“Do you suppose they're safe to touch?” Leslie's already let himself drift forward; he's ahead of the rest of us by a good three meters now. Lieutenant Peterson is eyeing her end of the lines between them as if she's about to grab a fistful and haul Leslie back to her hand over hand.
“No. I don't think it's safe to do anything to them.” They're all looking at me. I blink. I hadn't intended to speak just then; it slipped out. “But if I understand you right, Les, you think they can't talk to anything they're not touching?”
“Got it in one,” he says, straining at the end of his leash. “I'm not sure they can notice us unless we wander in among them.”
“Forgive me if that sounds like a thoroughly lousy idea.”
“I know,” he answers, and this time he does grab the ropes and turns himself completely around, so we can see his broad white grin reflecting the running lights of the Buffy Sainte-Marie. “But it's also what we came out here for, isn't it?”
And they're all waiting for me. Waiting for me, even though the lieutenant ranks me. Waiting for me because I'm Genevieve Casey, dammit. And calisse de chrisse, I hate this shit.
“All right,” I say, and I do it without reaching out for Richard, because I already know what Richard's going to say. “All right, guys. Spread out. Let's go on in.”
Richard watched silently through Min-xue's eyes as Clarke receded behind the Gordon Lightfoot. It was only Min-xue's third trip in a Canadian shuttlecraft. Richard kept an ear on Min-xue's thought process, certain that Min-xue would call for his attention shortly. Right now, the pilot was musing on how he'd never expected to find himself in space again, much less headed for a billet aboard the Canadian flagship. Richard knew that Min-xue had assumed this part of his life was over. Had assumed that his life was over, destroyed in an act of conscience that was also an act of treason. He'd never expected to sit where he sat, the lone passenger on a hastily detoured shuttlecraft, a startling extravagance by Chinese standards.
Clarke slid out of view as the shuttlecraft turned toward the Montreal. Min-xue couldn't see their destination through the ports on the shuttlecraft's sides, and the pilot's compartment was shielded from the passenger cabin by a bulkhead. There was a monitor on the back side of that bulkhead, and Richard contemplated turning it on for Min-xue, but he wasn't sure if Min-xue wanted the long view of the Montreal, or of Earth, or of the Benefactor ships.
Both he and Richard knew very well what they all looked like, after all—
Richard?
“A good rain knows the season, and comes on with the spring,” Richard quoted, drawing a smile to Min-xue's thin-pressed lips. “I've been wondering if you would want to talk.”
You're still reading the Tang poets, I see.
“You are an enormously bad influence,” Richard answered, and Min-xue smiled. “Min-xue, I know you've spoken to the Canadian legal team about the—”
About the impact event. Yes, and so have you.
And Richard knew why the young man chose that distancing, clinical term. Euphemism had its uses. “They feel we are not being as forthcoming as possible about Captain Wu's orders.”
They think we know more than we're telling, you mean.
Richard indulged himself in a calculated hesitation. “Yes.”
Perhaps they should ask Captain Wu these questions. I do not know the source of his orders. I am certain that they came from his chain of command, however. Min-xue closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair, regulating his breathing. Richard couldn't do anything about the roughness of the seat against Min-xue's back, or the way the vibration of the engines rattled through the ship as a controlled burn accelerated them toward the Montreal, but he could — and did — dim the Gordon Lightfoot's interior illumination.
“Thank you, Richard,” Min-xue said out loud. He turned his head to press his face to the cold glass of the portal, a gesture Richard saw a lot among his pilots. His pilots. With their hair-trigger reflexes and enhanced senses that made the simplest navigation through daily life an act of courage and endurance. His pilots. Richard's pilots. Richard's ticket to the stars.
And telling Riel I accept her offer of citizenship would make it that much easier to be certain I get there. Eventually.
“You're welcome. Min-xue, I'd like your permission to adjust your wetware somewhat.”
“What are you going to do?” Min-xue didn't open his eyes, but the creases at the corners eased as Richard bumped the light level down again.
“Update the protections and start low-level monitoring on your nanosurgeons.”
There's a problem? You have doubts about the worldwire?
If Richard had a lip, he would have been chewing it. His pilots. And not, frankly, just his pathway to other worlds, but personal friends, all three of them. Well, his friends or Alan's, and there was no practical difference between the two.
Mad as they were.
He'd been unable to save Trevor Koske and Leah Castaign. Humans would persist in being human. “Preventative measures. I'm having the same conversation with Jen and Patty right now.”
You're not telling me everything, Richard.
“I can't.” But closer monitoring of Min-xue's nanotech would give him a further glimpse into the Chinese programming techniques, and besides, he was worried about the unexplained dieoffs in Charlie's ecospheres… and more worried that he hadn't noticed it happening.
Min-xue opened his eyes. His hands curved in to the hand grips molded to the edge of his seat, useful in zero gravity, now useful to push himself forward against the thrust that pressed him back into his seat. “This is the life I have chosen.” He gave his head a sideways shake. “All right,” he said, tightening his grip on the handholds. “All right. And Richard?”
“Min-xue?”
“Turn on the monitor? I want to see where we're going.”
Richard did it, and answered, “Don't we all.”
