Worldwired jc-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  Playing him the music of the spheres.

  He wouldn't permit himself to remember that the odds were a thousand to one that he was going to die out here.

  You're where you belong. And you'll get home somehow.

  Eventually.

  In the meantime, he kept himself busy talking to Charlie, and to Jeremy — through Charlie — and writing exhaustive reports on the data he could collect in between Charlie's xenobiological pursuits. Although, right this instant, both of them were too focused on Dick's feed-via-Casey of what was going on in New York for either one of them to be accomplishing a lot.

  There's something to be said for hive minds, Leslie thought.

  Charlie didn't have to look up from his perusal of a recovered feather—feather-analogue—to engage the conversation. Ours, or the shiptree's?

  Don't you think two hive minds would be a bit coincidental?

  There is that. Charlie hooked a toe under a projecting root to keep from drifting, curling his legs to hunch himself closer to the tree-analogue he was examining. Leslie's kinetic sense wanted to echo the movement, wanted to feel his muscles stretch and play as Charlie's did. Bad enough he found himself imagining breathing hard when Charlie clambered around the chambered arboretum that seemed to comprise the majority of the shiptree's interior. And frankly, I'm not sure what we have here is a hive mind, so much as a Gaia-type intelligence. The whole ecosystem, including the ship, seems to function as one beastie; not a threaded intelligence, like Dick, and not separated intelligences, like humans, and not a single big unified brain split into however many bodies it happens to need at a given moment, as I suspect the birdcages are, but something more like the internal structure of the human mind, where various sections handle various functions autonomously, irrespective of whether the consciousness knows what's going on at all.

  So you're suggesting this thing's reptile brain is—

  Actually housed in a reptile. More or less. Yeah. Charlie's knees ground as he straightened his legs, letting himself drift. Leslie winced in sympathy. Or maybe a shrubbery. The plants are awfully friendly around here. He brushed away a vine that tried to twine around his waist.

  And how do they communicate, then?

  Leslie felt the shrug as Charlie continued. Chemically? Electrically? Same way your brain does, I guess. Jeremy's done a little poking around here and there; not only is the air we're not breathing a soup of pheromones, but there's nanosurgeons through all this plant life and the whole thing is threaded with conductive material. Heck, if I'm right, the buckytubes that give the thing's hull its tensile strength are also its brain. Based on Richard's theory that all you need for consciousness is the right kind of piezoelectric activity in any sort of substrate that will support it, buckytubes are ideal, as long as they have neurons and synapses. More or less.

  “I'm not defining consciousness this week,” Richard said.

  Good. Then I won't have to wrestle you for my Nobel Prize. Charlie reached out and caught the branches of a tree-analogue in his gauntleted fist, wiping beads of condensation off his face plate. Dammit. I've had it with this suit. Still nothing doing with the culture plates?

  “Charlie,” Richard said, “I'd prefer you waited the full eleven days. I don't like you risking yourself unnecessarily.”

  I don't like risking myself at all, Charlie replied. But we've established there's nothing toxic to earthling life in here. The proteins and sugars even twist the right way. And I've got a belly full of alien nanosurgeons that should be able to handle anything I might get myself into. If I wasn't thinking hard about Persephone and Eve, I'd even consider taking a bite out of one of those things that look like azure figs.

  You sound like you're talking yourself into something, Chaz. Leslie needed to walk. It was driving him nuts that he couldn't stuff his hands in his pockets and go for a stroll.

  Oh, hell, Charlie answered. He reached through the canopy and grasped an outgrowth of the chamber's glowing wall, strands of light sliding through disarrayed greenery. I've already talked myself into it. What's the worst that could happen?

  “At least go back to Jeremy and the base camp—” Richard said, but Charlie shrugged inside his space suit again and pushed himself away from the bulkhead, setting himself adrift.

  Jeremy would just get in the way, he said, reasonably. Besides, we figured out how to talk to the birdcages when we got swallowed and chewed up a bit, and Les and I are both fine.

