Worldwired jc-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  — but we got away with it, ma'am.

  She's not looking down.

  “Yes, ma'am.” I nod crisply, and get the fuck out of her ready room.

  I wind up in the smaller lounge — not the pilot's ready room, but the public one that, as Elspeth says, nobody uses — with my feet in Gabe's lap and a cup of nasty, sugary coffee in my hand, waiting for the post-combat-time shakes to pack up and head on home. Elspeth's the other way on the bank of couches, her feet between mine, and Gabe's got his back scrunched into the corner and is absentmindedly petting us both, with that look on his face that's half donkey between two bales of hay and half mouse between two cats, although really we don't treat him as roughly as all that. All three of us are staring out the porthole into space, where about half the baroque outline of the shiptree and half of Piper Platform's chained, rotund doughnut take turns flickering past as the Montreal's wheel revolves on its pin.

  It's nice to sit still.

  “Happy birthday, Jen.” Elspeth lifts her head off the arm of the couch and feels around on the floor for her water bottle. She's reading something on her contact. I can see the green hairlines of the text paused in front of her pupil as she blinks and yawns.

  “You almost got away clean.” Gabe winks at me, his catcher's mitt of a hand folding around my foot. My chest aches when I look at him, and I know he knows. Once upon a time, he was Captain Castaign and I was Corporal Casey, and he saved my life. And there were thirty-three other guys he didn't manage to get to in time. “All you had to do was keep the crisis going a little longer, and we would have had to wait until next year.”

  “It's October in Toronto,” I remind him. “Heck, it's October on the Montreal. For that matter, in Montreal.”

  He shrugs. “Vancouver's the capital now. Since we're not on Earth, I think we get to pick our time zone.”

  “Following that logic, it should be Jen's birthday for, um.”

  “Forty-seven hours,” Richard supplies helpfully, over the wall speakers.

  “Not forty-eight? No, wait—” Elspeth blinks owlishly, having quite obviously confused herself. “I can't picture how that works around the international date line.”

  “I'm all for longer birthdays.” Gabe's voice is unconcerned, mellow. He digs a thumb pad into the arch of my foot and I groan. The self-warming coffee cup makes my meat hand sweat. It can't ease the aches in a metal one that doesn't have any sense of pain anymore, but it's psychologically comforting anyway.

  “Why not? It's been the longest year of my life. It deserves a longer birthday.”

  “Shortest year of mine,” Gabe answers. “And the longest all at once. It's amazing how much fits into twelve months when you work at it, isn't it?” Somehow, he gets around that sentiment without bitterness, the old Gabe, looking up, meeting my eyes with calm acceptance and a sharp, whimsical smile. Healing, because that's Gabe.

  He's got the knack of getting better, of growing through things. I don't, so much. But I make up for it by muscling through. Elspeth shoots me that mind reader look and I shoot it right back, Richard laughing his ass off at the both of us, and I drink my coffee and set the cup down on the floor, a flagrant breach of shipboard protocol. If I had the energy to go fetch Boris out of Genie's quarters, the whole impromptu family would be here, except the girls.

  “We should page Genie and Patty,” Elspeth says, swinging her feet off Gabe's lap and sitting up. “And see if we can find something we can pretend is a birthday cake.”

  “No candles shipboard.”

  “You blow,” she says. “I'll flick a flashlight on and off. Wait, better, we'll get Dick to flicker the whole damned ship.”

  “If Gabe were a better hacker, I could flicker the shiptree on and off in Morse code,” Richard answers. Gabe snorts, but holds his peace, switching both hands to work on my feet now that Elspeth has opted out. “It looks like a giant birthday cake anyway, and maybe we'd stand a chance of getting through.”

  We laugh even though it hurts, or maybe because it hurts — like ripping off scabs — and Elspeth gets up to fetch the girls herself rather than just having Alan whisper in Patty's ear, and sometime long about oh three hundred hours on my second birthday Jeremy wanders in, looking like a man who's lost two falls out of three with his mattress, and Elspeth hands him a slice of the vegan brownies that are masquerading as my birthday cake, and between us we have a pretty good party after all.

