Undertow

by Elizabeth Bear

  A sideways flicker of his eyes. Jean didn’t so much change the subject as refuse to allow André to change it. “Besides, I know who’s been gunning for you.”

  “So do—”

  “Not Rim.”

  It was awkward to lift his head, to try to get a look at Jean while his leg was lifted in the air. His lacerated back didn’t hurt at all, but he could feel the cool resilience of a gel dressing laid on the mattress under him. He wondered how much glue and how many stitches it had taken to put him back together again, and whether they’d managed to match his skin tone with the stem culture or if he’d have tan spots he’d have to have corrected. Mottled like a frog, which would have made him laugh if it didn’t make his eyes sting.

  Jean rose from the green-and-white hospital chair and touched the control to inflate André’s pillow slightly. André leaned back, let his neck relax. But he didn’t let his guard down. “Who, then?”

  “None of your damned business.”

  André jerked forward; the lack of pain tended to make him forget that he was incapacitated. He felt incredibly pleasant, actually; floating, but not disassociated. And so comfortable. It was hard to sustain the irritation, even when Jean put a hand on his shoulder and eased him back, one more time. “It’s my business when it’s my life at risk.”

  “I handled it,” Jean said. “You’re my apprentice; you’re my problem. You worry about it when I say you do.”

  A shock of cold water, that. He hadn’t gone to anyone else to fight his battles in fifteen years. And it was humiliating, infantilizing; now André’s cheeks burned. He glared and bit his tongue. “Whatever you say.”

  Jean stepped back. His smile creased his prickled cheeks. “I know you’re just mouthing that, but I appreciate the effort.” He pulled a talker out of his pocket, the kind used by kids too young to be wetwired yet, pushed in the earbud, and clicked the activator. “Hello, yes, he’s awake,” he said, and paused to listen. “Why don’t you come on in?”

  “Cricket?” André asked.

  But Jean shook him off, and moved toward the door. “I’ll be back. Don’t worry, you’re safe here.”

  The door hissed open, shut, open again. André bit down on his tongue, stopping the words before they got out, and was glad. It wasn’t Cricket.

  It was Maryanne. And she wasn’t alone.

  She came through the door first, but she was a scout, not the leader. And a meter behind her sailed a taller, older woman, straight as a mast, her broad shoulders and chin already set with disapproval. Zoë Deschênes.

  Fucking Zoë.

  She was cheaply dressed, under her dignity, and André flinched from it. “What are you doing here?”

  “The doctor,” Zoë said, calmly, “says you shouldn’t even have a limp. How are you feeling?”

  “I asked what you were doing here,” he said. She already had him on the run. Already.

  “I’d ask the same,” she said. “But I know it. I wouldn’t be here—”

  “You shouldn’t be.”

  She bulled over him. “I wouldn’t be here if you…weren’t. You stupid bastard. If Mother could see you—”

  “She can’t,” André snapped back, despite himself, so sharp. Under his skin, like that. Instantaneously.

  Maryanne stood back against the wall and twisted her fists in her skirt. Chin tucked, eyes downcast. She was a cousin on his father’s side, not the same thing as being one of Zoë Asceline Deschênes’s children at all.

  Of course Zoë could push his buttons. Her mother had installed them.

  She didn’t smile; if she’d broken his defenses, he thought he’d snapped through hers just as completely. “You are such a bitch, André. Such a bitch. Such a child.”

  He drew a breath, restored by it. “And you’re here to call me names?”

  The frown deepened. And then she did smile, lips furling up to reveal broad white teeth. “No. And I shouldn’t have done that.” She paused. “I’m surprised you kept the name. When you were walking out on everything else.”

  “Not fair.” He waved the back of his hand at Maryanne. “I was there for the family.”

  “Don’t you bring me into this, André.”

  “You brought her!” He made his hands lie flat on the sheet, when he wanted to point at his sister, wave them wildly. He made himself look steadily at Zoë. Too much like her mother. Even the name. As if the elder Zoë had been able to imprint her personality on her firstborn child. “I’m surprised you came to see me here. Or not surprised, come to think of it. Did you visit to gloat, or to rub my nose in my crimes?”

  “I came because I don’t want to see you floating dead in the street,” she said. “And because if Mother were alive, she’d have come for you. Even now.”

