Worldwired

by Elizabeth Bear

  Her eyelashes flickered, dusting her cheek. She nodded to the window, which showed nothing.

  “Charlie,” she said. “Think for half a minute what I'm risking if I send somebody after him. I think they made it obvious that they weren't interested in giving Dr. Tjakamarra back.” She jerked her head at the view port. Nothing was visible from this angle. Not a glimpse of shiptree or birdcage or Clarke or even a curve of mother Earth flashed past—just the whirl of distant stars.

  He didn't need to see the birdcage to know that it was shuttered tight. And furthermore, Leslie said calmly in his ear, I'm here already and I'd be a fucking poor excuse for a scientist if I didn't try to take the opportunity to learn something.

  Les, you're really volunteering to sit out there in sensory deprivation until you go nuts or run out of air?

  Leslie was scared. Charlie could feel it; it accelerated his own heartbeat when he let himself feel it, sent sweat prickling across the palms of his own hands. His “voice,” though, was level and reasoned, even a little bit wry. Blame my acculturation, he said. The dark in here doesn't scare me, and I'm learning so much. It's not a bit neat, Charlie. The birdcage's reality tunnel isn't all that different from the idea of song lines—they know their roads. They have a feel for them, sort of . . . hardlined in.

  Charlie felt his lips twitch, and he wasn't sure if it was Leslie's humor or his own. He understood Leslie's seeming insanity on a visceral level—it was the scientific opportunity of the millennium, and whatever else Leslie was, he had the unholy intellectual curiosity that got explorers killed.

  It still felt wrong, though. Wrong to leave Leslie out there. Wrong not to go back after him. “Captain, he's most assuredly alive out there. And there's no guarantee—”

  “I know,” she said, and cut him off with a gesture. “Unfortunately, that's beside the—”

  “Charlie,” Richard said in his head, drawing his attention to what has happening outside. “Look at this.”

  “Captain.” Charlie heard the new crispness in his own voice, and saw Wainwright react to it.

  “What?”

  “Dick says the aliens are moving.” He hadn't quite finished the sentence when the captain held her hand up, cocking her head to one side as if she were listening to a voice in her ear. She pursed her lips and nodded.

  “The bridge,” she said, “relaying the same information.”

  Their eyes met, and he smiled. The corners of the captain's mouth curved slightly before they fell back into line.

  “Come on,” she said, resignation decorating her shoulders. “Let's go see what's broken now.”

  There's a good view of both alien ships from the bridge—the birdcage in 3-D front and center, right now, and the shiptree on the smaller screen off to the left, where it won't distract unless you want it to. I'm camped on the pilot's chair crosslegged. The normal buzz of restrained activity has dropped into hushed expectation; it doesn't pick up much when Wainwright and Charlie walk in.

  The captain looks at me, of course. Why is it always my fault? “Casey?”

  I hitch myself forward, chair dimpling under my calves, and jerk my chin up at the monitor. “What you see is what we know.”

  Her gaze follows mine. Charlie steps away, leans against a bulkhead, and folds his arms over his chest, but he's watching, too. The birdcage still looks shrink-wrapped under a layer of silver insulating foil, and teardrop-shapes are bustling about it, inside and out. I can't help straining my eyes for any glimpse of a thing that might be Leslie, even though Richard is perched on a ledge in the back of my head, assuring me that the situation is unchanged, and Leslie's clear-headed and rational and having the time of his life.

  Save us from the fearless, oh Lord, because the rest of us have to live with the consequences of the ways in which they get their own fool asses killed.

  Wainwright grunts under her breath at the same time as I notice the unnerving smearing effect of something dropping out of hyperlight beside the birdcage. She glances at me for a half-second; I show her the end of the interface cable laid across my lap. Just in case. She nods. Her eyes flick back to the monitor as crisp as snapping fanned cards together.

  I look back at the monitor, and I actually think I can feel my heart skip a beat in my chest. Teardrop shapes swarm around a lumpy grayish object scaffolded in twisted silver. “Tell me that's not another fucking asteroid, Dick.”

