Worldwired

by Elizabeth Bear

  I can't even begin to justify the idea that he might have made it out.

  And then I calm down enough to inspect the e-mail before I trigger it, and I see the date stamp. It's December 22, 2062. I have to bite my lip until I taste metal and salt and sit down and roll my head back against the rest on the acceleration couch and breathe. Long and slow and rhythmically. Breathe, Jenny. Breathe. Even though you're hurtling toward Malaysia, braking at something less than a G, and about to open an e-mail from somebody who died almost a year ago.

  It's a message from the grave. From the ghost of a kid who might as well have been my own. If my own were a gangster, a killer, and a petty warlord.

  But blood's thicker than water, right? And I shed a little for Razorface. And Face shed a little for me, once upon a time.

  I extricate my tongue from in between my teeth, the tweed of the capsule seat catching on the ass of my uniform pants, and I key the mail open.

  And find myself staring not into Razorface's dark brown eyes while his mobile lips shape words around the sibilants that hiss between his pointed teeth, but at a series of images of documents, obviously snapped hastily, probably—judging by the distortion—through somebody's contact optic. There might be a dozen of them. I don't have time to examine them the way I'd like to, and whatever they are, they don't make a lick of sense to me, because every last one of the damned things is in Chinese or something that looks just like it.

  These weren't Face's. Because as many times as I offered to teach him, Razorface never learned to read. In any language.

  The images have to come from my enemy, my ally, the niece of my long-dead lover, Indigo Xu. And they've been here, lying in the Net, waiting for me. Waiting nearly a year, for me to set foot on Earth again.

  Face's recorded voice calls me by a name I haven't heard in a year. “Maker,” he says. “We grabbed that Holmes chick. We're gonna hole up until we decide what to do with her. But Indigo found these on her when we grabbed her, and she says you need to see this. It's Chinese but she can't read it. She says it's coded, but I figure with the friends you got you can crack it.

  “One other thing. Holmes looked like she was about to skip town when we snagged her. She had a suitcase and a wad of cash chits, a lot even for a rich bitch like her. You be careful up there, all right?” And then he grins at me, showing me all that serrated silver, and cocks his head arrogantly, cock of the walk. “You be careful up there, girl.”

  Sweet Mary, Mother of God. It takes me awhile to organize my thoughts beyond that. I swallow and look down. You be careful “up there,” too, Razorface. You just be as careful as you can.

  Richard, I say inside my head, shuffling the images in front of my inner eye for long enough to see if any of them contain so much as a word of English, Dick. Can you hear me?

  “Loud and clear, Jen.”

  I really, really, really need your help.

  Min-xue's nervousness didn't betray itself in a shaking hand, although his palms were sweating. His face was impassive, his emotions carefully sealed away, and if the palms of his hands were slick with sweat, no one would ever know.

  What gave him away was that he was talking to Richard in Cantonese, because he couldn't think of the words he wanted in English. Which made it difficult to talk to Jen or to Patty, seated across the aisle in the luxury of the Canadian wide-bodied jet that was descending, ear-poppingly, toward New York. The pilot had swung wide over the Atlantic and they were still high enough to see what Richard said was the shoreline of Connecticut and Long Island Sound; the pilot was giving them the view.

  There was plenty to look at. Filtered sunlight fractured on the waters of the Atlantic, a sparkle eased by polarized glass. Min-xue squinted anyway, unlacing one hand to shade his eyes. He understood that the entire downtown area of New York City had been an island within living memory, in much the manner of Hong Kong. Now, Richard supplied the names for the geographic features he was looking at, and images of what it had looked like before, for the sake of comparison. Dikes and landfill bulwarked large portions of what had been New York Harbor, and what had once been called the East River had been pumped dry. New York Harbor itself was enclosed by a ponderous seawall and a series of locks that allowed ships to move from the higher waters of the Atlantic into the ancient port. Richard said the harbor was largely fresh now, from the outflow of the Hudson River. The seaward ends of the narrow bands of water that separated Long Island and Staten Island from the mainland had been sealed up, and the seaward faces of the islands protected by more dikes and seawalls.

