaks open.” I get my hat and my gauntlets on, double-checking the seals before I tug the controls away from Min-xue so he can get dressed. He does a better job than I did, fast and efficient despite what must be unfamiliar suits. I wonder how different the Chinese equipment is. He seems to be doing okay with the controls.

  “Richard coached me,” he says in his musical English, without turning his head inside the helmet to look at me. “When he reprogrammed my wiring to the Canadian standard.” He checks his restraints and rests his gloves on the arms of the chair rather than taking the controls back. I drive at the birdcage as hard as I dare. The gaps in the filigree aren't all the same size, and I need a pair of them opposite each other, or nearly, and big enough that I can line them up and coast through on inertia. I'm not risking a burn inside that thing if there's any way around it. And then, assuming we catch one of the missing the first time through, we get to come back and try it again.