In a minor confirmation of the law that the perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum, it was the issue of time zones and the selection of a sufficiently closemouthed translator that prevented Riel from contacting Premier Xiong before Sunday morning. She made a major concession in allowing the PanChinese premier to choose the translator. But then again, that was the way the game was played, and machine translation was not nuanced enough for these purposes.
There were channels and there were channels, of course, and the means she was resorting to, while official in the broader senses of the term, weren't exactly diplomatic. Which was helpful, in the sense of deniability, and unhelpful — in the sense of deniability.
And once upon a time, the world made sense, she reminded herself, opaquing the reflective surface of her interface plate and checking her makeup for the third time. And then you got this job. She checked her watch, then checked the time on the heads-up display in her contact, and then rolled her eyes at her own nervousness. She was nauseated with anticipation, and it wasn't going to serve her to any advantage if she didn't get the adrenaline under control.
So what if the PanChinese premier was late? Her meeting with Hardy and Frye wasn't for ninety minutes. And if they showed up early, or she ran long, they could cool their heels out by the water fountain for a while. Which thought made her smile, and not — she noticed in the opaqued plate — not very pleasantly.
She wiped the expression off her face. The hip unit sitting on the desk beside her chimed. She jumped, took a breath, and drank three gulps of the rooibos chai staying warm in her self-heating mug before she felt composed enough to reach out and thumbprint the secure HCD. “Premier Xiong,” she said, raising her eyes as the man's pinched, expectant face rezzed in midair. “It's good of you to agree to this conference.”
“Prime Minister Riel.” A pause, for encoding and translation. “It is good of you to hear me. We have a problem.”
“More than one,” she answered. It came easier as she found her stride; this was no different, really, than any other such conference in her tenure as PM. More fr
aught, perhaps, and more hazardous, but the actual mechanics were no different.
It was still just a matter of two people sitting down to talk and establish common interests and points of negotiation. Constance Riel folded her hands together. It did not stop her from fiddling with her ring. “Premier, continued hostility benefits neither of us. Let us be frank; Canada is not in a position to profit from ongoing conflict, and I do not believe China is either. You have the problem of the Russians to contend with, the PanMalaysian alliance and Japan… and the same climatic issues we have. I don't want a war, sir.”
A longer pause this time, and she wondered what word the translator had been checking context on. Or if there had been a hasty consultation at a higher level. Eventually, Xiong's impassive face was softened by a blink, and the faint tilt of a smile. “None of us want a war, Prime Minister.”
She saw the sideways flash of his eyes, the faint movement of his head as he shook off some fragment of well-meaning advice. Unlike her, she realized, he must indeed have someone in the room. Other than the interpreter, of course.
“We are prepared to offer an apology,” he said flatly, unprovoked. She had expected to have to force him into that particular corner. She didn't trust it.
“In exchange for?”
“An apology in return.”
“The attack on Toronto was unprovoked, Premier—”
“The attack on Toronto was not supported by our government,” he answered, cutting her off with a wave of his hand. She blinked. It was not the translator who had spoken.
Xiong's accent was inferior to his translator's, but his English was perfectly plain as he continued, leaving Riel at a loss. “The miscreants will be punished when they are located. To that end, we require the return of the crew of the Huang Di. Surely there can be no question that this is appropriate, and that it is necessary for us to question our citizens and determine whether there were, in fact, orders — and if so, from whom they came.”
Ah. That, Riel had an answer to. “Premier, we also would like to see the crew of the Huang Di answer a few questions. In a public forum, rather than behind closed doors.”
“I see.” He glanced down, consulting his notes or concealing the green flash of an adviser's message across his contact. “We would like the compiler code to the operating system being used by the nanosurgeon infection that Canada has inflicted upon the unsuspecting nations of the earth. We profess ourselves willing to share our own codes, and to make this information available to the scientific community and to the security forces of any nation or supranation that wishes access to them. Pursuant, of course, to a security check.”
“I'm afraid that won't be possible,” she answered. Even if that weren't a back door into Richard that I wouldn't give my sister. “I am, however, certainly open to entertaining the resumption of friendly relations between our countries.” Where “resumption” is a euphemism for “we never have gotten along all that well, but I'm willing to ignore that little twenty-year dustup that we don't call World War III if you are.”
“You realize, Madame Prime Minister, that while I am amenable to… negotiations, there are elements within my nation that will be opposed.”
“I have an Opposition of my own, Mr. Xiong.”
He chuckled, his eyes twinkling like agates, the first flash of a real personality she'd seen. “I'm sure you do. There's something else you should understand, if you are determined to permit the United Nations to address this matter.”
“It wouldn't be fair to go to NATO, would it now?”
His smile was very cool, and very thoughtful. “You're aware that the same technology that is used to enhance the starship pilots can be used to create more… traditional warriors?”
“Canada is aware.” And then the bottom dropped out of her stomach, a trap door under a hanged man's feet. “Are you insinuating that China has such a program in development, sir?”
“Of course not,” he answered. “It would be classified, if we did. I'll see you in New York City on the eighth of October, then?”
“Will you be attending yourself, Mr. Premier?”