  The bobbing shapes of tidal generators dotted the waters of the Atlantic outside the seawall. “Those power the pumping stations that keep the groundwater down inside the dike. Manhattan's on schist—it's bedrock, but Long Island is a glacial moraine. Soft.”

  Don't the foundations crack?

  “It's a screaming mess down there—”

  Min-xue felt an extended lecture coming on, and scrambled for a better question. Where's the Statue of Liberty?

  “It's inside the harbor,” Richard said. “You'll need to go to the other side of the plane.”

  It should be farther out at sea, Min-xue argued, but he got up and walked across the aisle, to where Jen and Patty were pointing and saying soft, appreciative things.

  “Then nobody on land could see it.”

  Which was eminently reasonable, but it still disappointed Min-xue somehow that the only waves that lapped the base of the lady with the torch were the wakes of ferries and departing container ships. Foolish romantic.

  “If you need romance,” Richard said, his eyebrows wiggling in amusement, “you could consider that the New York Dike is the largest single engineering project in the history of the world, or so they say.”

  In terms of earth moved, I wager the Great Wall was bigger.

  Richard chuckled. “Nationalistic pride?”

  I am Taiwanese, Richard.

  “Somewhat.”

  Which earned him a wry twist of the mouth from Min-xue, but no further comment.

  “Can you at least let me tell you about the floating airport?”

  Dick. Patty leaned close enough to Min-xue that he could feel the heat of her body through his jumpsuit. She knew better than to touch him, of course. He gave her a flickering smile, much shyer than he had intended, and looked away quickly. Richard cleared his throat, lounging against the walls of Min-xue's mind with his angular arms folded and his hands, for once, still. “Have you thought about the message I asked you to take to Captain Wu, Min-xue?”

  Is it not enough for you that I betray China, Dick? Must I betray Canada, too?

  “You could think of it as serving both of them.”

  He could. It wouldn't even be—entirely—self-deception. But how will Captain Wu think of it?

  “As an opportunity to redeem himself before his premier?”

  You are a very manipulative entity, Richard.

  “How can I be?” Richard smirked, and unfolded his arms, turning his palms skyward. “I haven't got any hands.”

  The plane dropped lower. Min-xue returned to his seat to be certain he had his sunglasses in his pocket for when he had to brave the fluorescent lights in the terminal.

  General Valens—security in tow—met them after their passports and paperwork cleared them through customs. It was an unearned honor, in Min-xue's estimation—but not an unexpected one. Especially when the general—already drawing a certain amount of attention in a full dress uniform that was obviously not that of any branch of the U.S. military—scooped up his granddaughter and swung her around until her hair and feet flew out behind her. Patty started laughing when her shoes left the floor. Min-xue had never heard her laugh like that before, like a child, unself-conscious, with abandon. He averted his gaze behind his sunglasses, all too conscious of how he was staring, and found himself abruptly eye-to-eye with Jen Casey.

  They stared at one another for a second, until she cleared her throat and glanced down. He didn't need Ric
hard to tell him what she was thinking—that it could have been her, swinging Leah Castaign around like that. Or that she loathed herself for the thought as soon as it occurred.

  Not for the last time, Min-xue thought he would have liked to have known Leah.

  If nothing else, so he could mourn her properly. “She ought to have a statue,” he said under his breath, in English, a sort of peace offering, and saw Jen's eye quirk upward.

  “They all should,” she said, and turned away just as the general set Patricia down.

  Valens straightened and settled back on his heels and finally looked at Jen. Around the terminal, travelers were stopped, taking in the spectacle of two old soldiers sizing each other up, standing in the middle of Metro New York William Francis Gibb Memorial Airport, accompanied by two strikingly unrelated teenagers. Min-xue stole a glance downward. Jen was wearing white cotton gloves on both hands, not just the left one.

