It doesn't make you nervous?
It doesn't make you nervous, and you're the Jonah who spent his time in the belly of the whale.
Because I feel like it ought to scare somebody.
The Montreal kept climbing. Charlie stood and glanced out the port; Leslie shared the view. They could just catch the red flare of the Huang Di's engines reflected against the Montreal's vanes, although they couldn't see the Chinese ship herself. You're the one who keeps talking about beginner stories, Les. You just don't like being on the beginner side of the damned things any more than anyone else does.
“Bloody hell,” Leslie said out loud. “Charlie, I hate it when you're right.”
“Leslie?”
He didn't jump as Jeremy laid a hand on his shoulder, leaning down a little. He'd felt the linguist coming up behind him. “Yes, Jer?”
“Come on,” he said, letting his hand fall away. “These guys are going to be here all night. Let's get something to eat, and flicker our flashlights at the shiptree for a couple of hours. Maybe we can teach it some nursery rhymes.”
Leslie grinned and got up. Beginner stories.
Sure.
Three years later
1746 hours
Wednesday 15 December 2066
HMCSS Montreal
LaGrange Point, near Valentine
Elspeth has stationed herself by the far wall of the room, where she can see everybody. She keeps looking back and forth between Wainwright, Charlie, Gabe, Patty, Genie, and me. It's a measuring look, as if she's trying to figure out which sand castle is likely to crumble first, so she can shove some more mud up against it. Her irises gleam like polished agate, excitement thrumming through her, giving a lie to the new gray in her hair, coarse wiry strands that go this-way and that-way, oblivious to the direction of her long coiling ringlets. You'd think it would be Gabe who would hold this mad little family together.
You'd be wrong.
She's looking at him when I wander over to her and slouch against the wall, my upper arm against her shoulder. She sighs and leans into the touch, warmth pressing my jumpsuit into my skin. She pushes a little harder, leaning in to me. Neither one of us looks down from the planet on the monitor. “Ugly fucker,” I say, while the whole bridge holds its breath in quiet awe.
The dusty brown planet spins like a flicked bottle top, the ringed, sky-killing bulk of its gray-green motherworld hanging in crescent behind it. The light of the star that warms them isn't quite right either, and from what I understand the bigger planet's orbit is so erratic that the little Earth-like world we plan in our infinite arrogance to colonize will have summers like Phoenix, Arizona, and winters like Thompson, Manitoba. What's not scorched desert is frozen desert.
And based on the first long-range surveys, there's some kind of life down there smart enough to build cities. Still, we learned to talk to the birdcages and the shiptree, and we'll learn to talk to these guys, too. And Manitoba may be cold, but hey, people been living there a hell of a long time now. And like the Benefactors before us, we're a tougher species than we were.
“Bet it will look okay to the crews of those generation ships, when the Huang Di starts retrieving them.”
“When does Min-xue . . . pardon me, Captain Xie . . . leave?”
It's become seamless. I don't have to ask Richard; the information is just there, waiting for me, as if I always knew it. “Oh five hundred.” Thank you, Dick. He feels different now, bigger: talking to him is like talking to a reflection in a still pool. It's right there, close enough to touch, but you can feel how deep the water is underneath it.
And how long before we start taking him for granted, too?
“Genie already has.” A rueful acknowledgment, and he dissolves in a shiver of pixels. He'll be back if I need him. Or hell, even if I don't.
I snicker. Elspeth tilts her head against my arm.
Somewhere down there, there's a mountain or a sea that's going to be named after Leah Castaign. Once we pick it out. Koske gets one, too, and the crews of the Quebec and the Li Bo and the Lao Tzu. And after them, the crews of Soyuzes and Apollos that Richard could tell me numbers for, if I bothered to ask him, and some American space shuttles destroyed around the turn of the century, and a Brazilian tug crew killed capturing the rock that anchors the far end of the Clarke beanstalk, and the crew of the first Chinese Mars lander, and then there's twenty years of in-system accidents to get through . . .
They've already decided the little planet is going to be called Valentine, and the big one Bondarenko.