  Sure. Psychically linked and chock-full of alien micromachines, and I'm stuck in orbit with a space suit that's being renewed by alien tech the only thing keeping me alive, and I can't feel my body. But just peachy, all in all. Chaz—

  Trust me, Leslie, Charlie said, and tripped the latches on his helmet with gauntlet-awkward thumbs.

  Leslie held his breath, his hands clutching uselessly on nothing but the fabric of his gauntlets as Charlie lifted the helmet aside, as if he could force Charlie to hold his in sympathy, as if—

  Charlie blinked, his eyes immediately scratchy and red, and spoke out loud. “Well, I'm allergic to the flower-analogues. The air smells clean. Green, moist — damn, there's a lot of ‘pollen.'”

  Are you sure you don't want to put your hat back on?

  “Yeah,” he said. Leslie could feel the sneeze building in the back of Charlie's throat, and to be honest, it did feel just like a snoot full of dust and plant sex. And the air did smell glorious through Charlie's nose, fresh and cool and redolent of sweet strange flowers, gingery and complex. “Huh. I'd strip off the rest of my suit, but I don't want to haul it back. Oh, damn.”

  Charlie's head went back, his lungs filled with a breath taken for a deep and violent sneeze—

  And he vanished like a blown-out candle, completely and painlessly gone. Leslie reached for Richard, and Richard wasn't there. Dick?

  Dick?

  Nothing. Richard, can you hear me? Bugger all—

  His fists clenched hard, hard enough that the lining of his gauntlets cut his hands. Which was when he realized he could feel them, feel his stomach clenching on nothing, the aching head, weird clarity, and nausea that he knew from past experience was the next step after the sharp pangs of unassuaged hunger.

  When Richard fell out of her head, Genie almost sat down on the floor. Her knees went wobbly and she clutched wildly about herself before her left hand connected with the wall. She tottered, but stayed up. It wasn't that she didn't know how to do anything without Richard, really. It was just that she had gotten used to not ever being alone.

  She turned, wild-eyed, and yelled for Richard out loud, already knowing she'd get no answer. She raised her eyes, glanced around the monitors, found herself staring at Wainwright. The captain locked her gaze on Genie, standing in front of the chair she'd bolted out of, the hand that wasn't still holding her coffee cup open and turned aside as if she expected at any moment to receive an explanation in the palm of it.

  Genie's eyes felt big as softballs, her hair trembling against her cheeks as she shook her head jerkily before Wainwright could ask her question. “Captain.”

  “Can you explain to me why the hell”—Genie flinched, and the captain softened her voice—“why I can't get ahold of my AI, please?”

  “Oh,” Genie said, wiping sweat from her palms. “Captain, the worldwire is down.”

  Wainwright's eyes got as big as Genie's felt. She managed not to drop her coffee cup, but she turned on the ball of her foot and started chipping orders off like bits of a block of ice.

  Genie was already moving by the time Captain Wainwright turned around, looking for her. Genie's feet wanted to glue to the floor. She wanted to back into a corner and shake, because the look on Wainwright's face was like the look on Elspeth's face when Elspeth shook her awake and dragged her out of bed in her pajamas, the night Toronto died. The night Leah died.

  And Genie not only couldn't feel Richard anymore — she couldn't feel Patty, or Aunt Jenny, or Charlie — or anybody else on the worldwire either. She was all by he
rself. “Is everything going to be okay?”

  “I don't know…” And then the captain sort of paused, and sort of settled into herself, as if she had gotten just a little more solid, a little more real. As if she'd just remembered she was the captain. “Yes,” Wainwright said. “It will. You know what I think you should do?”

  Genie shook her head. She would have said something, but she could tell already that her voice would just come out a squeak.

  “I think you should go to your father's lab and find him or Elspeth. And tell them I sent you, because he's going to be trying to get hold of Richard, and maybe you can help.”

  “Because Papa's not on the worldwire.”

  “Right.”

  Genie drew one big breath and let it out through her teeth before she nodded. “All right,” she said. “Be careful, okay?”

