Worldwired jc-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  Bernard Xu once told me to save the world. Good Christ.

  I'm a madwoman. I stop, and swallow, and I think about it for ten long, hard, aching seconds, while Riel stares at me, and I swear I can hear the world creak slightly as it spins a little slower than it usually does.

  Peacock told me to save the world for him. But you know something? I did that. And I really want to see what's on the other side of all those rocks up there, and all that empty space.

  “I'd be wasted anywhere but the Montreal, Madam Prime Minister,” I say, and stick out my right hand.

  It's another good ten seconds before she manages to put out her own, and take it.

  Nine months later

  8:30 AM

  28 July 2064

  Clarke Orbital Platform

  Leslie leaned both hands against the chill crystal of Clarke's observation deck as the Montreal's fretted golden sails bore her away, the Huang Di trailing her on a parallel line of ascent, chemical engines smearing the sky behind with light. He didn't bother to magnify the image as the two ships shrank to pinpoints, rising out of the plane of the elliptic. Leslie didn't need to see them go. He could feel their weight like an indenting finger dragged across the infinitely elastic substance of space.

  Looking good, Charlie.

  I'm going to miss you, Les. What if we find even weirder aliens where we're going?

  Don't be daft. And I've got enough aliens to talk to right here. And it's not like we'll be out of touch.

  They were both very quiet for a little while. Leslie dusted his palms on each other and turned away from the glass, past the reporters and the dignitaries and the trays of canapés. Past Prime Minister Riel and Premier Hsiung and General Valens, who were clustered with other VIPs near the screen.

  Leslie kept walking. Funny sort of leave-taking, this.

  Is it really? Leave-taking, I mean?

  Now that you mention it— There was coffee to be had, self-heating vacuum mugs being handed out by caterers. Leslie availed himself of one and staked out an inexplicably empty chair. Well, whatever you run into out there, I hope it's as easy to get along with as the Benefactors.

  Charlie laughed inside his head. Through Charlie's eyes, Leslie could see the Montreal's familiar hydroponics lab, the receding image of Earth on a wall screen, the changing angle of the sunlight through the big windows. Why should what they want be so different from what we want?

  They're aliens?

  Yes, but look at it this way. We're not species in competition; there's nothing a birdcage needs that competes with or conflicts with anything we need. We don't use the same resources. And there's a lot of room up here.

  That doesn't explain why they came running to see what was up when we started playing with the tech they left on Mars. Or why they left it there in the first place.

  Charlie rubbed the bridge of his nose. Leslie caught himself mirroring the gesture and smiled.

  Charlie shrugged. Why does a kid poke anthills with a stick?

  To see what the ants are going to do. To see what the inside of the nest looks like. Leslie paused. Oh, bugger it, Charlie. You want to know what I think? I think Elspeth's right. I think they wanted us to teach them how to talk to each other. I think they needed somebody to translate. And they got it. And I feel like an idiot just saying it, because that implies they've been wandering around out there for umpteen million years, unable to talk to each other except by grunts and pointing, and a bunch of chimpanzees stagger in and accomplish it in nine months. And that's just ridiculous.

  Why is it ridiculous? Leslie could feel Charlie's encouragement, his agreement. We've been walking around in gravity for the last umpteen million years, and they showed us how to manipulate it in brand-new ways in a couple of months. They never had to learn to talk.

  Leslie didn't have an argument for that. Or not a good one, anyway. They're critters that manipulate gravity, and we're critters that manipulate symbols.

  That's what I said.

  It doesn't make you nervous?

  It doesn't make you nervous, and you're the Jonah who spent his time in the belly of the whale.

  Because I feel like it ought to scare somebody.

  The Montreal kept climbing. Charlie stood and glanced out the port; Leslie shared the view. They could just catch the red flare of the Huang Di's engines reflected against the Montreal's vanes, although they couldn't see the Chinese ship herself. You're the one who keeps talking about beginner stories, Les. You just don't like being on the beginner side of the damned things any more than anyone else does.

  “Bloody hell,” Leslie said out loud. “Charlie, I hate it when you're right.”