I just hope we won't run out of planets before we run out of names. On the other hand, chances are good there are going to be more planets, aren't there?
And also that there are going to be more names.
It's quiet a long time. Beep and hum of workstations, rustle of fabric, and not a word spoken as we all stand there and gape like a bunch of fools. I don't miss the fact that Patty reaches out and slings a casual arm around Genie's shoulders as they stand together. Nor do I miss the way Genie leans into the embrace. That jealous pang in my gut can just go to hell.
“Jen?”
I must have got even quieter than the rest of the crew. And Elspeth never needed technology to read anybody's mind. “Doc?”
She stands up straight and gives me another little nudge before she steps half an inch away. “When are you going to forgive Patty for not being Leah?”
I look down at the top of her head for six long seconds before I blink. “Why you always gotta ask the hard questions?”
“It's my job.”
“Uh-huh.” It's a good question, though, even if I hate it. And I know the answer, and I hate that, too: I'm not. It's a crappy answer, and it's not the Hollywood one. But it's true.
On the other hand, that's my problem and not hers, and I don't have to make it hers, do I? Because if I were a grown-up—which I'm not, not by a long shot, and I know that—but if I were a grown-up, I'd walk over there and drop an arm around her shoulders, and I'd pick Genie up, although Genie's big enough that she'd probably smack me for it, and I'd hug both of them until they squeak.
Oh, right. What the hell am I waiting for, again? I mean, really—
What's the worst that could happen?
“Hah,” Richard says in my ear, as I start forward. “Jenny, if you have to ask—”
Many men afterwards become country, in that place, Ancestors.
—Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines
Epilogue: eleven years later
1300 hours
Saturday 15 May 2077
Toronto Impact Memorial
Toronto, Ontario
It's been awhile since I felt soil under my feet: it presses my soles strangely, Earth's gravity harsh after so long aboard the Montreal. And yet I wander through the crowds on a fine May morning: the fifteenth. Leah's twenty-eighth birthday would have been next week. Taurus, the bull, and the year of the rooster. The moon of greening grass and false prophets.
The tourists and dignitaries and mourners don't step aside for me. I keep my head down and my chin hidden behind my collar, and if anyone notices me, it's to wonder why I'm wearing gloves and a trenchcoat on a warm spring day.
What is it that moves us to build gardens where people die?
Not that it's wrong. Something should grow out of this.
Hell. Something did.
I won't find Leah's name anywhere on the black stone paving the bottom of the shallow reflecting pool. Won't find it carved in the dolomite inlaid with stars of steel that surrounds the rippling water, or on the pale green-veined marble obelisk that commemorates the uncounted dead. I won't find Indigo's name or Face's name either, because here there are no names.
Only the water silver over black stone, and the splashing of quiet fountains, and the obelisk yearning skyward like a pillar of light. Like a pillar of desire, rising from an island at the center of the pool. An island the faithful have littered with offerings and farewell gifts.
The smell of
lavender and rosemary wafts from the hedges, and early bees and butterflies service the blooms. The drone of their wings is the only sound on the air except for the whispers. Dick's done brilliantly—the ice caps are growing, the oceans receding, although they're still not at anything like historic levels. I hope he's able to stabilize the climate before it flips the other way, into an ice age.
But I guess we'll blow up that bridge when we come to it.
I pass a retired soldier on a park bench, stop, and turn back as his profile catches my eye. He climbs to his feet: still in uniform. “The jacket's gotten a little big for you, Fred. Did Patty tell you I was coming?”
She's doing grad work, now, at Oxford. They've rebuilt; Jeremy was invited to teach, and he recruited her as a student. Not that she would have had any trouble getting in, although Fred threw a fit when she decided to leave the service. It's good to see the kid getting what she wants for a change, instead of what her family's told her to want.
He shakes his head, his cover in his hand. Reddened cheeks pouchy, hair gone white but only slightly thinning, eyebrows that probably seem threatening when he glowers. “The Vancouver's just left on an exploratory mission, and the Toronto is about ready to fly. They're going to give her to Genie as primary pilot, although I don't think Genie's heard that yet, and she's not going to hear it from you.”
“Done at twenty-three. Damn.”
