Scardown jc-2

by Elizabeth Bear

  I'm a damned lucky woman, and I know it. The poster child for Valens's research, for the success of the crudely wired modifications he worked on us so many years ago. Thirty percent of my compatriots never walked again, and most of the ones who did are dead. Richard hacked the records, and he tells me it was usually by suicide.

  Believe me. I'm not in a position to judge.

  The nanotech is safer. Gentler. And he won't be trying to fix anything broken, the way he had to with me: just augment her already speedy, youthful reflexes.

  I'm so scared for Leah I can barely breathe. But when the door opens and I stand to greet her, it's my goddaughter who confronts me. “Aunt Jenny,” she says, tossing her carryall into the corner. “Where's everybody?”

  “Out.”

  “Bien,” she says, kicking the door shut and reaching around to unbutton her skirt. “Nous devons parler.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  She grins at me, bright eyes wise as her mom's. “You got nominated because Dad was chicken, didn't you?”

  I think of a cold December day two and a half decades before. You're my best friend, he told me. It took me almost thirty years to realize that that was Castaign for You stupid girl, I love you.

  Spilt milk and all that. “What gave us away?”

  She walks down the hallway to her bedroom, scooping up her school clothes as she sheds them like a snake. “Genie caught you kissing the other night after she was supposed to be in bed. She squealed.”

  “Petite cochon.”

  “Oink oink,” Leah says. She disappears through her bedroom door. “You're not very slick, Aunt Jenny.”

  She makes me laugh. “I've never gotten away with a damned thing in my life. Will you believe me if I tell you everything's cool?”

  I hear drawers moving, the closet swinging open. Little grunts as she yanks her jeans up. Still growing. “I always wondered why you and Dad… after mom died, I mean. I asked him once if he was going to marry you. It was kind of a stupid thing to ask, I guess.”

  “A complicated thing.”

  “Are you moving in with us?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going back to Hartford?” She comes out again, willowy adolescent with a zit beside her nose, faded blue jeans with the stylish multicolor luminescent whip-stitch up the seam, fringe, and holographic boots.

  “I don't think so.” There's nothing there I want to go back for, now that Boris is here and my best friends are dead. “I was going to find someplace here. Unless they ship me out long term on the Montreal.”

  “Is that going to happen?”

  “Chérie, I don't know.” She's so beautiful she makes my eyes sting. I might even live long enough to see her grown up and married, fat babies and a career. Hell. A career flying starships. Just like her old Aunt Jenny. I might outlive Genie.

  So might Gabe. “I've got some other news for you, too.”

  She stops midmotion, swing of golden hair backlit in a sunbeam, dust motes dancing like guardian angels beside her face. “You got the list.”

  The list of students selected for the final pilot training. The first small trial group. “You're in.”

  “Eeeee!” She squeals and jumps, barrels into my arms, puppy dog lithe and all that adolescent dignity utterly forgotten as I pick her up and swing her around. “I'm going to fly! I'm going to fly just like you!”

  I swallow my unease and grin into her hair. “You rocked the test scores, kiddo.” Gabe's too scared about it to think straight. Leah can't wait to get shot full of nanotech. And me? I keep thinking about the little machines remaking my body molecule by molecule, and what they could mean to Genie. And what could go wrong.

  She bounces back, pushing her hair out of her face. It's my gesture, a one-handed rake, and it makes my eyes sting. “Can we go now?”

  “Gonna get a coat?”

  “Yes, Mother.” Complete with stuck-out tongue. Leah goes after a clean sweater and I follow her, and she's back on topic like a ferret down a rabbithole. “You and Ellie — I'm used to Dad having girlfriends. But it's just—”

  “Not like regular girlfriends?”

  “Aunt Jenny. It's a little embarrassing, but… It's usually more — un trou de passage, you know?”

  “Leah!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Marde.” And then I think about what I was doing at her age. “Oh, hell, kid. You're old enough to know what a cheap lay is. And what a not-so-cheap one is, too. Neither Elspeth or I could ever come between your father and you.” I grin. “Honey — old, fat people need sex, too.”

