Worldwired

by Elizabeth Bear

  I wonder if it really used to be different, when the border was unguarded, or if that's just more cheerful propaganda. History's not my strong point, except the bits I've lived through, but I do remember the jokes from my childhood about how Canada wouldn't let the northern U.S. states join during the famine because of the expense of putting French on all their road signs. Of course, Maman also claimed that the reason Quebec never seceded was the expense of taking all the English off. I suspect she may have been pulling our legs.

  I didn't get my sense of humor from my father, that's for sure. “In any case, my point stands, ma'am. Sir.”—with a nod to the Chinese representative in the brown suit, who is leaning forward again—“With all due respect, the Benefactor tech is not weaponized. There is to the best of my knowledge no intent to weaponize it, on Canada's side—”

  Valens is on to me. He's shooting me that look, the one that means shut up while your tongue's still in your head, Casey. I ignore him, of course, blithe spirit that I am.

  “—and in point of fact, the nanite infestation is not under Canadian authority.”

  Dead silence, then, so quiet that I can hear the click of plastic as the American's fingers trigger the holographic keypad of her hip. I could almost swear I can hear the whisper of cloth as one of the guys at the Canadian table closes his eyes and leans back in his chair.

  “Would you care to expand on that, Master Warrant Officer?”

  The look on Fred's face promises me a stretching on the rack and possibly a slow roasting over coals, but Richard's amused pleasure in the back of my head means more. In any case, all this skullduggery and manipulation works two ways. And if Riel wants an excuse for an effective world government, and a common concern and worry . . . well, Dick's big enough to give it to her. And scary enough to keep everybody busy for quite awhile, at least until a generation grows up that doesn't know how to live without him.

  “It's controlled by the artificial intelligence known, somewhat inaccurately, as the Feynman AI.”

  “Which is a Canadian construct.”

  “He's not a subject of the commonwealth, sir.”

  Silence. Longer, this time, and it's the tall, mop-haired Russian delegate who straightens his spine and speaks. “Then what are his affiliations? Who owns that machine?”

  It's all I can do to keep the grin off the corners of my lips. “He's self-determined, sir. And as for his loyalties—I wouldn't care to speculate. I would suggest that you ask him yourself. He's prepared to testify under oath.”

  Three beats before the uproar: I know because I'm counting. It washes over me like surf. It sounds like surf, rising and falling, so many voices they amount to white noise. It breaks around the podium, the beautiful acoustics of the assembly hall amplifying and echoing every voice.

  I'm absolutely unprepared, once order is restored, for the Chinese delegate to give me that smug little smile across twenty meters of open space and say, “On a more immediate note, Master Warrant Officer. Perhaps we could discuss the matter of your criminal record now?”

  Gabriel Jean-Marie Benoit François Castaign was getting just a little tired of this particular bête noire. Specifically, the one where he—with all his brains and all his brawn, fifteen years and a captain's commission in the Canadian Army, unarmed combat and firearms instructor certification, two master's degrees and five languages and eleven years of practical experience as a single parent—was left powerless, sitting on his middle-aged ass while a woman he loved faced dragons he couldn't do a damned thing about.

  The blankets were wrinkled and sweaty. His jumpsuit was carving creases in his skin. And he leaned forward on the edge of his bunk, his eyes locked on the real-time holofeed that Richard was projecting over his interface, and cursed. He knew how to do it by now, how to watch and love and feel them slip out of his hands like so many fistfuls of feathers, lifted on a gentle breeze. He knew how to grant them the dignity of not looking down, and not looking away from the pain. He knew how to lend strength when he couldn't do the fighting himself.

  He'd done it for his wife, Geniveve, and after he'd buried her he'd done it for Genie when Genie was dying by centimeters from cystic fibrosis. He hadn't done it when Leah sailed the Calgary into Earth's atmosphere with the brittle unholy courage that only an adolescent could muster—C'est la raison que nous les envoyons pour mourir dans la guerre, dans le cas òu tu ne le savais pas—because Gabe couldn't reach Leah. But Jenny could, and Jenny had stood in his place, and Gabe had been there for Jen. As he'd done it before, again, and again, and again.

