Worldwired

by Elizabeth Bear

  “I'd thought of that.”

  “But.”

  “But it could look like a payoff. His reward for betraying the PanChinese government. If he testifies.” Her fingers fret nervous circles on the interface plate on her desk. “You've heard the hearing date's been set.”

  “After nine months of stalling and legal wrangling? I had not heard.” Richard. Don't trust me all of a sudden?

  He's right there, of course. “I keep your secrets, too, Jen.”

  The fact that he has a point doesn't make me like it any better. “Wait,” I say, catching on. “You said hearing.”

  “Yes,” she answers. “We're not getting a trial. The UN is planning a discovery procedure, open questions from the floor, rather than a World Court proceeding.”

  Change is good, right? Right. I thought so, too. “When's our big day?”

  “Thanksgiving.”

  “October? So soon—” I catch myself, settle my feet more firmly on the carpeted floor, and lace my hands behind my back, feeling hardness of steel between the fingers of my meat hand, softness of flesh between the fingers of metal. My shoulders roll back of their own accord, as if to ease a pain that hasn't troubled me in a year. Who ever would have guessed it would be so hard to let go of, even after it was gone?

  “I think the Chinese expect their sudden capitulation, and demand for a speedy resolution, will catch us flat-footed.”

  “That sounds like the prime minister's opinion, Captain.”

  She lifts her chin, and the corner of her mouth flickers up: a brief, transformative smile. “You have a good ear.”

  “And has it?”

  “Caught us flat-footed? No.” She stands, compactly strong, exuding energy and confidence as she paces, the rug scuffing as it compresses and releases under her step. She stops and turns toward me, solid and four-square. “Your boy—”

  “Not mine, ma'am.”

  Her shrug says whatever. “Have you talked to him yourself?”

  “No, ma'am. Richard has. Mr. Xie is still in protective custody at Lake Simcoe.” The fingers of my right hand twitch toward my chest. The beaded feather my sister Nell gave me when we were kids is in my breast pocket, where it lives a lot of the time now. I want to pull it out and look at it, stroke its creamy brown and ivory bars and jewel-bright glass beading, or at least press it against my body through the cloth so I can feel it. Like a little kid rubbing a rabbit's foot in his pocket. Marde, Jenny. If you need to fuss with something, get a rosary.

  Now, there's an unlikely image.

  “Richard thinks he can be trusted.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Richard's judgment has proved pretty good so far.” She turns to look at that holomonitor, at the long lacy sprawl of the Montreal gleaming slender and uncanny as a suspension bridge across the void. She didn't want to trust the AIs at first. She ran out of choices when the rest of us did. “Do you think Riel would let us spring him? Bring him Upside?”

  “I think the prime minister could be convinced, ma'am. I think she or I could convince F—Brigadier General Valens.”

  “Do it.” Just like that, snap decision and she turns back to me, hands hanging open. “As for the other thing—”

  “The EVA, ma'am?” Breath tight in my throat. I don't let her see it, but from the way her eyes narrow, she knows.

  “Patty stays inside. You take somebody EVA certified for every member of the contact team—”

  “And?” I can hear it hanging.

  “And you're not taking more than three of my crew. I won't risk more. It's your baby, Casey. Sort it out.”

  “Beg pardon, ma'am . . .”

  “Casey?” She's turned away, but I need clarification.

  “Am I to participate in this mission?”

  “I can't think of anybody more likely to bring them home alive, Master Warrant.”

  “Ma'am.” One more question. Just one, trying the patience I see fraying in the slow rise of her shoulders toward her ears. “Am I contact team, or crew?”

  “Are you EVA certified, Casey?”

  She knows I am. It was one of the first things I saw to, once things settled a little. No way I'm going to be stuck inside a tin can in a universe full of very aggressive nothing without knowing I can survive if I have to go out. “Thank you, ma'am.”

  “Dismissed.” I catch the reflection of her smile in the crystal of the holomonitor as I salute, turn on my heel, and go.