  The captain blinked, and her eyes went dark and soft. “Cross my heart. You, too.”

  “I will.” And then she thought of something. “Captain?”

  Wainwright had already started turning back to her crew; the look she shot Genie was halfway between that softness and professional ice. “What is it?”

  “Did you try calling Charlie or Jeremy on the radio?”

  The captain's eyebrow rose. “A fine idea, young lady. Now follow orders. Off the bridge.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” Genie turned back around and ran.

  It was weird not to have Richard in her head, weird not to be able to reach out to him and have him tell Elspeth and Papa that she was coming. She could have used the intercom, she guessed, but she didn't want to stop that long. And a good thing she decided not to, because the alarm for general quarters sounded when she was one turn and half a passageway from Papa's lab. She leaned forward and sprinted with everything she had.

  The pressure doors didn't come down, which was what she'd been scared of, but she still had to lean against the wall beside the hatch to the lab panting before she could get enough breath to grab the wheel. She didn't bother to knock or push the buzzer before she undogged the hatch, just swung it open and called inside, the alarm worrying at her ears.

  “Genie!” Elspeth was inside, right by the door. She must have started coming as soon as she saw the wheel turn. She reached out and dragged Genie over the kneeknocker. Genie let Elspeth dog the hatch before asking any questions. Her papa only looked up from his console long enough to flash her a strained smile, and then glanced back down again, fingers flickering through his interface, the red, green, and violet holograms dying his skin. “Where's Boris?” Elspeth asked.

  “In my room.” Genie wrapped her arms around Elspeth's shoulders and hung on tight. She was almost as tall, these days. In another year, she'd be taller. Elspeth hugged her back, distracted. “How come all the alarms?”

  Papa looked up again, but didn't turn, and his hands didn't stop moving. Oh, no, Genie thought, and stepped back to look right at Elspeth, hoping Elspeth would say something to change what Genie was afraid she already knew.

  “There's something going on, on the ground,” Elspeth said, in that quiet I'm-not-going-to-lie-to-you voice. “We don't know what, exactly. But there are reports on the Net that there's been gunfire inside the United Nations building, and they've shut off the streets around it—”

  “And Richard's gone all quiet,” Genie finished.

  Elspeth nodded.

  “Are you scared, Ellie?”

  “It's better now you're here,” Elspeth said, so Genie gave Elspeth an extra-big hug, just in case.

  There's no two ways about it. I've lost my edge.

  Which is a hell of a thing to realize when you're crouched under a table, every sense straining, covering a cowering head-of-state with your body, a bleeding general prone on your left side and a couple of teenaged kids huddled together on your right, and all hell breaking loose in every direction.

  It's been a couple of seconds since the shouting stopped, and I listen through the noise of another three-shot burst that doesn't come near us. All around, I hear the rustling clothes and staccato breathing of cowering dignitaries, sharp calls in languages I don't recognize, one soft, bitten-off animal moan, the floor-shaking rumble and hysterical screams of the people who ran for the doors instead of diving for cover, and who are now caught in the bottleneck.

  I wonder how the hell they got the weapons in here.

  I wonder how the hell we're going to get out.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” Riel says against my chest, pushing my uniform off her nose with the flat of her hand.

  “I wouldn't mind so much if, next time, you could arrange to be assassinated when I was armed.”

  Valens chuffs like a big cat, a sound halfway between a laugh and a gasp. I twist my neck to glance at him; the idiot's shoved himself onto his back and red seeps thickly around the fist he's pressed into his gut. His face is chalky yellow-green, the color of mold on cheese. Our eyes meet, and I don't say anything, and neither does he. No need. It's nothing he can't survive, if we get him into surgery before he bleeds to death, and he and I both know it.

  I bet he's in agony, though. I wonder if he ever thought he'd get gutshot diving across a table to take a bullet for Constance Riel. He was luckier than the Mountie that soaked up the rest of the clip, at least.