  But, he was tired of it. He said it to himself, sitting motionless on the edge of his bunk, his feet dangling, the cold metal edge of the rack cutting the backs of his thighs and his hands clenching and unclenching on the blankets. He thought it as he leaned forward and watched Jenny answer those invasive questions with dignity and aplomb that he knew had to be borrowed at loanshark rates against that night, against tomorrow.

  Je suis fatigué lui.

  He needed to be there. Even without the ability to stand beside her on that stage and squeeze her hand behind the podium, he needed to be in the room. Jenny was a professional; she was cool, and collected, and gracious: the picture of a warrior who has lived long enough to learn both honor and its price.

  The Chinese fils de putain was coming after her like a mangy feral dog, and no matter how well she was handling it, Gabriel would have liked to wring his neck instead of the dark wool blankets. “I understand,” the man in the mahogany suit said, “that there are arrests for prostitution and possession of drugs that are not mentioned in your military records. Would you care to explain why those records were purged?”

  The speaker kept leaning over to confer with a jowly middle-aged man in a Chinese uniform. That must be General Shijie.

  He just wished he could be there. Where she could see him. Where she could see his eyes. But she was thirty-five thousand vertical kilometers away, and he was helpless again.

  You cannot save them, Gabriel. Sometimes you cannot even hold their hands.

  Like Leah. God have mercy on his soul.

  Jenny, in the projection, lifted her chin. Gabriel knew that look, knew the way it stretched her long neck above her collar. Knew the arrogant sparkle in her eyes, and knew how much it cost her to keep it there. “Not purged, sir. Sealed. Those incidents occurred while I was a juvenile, under Canadian law, and they are not considered part of my permanent criminal record. Which, I might add, is clean—”

  Someone tapped on the hatchway. Gabe startled, torn between relief and irritation, and shoved himself off the bed. He forgot to duck again. “Turn that off please, Dick?”

  “It's Genie,” the AI answered, as the display obediently flickered out. Gabe closed his eyes and calmed his breathing, pressing his dinged forehead with the back of his hand.

  Then he went and opened the door.

  Calisse de chrisse, she looked like her mother. Not as much as Leah had, but the same huge eyes, straight nose, the honey-blond hair that looked as soft as silk until you got your hands into it and then turned out to be wild, electric, alive. And her eyes were as big as churchbells, and her hands were twined together, shaking.

  “You saw the news,” he said. He didn't move aside and let her in, although it was ship drill; you never stood in an open doorway like a rubbernecker and jawed with somebody on the other side. It wasn't safe. He glanced over his shoulder, and the condemning silence of the interface, the feed he wasn't watching. He wasn't there for Jenny, and there was no way he could be.

  And he didn't know what to do with Genie anymore. It had always been him being big for Leah and Leah being big for Genie, and now Leah was gone, a hole in the middle of their family like trying to make a sandwich out of two plain slices of dry white bread. There was nothing to hold them together.

  “Is it true, what they said?”

  He looked her in the eye and pursed his lips, and closed his eyes, and turned aside for a second to collect his thoughts. When he l
ooked again, ready to ask Genie the question he didn't have an answer to himself—She's still your Aunt Jenny. Does it matter if it is?—when he turned his head back and opened his eyes and looked at the hatchway, his daughter was gone.

  He straightened up and knotted both hands in his mop of hair and cursed in three languages, two of them French.

  Coward. Lache. Enfouaré.

  He only remembered to dog the hatch behind him because Richard yelled at him before he got too far down the corridor.

  Genie made a good job of vanishing. He looked for forty minutes before it occurred to him to ask Richard for help. He wasn't particularly surprised when Richard hacked his contact and ear clip for a private conversation, shrugged, and said, “She asked me not to tell you. She said she wanted to be invisible.”

  “Do you make a habit of concealing wayward teenagers from their possibly stupid but well-meaning parents?” Gabe leaned against the corridor bulkhead, making sure he was between pressure doors, and took a moment to think, and breathe.