  Her lips twitch, and she giggles. “It's such a big deal?”

  “You can live without it. But very few people actually want to. Is there a boy you've got your eye on? Because if there is, maybe we should talk about some other things, too.”

  “When there is…” She roots around in the laundry basket until she finds a red sweater shot with silver threads. “Does this match?”

  “You're asking me?” I gesture down at my stained jeans and the plain white blouse I'm wearing. I make the eye contact and hold it. “When there is, Leah, you'll tell me before you do anything serious?”

  “So you can sic Dad on him?”

  “So I can teach you how to take care of yourself.”

  After a brief hesitation, she nods and laughs, but it trails off. The Hyperex I've taken in preparation for tonight's simulation makes every movement of her long legs in those gaudy pants trail seams of light. Her hands are like white butterflies.

  “Leah, what's wrong?”

  “Elspeth's not going to be leaving because of you, is she?”

  Oh. I'm irrationally jealous, a sharp spike I never quite felt over Gabe. I bite down on it, hard, until it passes. Mine. Dammit. Mine. “No,” I say. “I don't think so.”

  She raises her arms, tugs the sweater down. I go to smooth it in the back and straighten her collar. “Good,” she says. “I like her.” And then she turns around suddenly and is all boneless puppy in my arms, her face pressed to my chest. “I don't want you to go away again.”

  Oh, sweetheart. “Next time I go, you might be coming with me. How you doing about Monday?”

  “Scared green,” she says, drawing away. “They didn't give us much warning, did they? And it was awful when you did it.”

  “I've got other problems. A spinal cord that's severed in two places, for one thing. You won't have to be on a ventilator. Or confined to a bed for most of it, though I guess you can expect some sensory effects.”

  She looks up at me and pushes her hair behind an ear delicate as a cat's. “I think you're really brave, Aunt Jenny.”

  I toss her jacket to her and grab my own. This could have gone much worse. “I'm just too stubborn to quit, cherie. Your dad: he's the one who's brave.”

  3:00 PM

  Friday 17 November, 2062

  Bloor Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  Genie stopped with her hand resting on the edge of Papa's office door, still in her school clothes. The door was open a crack; she picked out Ellie's voice beyond and froze, one foot in midair, torn between backing away and walking in to let them know that she was home. She balanced on one foot to tug her sock up, telling herself it wasn't really trying to overhear. But it was a good excuse not to go in until they finished talking, so she spent a minute making extra sure her shoe strap lay flat.

  “… what had Valens's panties in such a bunch?” Elspeth.

  And then Papa. “I eavesdropped a little. Riel put Holmes on the grill. The prime minister might pull support for the program. Force Fred to retire or reassign him. He's been in the doghouse over the Chinese infiltration of the Mars mission for a good ten years now. I'm sure there's someplace very cold and dark that needs a colonel or three.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes. I don't know what I'll do for Genie if I don't have NDMC access for her.”

  Silence, then, and Genie decided it was a good time to walk in. While it was quiet. Before they
caught her. She didn't meet Papa's eyes as he stood up from the chair. Elspeth had been sitting across from him: she spun around and got up, too.

  “Hi,” Elspeth said.

  Genie put the foot down and let hair fall across her face. She let go of the door and walked into the room. “Hi.”

  Diagrams and colored lines hung in the air between Papa and Ellie, twisting slowly over the big desk. Genie saw the projectors flickering, colored lights under the interface plate. “AI stuff?”

  “We're very dull,” Papa answered. “Nothing but work.”

  “That's why he needs you.” Ellie came over to give her a hug and then held her chair so Genie could sit.

  Genie grinned but the grin dropped away. Her stomach felt funny again. Worry, she decided, tasting the tension in the air.

  “Excuse us while we talk shop a bit more?” Elspeth walked around the desk to stand beside Papa. She stuck her finger into the diagram and wiggled it until the threads writhed and rearranged. “The problem is we're trying to extrapolate the conditions under which an AI will self-generate from a sample of one. We might have better luck figuring out why they don't form, but — all I know for sure is we can make Richards.”