  “Leslie?”

  He didn't jump as Jeremy laid a hand on his shoulder, leaning down a little. He'd felt the linguist coming up behind him. “Yes, Jer?”

  “Come on,” he said, letting his hand fall away. “These guys are going to be here all night. Let's get something to eat, and flicker our flashlights at the shiptree for a couple of hours. Maybe we can teach it some nursery rhymes.”

  Leslie grinned and got up. Beginner stories.

  Sure.

  Three years later

  1746 hours

  Wednesday 15 December 2066

  HMCSS Montreal

  LaGrange Point, near Valentine

  Elspeth has stationed herself by the far wall of the room, where she can see everybody. She keeps looking back and forth between Wainwright, Charlie, Gabe, Patty, Genie, and me. It's a measuring look, as if she's trying to figure out which sand castle is likely to crumble first, so she can shove some more mud up against it. Her irises gleam like polished agate, excitement thrumming through her, giving a lie to the new gray in her hair, coarse wiry strands that go this-way and that-way, oblivious to the direction of her long coiling ringlets. You'd think it would be Gabe who would hold this mad little family together.

  You'd be wrong.

  She's looking at him when I wander over to her and slouch against the wall, my upper arm against her shoulder. She sighs and leans into the touch, warmth pressing my jumpsuit into my skin. She pushes a little harder, leaning in to me. Neither one of us looks down from the planet on the monitor. “Ugly fucker,” I say, while the whole bridge holds its breath in quiet awe.

  The dusty brown planet spins like a flicked bottle top, the ringed, sky-killing bulk of its gray-green motherworld hanging in crescent behind it. The light of the star that warms them isn't quite right either, and from what I understand the bigger planet's orbit is so erratic that the little Earth-like world we plan in our infinite arrogance to colonize will have summers like Phoenix, Arizona, and winters like Thompson, Manitoba. What's not scorched desert is frozen desert.

  And based on the first long-range surveys, there's some kind of life down there smart enough to build cities. Still, we learned to talk to the birdcages and the shiptree, and we'll learn to talk to these guys, too. And Manitoba may be cold, but hey, people been living there a hell of a long time now. And like the Benefactors before us, we're a tougher species than we were.

  “Bet it will look okay to the crews of those generation ships, when the Huang Di starts retrieving them.”

  “When does Min-xue… pardon me, Captain Xie… leave?”

  It's become seamless. I don't have to ask Richard; the information is just there, waiting for me, as if I always knew it. “Oh five hundred.” Thank you, Dick. He feels different now, bigger: talking to him is like talking to a reflection in a still pool. It's right there, close enough to touch, but you can feel how deep the water is underneath it.

  And how long before we start taking him for granted, too?

  “Genie already has.” A rueful acknowledgment, and he dissolves in a shiver of pixels. He'll be back if I need him. Or hell, even if I don't.

  I snicker. Elspeth tilts her head against my arm.

  Somewhere down there, there's a mountain or a sea that's going to be named after Leah Castaign. Once we pick it out. Koske gets one, too, and the c
rews of the Quebec and the Li Bo and the Lao Tzu. And after them, the crews of Soyuzes and Apollos that Richard could tell me numbers for, if I bothered to ask him, and some American space shuttles destroyed around the turn of the century, and a Brazilian tug crew killed capturing the rock that anchors the far end of the Clarke beanstalk, and the crew of the first Chinese Mars lander, and then there's twenty years of in-system accidents to get through…

  They've already decided the little planet is going to be called Valentine, and the big one Bondarenko.

  I just hope we won't run out of planets before we run out of names. On the other hand, chances are good there are going to be more planets, aren't there?

  And also that there are going to be more names.

  It's quiet a long time. Beep and hum of workstations, rustle of fabric, and not a word spoken as we all stand there and gape like a bunch of fools. I don't miss the fact that Patty reaches out and slings a casual arm around Genie's shoulders as they stand together. Nor do I miss the way Genie leans into the embrace. That jealous pang in my gut can just go to hell.

