“You trust me,” Richard hisses in my ear, and I sense his tremendous disappointment in me. “Well and good. Trust me all you like—but do you want the Benefactors to have this kind of control over everything on Earth, Jenny? Alan and I are not going to let this happen—”
—and I hear somebody yelling, running footsteps, skidding on the frozen lake and the flicker of a flashlight across my back, the blood, the ice.
Somebody.
Gabe.
Marde. All right, Richard; you proved your point. My emotional blackmail won't work on you any better than Leah's did.
“I'm still a computer program,” he says.
You're a computer program that forgot one thing, I remind him. Can you hack the Chinese system the way you just hacked mine?
A pause, one I know is for my benefit. “No. Not if they knew I was coming. I've been trying since you were shot.”
So what makes you think that the Benefactors would have any better luck than you?
I can tell that he doesn't have an answer because he lets me go, and I'm standing—a little dizzy with blood loss—to face my tongue-lashing from Gabe by the time he catches up with me.
11:00 PM
Tuesday 19 December, 2062
Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
The big truck purred to life as Razorface stroked the steering column. Indigo slouched against the passenger door, staring through the streetlamp reflections at pavement and ice. “Indy.”
Nothing, while he reached down and touched the radio on. Razor kept the reach going, cracked his neck out loud, and laid a hand on her arm. She jumped as if he'd snuck up on her. “Indy.”
“What?”
“Don't freak on me, babe. You in?”
She didn't turn to look. Her reflection showed a fine line etched between dark eyes and she suddenly looked her age. She shook her head slightly, hair whispering around her ears, and he pulled his hand back to cover a cough that tasted like molasses.
He nodded. “You're in.”
“Yeah,” she answered. “Where do we go?”
The Bradford ghosted into the stream of traffic, a navy blue shark cruising Toronto's dark waters. Razorface swallowed a mouthful of gunk, flipped the rearview mirror to “night,” and laid both hands on the wheel. “I've been tailing Holmes.”
“Have you.”
“She doesn't always drive home the same way,” he continued, ignoring the darkness in Indigo's voice. “But she's got a Monday route, and a Sunday route—”
He let the list flicker out when the girl half turned and tilted her head to the side. He didn't turn to look, but saw her expression with half one eye. “She thinks we're that dumb?”
“She thinks she's that smart anyway,” Razorface said, and turned west on Bloor. “You game?”
“Yeah.” A long exhalation, like a smoker's release. “Yeah. I'm game.”
0600 Hours
Wednesday 20 December, 2062
Somewhere over the Atlantic
I wake in a dark corner of a private jet, and not Holmes's jet either. This one is lushly appointed, but there's something worn about the edges of the beige leather recliner—almost a couch—that I'm strapped into. Low-angled sunlight streams around the blind to my left; if we're headed for Brazil, it must be morning.
My right arm's swathed with bandages. Tug of an IV in my right ankle when I release the belt and start to swing my legs around: I slide the IV out, keeping pressure on the puncture until it seals. Richard? The arm itches fiendishly.
“Welcome back.”
Good morning. I shiver a little, remembering the cold of the night before, but there's more to it than that. You get used to following orders. Somebody snaps one, and you find yourself doing something you otherwise might not. It takes awhile to get out of the habit. Valens told you to fix that, didn't he?
“I know. It can't be fixed.”
But can you block it from the outside, like I said?
“A boy can try.”
Light edges a curtain a couple of meters forward, too, and once I sit up I hear muffled voices trickling through. The corridor is narrow enough that I can lean over and pop the windowshade up. Sunrise—I presume it's sunrise—spills through scarred Plexiglas. I look down at my knobby bare toes scrunching carpet and laugh.
Still not dead.
Well, until Gabe gets his hands on me, at least.
The sun slips up a centimeter or three while I peel tape off my arm and lift the gauze to look under. “Damn,” as the compartment brightens and I look up to Gabe's broad shape silhouetted under the pushed-back curtain.
“You fucked yourself up.”
“All better,” I say, and—wincing—peel the gauze back so he can see the ragged black line of scab flaking from pink scar and a very tidy set of, oh, ten or twenty stitches. I hold it up next to my face, tilting my head, trying for wide-eyed innocence.
I've never mastered that one. His scowl informs me that I haven't gotten any better at it. He lets the curtain fall closed behind him. He doesn't say another word, and I worry my knuckle between my teeth as he sits down across the aisle.
Leah's voice, and Patty's, filter through the curtain. I lower mine. “You are so going to kick my ass.”
“No,” he says, and sprawls against the wall, closing his eyes. “Do you ever think about what you're doing, Jenny? Or do you just kind of—do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Leah and Richard explained your plan. If I can dignify it with the term.” The sunrise turns his curls from ash-and-straw to spun red gold. I get up and cross the aisle, curl myself into the angle of his arm, lean back. He doesn't move away, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “But this noble self-sacrifice shit has got to end, Jenny. You have to think about the rest of us.”
Mon ange, if only you knew. I cover my mouth with my hand, try to turn it into a cough, but the laugh starts deep and spills up out until I fall back against Gabriel's shoulder, shaking my head against his sleeve. “I was,” I croak between giggles. “Oh. Fucking hell. I didn't mean to scare you, Gabe.”