  1100 hours

  Saturday September 29, 2063

  HMCSS Montreal

  Earth orbit

  Charlie Forster had been living in space for so long that he'd forgotten what it was like to work in a lab with windows and a door that could be left open to catch a cross breeze, and he wondered if he really remembered how a full G would feel. He still had good muscle mass, though—partially a function of his somewhat heavier-than-ideal weight, and partially because he was religious about taking the mystotatin blockers that prevented muscle loss—and he was willing to bet that, given advances in low-G health care—his time on orbital platforms, starships, and Mars had raised his life expectancy. And, as he opened the hatch of his lab for Leslie Tjakamarra and Jeremy Kirkpatrick and ushered the Australian and British scientists inside, he had to admit that he wasn't immune to a certain pride of place: as one of the team who had uncovered the Benefactor ships on Mars, as the contact team's expert in the nanotech, as the guy whose lab space was housed in a starship. There was pleasure in that.

  Especially when meeting fresh new faces, eager to be awed.

  Or fresh old faces, he chuckled to himself. It's not like any of us are going to see forty again. Nor are any of us particularly easy to awe anymore.

  The men's ship shoes scuffed on the deck plates as Charlie palmed the light on. He'd spent a good part of the last nine months moving his base of operations from Clarke over to the Montreal, and he finally had his lab set up the way he wanted it. Richard had helped him engineer the mounts for the biospheres that held his experimental subjects. The possibility that the Montreal's “gravity” might fail or shift rendered storage of fragile objects that needed indirect light into something of an engineering challenge.

  The space he had appropriated was one of the hydroponics bays that helped supply the Montreal with food and oxygen. It had full-spectrum lighting already installed, and the biggest ports on the ship. Charlie hadn't bothered to move any of the tanks where radishes and sunflowers and soybeans grew in a transparent gelatinous medium; the fertilized profusion didn't interfere with his work and he rather enjoyed the green leaves, moist air, and the buzz and flutter of the Montreal's pollinators—honeybees and butterflies. The ship's entomologist visited, too. That was nice.

  Besides, Charlie's work used otherwise wasted space, and almost every inch of the Montreal served double or triple duty. The lab's interior bulkheads gleamed with rows of glass biospheres like Christmas ornaments, held under the grow lights in lacy titanium frames. Inside those baubles was the flicker of movement; colorful shrimp darted around snails and filigrees of algae, each sphere a discrete ecosystem. And all of them, save the controls, infected with unmodified Benefactor tech.

  Jeremy Kirkpatrick grimaced and looked around. “So this is where the tofu comes from.”

  “Tofu,” Charlie said, “and the salad oil, and the spinach . . .”

  “A very impressive setup.” Tjakamarra nevertheless didn't seem to be paying much attention to it. He crossed to the broad crystal port and leaned his hands against it, pressing one cheek to the glass to get a better look at the Montreal from this angle. “Is all this foliage infected?”

  “Only what you see in the biospheres,” Charlie answered. “The rest is natural flora.”

  “Wouldn't it make more sense to use the nanotechnology to . . . what, protect? bombproof? the hydro tanks and so forth?”

  “You mean, like we've already infected the planet?” Charlie laughed. “We're trying to follow a policy of conservative use on the nanosurgeons
. Only a few people on Montreal have had the full treatment; most of us are natural, and several of the ones who are infected—like Genie, for example—aren't enhanced. Although she's on the worldwire, she doesn't have the augmented reflexes or the full VR package. The plants stay natural unless there's a reason to make them otherwise.”

  “I see.” Tjakamarra turned his back to the port and leaned against the bulkhead, his wiry, black-jacketed frame blurring into the darkness outside. The Montreal's running lights cast blue and green reflections through his hair. “Given what's happening on Earth, Dr. Forster, you'll forgive me if I find your precautions a little laughable.”

  “Please, call me Charlie. And trust me, we're not naive,” Charlie said, gesturing the other two to follow him as he turned toward the instruments at the far end of the lab. “We're doing whatever damage control we can. Come on, I'll show you the critters up close and personal.”