  Papa smiled at Genie and then down at Elspeth, but the second smile was twisted and wry. “I don't see a way around it. Maybe we should just start with a fresh crop of artificial personalities and see what happens. Is there any reason they have to be based on real people?”

  Elspeth suddenly focused. “No. No, there's not. The original research wasn't even focused on making an AI — it was strictly A-Life stuff. Richard was an accident.”

  “Hah.” Papa grinned wider, but Genie could tell he was hiding something, some trouble, and she rested her chin on her hands. “Then I think we have a starting point.”

  1700 Hours

  Friday 16 November, 2062

  Allen-Shipman Research Facility

  St. George Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  I lean on one-way glass in the observation and training room and look down into a lab sunk a few feet below ground level. I stand watch over a row of seven chairs — they look like dentists' chairs — in four of which lie sleeping children. Leah and three boys: two dark, one fair.

  Sleeping children, except their eyelashes do not flutter. Their hands don't stir. The glossy gray cables of the neural VR interfaces drape their breasts like fat, suckling serpents. Their faces have fallen slack as no living person's ever should, and the sight awakens that old chill in my belly. Shadows surround Leah's eyes like bruises. They lie as if dead, these children, navigating the unimaginable steppes of space in a fancied but coldly practical dance. They look dead.

  I never want her to see me that way.

  A red-haired technician moves among them, smoothing hair and moistening lips. She brushes aside an escaped strand of Leah's hair and I turn away. I have work to do, and in a moment the technician will come up the short flight of steps and down the corridor and join me in the observation room. Where I am supposed to be designing the real-time training protocols these kids will confront once their augmented reflexes are in place. I'm here to teach them how to fly. As soon as I finish learning how to do it myself. Or maybe sooner.

  The door handle turns as the technician comes to join me. I sit at a desk, using the inadequate VR of the prosthetic eye instead of the full wetwired interface at the back of my neck, and log myself in. Even with the focusing potential of the drug, the simulated ship and its responses seem a thousand times slower than the real thing.

  9:00 AM

  Monday 20 November, 2062

  National Defence Medical Center

  Toronto, Ontario

  Leah squeezed her dad's hand one last time before she sat down in the chair and let the doctor wheel her down the corridor, leaving her father alone with Aunt Jenny. She tried not to think about the funny narrow feeling in the pit of her stomach, or the funny metal taste in the back of her mouth, and concentrated on enjoying the totally unnecessary wheelchair ride. “So what do we do now, Dr. Valens?”

  He leaned forward over her shoulder as he pushed. “Well, you get to share a room with my granddaughter Patty. We'll get you settled in and I'm going to bring you something to drink. It's the nanite broth.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  “Really nasty lemonade.” She heard his grin as he opened the door to a hospital room that was pleasanter than she expected, with gingham curtains and even an area rug between the twin beds. A tall, muscular-looking brunette girl in green surgical scrubs sat cross-legged on the one beside the window, playing a holographic game that involved assembling falling geometric shapes into patterns before they reached the covers. She glanced up long enough to smile and looked back down, her brow creased in concentration.

  Valens kept talking as he set the chair's wheel-lock and helped Leah up. “Then we implant two chips. One at the base of your skull, next to your neural-VR interface. The other goes in the back of your hand. Those chips control the nanosurgeons. Leah, this is Patty. Patty, this is Leah. You're the only young women in our test group. I know you'll make us proud.”

  “We're going to kick the boys' butts, Papa Fred.”

  Leah looked back at the other girl. She'd lost her game, and the holographic shapes spilled out over the bed in a snowdrift, but she was grinning.

  “You bet we are,” Leah said. “We're going to fly first!”

