“I think I know where you're going with this, ma'am.”
Riel smiled. “Appeasement never works, Janet. And ignoring the problem isn't going to make it go away. Especially when it's come hundreds of light-years to introduce itself.”
“And?”
“And if I find out that anybody — coalition or opposition — is working with PanChina to undermine Canada, there won't be a hole deep enough for him to hide in. And by ‘undermine,' I do mean anything from sharing information to passing notes under the desk. Comprenez-vous?”
Frye nodded. “Je comprends.”
Riel reached out and patted Frye's arm. “One crisis at a time,” she said. And don't think I'm ever going to trust you one inch farther than I can toss you, General. But if I can use you to distract Unitek while they're trying to play Canada and China off against each other, then you're a pawn I'm going to keep on the board until I have to sacrifice you. “One crisis at a time.”
She nearly jumped out of her skin when the critical-alert light on the corner of her interface plate began to blink.
• • •
I don't see what sets the teardrops off. It always seems to happen that way, doesn't it? You're cruising along, minding your own business, and suddenly things are blowing up to the left and to the right of you, and no matter how hard you were looking you never see where the goddamned rockets came from. And you just grab the wheel and floor it, and hope you don't wind up upside down in a crater. Richard. Richard! What the hell is going on?
“I don't know, Jenny. Something. Hell—”
Or, in this case, you're standing on the sidelines adjusting your cuff links, and the next thing you notice, everybody's shooting at each other. And you're too goddamned far away to make any difference at all, even if you tried.
So, suddenly, Charlie and Leslie are shouting over the suit radios, phrases broken by static, frantic scurrying, and I'm half a second from trying to get to them even though they're a klick away across the diameter of the birdcage and I'd just get my own fool self killed, except I remember a second before I hit my maneuvering jets that I'm hooked in to Jeremy by ten feet of carbon filament and by the time I get myself unhooked, it's over and everything's calm as a millbrook downstream of the paddles.
“Casey? Dammit, Casey!” But Captain Wainwright's voice-of-command over my suit radio isn't even enough to snap me out of it, and neither is Lieutenant Peterson tugging on my spacesuit, trying to drag me away from the birdcage, back to the shuttle.
You know those pearl necklaces, the ones where the jewel rolls around free inside a silver wire cage that hangs off a chain? Leah used to have one; she wore it to Mass sometimes. The pearl in hers was pink.
When things stop twisting in front of my eyes, all the mercury in the birdcage has gathered in an enormous blob at the center of the ship. It floats there, a spherical mirror, flawless and shivering, and Charlie and Leslie are gone.
Goddamn it, I am sick of watching people I like get killed. I am even sicker of getting people I like killed. It's not an acquired taste, let me tell you; every drink is bitter as the last. And they never get any easier to swallow.
“Aw, Christ,” Peterson says, turning to fix her lines to Letourneau for the slow sail back to the Buffy.
I can feel Richard in my head; I can feel him thinking, but he doesn't seem to have anything to say. I don't either, and Jeremy's just as silent.
But he's not retreating any more than I am. Instead he hangs at my shoulder, just looking at all that fluid silver, and our colleagues buried somewhere inside. And Wainwright's stopped shouting in my head, and Peterson's silence tells me she's conferring with the captain privately. Which is fine with me. The officers are welcome to it.
Finally, she clears her throat. “Master Warrant Officer?”
“Lieutenant?”
“The, ah. The captain ordered us to clear the scene.”
“Ma'am.” I start backing away. I don't want to turn my back on that thing. Not for a second.
“Wait,” Jeremy interjects. His gauntlets wave like an upturned bug's legs, hard enough that he wobbles until his gyros straighten him out. “Wait, wait—”
“Jer?”
“Get a sample,” he says. “Les said get a sample.”
“Dr. Kirkpatrick.” Peterson's voice, rich with warning.
Insubordinate as always, I follow Jeremy back toward the cage. “We won't go inside, Lieutenant. We may as well salvage something out of this mess.”