  Wainwright doesn't even bother to glare at me over my language. “What's it made of?”

  “I'll bounce a laser off it, ma'am.” There's a pause, as the second lieutenant who spoke does just that, and waits for a spectroscopic analysis. “Mostly water ice, ma'am.”

  “There's no evidence that's a weapon, then.” Wainwright's relief isn't quite palpable.

  “None. In fact, they seem to be chipping it apart.”

  Oh. Through Richard, I feel Charlie's epiphany—or maybe it's Leslie's epiphany—half a second before Charlie puts it into words. “It's life support,” he says.

  “Dr. Forster?”

  The birdcage guys are ferrying meter-wide chips of water ice through the veils hung over their filigree space ship, busy as ants tearing apart a grasshopper.

  “It's life support,” he says again, turning to face her blank look. His hands pinwheel for a second, and then he finds the words. “Water ice. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Maybe a little carbon dioxide frozen in there. Oxygen and water. They've figured out the stuff they need to keep Leslie alive for a while.”

  I know I should find that reassuring.

  I should. I really should.

  0600 hours

  Sunday October 7, 2063

  HMCSS Montreal

  Earth orbit

  Charlie's spending a lot of time staring at the bulkheads lately. The bulkheads, the portholes, his hands, me, anything else that wanders across his field of vision. He's so quiet, so internalized, and even when he's allowed out of medical on short, supervised walks, his focus is . . .

  Well, he hasn't got any focus. That's what it is. There's a quality to his distraction that reminds me of somebody on a hefty dose of hallucinogens, as if everything he looks at is bright and new and different and unique. And then there's that new trick he has, of talking inside our heads like Dick does, bypassing the message-passing the rest of us have to get the AI to handle. I don't think even Richard understands how the Benefactors have altered him and Leslie, and it freaks all of us out.

  Leslie and Charlie, understandably, most of all.

  Charlie is spending a lot of time closeted with Alan and Richard and Jeremy and Elspeth, in any case. And Leslie is . . . Leslie is a disembodied voice in our heads, sort of like Dick, but infinitely more disconcerting, because he's out there, floating in darkness, not dead, but we can't really tell if he's alive either. And Gabe's up to his curly blond forelock in programming, and the Montreal's not moving because Richard's got her guts hanging out all over space and we're not moving her unless we have to, which leaves me more or less adrift—except for the time I spend training Patty and Genie to fly.

  In any case, the days between Charlie gaining consciousness and us getting ready to board the Gordon Lightfoot for the short trip to Forward Orbital Platform drag past like a month and a half. Especially since I spend a fair amount of it being briefed by Riel's lawyers and representatives, preparing for my appearance in front of the United Nations.

  I've testified before. It's not new. It's not threatening. It's not even particularly interesting, although I'm having a hell of a time convincing Patty of that.

  On the other hand, she may just be wound up at the prospect of seeing her grandfather for the first time in nearly a year.

  I try not to think about the fact that having Min-xue, Patty, and me all in the same place at the same time is a great big security risk. I try not to think about the fact that Riel will be there, too, for at least part of the time. I try not to think about the fact that—even though New York City has very stringent policies, and the UN isn't exactly America,
and they have even more conservative ideas about who should be armed, and where, and when, than New York does—we'll be in America, not Canada, and there are a lot of guns in America, and the American government doesn't keep particularly good track.

  And that I won't be allowed to carry one.

  And that's why I'm holding Patty's hand as tight as I am when we step through the Gordon Lightfoot's air lock onto Forward, even if both she and I are pretending that the contact is intended to reassure her. Min-xue is a little ahead of us, and the three of us are flanked and led by Canadian Air Force security personnel who are doing a remarkable job of effacing themselves. By the time we scuff across the patterned carpeting and into the main concourse, I've almost forgotten they're there.