“You did,” he says. “You made sure somebody would clue. Otherwise what was that little drama for?”
“Ow.” I nibble the knuckle a little harder than I intended. “I—” Pinch my nose against the burning and close my eyes. “There was absolutely no chance that I was going to die from a little cut like that.”
“Good,” he says, and squeezes me as the girls laugh riotously on the other side of the curtain, resuming a conversation that must have been interrupted by my little fit. “Someday you'll have to fill me in on your logic.”
“Yeah.” I wonder how I can explain. I owe a terrorist a favor. I have to save the world.
Hmmm.
Maybe not.
I kiss him on the cheek and climb to my feet, not bothering to look for my boots. “I have to give something to Patty,” I say as he pats me on the ass.
“Come back afterward,” he says. “They're having fun. Don't spoil it with grown-ups.”
Patty studied the paper in her hand, avoiding the look that passed between Leah and Casey before the latter took the former by the wrist and led her forward, into the jet's cramped sideways galley.
The envelope's thick creamy paper was soft as felt, and Patty knew the handwriting well from birthday cards. She ran her thumb across it again, reluctant to risk what it might say inside. Frightened, because she couldn't imagine anything that Papa Fred wouldn't say to her face. Frightened, because Casey hadn't been able to meet Patty's eyes when handing her the note.
She slid her thumbnail under the flap and lifted it, the gum stretching at first and then the paper tearing at the edge. Patty glanced up and checked to make sure Leah, Casey, and Leah's dad were all out of sight. She slipped the note out of the envelope and unfolded a thick sheet of cotton laid that smelled faintly of Papa Fred's cologne—crisp and a little musky. The ink was black, formal. A glossy blue-green plastic chit—a data slip—fluttered to her lap,
and she picked it up by the edges, unthinking.
It was a moment before her eyes would focus on the page.
Dear Patty, the note began, under yesterday's date:
I've asked Jen Casey to bring this to you because I wanted you to have something real to take with you, and because I couldn't be there. I love you, and when you get to be my age, you will realize something. It's not how the future remembers you that is important. It's what you leave behind.
You're probably going to hear some nasty rumors about me soon. They're not quite true.
I'm leaving you, and the Montreal, and a few other things. Protect those for me, and make the most of your life that you can. Live a long time and be whatever you want to be, and don't ever let anybody tell you that you have to do anything if you know that it's wrong.
The only thing you must do is the thing your conscience demands.
You're a good girl, and smarter than your dad. Don't tell him I said so, but he takes after his mother. (Grin)
I like to think you're more like me.
Be good, but don't be too nice if you can help it.
Love,
Papa Fred
P.S. I've included a data slip with some code numbers that will give you access to my private files. Don't share them with anybody. I trust you to use them as I would have wanted.
“Oh,” Patty said. She read the note over, folded it back around the data slip, and put it all back into the envelope, which she zipped into her breast pocket. She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
That was good-bye.
I'm not going to see him again.
It was a peculiar feeling, light. As though the juice had been wrung from her and she were a husk, a squeezed-out rind with features painted on the surface.
Leah had told her about the AIs, although she hadn't spoken with them. They hadn't spoken with her. Why? she wondered. Do they not trust me because they don't trust Papa?
They wouldn't let Leah or Casey hurt themselves. They're worried about the nanotech. They're worried about Papa Fred. They're worried about all sorts of things they're not telling us, too, I bet.
Patty glanced along the aisle and saw Casey's and Leah's shadows still cast out on the floor beside the galley. Shadows leaning close: whispering or embracing.
“Richard,” Patty said softly, covering her lips with her hand. “Alan? Can you hear me?”
“We hear you, Patty,” a neutral voice answered, sounding like it came from inside her ears. “You don't need to talk out loud. How can I help you?”
“Why—” Why didn't you ever talk to me before? Can I call you Richard?
“Call me anything you like. And because I didn't want to worry you. And the fewer people who knew of our existence, the better.”
What about now?
“The secret's out.” She had a sense of an oblique smile, hands drumming on brown-trousered thighs. “So what can I tell you, Pilot? We'll be working very closely soon, you know.”
I'm tired of secrets. Patty unbuckled her lap belt and stood, pacing the aisle. She stopped and peered from a window. Sunlight gleamed on choppy indigo, far below. The tightness was in her gut again, the old midnight tension. Get good grades. Don't fool around with boys. Succeed. Understand. Excel.
Richard, tell me everything.
“Everything about what?”
Everything you know.
2100 Hours
Thursday 21 December, 2062
PPCASS Huang Di
Under way
“Second Pilot, you are relieved.”
Min-xue looked up from his panels, noticing the drawn expression on the face of the first pilot as he floated behind Captain Wu. “Captain, my duty shift has just begun. The first pilot has just completed a shift—”
“Second Pilot.” Captain Wu lowered his voice and leaned forward. Alcohol tainted his breath, half covered by the scent of ginger candy. “I have received new orders. Pursuant to our earlier conversation, if you recall it.”
Min-xue's hands, moving automatically to release his webbing, trembled. “Yes, sir.”