“Kid's special.” He shrugs. “And I wouldn't call it done. You have some finished apprentices for us, I hope?”
“Some.” I shoo a curious honeybee away. “So how'd you know I'd be here? Dick rat me out? Did Doc?” Elspeth would, too. If she thought I needed closure.
“Elspeth doesn't talk to me. No, I heard the Montreal was home. I guessed.” He sticks his hand out and I take it, glad of my gloves. Brief contact, as if we're in a contest to see who can be the first to let it drop. I turn and keep walking. He falls into step. “Gabe's not here? Elspeth?”
“Couldn't stand to come.”
“Did you ever get married?”
All three of us, Fred, or any two in combination? Be funny if Elspeth and I did it, and kept Gabe around as a houseboy. Hell, I bet he'd be amused by that. Gabe, I mean. Well, Valens, too. “Why mess with what works?”
No answer to my sarcasm but the splashing of water as he strolls along beside me, supple and spry. Mideighties aren't what they used to be.
I scratch the back of my right hand. “You ever try again?”
“Georges raised parrots. He would have wanted me to pine.” He waves to the tall white stone, with the back of his hand as if his shoulder pained him. “I hear the colony is doing well.”
I shrug. There's a funny story about that, but it's not for today. “They're doing all right, I guess. I see those Benefactor ships are still in orbit.”
“Different two,” he says. “They change off. They still playing music at you?”
“And us at them. Jer, Richard, Elspeth, and Les have a pidgin worked out with the birdcages. And good chunks of a chemical—a pheromone—and a light grammar, I guess you'd call it with the shiptree. It's nice not having to leave Elspeth here, thanks to Dick and the wire. Gabe would drive me nuts without her.” I lower my head; he offers a handkerchief. I blow my nose. I'm not the only one. “They did a nice job on the memorial, Fred.”
“They did.”
The tide of pedestrians carries us to the edge of the reflecting pool at a shuffle and hesitates. Nobody pushes. We all take our time. Around me, people are unlacing shoes, rolling up pant legs, sliding stockings off. I do the same, a tidy little pile of socks and spitshined leather by the lip of the pool. People start staring when I peel the gloves off; I hear the murmurs. I hear my name once, twice, and then a ripple of excitement when I shrug off the black trenchcoat and stand there in the sunlight, barefoot in a fifteen-year-old uniform.
I don't look at them, but I can feel them looking at me, and the ones wading out to the island pause, each of them, as if a giant hand stopped and turned them in their tracks. Genie and Patty and Gabe came to the dedication, ten years back.
I couldn't. “Hold my coat for me, Fred.”
He doesn't answer. But he folds the coat over his arm.
The water's sun-warm against my ankles, the black stones slippery and smooth, bumpy with treasures. People stand aside as I stride forward, stinging eyes fixed on the blur of the obelisk, footsteps quick enough to scatter droplets of water like diamonds into the sun. I find the feather in my pocket by touch and draw it out—a little the worse for wear, but safe in its chamois. Like rubies, the beads catch the light when I uncover it.
There are words on the obelisk my eyes are too blurred to make out, even when I step onto the island and pick carefully between the scattered offerings—photos and flags, trinkets and caskets and a full bottle of 18-year-old Scotch—the airworthy ones weighted with the heavier.
I can't quite read the words, but they're graven deep and I trace them with a fingertip:
10:59 PM
December 21, 2062
I tug a bit of sinew from my pocket, because it's traditional, and I wind it around the obelisk—which is slender enough to span with my arms, like the waist of a teenage girl—and then I tie Nell's feather to it. Tight, just above the writing. So the veins I smooth with my fingertips flutter in the breeze and the glass jewels sparkle in the sun.
The stone's warm where I lean my forehead on it. When I straighten up and wipe my nose on the back of my hand, the crowd is so silent I hear my sniffle echo. Every single one of them stares at me, and they don't glance down when I stop at the edge of the island and glare, putting all the eagle in the look I can.
The moment is stillness, utter and heartless, and that stillness continues when I step into the water again and wade back to shore, sodden trouser cuffs clinging to my ankles.