  And Patty is shaking. And the skin is tight and pale across her cheeks, betraying the clenching of her jaw. I give her hand an extra squeeze and she gives me half a smile, and we step apart as we move onto the concourse. Forward Orbital Platform's larger and brighter than Clarke—newer, and the interior is designed in bright cheerful colors, mostly cobalts and sunshine yellows that remind me of a children's hospital. The air isn't as good as the Montreal's, but it's warm and doesn't smell canned, which is more than I can say for the shuttle.

  I especially like the way the overhead clearances are vaulted and painted different shades of blue to give the illusion of texture and depth. It's almost like not being in a tin can eighteen hours by beanstalk above the surface of the Earth.

  Richard clears his throat. “Riel wants a word—”

  Put her through.

  “Master Warrant Officer.”

  Prime Minister. To what do I owe the pleasure? I can tell by the timbre of her voice and the way her image settles into my mind's eye that she's using an external VR setup. Those of us who are wired into Richard's network come through differently, with stained-glass sharp edges. It's like the difference between a shadow and one of those Victorian paper cuts.

  “I'm mailing you some encoded documents. Richard has the key; you'll be able to access them on your hip unit once you're back in atmosphere.” She smiles, her oh-so-plausible, oh-so-professional smile.

  I smile right back. Richard will be showing her a simulation of my face. What's the subject matter?

  “It relates to the various security council members you'll be testifying before. I trust in your ability to make connections. Although I'm concerned about your history of service in South Africa, as it's one of the temporary members this year. It won't make you popular with them.”

  At least Canada inherited the UK's old security council seat along with the royal family and the British armed forces. That puts us on an equal footing with China. The corridors of Forward's concourse move past at a casual rate. Patty reaches out and grabs my sleeve, guiding me. Min-xue is still five steps ahead. He doesn't look back, but he also doesn't ever let the distance between us vary. He's wearing a Montreal uniform jumpsuit without insignia and carrying a Chinese armed forces duffel he must have brought from the Huang Di. His shoulders are stiff, his neck rigid, and the expression on his face must be something, because passersby turn to look and then look away.

  “Yes. We have a veto and so do they. Which means nothing at all will get accomplished, I'm afraid, and we can look forward to renewed hostilities by the end of the year. If worst comes to worst, we'll consider giving them the Huang Di back as a bribe.”

  Appeasement, ma'am?

  “Negotiation.”

  Dick. Who are the rest of the temporary security council members this year? I should have looked that up before I left the Montreal. Except I've gotten lazy about things like that, because there's no Net access from the starship except for through microwave communications, and that takes forever.

  “Belgium, Monaco, New Zealand, Belize, Chile, Somalia, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, and Republic of Hawaii.”

  Not a lot of good friends there. It's easy to get very reliant on Richard. I imagine Patty and Genie's generation won't think twice about it. Hell, I wonder what we'll need schools for; we'll think a question and the information will be there in our heads, as if we always knew. We'll have to learn a whole new way of thinking. A whole new way of learning.

  Richard clears his throat. “You know, it was Einstein who said that imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

  And now knowledge encircles the world.

  “Or rather, I do.”

  Megalomaniac.

  “I come by it honestly.”

  The side conversation happens so fast that Riel's just starting to notice my distraction. She leans back behind her desk, unsteepling her fingers to play with her coffee cup. It scrapes on the glass of her interface plate. She winces. “Casey?”

  Sorry, ma'am. Negotiation, check. Do you think there will be a war?

  “I think there are forces inside PanChina that would dearly love a war. They're still an expansionist society—”

  And we're not?

  “Us or them, Master Warrant. In any case, I'll see you in New York City.”

  When do you arrive?

  “Not for five days. The hearings start Monday, but I am not scheduled to testify until next week. General Valens will be joining you, however.”

  I'll look forward to it.

  Her raised eyebrows and the tight smile that flashes across her mouth tells me she's picked the irony out of my internal voice. “Safe trip, Casey,” she says. Her eyes flicker away from mine, up and to the side. “Thank you, Richard. That will be all.”

  And silence follows.