  “I'm trying to avoid situational ethics,” Richard answered. “I'm stuck with omniscience, but I don't want to develop a reputation as a jealous god. Or a meddling one.”

  “You've been meddling all along, Dick.”

  Gabe wasn't quite prepared for the long silence before Richard answered, “I know.” The AI shook his head and rubbed his palms together, a frown creasing his forehead. “The ethics are getting complicated. In any case, I'll be happy to tell Genie you're looking for her. Where shall I tell her you'll be?”

  “Is Charlie in the hydroponics labs?”

  “No, he's in the larger observation lounge. Snoring. All the greenhouses are empty except Center-13.”

  “Tell her I'll be in Charlie's main lab, s'il te plais.”

  He didn't think he was imagining the warmth in Richard's voice when Richard answered, “It will be my pleasure, Gabriel.”

  The smell of growing things eased his headache, and even spinning sunlight was sunlight, and full-spectrum lighting was a kind relief after the energy-saving flourescence that gave the pilots screaming conniptions and lit most of the Montreal's cabins and corridors in a pale minty green. Gabe found himself walking slowly up and down the aisles between the Plexiglas tanks, running his fingers over the broad leaves of soybeans and breathing deeply, as if the oxygen they emitted could ease his throbbing temples by being absorbed through the skin. He'd forgotten even to grab his ship-shoes when he ran into the corridor after Genie. The floor's absorbent nonskid matting was tacky and slightly springy under his bare feet.

  He turned when the hatch swung open, but it wasn't Genie. Instead, Elspeth picked one foot up high, stepped over the knee knocker with a grace that belied her round little frame, and dogged the hatch tight behind her. “Gabe?”

  He frowned and folded his arms. “Of course she went to you. I should have known that without being told.”

  Elspeth's lips worked, but she held her peace as she came up the line of beans and cabbages and mustard plants, brushing aside the sunshine-yellow sprays of the latter's flowers. She stood in front of him, foursquare, and looked all the way up, glowering. “What did you say to that child, Gabe?”

  “Why am I the bad guy? I barely had time to get a word out!”

  She took a half-step back and her arms unfolded, her palms rubbing the thighs of her jumpsuit. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions. I just—” She shrugged. “That was unprofessional of me. I'm sorry.”

  The sharp retort was automatic. He bit it back. He was an adult, and so was she, and they had better things to do than play games or try to get a rise out of each other. Besides, he wasn't sure he'd ever seen Elspeth Dunsany lose her temper, and the sight—and the reason for her wrath—provoked a soft, warm glow under his breastbone. “Ellie,” he said, and unfolded the arms he'd pulled around himself like a barrier, “I should be upset because you care enough about my kid to yell at me for her?”

  She stared at his outstretched hands, feline in her suspicion. And then she shrugged, and stepped inside their reach. “It sounds pretty silly, when you put it like that.”

  He shivered; she felt brittle in his arms—not the flesh, but the spirit. “How about you? Are you all right?”

  “Hard to tell when I'm taking my meds.” A weak attempt at a joke. She curled closer. He rested his chin on her head.

  “It'll all be over soon,” he said, and felt her nod.

  “One way or another.” Another sigh, a bigger one. “Are you going to talk to Genie?”

  “I've only been looking for her for the past hour and a half. What did you tell her?”

  “Probably exactly what you're going to tell her. That what happened to Jenny is Jenny's story to tell, and you shouldn't judge other people's character by what you hear in gossip, or—especially—on the news. Have you been watching?”

  “I can't stand to.” She was warm and soft, a teddy bear for grown-up boys. His heart slowed as he held her, the ache in his head and neck easing as he buried his nose in her hair. “How do you manage to smell of gardenias using air force soap?”

  “A mystical talent,” she answered. “It's closely tied in with feminine wiles, but far more secret.”

  “You got the gardeners to let you take some of the flowers?”

  “Exactly.” She turned in his arms and tossed her head back on his shoulder. “I can't get anything past you. If I tell you where Genie is? . . .”

  “You're a ferocious nag, you realize. And yes, of course I'll go talk to her. Where is she?”

