Scardown jc-2

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Call me Ellie.” She stroked Genie's hair, staring upward as if she could see past the ceiling and the sky and the starships that hung over them like swords on slender threads to — whatever — lay beyond. “Thank you for saving her.”

  Riel muffled a cough against the back of her hand. “I'm allergic to cats,” she said, and watched Dunsany's — Elspeth's — eyebrows rise.

  “I'm allergic to bullshit,” Elspeth replied. “Are we going to sit here and — what — wait for the Benefactor tech to take over the planet? We can't get a decent satellite image because of the dust, but Woods Hole is reporting that they're already picking up fish with nanite loads. And all is silence from above.”

  “The Feynman AI has been staying in touch. He says another wave of ships is en route. It's sort of reassuring to think their coordination isn't precise.”

  “I know.” Elspeth lifted her shoulders against the stone behind her, her hair catching in strings on gray rock. “I have a recommendation. As a scientist. Not a politician.”

  The mantel was granite, too, but polished to a gloss, and Riel stroked it idly with the pads of her fingers. A bright star-shaped chip drew her attention, on the chimney just above where she rested her elbows. She pressed a thumb into it: a bullet ricochet. “You fill me with dread, Doctor.”

  “Hah.”

  “Well?”

  Genie stirred, and Elspeth gentled her with one hand. The girl had cried herself into exhaustion, squeaking around the bandages on her cracked ribs, and Riel didn't think an earthquake would waken her. “The Benefactor tech is spreading. The AIs in the downed ship will serve to control the nanotech on earth. What if we want to send people off planet? What if they get—taken off planet?”

  Riel carefully retaped the window plastic, shutting the day-turned-dark behind a thick, translucent sheet. “They've made no progress talking to the aliens?”

  “None, Richard says. Not even a broadcast.” Elspeth patted her HCD, quiescent now. “The ships just hang there and wait.”

  Riel chewed her lip. She almost leaned back against the plastic, and remembered the broken glass behind it just in time. “What do you recommend?”

  “I have the schematics for the control chips we've been using in the pilots. If people start becoming infected, we need to be prepared. Some of them may die. They will all fall very sick. Richard says he can control it, and he'll only allow the nanosurgeons to modify the injured and the ill, and he'll limit it to the lowest levels of infection. In the meantime, I want to go to the disaster zone. I want an Engineering Corps mobile lab, and every technician and doctor you can scrape up.”

  “What happens then?”

  “We start with the wounded and hope they live through the process. Hell—” and Elspeth smiled, rubbing the thin gold cross around her throat. “We'll need — shit. We'll need a hell of a lot of everything. Disaster teams are moving in. We'll have to secure the cooperation of the U.S. authorities. The badly hurt, we can always dunk them into what's left of Lake Ontario once they're microchipped. Hold their heads under until they stop kicking, then haul them out and plug them into an IV. Some will live. Some won't. If it works, it works, and these people will have nothing to lose.”

  Riel closed her eyes, smelled smoke, tasted bile over the brandy's sting. Well, Connie?

  What do you do?

  And she opened them and looked at Elspeth Dunsany and the girl and the cat in her lap. “You're a pacifist. You opposed our involvement in South America, as I recall. It's why you went to jail. Conscientious objector, weren't you?”

  “You have”—a slight, sardonic smile lifted Elspeth's cheek—“excellent reading retention.”

  “Sometimes you need to break things to prove you're not going to take any shit from the bad guys.”

  “And sometimes all the options suck.”

  You have that right. Riel considered Elspeth, and was considered in return. Well, Connie?

  “Do you think we're going to get out of this without another fight from the Chinese? Over the Huang Di, if nothing else?”

  Elspeth Dunsany cleared her throat. “We can always nuke the Chinese tomorrow, assuming the Benefactors don't wipe us all out as a bad job and give the porpoises a chance. What are you going to do about the Chinese? Who are you, Prime Minister?”

  Riel came very close to turning her head and spitting. “You know, Elspeth, I keep asking myself, What would Winston Churchill do? You know they're blaming the attack on a mutiny aboard the Huang Di. Fringe elements. So sorry. The near-destruction of the ship resulting from the captain's attempt to regain command—”

  “I see.” Dunsany's hands made a wheel in the air. “I hear a but.”