  I only realize I've stopped walking when Patty tugs my sleeve again. I blink and glance left to right, meeting the concerned gaze of Min-xue, who stands in the center of the concourse, the security personnel spaced professionally around him. He swallows, and says in his beautiful idiomatic English, “Casey, are you all right?”

  “Fine, Pilot Xie. Just distracted by a . . . conference call.”

  His smooth expression crinkles to a rueful smile, and he looks as young as he is. “I see. This is our platform, then.”

  0430 hours

  Sunday October 7, 2063

  Vancouver Provisional Capital

  Canada

  Janet Frye cracked another sunflower seed between her teeth and rolled the salty, waxy meat out of the shell with her tongue, letting her eyes unfocus. There was an untouched glass of room-temperature slivovitz and an opened, old-fashioned paper letter on the counter in front of her, and she hadn't been to bed.

  She flattened the letter with the palm of her hand and read it again, cracking another sunflower seed as she did. The shell rang in the empty garbage can by her knee when she turned her head and spat. The words on the page still hadn't changed.

  She stood off the padded stool and crossed her basement, slippered feet scuffing on parquet floor and weatherproof carpeting. A 3-D in the corner opposite the bar, the sound muted, showed flickering images from 3NN. The famines in Georgia (the European one, not the North American one)—linking it none too subtly to the aftermath of the Chinese invasion of Siberia the previous year—dominated the news, for reasons that made perfect sense if you understood that Unitek had a controlling interest in the Russian journalistic agency that handled English-language news feeds, and understood as well that Toby Hardy liked keeping his allies even more off-balance than his enemies.

  Janet blinked her optic on, ordered the news feed to standby, and folded her arms as she leaned against the wall. If anything important happened, her hip unit would buzz.

  She spat a shell into her hand and flicked it toward the trash can. She missed. The front door warbled in her ear and she sighed and kicked her slippers off, thumbing her hip to check the security cameras. The image was dim, gray-green low-light. The sun wouldn't be up for hours. She knew who it would be before he even raised his face to the camera to allow himself to be identified, knew it by the long black car pulled up in the circular driveway and by the expens
ive cut of his suit.

  And who the hell else would be ringing her doorbell at four thirty in the morning?

  Tobias Hardy, of course. As if thinking the devil's name were enough to summon him.

  Only one of her Mounties was still up at this godforsaken hour, sitting on the sofa in the living room watching late-night holo. Internal cameras showed her how he got to his feet before the doorbell finished buzzing, and was moving toward the entryway even as she made her way up the steps from the rec room. He knew Hardy, but he still made a point of taking a thumbprint and checking ID. It never, ever hurt to be careful.

  “Ma'am?” the Mountie said, hearing her step behind him. He turned and caught her eye, his own very blue under shaggy terrier eyebrows. “I haven't patted him down yet, ma'am.”

  “It's okay, Kurt. I'll take him downstairs. Toby, come in.”

  Hardy stepped past the Mountie, a precise and calculated movement that made sure his suit didn't brush Kurt's arm. Kurt's eyebrows went up as he continued to hold Janet's gaze over Hardy's shoulder. Janet shrugged, not caring that Hardy saw her.

  “Thank you, Janet.” He stepped out of his loafers inside the door and lined them up neatly beside the shoes of other household members, but he couldn't resist a sidelong glance at Janet to make sure she noticed that he was kowtowing to the rules of the house. She kept her face expressionless as he stepped into a pair of slippers and followed her down to the basement.

  She didn't bother kicking her own slippers back on when she got to the bottom of the stairs. “Drink, Toby?”

  “Coffee?” He looked doubtfully at her slivovitz. “A little early for the hard stuff.”

  “It's a little late, for me,” she said, leaning back against the bar. Coffee, she told the house, and the house set about roasting and brewing. Kurt would bring it down when it was ready. She folded the letter closed, absently, and then folded it in half, and then tucked it into her jeans pocket, aware that Hardy was watching every move. “What warrants a clandestine predawn visit, Toby? You're not here to discuss Unitek's contributions to the Home Party.”