  Vancouver, Offices of the Provisional Capital

  British Columbia, Canada

  Saturday 29 September 2063

  0730 hours PDT

  Valens folded his right leg over his left leg and focused past the glossy tip of his loafer to Constance Riel silhouetted against the pale mauve sheers that softened her office window. The office itself still held the air of hasty improvisation. The interface plate was a few centimeters too small for the desk in both directions, and the faded patches on the carpet did not match the furniture. The office hadn't been intended for an office; in its earlier life, it had been a conference room.

  But Riel needed the space. Space in which to pace back and forth, as she had been before she paused by the window, and space in which to host the impromptu councils of undeclared war that were more or less her existence these days.

  Her existence, and Fred's. “You shouldn't frame yourself in the window, Connie.”

  She let the translucent curtain fall back into place, but didn't turn. “If I hadn't lost my husband in Toronto, he'd have divorced me for neglect by now. The glass is bulletproof, Fred.”

  “There's no such thing as bulletproof.”

  “Bullet-resistant.”

  “And useless against an RPG. It's not armor plate.”

  “I'm as protected here as I can be, Fred. The building's as secure as my residence in Toronto was.”

  “No,” he said, and got to his feet. The carpet pad needed replacing; it felt almost tacky under his feet. Priorities, however, lay elsewhere. “It's not as safe, and you're not safe standing in the window.”

  “Who died and made you Mountie?” But she stepped away from the window. “Who would have thought a year ago, Fred, that you'd have appointed yourself my own personal watchdog?”

  He didn't answer. The question was the answer. Needs must when the devil drives. And China was turning out to be a very particular devil.

  She shook her head, searching the office for her coffee cup. “It had to be Saturday morning. It's always Saturday morning. Just in time for the weekend news lull, dammit. I don't know why I should be so annoyed that even the UN understands that.”

  “United Nations hearings aren't the end of the world—”

  “I don't want hearings, Fred. I want a full World Court genocide proceeding, and I want China made party to it, over their refusal, dammit.”

  He sighed heavily. “Do you?”

  “What are you asking? Of course I do.”

  “Do you want to open the door for the Chinese to come back with war crimes charges against us, for the Calgary crash and the nanotech infection?”

  Riel paused. “Well, hell, that's why we're having the hearings. Charges and countercharges. Maybe we can wrangle it into a crimes-against-humanity case. Are you still willing to take a fall for the program if it comes to it, Fred?”

  He didn't answer. He didn't need to.

  She looked up, met his gaze, and nodded, satisfied. “There are days when I wish the opposition would put enough of a coalition together to boost my ass out of this chair.”

  “And have one of their own responsible for this train wreck? No, they'll wait until you go down in flames, and nod knowingly while they pick up the pieces.” He took her elbow, feeling her brittleness as if it were a physical as well as spiritual thing.

  She glanced sideways, caught the outline of his smile, and laughed as if through blood. “You think it's too late to requisition a train wreck instead? Christ, I have to deal with the cabinet today—”

  Her desk chimed, a three-note ascending scale that made both their heads turn in recognition. “Richard,” Riel said.

  “Prime Minister,” the AI answered, resolving into one-third-sized visibility, a wee man standing atop the desk.

  “Is this about the UN?”

  “If only it were so simple. We have bigger problems, Prime Minister, General Valens. I'm going to conference in Dr. Forster. He's just made an unsettling discovery. It's a secure line; I'm handling the transmission myself. Dr. Forster?”

  Another familiar voice. “Fred? Prime Minister?”

  Valens found himself exchanging a glance of anticipation with Riel, and not a happy one. He swallowed the lead weight that seemed lodged in his throat and folded his hands behind him. “We hear you very well, Charlie. What seems to be the problem?”

  There was no light-speed lag when Richard handled the transmission; Charlie's rueful flinch was immediate. Valens felt his gut clench, abdominal muscles tightening in anticipation of a blow, setting himself to take it and come back swinging. Consciously, carefully, he smoothed his breath and forced himself to look steadily at the hologram, waiting with every appearance of patience and strength.