I hear her sigh. I rather imagine she's getting an earful from the captain, and I'm not entirely certain why I'm being spared it. Maybe Wainwright's afraid she'll say something she's likely to regret if she talks to me directly. Richard, do you think we can get away with this?
“Insufficient data, Jen,” he answers.
When did you get replaced by a bot?
“You know, the more upset you are, the more sarcastic you get.” Sensation of a raised eyebrow, and I bless him silently for knowing what I need, archness and sharp diversionary tactics instead of sympathy. “In any case, I think you're right about an attempt to salvage… Jen.”
Dick? Feeling more like a straight man every second, I hesitate, shaking the lines to slow Jeremy down. What is it?
“Jen, I don't want to get your hopes up. And I don't want to give you a false impression that I have any control of this situation at all, much as I wish I could do something—”
Dick. Out with it already. Jeremy moves forward again, a scraper and a vacuum bag in his hands.
“You know I have some limited, some very limited communication with the Benefactor nanotech.”
Yes?
“Jen, I think Charlie and Leslie are alive in there.”
I've got to give Wainwright credit. She doesn't say I told you so. She doesn't even think it real loud, although the vertical line over her shapely little nose advertises restrained wrath. The funny thing is, I don't think she's angry with me.
I don't know what she is angry with, though, and I'd be just as happy not to get between her and the object of her wrath until she's done reducing it to scrap metal. There are forces of nature I'm willing to fuck with, and those that I'm sensible enough to give a wide berth — and right now, Wainwright falls into the latter category.
Even if she doesn't trust me, Wainwright's a good CO. She knows me better than I know myself sometimes, and she's got to be aware that left to my own devices, I'd be stalking the halls of the ship making a terror of myself, keeping my own kind of walking vigil for Leslie and Charlie. And since she knows that, and she knows Richard will tell me if the status changes, she heads it off at the pass by giving me a job to do.
She appoints me Xie Min-xue's guardian, and gives me—us—the run of the ship. Under Dick's supervision, of course. But then, we always are.
Pilot Xie waits in the pilot's ready room, the one I took Leslie to when he first came on board. Xie stands when I enter; he's just barely eighteen, and he could pass for fifteen when the light hits him right. He's a fragile, girlish sort of a boy with eyes like watchful black jewels. It occurs to me, looking at him, that Leah probably could have broken him over her knee, and Patty would have no problem at all.
His eyes track me but he doesn't speak at first, just presses his arms tight to his sides and bows, his body language indicating as clear as an eight-sided sign, stop there. Beyond this point there be dragons. Something about the distance in those eyes tells me he's talking to Richard, which is no skin off my nose. If it comforts him, more power to him.
If I remember Richard's briefings right, the Chinese pilots are wired even closer to tolerances than we are, because they don't have access to Canada's performance-enhancing drugs. And moreover, their wetware isn't adrenaline-sensitive. Rather than moving through the world in a fairly normal fashion until something triggers their enhancements, they live their lives like hummingbirds, vibrating on the verge of flight.
All things considered, then, I have to think that Xie Min-xue comes across as a remar
kably normal young man.
And just as I'm thinking that, with no warning whatsoever, Richard drops me into his skull.
Just like that. Bang. The same way he gave me Leah, for the last thirty seconds of her life, the same way he steps into me and I step into him, through the quantum communication between the microscopic robots that live under my skin and Pilot Xie's, and that make up Richard's body, if a body, precisely, is what he can be said to have. For a second or two I'm feeling the air on Xie's skin, the way it prickles the hair at the nape of his neck and the way the ready-room lights are too bright. I can barely pick up the flicker, untriggered and well rested; to Xie it's a strobe. We've got to do something about that, I say to Richard. Rip out every fluorescent light on the Montreal if we have to—
I realize too late that Min-xue — which is his name, after all, and the way he thinks of himself — can hear me when his lips peel back from crooked teeth in a most engaging grin, and bows even more deeply.