  1100 hours

  Thursday October 4, 2063

  HMCSS Montreal

  Earth orbit

  You'd think sitting in a hardbacked chair watching an unconscious man breathe would be about as exciting as a grain elevator, but damned if my heart isn't caught painful as a thumb in the hollow of my throat. Because he is breathing. Not awake, but breathing on his own, unventilated. And I know what it's like being stuck inside a body that won't do what you tell it to do, so I sit there beside the bed with my HCD propped on my knee and read to Charlie. Ulysses, currently. The Alfred, Lord Tennyson one, not the James Joyce one. I wouldn't do that to anyone who can't defend himself.

  I've just gotten to the rousing bit at the end when the wheel spins and the hatch glides open with a little pop of balancing pressure. I keep reading, though; it's probably the corpsman coming in to check on the patient, and he can take a pulse through poetry. Except the corpsman wouldn't wait until I finish up and blank my optic, and then clear his throat.

  I crane my neck around and face the hatch. It's Jeremy Kirkpatrick, his ginger curls squashed as if he hasn't combed them since he slept, crow's feet deepening alongside his pale eyes as he squinches down to peer in. “Jen? Got a minute?”

  “Come on in. My company's not going anywhere.”

  He hops over the knee knocker fast, dogging the hatch behind him, and glances down at Charlie's face. “Wainwright not letting us go after Leslie gets right up my nose.”

  He sounds it, too. “You're old friends.”

  “University.” He flops against the hatch and blows between rubber lips. “You're a love to look in on Charlie like this.”

  “Don't let it get out. They'll just make more work for me if they know. I don't suppose you found out anything useful about the alien spit we brought from the birdcage?” The chair digs into the back of my legs, so I stand. Having somebody else in the room makes me restless. I want to pace but content myself by leaning over Charlie, smoothing the hair around his bald spot.

  “Alien spit, huh?” He's grinning when I look up, a tired desperate grin that furrows those crow's-feet even deeper.

  “Got a better name?”

  “Not a more appetizing one. In any case, it would be easier to analyze if the xenobiologist weren't in a coma.” He comes around the end of the bed nearest the door and looks down at Charlie, the corner of his mouth dragging hard. “Dammit—”

  “I'm sorry.” Out before I can bite it back, and he looks away from Charlie and frowns at me. I don't look up, but my peripheral vision shows me the deepening lines between his eyes.

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “Because it was my stupid goddamned idea to provoke the Benefactors into doing something. And they did, didn't they?”

  “And weren't we climbing over ourselves to get involved? And wasn't it you who went out and brought Charlie back?”

  There's obviously no arguing with the man. I bite my tongue before I can say I didn't get Leslie, did I? “Marde.” I'm going to wear a groove in Charlie's head if I keep poking at his hair. I wrap the fingers of my prosthesis around my wrist and curl my meat hand into a fist. “What about the medical labs?”

  “Jen?”

  “To analyze the alien spit. What about the ship's doctor? Or the ship's entomologist or botanist? What about Dick?”

  “What about Dick?” Richard says in my head. “Dick suggests retrieving a good xenobiologist from Earth. Except we already had the best one, and it's not exactly a common specialty.”

  I imagine it's going to get more popular. How many bio students do
you think have switched in the last nine months?

  “It'll be a glut on the market. Keep reading. Alan can hear Charlie, and Charlie can hear you. Although he's very confused.”

  Conscious?

  “Sort of. Drifting. Jen, I don't mean to alarm you, and I can't tell you why, but if you notice yourself slowing down, at all, or feeling… unwell, bring it to my attention immediately.”

  Dick, are you insinuating there's some kind of problem with the nanotech?

  “I can't confirm that.” He seems to sense my protest before I articulate it. “And no, before you go there, Alan and I don't have the capability to watch each individual nanite constantly.”