  Valens smiled at Jen and at Min-xue. “Well,” he said, quietly. “I'm glad you both made the trip. Once we've survived the ferry ride into the city, would you care to share my limousine to the embassy?”

  “And then confer with Captain Wu, sir?”

  “Actually—” Valens led them toward the ferry dock. Their luggage, what little they had, would be delivered. Another privilege that came with the Canadian government jet and the annotated passports. “He's waiting in the limousine. Although my Mandarin wasn't sufficient to give him a very good idea of who is arriving, or what to expect.”

  Aboard, Min-xue leaned against the forward rail of the ferry. Port cities the world over smelled the same; combustion and garbage and the rotten tang of tide pools. He breathed deeply, closing his eyes, and imagined himself home in Taiwan.

  The others came to collect him as the ferry glided into dock. He touched his breast pocket, making sure the facsimiles of the papers that Jen had given him were still there.

  The limousine wasn't all that long, and it was a quiet, staid pearl gray. The doors slid into the frame with barely a whisper. Valens stepped aside with an actor's sense of timing, allowing the man in the back seat a long clear view of Min-xue as Min-xue ducked his head and stepped in.

  To his credit, Captain Wu only blinked, and edged over on the seat to make room for Min-xue. He did make a small show of studying Min-xue's Montreal jumpsuit, however, and clucked his tongue. “Second Pilot,” he said, in Mandarin. “I am ashamed.”

  “Before you declare your shame, Captain,” Min-xue answered, in the same language, as he pulled the papers out of his pocket, “can you please tell me whether you have seen these code sheets before?” He handed them over, keeping his voice low and his body language meek as the three Canadians arranged themselves.

  Captain Wu studied each of the sheets carefully. His throat worked. Min-xue laid a fingertip on Captain Wu's knee, knowing that the captain would see it for the concession it was, coming from a pilot.

  “I have seen them,” the captain of the Huang Di said.

  “Where have you seen them, Captain?”

  “Second Pilot, before I answer that, you will tell me where you obtained these.”

  “They were your orders to retrieve the asteroid and destroy Toronto, Captain. Were they not?”

  “You will answer my question.” Captain Wu sat back, the offending papers dropping from his fingers to scatter on the carpet.

  “Under the pearly moon in the endless sea, pearls weep,” Min-xue quoted, tilting his head. “On Lan-t'ien Mountain, jade breeds smoke in warm sun. / This passion might be a thing to be remembered / Only you were already bewildered and lost.”

  “Will you believe I regret it, Min-xue?”

  “They came from the person of a Canadian citizen, Captain. A Unitek vice president. One closely involved in the starship program. Before the orders were carried out. She could only have received them from somebody in China. There was a conspiracy. Treason on both sides. And tens of millions died.”

  The captain blinked. Min-xue heard Jen shut the door behind him, her prosthetic hand clicking on the handle despite her cotton glove, and smiled. The general might be chivalrous, but not so chivalrous as to forget that one of the women he was squiring was also a noncom.

  “Yes,” Captain Wu said. “Those were my orders.”

  “From whose hand were they sealed, Captain?”

  “The minister of war, Shijie Shu,” he said, all on a breath, and rocked his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes.

  “Will you testify to that before the United Nations, Captain?” Valens leaned in, his Mandarin ungrammatical.

  Captain Wu looked at Min-xue. Min-xue bit his cheek until he tasted copper and nodded. Captain Wu dropped his eyes to the papers scattered like so many peach blossoms about his feet, and then to his own folded hands, and sighed.

  Min-xue looked up at Valens, and swallowed bitterness. And in English he said, “Yes. General, he will testify.”

  The instant I'm back on Canadian soil, I feel different. Even a patch of Canadian soil a few dozen yards square, squatting on the eastern edge of America. I'm sure it's psychosomatic, but I feel my shoulders straighten, the wreathed crowns on my epaulets shining a little brighter in the wan autumn morning.