“I would be in your debt, ma'am,” he says inside my skull, the same way Richard does. I shake my head, amazed.
I have to try it myself. Please. Call me Jenny.
“With great pleasure, Jenny.”
Dick, how long have you known about this?
“Since Leah, more or less. The practical implications, however, are just starting to work themselves out.”
Practical applications beyond telepathy?
“Beyond worldwide, instantaneous communication, Master Warr— Jenny?” Min-xue is smiling, enjoying his advantage.
Galaxy-wide. Instantaneous. Your word, ansibles. Ansibles in our heads. Completely private — or is it, Dick?
“It's as private as I make it,” Richard says, and I can see from the way Min-xue angles his head that his smile is for the AI whose image we both see real as if he were in the room, and who would be transparent as a ghost to any unmodified human who stepped in beside us.
Once again, you rule our destiny. I mean it to be mocking, but I can't help it if it comes out a little defenseless, as well. This is going to change the world. This is… this is the Net writ large.
“The global village,” Richard says quietly.
“The what?” And I'm not sorry Min-xue's wired a little faster, if it means he got to be dumb quicker. I must think it out loud, because he ducks his chin and tilts an apologetic smile at me, and Richard laughs.
“An antiquated catchphrase,” Richard says. “You might call it an advertising slogan.”
But is it really going to change the way the planet is run? Or is it just going to give us more differences to fight over?
“Too soon to tell. Might eventually give world leaders a hell of a lot of grief making people believe geographic boundaries have any value, though.”
“That will take generations,” Min-xue interjects.
I run both hands through my hair, turning my back on him — except I can't, really, because I carry him with me as I walk to the porthole and pause.
“Only one or two, Min-xue. Patty's already adapting to her AI linkages with real fluidity.”
Dick, does Ellie know about this yet? Valens and Riel?
“Only you two.”
They need to. They need—
Shit.
“Ah. I see you've arrived.”
“The Benefactors.” I say it out loud, and Min-xue, who has closed his eyes against the flicker of the lights, jumps at the sound of my voice. I don't see him jump. I feel it. Completely fucking bizarre.
That thing they do. Where they… slide through each other. That's why they grabbed Les and Charlie; they're still trying to talk to us.
He doesn't comment.
What are we going to do about it, Dick?
“It's easier to get forgiveness than permission.”
Because conspiracy's served us so very well in the past.
“There is that,” he says, spreading his fingers wide as nets while Min-xue looks on, watching silently. I catch something from him, a flicker of Chinese, a rhythm like poetry. It calms him, whatever it is. Mantras?
“Li Bo,” he answers, with that same off-center smile.
I know where you're going, Dick.
Richard likes watching me think, damn him to hell. “What?”
This is it. This is everything. I press my face against the cold, cold porthole crystal as if it could calm the sensation that has me shivering, the same sensation you have when you look up and you can see the wave breaking, and it's not on you yet, and it's much much bigger than you and it's much much too late to get out of the way. How did Charlie reprogram the first nanites, Dick? How did he get them to accept our alien earthling code?
“Gabe and I know the process. It's more straightforward than you might think.”
It's Min-xue, strangely, who breaks the tableau. I feel him come up behind me, and — light as a leaf brushing my skin — lay his palm against my shoulder, carefully touching only cloth. “It could kill them,” I say.
“Staying where they are will likely kill them, too.”
“And you're relying on my conscience, Dick?”
“The last time I checked, you were still arguably a human being. If I'm going to organize a coup, I'd feel better knowing I'm not a megalomaniac AI.”
Dick. He grins before I say it. You are a megalomaniac AI. That doesn't change the fact that you're right. Min-xue?
The Chinese pilot stares at me as I turn around to face him. His arm drops to his side. He looks at where Richard would be if Richard existed, and he nods, slowly, his eyes unfocused and his expression grave. “If the nanites are how the Benefactors communicate among themselves, and they've taken our two scientists alive, we might be forgiven for assuming that the contact is a further attempt to communicate with us.”