  I hope you're watching mine! And Patty's, and Min-xue's. And especially Genie's, even if her load is lighter by about half.

  “I will take the best care of you that I can.” Which isn't much of a promise, if it's meant to be soothing.

  Jeremy blinks at me owlishly. He must have learned to pick out the talking-to-Richard expression by now. “The AI?”

  “Who else? He's worried. About the Benefactor tech.”

  “Ah,” Jeremy says. He leans away from me, gangling arms crossed over his chest. His teeth dimple his lower lip, and—

  Dammit, he knows something I don't. But Richard's silent, too, and for a moment the only sound I can hear is Charlie breathing in and out and in again. It's not a soothing kind of silence. It puts my nerves on edge, and the sight of Jeremy distractedly straightening Charlie's sheet does nothing to ease the worried tightness under my breastbone.

  Then I hear what I'm hearing, and I reach out with my metal hand and grab Jeremy's wrist lightly, just below the projecting bones. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” His head comes up on his long inelegant neck like a wiry old stag scenting the breeze. He strains to pick whatever threat I've noticed out of the hum of ventilation and the soft endless rasp of an unconscious man breathing.

  Except I'm hearing something else. An echo. An overlay. As if another person were breathing in unison with Charlie, in perfect rhythm, in and out and in again.

  “Bugger,” Jeremy says. “I don't hear anything.”

  “I do,” Dick says, activating the motes in the room so Jeremy can hear him. “Breathing. Not exactly hear. Feel.”

  Jeremy's eyes get big. He looks at me, and I look at him, and we both glance reflexively toward the port, which shows nothing currently but blackness. “Oh, bugger,” he says quietly. “It's Les you two are hearing, isn't it? He's alive out there.”

  I don't answer, but I don't look down.

  “We must fetch him back.”

  I ain't arguing. “Dick,” I say out loud, for Jeremy's benefit. “How much longer do you think it will be before Charlie is modified enough for you to talk to?”

  He uses the wall speakers. “I'll see if I can expedite matters. Without putting them in any further danger, of course. If what I'm reading is correct, I am getting signal from Leslie over the worldwire, strongly enough that Jenny and the rest of the pilots are picking up an echo. It appears that most of his and Charlie's body processes are synchronizing — heart rate, brain function, and so on. Very interesting. All I can postulate is that the birdcages have some method of sustaining his life, and they've infected him with their nanotech as well. Since Charlie's carrying both their bugs and ours — well, Leslie should be safe out there. As ridiculous as it is to say he's safe.”

  “Of course,” Jeremy says. But he does not sound convinced, and that downward drag twists the corner of his mouth one more time as he meets my eyes and glances quickly away.

  Dr. Tjakamarra.

  Dr. Tjakamarra.

  Leslie's hands weren't cold anymore, because he couldn't feel his hands. He wasn't sure what he could feel, exactly, but his hands weren't part of it. He felt… adrift, buoyed as if in a calm enormous sea, except if he had been floating, the currents would have pushed his skin, the sea would have sounded in his ears over the beat of his own heart. And there was no susurrus of white noise, no silken stroke of water.

  In fact, he couldn't feel the boundaries of his body at all. He had no skin, no bones, no tactile sensations. Just warmth, boundlessness, quiet. Nothing breathed in him, and what moved did so on a stately, formal, predetermined pattern; he imagined he felt the way the air must feel, on a still, humid afternoon. Alive, heavy. Electric.

  Waiting for the storm.

  And somewhere, someone was speaking poetry: Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks…

  Dr. Tjakamarra.

  Leslie concentrated on his hands. Hands made the man — no. Hands made man. There were other animals just as smart; nothing in his studies had ever contradicted that bias. Unless the bias itself had led him to dismiss the contradictions.

  Always a possibility that a good scientist should consider. Was he a good scientist? Or was he a crackpot, some sort of half and half creature walking neither the songlines nor the white man's path? Uncommitted?

  Homeless?