  1:00 PM

  Monday 20 November, 2062

  Clarke Orbital Platform Biolabs

  Brazilian Beanstalk Terminus

  Charlie Forster rubbed enthusiastically at the bald spot he was too vain to get fixed and frowned around his VR contacts. Massive magnification showed him swarming nanobots, scurrying and multiplying in a nutrient-and-metal-rich broth. These were the original beasties, salvaged from the ship tree abandoned on Mars: the many-times-great-grandparents of the neurosurgical bots Valens used to augment his pilots. Charlie spared a thought for the newest of the lot — Master Warrant Officer Casey — and smiled. She was sure a hell of a lot less brittle than the rest of the guys so far. And seemed possessed of an actual personality, too.

  He blinked.

  She.

  “Fucking hell.”

  Charlie reached for his interface so fast he fumbled it, and only the autosave kept him from losing a half-hour's worth of nanite data. He held his breath until a familiar voice came over his ear clip. Silver hair resolved in the uplink. Charlie blinked to center a wandering contact. “Valens here.”

  “Fred, it's Charlie. Look, I have a wild idea on the old-style neural implant adaptations. Can you pull your old data? Or maybe you can tell me just from memory.” Impatiently, he waited out the brief lag.

  “Tell me the question and I'll tell you if I need to look it up.”

  “How many in your original group were women?”

  A pause that seemed, perhaps, slightly longer than the lag. “I can answer that. Only three. We wanted more — it's my entirely unscientific bias that women are physically tougher and personally more cooperative than men — but women were less likely to sustain the kind of massive trauma we needed to justify the work, and less likely to volunteer when they did.”

  Charlie didn't let his flinch show in his eyes. There were noticeably fewer men Valens's and Charlie's age in Canada than there were women. Charlie still had twinges of guilt over not serving, on those occasions when he was reminded that almost everybody else had. “What happened to them?”

  “Let's see. You've met Casey, of course. Fazzari came through it almost as well and succumbed to a massive aneurysm about five years back. Ray didn't make it through the surgery. She was the oldest of the original group.”

  “None of them showed the hypersensitivity and autism?”

  “Casey has it to a limited degree, and so did Fazzari. Casey used to have a lot of problems with brightness and sudden movements, although she learned to compensate. She's hypersensitive to touch and texture as well. When h
er implants were failing earlier this year, she was having seizure episodes that seemed triggered by flashing lights or adrenaline. She's also prone to a feedback overload from tactile stimulus—” Valens tilted his head, eyes cast sideways, and made a sound that could have been a chuckle, or a cough. “And shame on you for even thinking it, Charlie.” Taut lips skinned back in a sudden grin.

  Charlie cleared his throat. He wondered if there were many other people Colonel Valens would unbend enough with to make an off-color joke. “No suicides among the women, though?”

  The tiny image of Valens in Charlie's contact lens shrugged. “Three out of 155 isn't a statistically significant sample, Charlie.”

  “No.” Charlie polished his bald spot some more, watching the coiling, breeding nanites with about a quarter of his awareness.

  “Do you have any theories?”

  Charlie shrugged. He stared at the ceiling. He rubbed his hands together. “Well. The female immune system is significantly different than the male. It has to be able to identify friendly aliens and tell them apart from unfriendly ones.”

  “Friendly aliens?”

  “Sperm,” Charlie said dryly. “Babies. Have you started the implantation process on the first candidates?”

  “Two girls,” Valens answered. “Five boys.”

  “If you can get more girls into the pilot program, I'd suggest that it's probably a very worthwhile use of resources. Meanwhile, I'll start trying to figure out why.”

  “Girls don't play computer games, dammit.”

  “Then find better computer games, Fred.”

  1:00 AM

  Tuesday 21 November, 2062

  National Defence Medical Center

  Toronto, Ontario

  Patricia woke in darkness. She lay still for a moment, feeling the unfamiliar tug of the IV line in the back of her hand; it ran nutrients and trace elements into her bloodstream for the nanosurgeons. A sensation like chewing on tinfoil filled her mouth. “Ick,” she almost said, but then she remembered she wasn't alone in the room. She strained her ears and heard Leah snore softly: more a kitten whimper than an actual rattle.