  “Jen?”

  I must have got even quieter than the rest of the crew. And Elspeth never needed technology to read anybody's mind. “Doc?”

  She stands up straight and gives me another little nudge before she steps half an inch away. “When are you going to forgive Patty for not being Leah?”

  I look down at the top of her head for six long seconds before I blink. “Why you always gotta ask the hard questions?”

  “It's my job.”

  “Uh-huh.” It's a good question, though, even if I hate it. And I know the answer, and I hate that, too: I'm not. It's a crappy answer, and it's not the Hollywood one. But it's true.

  On the other hand, that's my problem and not hers, and I don't have to make it hers, do I? Because if I were a grown-up — which I'm not, not by a long shot, and I know that — but if I were a grown-up, I'd walk over there and drop an arm around her shoulders, and I'd pick Genie up, although Genie's big enough that she'd probably smack me for it, and I'd hug both of them until they squeak.

  Oh, right. What the hell am I waiting for, again? I mean, really—

  What's the worst that could happen?

  “Hah,” Richard says in my ear, as I start forward. “Jenny, if you have to ask—”

  Many men afterwards become country, in that place, Ancestors.

  —Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

  Epilogue: eleven years later

  1300 hours

  Saturday 15 May 2077

  Toronto Impact Memorial

  Toronto, Ontario

  It's been awhile since I felt soil under my feet: it presses my soles strangely, Earth's gravity harsh after so long aboard the Montreal. And yet I wander through the crowds on a fine May morning: the fifteenth. Leah's twenty-eighth birthday would have been next week. Taurus, the bull, and the year of the rooster. The moon of greening grass and false prophets.

  The tourists and dignitaries and mourners don't step aside for me. I keep my head down and my chin hidden behind my collar, and if anyone notices me, it's to wonder why I'm wearing gloves and a trenchcoat on a warm spring day.

  What is it that moves us to build gardens where people die?

  Not that it's wrong. Something should grow out of this.

  Hell. Something did.

  I won't find Leah's name anywhere on the black stone paving the bottom of the shallow reflecting pool. Won't find it carved in the dolomite inlaid with stars of steel that surrounds the rippling water, or on the pale green-veined marble obelisk that commemorates the uncounted dead. I won't find Indigo's name or Face's name either, because here there are no names.

  Only the water silver over black stone, and the splashing of quiet fountains, and the obelisk yearning skyward like a pillar of light. Like a pillar of desire, rising from an island at the center of the pool. An island the faithful have littered with offerings and farewell gifts.

  The smell of lavender and rosemary wafts from the hedges, and early bees and butterflies service the blooms. The drone of their wings is the only sound on the air except for the whispers. Dick's done brilliantly — the ice caps are growing, the oceans receding, although they're still not at anything like historic levels. I hope he's able to stabilize the climate before it flips the other way, into an ice age.

  But I guess we'll blow up that bridge when we come to it.

  I pass a retired soldier on a park bench, stop, and turn back as his profile catches my eye. He climbs to his feet: still in uniform. “The jacket's gotten a little big for you, Fred. Did Patty tell you I was coming?”

  She's doing grad work, now, at Oxford. They've rebuilt; Jeremy was invited to teach, and he recruited her as a student. Not that she would have had any trouble getting in, although Fred threw a fit when she decided to leave the service. It's good to see the kid getting what she wants for a change, instead of what her family's told her to want.

  He shakes his head, his cover in his hand. Reddened cheeks pouchy, hair gone white but only slightly thinning, eyebrows that probably seem threatening when he glowers. “The Vancouver's just left on an exploratory mission, and the Toronto is about ready to fly. They're going to give her to Genie as primary pilot, although I don't think Genie's heard that yet, and she's not going to hear it from you.”

  “Done at twenty-three. Damn.”

  “Kid's special.” He shrugs. “And I wouldn't call it done. You have some finished apprentices for us, I hope?”

  “Some.” I shoo a curious honeybee away. “So how'd you know I'd be here? Dick rat me out? Did Doc?” Elspeth would, too. If she thought I needed closure.