  Elephants came closer to H. habilis than anything nonprimate he could name — tool-using creatures of social complexity and intricate language. He could have made a life's work of studying their culture, if they still existed outside of zoos.

  Dr. Tjakamarra. Leslie, can you hear me? It's Alan.

  The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows…

  It went beyond hands. Elspeth Dunsany had a theory that the Benefactors were interested in humans because humans had the habit of wanting to talk to anything, everything. It made a certain amount of sense: Leslie himself had often suspected that Homo sapiens would better be rendered as Homo loqui… Homo loquacis? Homo something, anyway, and leave it to cooler Latinate heads to decide what, or—

  Homo garrulitas. There. That made him giggle. Or would have, if he could make any sound. If he could hear if he were making any sound.

  Of course, people themselves had always known that talking was the important thing. The real people, the chosen people, God's people are the people who talk our language. The barbarians — are those creatures over there, little better than animals, who make those disgusting noises. It was a human bias that hadn't changed in millions of years — and judging by the continuing tension between the English-speaking USA and recent immigrants, and English-speaking and Francophone Canada (to name two examples at random), it wasn't about to change anytime soon.

  For my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die…

  Dr. Tjakamarra. Leslie. Les. Can you hear me?

  Voices. Two voices, not just one. Familiar voices. Sort of. One a man's, and one a woman's. Except they sounded like voices inside his head. Like the voice of his own conscience. Like the voices heard in a dream.

  It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew…

  Leslie, I can hear you thinking. Talk to me.

  Les?

  Floating. And then the feather-light brush as of fingertips against his face, and a third voice, another familiar one, babbling nonsense the way he knew he would be babbling nonsense if he could find his mouth, if he had a mouth, if he—

  — and then a chattering complexity underneath it, like a stage full of extras muttering rutabaga rutabaga. And he was floating, drifting. And if he had hands, if he had fingers, he would reach out across the warm nameless darkness and twine his fingers through any fingers he could reach.

  They weren't words.

  Well, there were words, the woman's voice, the poetry: Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in the old days…

  And there was the man's voice, too, saying his name over and over again. Leslie. Les. Dr. Tj
akamarra.

  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal-temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

  Jen's voice. Jen Casey's voice. And why that hard-bitten old warrior would be chanting poetry in his ear, he couldn't imagine. And then the other one, the one saying his name, over and over and over, as if whispered in the ear of a dying friend…

  “Richard?” he said. Or tried to say, and he heard in the empty resonance of his own head that he had failed to make any noise at all. Richard? Can you hear me? Alan? Richard?

  “Leslie? Is that you?” And it wasn't Richard's voice, not really. It was Charlie Forster's, and it was inside his head, and then it turned into Alan's and Jen's all at the same time, and a thousand voices under that, speaking words in a language he couldn't understand, couldn't even imagine. Words? Not words. Images… no. Sensations. Sensations of heat and… sensations he had no words for, that his brain insisted on translating into things he had experienced, a huge babble of voices that weren't voices, of sensations that weren't sensations, hurting his ears, hurting his head, hurting his skin. Synesthesia, light that wasn't light but maybe gravity—

  And then a richer voice, not as cool and considering and patient as Alan's, but excited, engaged. Leslie imagined he could almost see the flicker of tumbling hands, the eyebrows rising like wings. It is gravity, Leslie. They “see” gravity! Or sense it, and that explains why their nanotech is in quantum communication and their stardrive uses gravity as its navigational system. Since gravity is the—

  Richard? Is that you? I can hear you. I can hear you!

  He couldn't tell.

  — since gravity is the force we theorize affects all dimensions in a superstring model of the universe, unlike the strong and weak and electromagnetic forces—

  Dick, I hear you! Dick? Jenny? Charlie?

  Echoes. Yammering echoes, and nothing more.

  — they're quantum life forms, Les. The birdcage Benefactors, anyway. Quantum life forms. You were right, you were right; they don't even sense the world the way we do—

  Richard, get me the bloody hell out of here! Help! Dick!