  A sugar maple planted inside the elaborate and very functional-looking front gate of the embassy catches my attention, and even if it's snow-laced and bare with the unholy winter, the familiar fractal pattern of those elegant branches soothes me. I wish it were any other October, and the glossy leaves just starting to burn umber and vermilion.

  I left Nell's eagle feather on the Montreal. I didn't want to deal with customs and endangered species acts and trying to prove my tribal affiliation and the ten thousand other things that would go wrong. Still, I press my hand against the breast pocket where it would normally be. Even if I don't have the feather, or Nell, or Leah, I can still feel the ghosts gathered around me like ancestors in reverse, where the children die and old warhorses get older in their place.

  Surreptitiously, I drag my fingertip over the trunk of the maple tree, just to feel its life. Rough and silky bark snags my glove; I tug it free quickly, hoping no one has noticed.

  There's a real live doorman to open the doors for us. He has white spats, and white gloves that are cleaner than mine. I don't think I've ever seen such a thing. As I take my cover off, I'm homesick enough to think the air inside smells of Canada, too. If I don't quite look at them straight, I can almost imagine that the snowy branches behind the panoramic windows of the lobby are old-growth forest rather than well-clipped hemlock. I swear to God I can smell the pine.

  Hah. It's probably the floor polish. Come on, Jenny. Get your head out of your ass. Tomorrow we go to war. And try to make sure those kids didn't die for nothing.

  It's a prayer, and I know it's a prayer, and I still can't quite bring myself to say, Amen.

  2100 hours

  Sunday October 7, 2063

  HMCSS Montreal

  Earth orbit

  Charlie hadn't gotten used to not being alone in his own head—hell, in his own body—yet. Because getting kidnapped and genetically engineered by aliens is the sort of thing you should process and move past in a week or two at the outside, really.

  He felt Leslie's approval at his sarcasm, and the internal quirk of Richard's humor that would have been a raised eyebrow or a twitched lip if they were simply three men sitting around a conference table, rather than sharing some bizarre brain space including bits and pieces of all three of them, but not all of any, and the undercurrent of alien presences—waiting, observing, straining as hard toward them as they strained back.

  We have nothing in common, Charlie thought. He leaned back in his chair, in his lab, among the dying ecospheres and the hydroponics tanks, and swung his feet onto the lab bench. Not even a sensorium.

  Richard would relay the inaudible parts of the conversation to Jeremy and Elspeth. The ethnolinguist and the psychiatrist were in-wheel, in the work space they had shared with Leslie, modeling symbol
structures or something Charlie didn't really understand. Charlie and Leslie could hear and feel everything that occurred in the room through Richard, and Richard would relay his own comments over the interior speakers, so it didn't matter if they were all in the same room or not, and he did his best thinking up here with the soybeans.

  We apparently share a powerful desire to talk to one another, Leslie answered. That's more than my ex-wife and I had in common.

  The most interesting part of their connection was that, while he didn't have Leslie's skills or his years of experience in just how language and communication worked, he could feel the model that Leslie and Jeremy were building with regard to communication with the aliens. Currently, it looked a great deal like a map. It was a map; a map of something drawn in terms of beings that sensed the architecture of space-time rather than the electromagnetic spectrum.

  It would be extraordinarily useful, Charlie judged, once they got the chance to take the Montreal and the Vancouver out on a real spin, and overlay this map with what Richard and the pilots could learn about the feel of the local gravity wells—For crying out loud, Leslie. You realize we don't even have a language with which to discuss this stuff, let alone a symbology with which to talk to the birdcages about it?—they might be able to lay their own visible-light and X-ray map over the alien one.

  By the way, we've got the lab results back. I've got to say, these guys really put the xeno into xenobiology. Except what he gave Leslie and Richard wasn't exactly words, but more a concentrated lump of his own experience and the test results and what it all might mean, or might not mean, without the ambiguities of language. For Jeremy and Elspeth's sake, he summarized: They're hydrogen based. What we call metallic colloidal hydrogen, probably supercompressed in their home environment. Something like the rocky core of a gas giant.