  “The pilot who mutinied is willing to testify.”

  “Do you think Richard would be permitted to testify, too?”

  “They might call it hearsay.” Riel couldn't quite stop the amused snort. “But it's never too early to start establishing precedent. You realize if he testifies, that means the planet is a person, more or less?”

  “Yes.”

  Which, Riel realized, was Dunsany's intention all along. “You'll lead this team?”

  “I'm—” Riel almost heard her swallow the words, not qualified. “I'm an M.D. A shitty one, but sometimes shitty is better than nothing. I'll do what I have to do.”

  Late December 2062

  HMCSS Montreal

  I'll say this for Wainwright. When she chooses a side, she doesn't screw around. Acting on Gabe's belief that Ramirez was the sole saboteur — Richard calls it the Lone Programmer Theory, which apparently is a joke — the captain releases her crew to normal duty, although she assigns every member a buddy with whom he eats, sleeps, bathes, and goes to the head.

  It's not a bad stopgap measure, as stopgap measures go.

  On the twenty-third, the Benefactor ships start signaling.

  Dit. Dit. Dah.

  Dit. Dit. Dah.

  Radio frequencies, and pulsed signals through the nanotech. Richard filters it after the first ten minutes, merci à Dieu. Dit. Dit. Dah.

  What the hell does it mean?

  “I don't know,” he answers. “But the last pip is twice as long as the first two, so I'm going to presume it's math and see if I can establish a dialogue.”

  Keep me posted.

  “I will.”

  How are things on Earth?

  “Bad,” he says. “Proceeding.” And leaves us to our vigil.

  After the third day, it blends into a sort of nightmare. The pills keep Patty and me half alert. We trade off six-hour shifts and sleep when we can, often curled in a observer's chair on the corner of the bridge. We eat what's set before us with wooden mouths. Sometime on Christmas Eve, Gabe pronounces the Montreal's systems clean, and Richard concurs.

  Dit. Dit. Dit. Dit. Daaahhhh.

  One plus one plus one plus one is four.

  Then Gabe walks off the bridge and I don't see him for eight or ten hours. When he comes back, he's clean and I hate him, until Wainwright orders me to the showers.

  “If they try anything,” she says, “Patty is here. And chances are there's not a damned thing we could do about it anyway.”

  Dah. Dah. Daaahhhh.

  Two plus two is four.

  Wake me up when they get to the square root of negative one, Richard. Soldiering makes you damned good at waiting. And at least they want to establish a dialogue, instead of pitching rocks. Or whatever.

  That's something. And there's hot water down there with my name on it, and right now that's the only thing that matters.

  Dit. Dit. Dit. Dit. Dit. Dit.

  Dah. Dah. Dah.

  Yeah, and like that. I'd better hurry in the shower so Patty can get a turn.

  I'm toweling off when the second wave of ships shows up.

  A different design.

  Dit. Dit. Dah.

  Richard? Didn't we do this part already?

  “Well, there's the odd thing.” A thoughtful pause, and it's really more Alan's voice when
he comes back. “They seem to be signaling not us, but the first wave of ships.”

  I see.

  What does that mean?

  “I wish I knew.”

  A clean jumpsuit is like a personal favor from God. I seal it up to my throat; the damned thing has somehow gotten too big. “Richard, make me eat more.”

  And Richard-for-real, not Richard-flavored-with-Alan. I'm getting used to his — malleable personality. “I'll try.”

  Late December 2062

  Somewhere in eastern North America

  It was worse than Elspeth could have possibly imagined, and she was glad that Genie had gone to a shelter for displaced military dependents in Vancouver. PanMalaysia, Japan, the European Union, and United Africa sent doctors, nurses, troops in blue U.N. helmets that made her think of Jenny in the moments when she thought.

  She lost track of where she was. What city, what nation, which way east lay. She ate when someone peeled her gory gloves away and shoved food in front of her, and she got on a plane or a truck when someone told her to, and she slept when someone pushed her over, and she lost more than she saved.