Walking through the water. Trying to get across.
Just like everybody else.
To Kit
Acknowledgments
It takes a lot of people to write a novel. This one would not have existed without the assistance of my very good friends and first readers (on and off the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror)—especially but not exclusively Kathryn Allen, Chris Coen, Jaime Voss, James Stevens-Arce, Michael Curry, Ruth Nestvold, Chris Manucy, Bonnie Freeman, Holly McDowell, Ejner Fulsang, Larisa Walk, John Tremlett, Amanda Downum, and Leah Bobet. I am also indebted to Stella Evans, M.D., to whom I owe whatever bits of the medical science and neurology are accurate; Peter Watts, Ph.D., for assistance with questions of biology; M.Cpl. S. K. S. Perry (Canadian Forces), Lt. Penelope K. Hardy (U.S. Navy), and Capt. Beth Coughlin (U.S. Army), without whom my portrayal of military life would have been even more wildly fantastical; Leonid Korogodski and Claris Cates-Smith Ryan for linguistic assistance; engineer Catherine Morrison and recovering biologist Jeremy Tolbert for fielding questions about rising sea levels, alien microbiology, and decontamination procedures; safety engineer Wendy S. Delmater; Meredith L. Patterson, linguist and computer geek, for assistance with interspecies semiotics; Melinda Goodin for Australian Rules English assistance; Stephen Shipman, for AI geekery; Chelsea Polk and Kellie Matthews for bolstering my knowledge of the native music of Soviet Canuckistan; Celia Marsh for emergency, just-in-time delivery of vintage Kate and Anna McGarrigle; Steven Brust and Caliann Graves, for advice and tolerance; Dena Landon, Sarah Monette, and Kelly Morisseau, francophones extraordinaire, upon whom may be blamed any correctness in the Québecois—especially the naughty bits; my agent, Jennifer Jackson, my copyeditor, Faren Bachelis, and my editor, Anne Groell, for too many reasons to enumerate; and to Kit Kindred, who is patient with the foibles of novelism.
For the sake of accuracy, I should note that in the interests of drama, my United Nations bears about the same resemblance to the real one that an episode of Perry Mason bears to an actual criminal proceeding.
The failures, of course, are my own.
BY ELIZABETH BEAR
GRAIL
CHILL
DUST
UNDERTOW
CARNIVAL
WORLDWIRED
SCARDOWN
HAMMERED
PHOTO: © S. Shipman
Elizabeth Bear shares a birthday with Frodo and Bilbo Baggins. This, coupled with a childhood tendency to read the dictionary, doomed her early to penury, intransigence, and the writing of speculative fiction—some of which conditions persist to this day. She lives in Manchester, Connecticut, with a giant ridiculous dog and a presumptuous cat.
www.elizabethbear.com
PRAISE FOR
ELIZABETH BEAR'S
HAMMERED
“Hammered is a very exciting, very polished, very impressive debut novel.”—Mike Resnick, author of The Return of Santiago
“Gritty, insightful, and daring—Elizabeth Bear is a talent to watch.”—David Brin, author of the Uplift novels and Kil'n People
“A gritty and painstakingly well-informed peek inside a future we'd all better hope we don't get, liberally seasoned with VR delights and enigmatically weird alien artifacts. Genevieve Casey is a pleasingly original female lead, fully equipped with the emotional life so often lacking in military SF, yet tough and full of noir attitude; old enough by a couple of decades to know better but conflicted enough to engage with the sleazy dynamics of her situation regardless. Out of this basic contrast, Elizabeth Bear builds her future nightmare tale with style and conviction and a constant return to the twists of the human heart.”—Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon
“Hammered has it all. Drug wars, hired guns, corporate skullduggery, and bleeding-edge AI, all rolled into one of the best first novels I've seen in I don't know how long. This is the real dope!”—Chris Moriarty, author of Spin State
“A glorious hybrid: hard science, dystopian geopolitics, and wide-eyed sense of wonder seamlessly blended into a single book. I hate this woman. She makes the rest of us look like amateurs.”—Peter Watts, author of Starfish and Maelstrom
Worldwired Page 34