  Riel looks like staying flat to the floor, at least; no idiot, our Connie. “So you could help?” she says, and doesn't try to ease her shoulders off the floor, even though she's lying in a puddle of red that's rapidly thickening to the consistency of ketchup. Hell, at least she keeps her sense of humor under fire.

  “Hah. Patty, you and Min-xue all right over there?”

  He's got her pressed to the floor much the same way I have Riel down, except Patty's on her belly, and Min-xue is absolutely shuddering with the effort of holding his body against hers. His eyes are squinched up tight; he looks out between ink-slash lashes, head tilted and his slick straight hair brushing the carpeting as he peers under the privacy panel on the front of the desk, straining after whatever it is that neither of us can see.

  “Not hurt, Jenny.” Patty's scared enough that she doesn't hesitate before my first name. “I can't reach Alan, though.”

  “I know. I can't reach Richard either.” The worldwire might as well be gone. Just gone. Which isn't reassuring at all.

  “Michel,” Riel says, and at first I have no idea who she's talking about. “My bodyguard.”

  Her eyes darken when I shake my head. That's all his blood we're lying in, except maybe a pint or so of Fred's. “I don't believe they're shooting up the UN to get you, Connie. The United Nations. That's some amazing shit. Congrats.”

  “Did anybody get a look at who was shooting?” She's trying to inch forward and peer under the privacy panel. I squish her against the floor as another three-shot burst splinters wood over our heads.

  “Xiong.” Valens scrunches under the table. “Did you see how the UN security went down? Like somebody cut their strings.”

  “Lie the hell still, Fred, before the rest of your guts ooze out between your fingers.”

  He doesn't laugh, which is good, because laughing would hurt him like a son of a bitch right about now, and he stops paddling his heels against the carpet and trying to crawl on his shoulder blades. Patty squeaks, though, and I wince at my own brutal choice of words. Sorry, kid.

  Ah, hell. She might as well get used to it now.

  Riel starts to say something, but it's cut off by a string of liquid syllables from Min-xue. He swears sharply in a language I don't recognize — I know it's swearing by the tone — and then shakes his head, black hair sweeping his forehead like a rattled curtain. “Not Xiong,” he says.

  “It was Xiong's bodyguards that had the guns.” Riel, proving her powers of observation.

  Valens, wheezing. “Is she dead?”

  “Janet? She took at least two in the chest.”

  “Quel domage,” Riel mutters, and Fred gags on a noise that's got to be flavored with blood. “If they hadn't d
ecided to take Janet out first, we wouldn't be having this conversation.”

  “They didn't take her out fast enough to keep her from spilling the beans on Hardy,” Fred mutters. I wish he'd stop talking. It hurts to listen to him.

  “If only she'd gotten to whatever she had to say about the Americans and the Chinese.” The blood is cold by the time it seeps through my pants legs, sticking the cloth to my knees. I wish I could say it's the most disgusting thing I've ever felt. “There's still four people out there with guns and security is lying on the floor, looking like their hearts stopped. How the hell do the Chinese plan to explain away Xiong's involvement?”

  “That's just it,” Riel begins, and Min-xue says at the same time. “Did anybody see the minister of war before the shooting?”

  General silence, which Riel takes for general agreement. Typical. Bitch. “He came in with Xiong and the PanChinese. He got up and left when Janet took the stand.”

  “I believe Premier Xiong is intended to be a casualty as well,” Min-xue murmurs, still shuddering like a racehorse in the gate although his tone is level — as if his brain were utterly divorced from the demands of his body. He brushes a strand of hair out of Patty's eyes with the back of one white-gloved hand.

  Yeah, I think I'm a fucking tough girl. Balls of sterling plated brass. Bullshit, baby: look at that kid. “A casualty?”

  “Or a… how do you say—”

  “Scapegoat.”

  “Thank you, Patricia.” He shakes his head. “We must rescue Premier Xiong as well, if we can. If he is not already dead.”

  “Not possible—”

  “Casey.” Riel's breath cools my cheek. “It's got to happen.”

  “Bien sûr.” I sigh. “I won't leave you unprotected, ma'am.”