  He wondered sometimes, in bleaker moments, if the cracks showed, and if his staff was humoring him by pretending not to notice. But he also knew, between wondering, that that wasn't the case. He'd just mastered the art of maintaining a facade, and there wasn't anybody that the facade needed to come down for now.

  Pity he wasn't having any luck turning the mask into reality. Charlie still hadn't spoken, though, and Valens cleared his throat. “Charlie. We're on tenterhooks, old friend.”

  It was eerie, the way Richard juggled the algorithm so when Charlie cocked his head and passed a palm across his scalp, it looked as if he frowned at Valens's shoes and then stared dead into his eyes. “We've come a long way from Mars, Fred.”

  “Light-minutes,” Valens answered, just to get the grin.

  Charlie essayed one bravely, but it crumbled. “Let me cut to the chase. Some of my nanosurgeons are . . . dying. And neither Richard nor I have a damned idea why.”

  “Dr. Forster,” Riel interjected. Both Valens and Charlie swung to look at her, her suddenly upright posture commanding the room. She smoothed her palms down over her forest-green suit, the discreet diamond on her ring finger flashing refracted light. “I'm going to need a written report. How long have you known?”

  He glanced down, checking his contacts. “Half an hour.”

  “I will ask you to keep it confidential—”

  “Prime Minister—”

  Charlie's tone tied another rock to the sinking sensation in Valens's gut. “Who knows about this?”

  “Doctors Tjakamarra and Kirkpatrick were with me.”

  Riel's shoulders dropped from around her ears, and Valens recognized it for relief. “Swear them to secrecy, too. And I mean secret; I'll do something drastic if I have to. And I need that written report—please—via Richard. As soon as possible.”

  “Ma'am. Anything else?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Find out what the hell is causing it, and if it's going to completely derail our attempts to buffer Earth's ecosystem, would you?”

  “We're on it.” And that was Richard's voice, Richard's image stepping in as Charlie pixilated and vanished. “Prime Minister—”

  The AI was interrupted by a different chime. Riel's secretary's tone; Richard put himself on hold, his image hanging motionless as Riel answered the other call. “Yes, Anne?”

  “Ma'am, I have a Mr.
Tobias Hardy from Unitek here to see you. And General Frye.”

  Riel rolled her eyes at Valens. Janet Frye. “Do they have an appointment, Anne?”

  “No, ma'am. I checked twice.”

  Sometimes, when the prime minister smiled like that, Fred Valens could almost like her. Even knowing that she was a sly old snake, a consummate manipulator, and a gameswoman to match even him. “I'm in a conference right now, Anne. See if you can squeeze them in tomorrow, please? Or perhaps on Monday?”

  “I'll do my best, ma'am,” Anne answered, and the link clicked off.

  Richard unfroze himself, steepling his long hands in front of his breast. “Toby Hardy I know—”

  “Janet Frye,” Valens said, rubbing his eyes with his forefinger and thumb, “is a retired general and part of the opposition leadership, heading up the Home party.”

  “Isolationists,” Riel supplied. “The more radical even want us out of the commonwealth. What do you want to bet they want us to play appeasement with the Chinese? The damned Americans are on my back again, too . . .” She rolled her neck from side to side. “You could have looked that up, Richard; you don't fool me.”

  “Sometimes it's more revealing to ask questions.”

  Valens crossed to the window himself. “Why do you think they're contacting you now?”

  “Oh, that's easy,” Riel said. She went to her desk, thumb locked open a drawer, and drew something small and flat out and laid it on the desk beside the interface panel. “I got some interesting intelligence last night.”

  Valens came to get a better look. “An HCD?”

  “The HCD,” Riel said, and looked at him. “The red telephone, so to speak.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  The prime minister left the communications device lying on her desk, and went to draw the curtains open again. This time, Valens didn't protest. “I was briefed last night,” Riel called back to him, reaching over her head to fiddle with the cords. “It seems General Frye got a sealed, couriered letter from the PanChinese consulate in the United States yesterday. I'm not privy to the details of what's in that letter.”