Of course, since we've seen no proof that the two groups of Benefactors can talk between themselves, there's no guarantee that adding a third language to the Tower of Babel will help—
“Did you spend your entire childhood in Sunday school, Jen?”
It only felt like it. Look, I'd feel better about this if we could ask Charlie and Leslie if they were game.
“So would I.”
“When fate intervenes, we serve where we are standing,” Min-xue says. “They would do it, if they knew.”
He's right, of course. How do you propose to pull this off?
“I'm going to… the closest equivalent would be to say I'm going to flash the bios on some of the nanites in the Benefactor… um, conjoined mass? When Charlie reworked the original Benefactor tech into something we could use, he cleaned out their brains with a focused electromagnetic pulse, and then retrained them. I don't have time to do that, but I do have considerably more information on how they work than he did when he started. And I have Gabe, who's a better code jockey than Charlie ever was.”
I try not to glow too much at the praise of Gabe. I'm somewhat attached to him.
“And then,” Richard finishes, “I'm going to try to take control of the birdcage entity, and get it to kick Leslie and Charlie free. I'll need somebody to catch them, if it works.”
Me, he means, or Min-xue. Or Patty. “And if it doesn't?”
“Then I'm going to use the nanites to begin to modify Charlie and Leslie.”
Without medical support.
“It will be less drastic than your surgery, Jen. I don't need them wired fast enough to fly a starship, after all. I just need to be able to read their minds.”
I find myself nodding, agreeing, knowing perfectly well that Wainwright and Valens are going to take turns breaking my fingers when they find out I knew about this, and I'm not even going to be able to work up a valid protest that I don't deserve it. All right, Dick. I'll take responsibility. But dammit—
“Yes, Jen?”
I want to be with you when you go on in.
Leslie Tjakamarra dreamed of flying, and he dreamed of being bitten to death by ants. Not separately, by turns, but both at once, in a timeless conflation of then and now and when that
blurred into an unceasing whole. He dreamed of the wave that rolls across the water, but cannot change the water, and he dreamed he was rocked in the womb of the mother, wrapped in the coils of the rainbow snake. He dreamed he was dying, and the sun bleached his bones, both at once. All at once.
All right now.
Leslie Tjakamarra had a starship dreaming, and he had joked that it was just as well that he had no taste for starship, as his kinship with them precluded his killing and eating one. He had a starship dreaming, and all things that were had been sung already, were just waiting under the ground for their time to come. Alive in the Dreaming before they were alive in the world.
He had a starship dreaming, and here he was, drifting in space, blind and deaf, warm enough that he knew his heaters hadn't broken, cool enough that he knew he hadn't been knocked into sunlight with his radiators failing. He wasn't sure if the blow had caused his faceplate to opaque, or if it was simply too dark to see, or if he had been blinded. His inner ear told him he was floating rather than spinning, and while he couldn't move his arms or legs, pins and needles told him he hadn't been paralyzed. He might have a moment's air left, or an hour's, or a day's; however much it was, it was a lifetime's worth.
Time passed and the tingling in his fingertips receded, leaving cold numbness. He could imagine, if he thought about it very hard, that he felt a squishy colloid between his fingers, a texture that resembled mud mixed with cold Vaseline. The chill crept upward, numbing his palms, making his wrists and the bones of his hands ache before the sensation left them.
This is going to be a long, chilly way to die, Leslie thought, and tried to relax into it, to relax into the dream and the dying.
He had a starship dreaming, and now it began to seem that he had become a small, peculiar sort of starship of his own.
Even for an AI, there was a fine art to doing everything at once, and Richard was stretching his limits faster than they could grow. If you were a certain kind of person, it was a universal constant that demands expanded slightly in advance of resources. Richard was forming the opinion that, in his case, the pigheadedness of the universe amounted to malice aforethought.
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