  “Elspeth doesn't talk to me. No, I heard the Montreal was home. I guessed.” He sticks his hand out and I take it, glad of my gloves. Brief contact, as if we're in a contest to see who can be the first to let it drop. I turn and keep walking. He falls into step. “Gabe's not here? Elspeth?”

  “Couldn't stand to come.”

  “Did you ever get married?”

  All three of us, Fred, or any two in combination? Be funny if Elspeth and I did it, and kept Gabe around as a houseboy. Hell, I bet he'd be amused by that. Gabe, I mean. Well, Valens, too. “Why mess with what works?”

  No answer to my sarcasm but the splashing of water as he strolls along beside me, supple and spry. Mideighties aren't what they used to be.

  I scratch the back of my right hand. “You ever try again?”

  “Georges raised parrots. He would have wanted me to pine.” He waves to the tall white stone, with the back of his hand as if his shoulder pained him. “I hear the colony is doing well.”

  I shrug. There's a funny story about that, but it's not for today. “They're doing all right, I guess. I see those Benefactor ships are still in orbit.”

  “Different two,” he says. “They change off. They still playing music at you?”

  “And us at them. Jer, Richard, Elspeth, and Les have a pidgin worked out with the birdcages. And good chunks of a chemical — a pheromone — and a light grammar, I guess you'd call it with the shiptree. It's nice not having to leave Elspeth here, thanks to Dick and the wire. Gabe would drive me nuts without her.” I lower my head; he offers a handkerchief. I blow my nose. I'm not the only one. “They did a nice job on the memorial, Fred.”

  “They did.”

  The tide of pedestrians carries us to the edge of the reflecting pool at a shuffle and hesitates. Nobody pushes. We all take our time. Around me, people are unlacing shoes, rolling up pant legs, sliding stockings off. I do the same, a tidy little pile of socks and spitshined leather by the lip of the pool. People start staring when I peel the gloves off; I hear the murmurs. I hear my name once, twice, and then a ripple of excitement when I shrug off the black trenchcoat and stand there in the sunlight, barefoot in a fifteen-year-old uniform.

  I don't look at them, but I can feel them looking at me, and the ones wading out to the island pause, each of them, as if a giant hand stopped and turned them in thei
r tracks. Genie and Patty and Gabe came to the dedication, ten years back.

  I couldn't. “Hold my coat for me, Fred.”

  He doesn't answer. But he folds the coat over his arm.

  The water's sun-warm against my ankles, the black stones slippery and smooth, bumpy with treasures. People stand aside as I stride forward, stinging eyes fixed on the blur of the obelisk, footsteps quick enough to scatter droplets of water like diamonds into the sun. I find the feather in my pocket by touch and draw it out — a little the worse for wear, but safe in its chamois. Like rubies, the beads catch the light when I uncover it.

  There are words on the obelisk my eyes are too blurred to make out, even when I step onto the island and pick carefully between the scattered offerings — photos and flags, trinkets and caskets and a full bottle of 18-year-old Scotch — the airworthy ones weighted with the heavier.

  I can't quite read the words, but they're graven deep and I trace them with a fingertip:

  10:59 PM

  December 21, 2062

  I tug a bit of sinew from my pocket, because it's traditional, and I wind it around the obelisk — which is slender enough to span with my arms, like the waist of a teenage girl — and then I tie Nell's feather to it. Tight, just above the writing. So the veins I smooth with my fingertips flutter in the breeze and the glass jewels sparkle in the sun.

  The stone's warm where I lean my forehead on it. When I straighten up and wipe my nose on the back of my hand, the crowd is so silent I hear my sniffle echo. Every single one of them stares at me, and they don't glance down when I stop at the edge of the island and glare, putting all the eagle in the look I can.

  The moment is stillness, utter and heartless, and that stillness continues when I step into the water again and wade back to shore, sodden trouser cuffs clinging to my ankles.

  Walking through the water. Trying to get across.

  Just like everybody else.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: c96affe8-af56-4c1f-99bb-89a84e4701b4