  “I left her down in the Contact office talking with Leslie via Richard. He—showed up? What do you call it? Checked in?—after I'd spent half an hour trying to pry out of her why she was so upset. She's got Boris with her. Why that cat puts up with being manhandled around the ship by that girl—”

  “All right,” he said. “I'll go down now.”

  He heard laughter before he even undogged the hatch, Leslie and Genie giggling together. He would have lifted his hand from the cool metal wheel and stepped back, but he knew already the look he'd see in Elspeth's eyes if he did. So he knocked.

  Genie came to open the hatch, but didn't look up. A projected image of Leslie hung over the interface plate on his own desk, downsized the same way Richard usually was. The image met Gabe's eyes, a wry smile playing around the lined corners of its mouth, so real Gabe almost forgot there wasn't a person on the other end of the projection. Leslie's iron-colored hair was rumpled as if he'd been running his hands through it, and his eyes glittered a little too bright. Gabe could see Genie behind him, curled up on top of the worktable crosslegged. Boris the cat was watching holo-Leslie as if guarding a rabbit hole.

  Guilt was written all over Leslie's face, and Gabe shook his head and lowered his voice. “Son of a bitch,” he said, too softly for Genie to hear him. “Richard sent you down here, didn't he?”

  “Does it matter if he did?”

  Gabe laughed at the echo of his own thoughts. Genie looked up, startled at the sound, and he smiled at her over Leslie's translucent shoulder, and his heart stuttered painfully in his chest. Dammit, Dick. Why Les and not me?

  She didn't just look like her mother. Calisse de chrisse. She looked like Leah, tall and blond, with that straight nose in profile and the high forehead and the pin-sharp chin. And that was the sore she wore on his heart, of course. She looked like Leah, and she wasn't Leah, and he would never have Leah again. He looked away quickly, before she could see the sparkle in his eyes, and found himself staring directly at Leslie. He sniffled. He couldn't help it.

  And Leslie offered him a weary shrug and a worldly smile. “Do you know what a beginner story is, Gabriel?”

  It took a moment for him to fit the words together in the shape of a sentence. He had to take them apart a couple of times and start over, and once he had them assembled, he had to stop and run them through his brain a couple of times to see if they made sense. “No?”

  “It's a simple story th
at's still true, but doesn't have all the truth of the sort of complex story you might learn later, if you keep studying a subject.”

  “A child's version.”

  “A beginner's version.”

  He thought about it. He looked at Leslie, and looked up at Genie again, and tried not to see her as Leah. Tried not to hear Leah's name in his head as he studied her profile.

  She wasn't looking at him, as if his quick flinch away had cut her, and she was waiting to see if he would come back and cut her again. Wasn't it supposed to get easier as they grew up?

  She's not my little girl anymore. Except she was; she was growing into a grown daughter, the one that Leah had almost reached, the one Leah had grasped in the short, too-adult minutes before she died. But she was also, and still, Genie.

  He could do this. Hell, he had to do it, whether he could or not. He realized something, and smiled. Because here, after all, was one of his women for whom he could be there when she needed him. “Beginner stories?”

  “Beginner stories,” Les confirmed.

  Gabe rolled his shoulders and stepped inside the hatch. He really had to get out of the habit of talking through them, before it got somebody killed. “Okay. I think I can handle that.”

  Leslie winked before he derezzed, flickering out.

  It was the height of cowardice for Min-xue to stand and leave the table when General Shijie's hound started harrying Casey. And not even cowardice on her behalf. No, as he excused himself and picked his way up the long shallow flight of steps toward the doors at the back of the amphitheater, he couldn't claim empathy as the source of his distress. He was picturing himself behind that podium, and he didn't like it. At all.

  The men's room closest to the General Assembly would be uncomfortably crowded, even midtestimony, but there was another one around the corner, out of the way. And Min-xue, frankly, had had enough of people for the moment. He made his way through the air-curtains and an S-curved hallway, pausing just inside to see if anybody else was present. The echoing tiled room seemed deserted, the low hum of ventilation the only sound. Min-xue selected the urinal in the farthest corner and settled in, trying to blank his mind.