  No finesse. No skill. Butchery. Oceans of blood. They died on the operating table and they died from the nanosurgery treatments and they just died for no reason at all, sat down in corners and stared and fell over, gone. It amazed her that there were any wounded at all, given the scale of the catastrophe, until she realized that some of the casualties had been hundreds of kilometers from the impact. And still she lost more than she saved.

  She leaned on the edge of a steel table during a moment's lull and breathed out slowly, controlled, the smell of antiseptic churning in her empty gut. I'm a fucking psychiatrist. What the hell am I doing here?

  “I'm a forensic pathologist.” Elspeth looked up, into the desperation-reddened eyes of an Oriental woman about her own age who wore a dust-clogged surgical mask. “Damned if I know.”

  “I didn't realize I was talking out loud.”

  “I'm amazed that I can talk. Kuai Hua.”

  “Elspeth Dunsany.”

  The woman's eyes widened a touch, as if adrenaline jerked her awake. “Really?”

  Elspeth sighed and turned tiredly away as stretcher-bearers staggered in, but they walked past her station to the back of the room. Burn victim. Not mine, thank God. And then a rush of shame at the thought. “My moment of infamy was a long time ago.”

  “No—” Dr. Hua stopped, confused. “I heard your name from a Canadian Army doc named Frederick Valens.”

  “You know Valens?”

  “Hell. He said to keep an eye out for you. Last I saw him he was over in the triage shed.”

  “Oh.” Oh. “Kuai, could you cover for me for a second?”

  “Don't worry,” the other doctor said, exhaustion flattening her voice. “We won't run out while you're gone.”

  Fifteen meters from surgery to triage, and the unnatural cold settled into Elspeth's lungs like a fluid, grit bouncing off her goggles in a bitter wind. Blood froze and cracked from her gloves as she turned them inside out and tossed them into a red-bag container by the door of the triage shed. Shed: a Quonset hut on an unevenly poured foundation, ice glittering on a roof like the metal rib cage of some long-dead beast. Elspeth pushed the double-hung rubber door open with her shoulder, blinking in the brightness of the artificial lights as she ducked inside.

  Valens was easy to find, even with a surgical cap hiding his distinctive silver hair. He looked up as Elspeth entered, and when she tugged her mask down he got up from a crouch amid the rows of stretchers and the walking wounded seated on the floor and started moving toward her, his catlike stroll reduced to a dragging stagger.

  “The prime minister has people looking for you. Don't you check your messages?” He didn't hold a hand out, and she didn't offer hers.

  “I haven't exactly had time. What do you want?”

  He blinked, voice grinding as if the words were buried somewhere very deep, and he had to go after them. “She wants you at the provisional capital in Vancouver. And from there, the Montreal.”

  “What good am I there?”

  He snorted. “Congratulations, Elspeth. You, Charlie Forster, Paul Perry, and Gabe Castaign are suddenly the world's foremost practical experts in communicating with nonhuman intelligences. The United Nations has demanded Canada assign you to their contact team.”

  The floor really was a shoddy piece of construction. She caught the toe of her shoe on a ripple in the concrete and would have gone down on a knee if Valens hadn't caught her elbow. “I'm needed here.”

  “Ellie.”

  Huh. She looked him in the eye. She could swear he'd been crying. But everybody she saw lately looked like that. “What?”

  “You're needed there. This is a big push. First contact—”

  She gestured around the room. “What about these people?”

  “The whole world's sending doctors. They're trickling in, but the trickle's becoming a flood. We're going to start shipping casualties to hospitals in the U.S., Mexico, Iceland. Over the pole to the Scandinavians. International cooperation,” he said through his mask, cheeks bulging under his eyes in what might have been a heartsick smile.

  “It won't last.” She closed her eyes and leaned into the strength of his hand on her arm. World cooperation? It'll take more than this. “What about the war?”

  “War?”

  “China. Russia. That.”

  “China claimed a few hundred miles of cold flat country. It's died down to sniping. Russia will take it back in fifty or a hundred years if the fighting doesn't kick up again. Everybody's looking upward now; you'd be amazed how effective it is at keeping them from shooting each other. Why do you care?”

  Because I care. It wasn't worth saying. She pulled away from his touch. “Who'd you lose, Fred?”