“There has been an attempt on the Montreal. Sabotage. The results were—incomplete.”
Why is he telling me this? Min-xue's eyes went to the first pilot's face, but it was stony and his vision trained far away. Richard, is this true?
“It's true.”
The captain was still speaking, just above a whisper—a tone for Min-xue's ear alone. “Now, while the Montreal is crippled, we are commanded to incapacitate the corporate leadership of the Westerners. It is the first pilot's duty. You will relinquish your chair.”
“Yes—” Min-xue stammered. “Yes, sir.”
Richard?
A moment's silence, and the AI's level voice. “Min-xue, I think we need to see what exactly is in your forward cargo bay.”
It's just as well that I don't need much light, Min-xue thought, slithering through a narrow service panel and kicking himself loose to drift on the other side. He caught a tether left-handed before his spin turned into a tumble, and checked himself silently against the webbing and the wall. It was colder here, cold enough to sting his ears and the tip of his nose, cold enough to dry the palm he pressed to the unadorned steel wall. Richard?
“Here.”
Which way? Is the Canadian shuttle at the Montreal yet?
An emergency light flickered greenly near Min's slippered foot, just once, and beyond it another, highlighting the number 5 on the door.
“Two pilots are present on the Montreal. Two are headed for the Calgary. It's cold in the cargo hold, Min-xue. You need to hurry.”
Min-xue raised his hand and triggered the irising hatchway. He slipped through it, sliding on a rush of more pressurized air into a stale-smelling chamber. Brief dim light trickled around Min-xue's shadow and illuminated the space in which he floated. His breath clouded on the air, froze, and drifted in flakes. Richard, I need lights. Can you do that?
“Unfortunately, no. There's probably a switch near the door, however.” Min-xue found it. Actinic light rippled across the harsh metal walls, and Min-xue stopped with one wrist wound through a black, webbed strap.
The cargo in the center of the hold did, in fact, resemble several hundred tons of meteoric nickel-iron. What Min-xue didn't understand was the strange apparatus surrounding it: a mess of cables and heavy-duty springs that seemed intended to protect fragile equipment from powerful shocks. Min-xue untangled the grab-tight and kicked off the wall, cruising toward the rock.
It's an asteroid, Richard. Why do these look like quick-release clips?
“Because they are,” Richard said quietly. “Excuse me, Min-xue. I have an evacuation to arrange.”
2230 Hours
Thursday 21 December, 2062
HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
Leah and Trevor are already en route to the Calgary to bring her on-line, and Gabe's half a step ahead of me, right on Wainwright's tail, moving fast down the curving corridors of the Montreal. The ship feels colder than I remembered, maybe because she's locked down, crew confined to quarters, most systems at minimum capability to make it easier for Richard/Alan to spot a usage spike—until Wainwright is sure systems are clean.
Wainwright has a strong stride for a little woman; I hustle to keep up, and Patty is three feet behind me. We're all but running for the bridge, where Gabe is supposed to help Richard clean any lingering traces of Ramirez's sabotage out of the ship. “How bad is it, Captain?”
“We've got Ramirez in custody. Koske and Richard tracked him down in one of the biospheres. I make at least one coconspirator, but he claims he acted alone.”
I bite my lip. “What have you done to get him to talk?” Richard—
“That's an exceptionally distasteful suggestion, Jenny.”
If it comes down to it, if we infected him, would you handle an interrogation?
Richard doesn't answer, but I feel him chewing it over. I won't suggest it to Wainwright until he
decides if it suits his moral compass. Given his power, I half hope he'll say no.
Wainwright clears her throat. “You know perfectly well that torture is ineffective unless you've already decided what confession you want to force. Meanwhile, we're doing a room-by-room search for transmission devices. They have to have some way to talk to the Chinese—assuming it is the Chinese—to coordinate these attacks. We haven't picked up any transmissions.”
“Ansibles,” Richard says in my head.
I repeat his word to Wainwright. “Richard hypothesizes that they've found a way to use the Benefactor tech to communicate.”
She doesn't look back. “Tell me what you know about controlling the AIs, Master Warrant.”
Oh. “Captain—”
“Yes?”
“You can't.”
“Casey.” Voice cool, but I can hear the strain in it. “That is not an acceptable answer.”
“You can't,” I repeat, making it level and professional. “Captain, what are you going to threaten him with? Do to him? Try on him? What can you offer him?” Richard stirs in the back of my head; I sense his pressure and presence. “You're talking about a consciousness that spans half the Milky Way, Captain. What can you possibly offer him?”
Wainwright stops so short that Gabe clips her heel. I'm ready for it and set myself in a smooth-faced parade rest when she comes around, blazing. “I—”
“Jenny.”
Richard. Shhh.
“No. Now.”
Not even time to make it polite. “Captain.” My voice cuts hers like a cleaver through bone. Richard's words tumble out of my mouth. I wonder why he didn't use the ship speaker, realize it's so Wainwright will hear the news in my voice and not his. “Captain, Richard says the Huang Di is closing on us at speed. She appears to have triggered her stardrive, then dumped velocity to sublight, but she's still moving at a very good clip.”
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