“Madame Prime Minister,” he answered carefully. “I should not miss it, if it lies within my power.”
He vanished, and Riel rolled away the ache in her neck. One down, she thought. Hardy and Frye up next. I hope this counts as a productive morning.
Patty knew why Captain Wainwright had sent her to the air lock to meet Xie Min-xue. Partially because she was young, and a pilot, too — and could be trusted not to do anything stupid like trying to shake Xie Min-xue's hand — and it was partially to get her off the bridge, where she'd been fretting since the Buffy Sainte-Marie uncoupled from the Montreal.
So she waited by the interior air lock door, her hands self-consciously relaxed, hanging palms-in against her thighs, her heart beating faster than it should, her hair braided so it wouldn't drift into her face, and one foot hooked under a grab strap. Alan? How much longer?
“He's the only one disembarking the shuttle,” Alan answered. “And they're docked. It'll just be a minute.”
Patty took a slow breath. She didn't close her eyes. She didn't need to, really; she just imagined herself armored, a golden metal robot shaped like a girl, or like a sketch of a girl on the mud flap of a truck. And the air lock cycled, and she found herself standing in front of a slender man, a boy, really, her own age or just a little older, his gleaming black hair floating above arched brows and his dark eyes glittering through his squint. He didn't smile, and he looked supremely comfortable in zero G. A duffel bag drifted from his left hand.
“Pilot Xie Min-xue?”
“I am.” Cautiously. Softly, his face slightly averted, so that his hair slid across one eye as if it could protect him from the directness of her stare.
She kicked free and pushed back quickly and dropped her gaze. “I'm Patty — I mean, I'm Patricia Valens. I'm one of the Montreal's pilots. I'm supposed to show you around.”
His chin lifted when she said “pilots,” and she could almost see the tension in his shoulders ease. “Show me around?”
“Give you a tour,” she said, assuming he had not understood the colloquialism.
“No, I understood.” Did he always speak so softly? “I had assumed I should be confined to quarters.”
She smiled and drifted another half-step away. He breathed easier once he had a little more room. “Escorted,” she said. “At least for a little while. But Richard will help you find your way around. We're supposed to treat you as a guest. Follow me.”
He did, silently, paying very close attention but asking no questions as she gave him the quick tour of the ship. She took him up the ladder in the central shaft so he could get an idea of the Montreal's size, and he gasped over the mock gravity in the habitation wheel, but “She's bigger than the Huang Di,” was his only comment, and that after she had showed him the bridge.
“About twice as big.”
Silence descended again, until she showed him to the small cabin that would be his. She stopped beside the hatch, standing to one side. “You'll stay here,” she said. “I'm sorry. I've done all the talking.”
“It's all right,” he said, but didn't undog the hatch or step through it. “I'm not very… talkative.”
They stood in the corridor facing each other. Patty could hear the Chinese pilot breathing, waiting. Finally, she stepped away from the hatch. “You can go in. You don't have to wait for me to open the hatch.”
“It's all right,” he repeated. He swallowed and looked down at his hands, fretting at the strap of the duffel. “Miss Valens.”
“Patricia.” She wasn't sure why she gave him the formal version of her name. Maybe the way his hands shook, almost too fast to see. “Please.”
“Thank you,” he stammered. “I wanted to ask you…”
“Ask,” she said, when he'd been stuck long enough that it seemed as if interrupting would be a mercy.
“Did you know Leah Castaign?”
; Patty didn't realize she'd stepped back until the bulkhead stopped her. She stared at him and forced her jaw to close. “You can't have known Leah.”
“No,” he said. “But she—” He sighed, and twisted his head aside again, staring at the floor, his hair a mess from gliding up the shaft in zero G.
Oh. “She died for you,” Patty said. She swallowed hard, but didn't look away when Min-xue's head snapped up.
“Yes. How did you—”
She shrugged. “I know,” she said. “I just know, okay?”
He bit his lip. He nodded. “Okay. Can you tell me about her? A little? Please?”
“I could.” She hesitated. “It would take awhile.”
“I'm not sleepy.”
She studied him a moment. “Do you play table tennis?”
“Table… tennis?”
“Ping-Pong?”
He shook his head. She shook hers right back at him. “What do they teach you in China?”
“How to fly starships.” Dryly, and quicker than she would have expected.
She snorted laughter, tight worry easing across her chest. “All right,” she said. “Put your bag in your cabin and I'll show you the gym and teach you how to play Ping-Pong. And I'll tell you about Leah. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
The Chinese pilots were faster. He beat her, seven to three.
Leslie had been next to bigger things. The Petronas Towers, for example. Uluru, which the ignorant called Ayers Rock. The base of the Malaysian beanstalk. The Montreal herself.
Only the rock had made quite the impression on him that the birdcage did.
They came alongside it about its midline, not that it displayed bilateral symmetry. Or radial symmetry, in fact — or any sort of symmetry at all. The design was rococo, the overall impression not too dissimilar from a baroque pearl if you ignored the fact that the silhouette was filigreed rather than continuous. The gaps between the bars of the birdcage were larger than they had seemed, from a distance. Some of the spaces compassed twenty meters.
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