  A long pause. He cleared his throat. “My husband. A son. Couple of”—pause and breathe—“pets.”

  “I didn't know you were married.” Pets. Goddamn it, Gabriel. I miss you. “It won't last,” she repeated. “The peace. It always comes down to us and them in the end.”

  “It does.” He pointed with two fingers, sweeping gesture that took in the triage shed and the camp and the world beyond. “Us.” And the same two fingers, thumb folded tight against the ball of his hand. A short, sharp gesture, straight up at the sky. “Them.”

  Elspeth coughed into her hand, brushing a puff of dust from her mask. “It won't be enough.”

  He shrugged. “I have wounded, Elspeth.”

  “Yeah,” she answered. “I'll go. But Genie comes with me.”

  “Don't tell me,” he said. “Call Riel.”

  1315 Hours

  Tuesday 2 January, 2063

  HMCSS Montreal

  I wait at the airlock, Gabe on my left side, Patty on my right. Captain Wainwright is three steps in front of us, Richard hovering like an anxious blind date in the back of my head. Some of his attention, anyway; the rest is occupied with increasingly complex combinations of dit, dit, dah. From two directions now.

  Elspeth's gotten so thin. She opens the hatchway hesitantly, peering around the corner, flinching back as Wainwright clicks her heels. “Dr. Dunsany.”

  And then she pushes the hatch wide and steps through. “Oh. Captain Wainwright, I presume? Gabe. Patty. Jenny.” Our eyes meet, and she steps first toward Gabe but then reverses direction and comes to me.

  And behind her, a weary, addled-looking Charlie Forster. And behind him — Genie.

  Genie, lugging a plastic animal carrier in both arms, who squeals and puts it down just this side of the hatch and then runs to Gabe and throws herself into his arms, and Genie looks pink-cheeked and healthier than I've ever seen her, hair shining the way Leah's used to, and as her daddy scoops her up that hair spins every which way. He buries his face against her neck, deep breaths swelling his chest, and I can see the little pale square of her controller chip outlined through her skin.

  And Ellie walks up to me, and hands
me the carrier, and I hear a plaintive mew from inside, and she keeps walking until I put my steel arm around her and pull her close.

  She looks awful.

  She looks old.

  I don't know which one of us is crying harder, and before too long Gabe and Genie are hugging us, too, and it all dissolves into a soggy pileup with Wainwright dogging the hatch carefully and then she and Charlie and Patty spending five or ten minutes studying the gray paint on the wall, trading sidelong glances.

  The captain clears her throat, eventually, and I peel myself away from my family and lug the carrier over. “Captain Wainwright.” Sniffle. Merci à Dieu, I'm turning into a crybaby. “May I request your permission to bring this animal aboard?” I hold the carrier up so she and Boris can see eye to eye, and he does me proud by squinching golden eyes at her and emitting a rumbling purr like a steam boiler.

  She studies him for a moment, and sighs. “Housebroken?”

  “More or less.”

  She chuckles. “Long tradition of ship's cats in the navy.”

  “This is the air force, Captain.”

  “I won't tell him if you don't.” And she smiles at me like she means it and jerks her head at Elspeth and Genie. “See our honored guests fed, would you, Master Warrant?”

  “Yes. Ma'am.”

  It's still tofu and noodles, and Genie makes faces until Gabe messes her hair up and glowers — and then she curls into the crook of his arm and won't let go. Boris scratches at the grate of his carrier until I pull him out and hold him in my lap. He quiets when I scratch behind his ears and talk to him in low tones. “Boris, baby. How many lives are you on now?” He rumbles back and settles in with a rattle, even the prick of his claws in my thigh driving my blood pressure down.

  Elspeth doesn't seem hungry, so I chivvy her to eat until she at least picks up her bowl and slurps the broth. “Ew,” she says. “Miso.”

  “Get used to it, Doc. Happy New Year, by the way.”

  “Happy New Year. So what have you and Gabe and Richard figured out about our aliens so far?”

  The soup is too salty. At least the cook is starting to figure out how much sugar to put in the reconstituted lemonade. Patty watches silently, pale eyes alert as they shift from Elspeth's face to mine and back again. “They know how to add. Richard's still working on it. But they seem friendly enough.”