  “You’re like a reefcrawler,” he said. His fingers plucked the cool, slick bedding; he forced himself to stop. “You don’t want me near you when I’m strong. But maybe if I’m easy prey, you’ll come see what you pick off my carcass, is that it?”

  Zoë hadn’t moved from her spot near the door. She folded her arms over her chest; the cheap fabric of her blouse pulled taut. “Is that what you think of me?”

  “I think you’re a charlatan,” he said. “I think you’re a con artist. You wouldn’t know real conjuring if it sent you a birthday wish. You tell people what they want to hear, you keep them trapped in their fantasies, and you skim off whatever you can. You’re a profiteer, Zoë. Just like Mother was.”

  She stared for a minute, her knuckles paling where her fingers laced over her arms. “An ethics lecture?”

  “Leave me the hell alone.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” A thoughtful purse of her lips punctuated the slow rocking of her head. He was in for it. Good; that would make it easier.

  Angry was better than shamed.

  But she surprised him. She nodded, and unfolded her arms, and came to him. She didn’t sit on the bed; instead, she dragged over the chair that Jean had used and perched on the edge. On a smaller woman, it would have looked delicate. On her, it gave the impression of hunger. “You think you’re better?”

  “I’m not in the gutter lying to people,” he said. “I’m not that.”

  He’d almost forgot Maryanne was in the room until she snorted. He glanced over; she was looking at him now. She shook her head and looked down.

  “You’re right,” Zoë said, and patted his hand before she stood. “You’re in a much better class of gutter now.”

  The door whisked shut behind them both while he still lay, stunned, chewing on his tongue.

  Where the hell did she get off being embarrassed by him?

  13

  THEY LET ANDRÉ GO HOME IN TEN DAYS; IT WAS TWENTY-FOUR before he was on his feet. He spent the interim flat on his back, at the mercy of a pair of home-care attendants whose visits never seemed to coincide with when he needed them.

  He was fortunate; by the time doctors and diagnostics pronounced him fit for weight-bearing exercise and swapped him into a walking cast, he was free of pain and just waiting for the new bone to harden.

  Not quite a miracle cure. But pretty effective.

  Cricket didn’t call him during his recovery, and after a while, he stopped asking Jean if he knew where she was. Jean didn’t answer, and André figured that was a good an indicator as any that Cricket had found out more than she wanted to. Sometimes people couldn’t handle the truth.

  He had a long time for thinking, though, between Jean’s lessons (mostly theoretical, at this point) and it occurred to him one morning as he struggled off the sofa and into the motorized cart that some truths were not of the nature that people could be expected to handle. He wished he could say it was some sort of a spiritual revelation, but mostly it was the wisdom born of nightmares.

  You think you’re fine. You think you got through it all right. And then you wake up sure the cold sweat on your face is blood, so real you can taste it.

  It was just as well Cricket wasn’t talking to him. He wasn�
�t sure, anymore, what he had to offer.

  It was almost a relief when Jean came for him, the day after he was allowed to walk again, and told him to pack a bag.

  Gourami glided forward alone in the ocean, and thought, I’m a far-swimmer now.

  Tetra had gone another way. Every capable person that Gourami and Tetra had found in the aftermath of the massacre had swum, bearing reports to other bands, other clans, other greatparents as well. The greatparents would share information, of course, but this way many of them would have different perspectives.

  Younger adults had traveled upriver or along the coast. It should have been far-swimmers who braved the open water, but there were not enough. So the older and stronger young adults had swum.

  Including those who were pregnant. As Gourami had become.

  So now they were far-swimmers. But not far-swimmers such as the bands had often seen. One did not take on egglings when one meant to journey.

  Gourami had not considered the consequences when se first saw an eggling thrashing in bloodied water and realized what the birds were feeding on, among the dead. Se acted on instinct, in hope and terror; se netted the fearful eggling in handfingers and swallowed it. The shock of water stretching se virgin brood pouch was like pain. Gourami reeled.

  And then seen and rescued another, another, another—

  So many endoparents had jettisoned their broods in frantic hope of the young surviving. So many—and Gourami, no matter how se searched, even to examining the brood pouches of the dead, could save only a few.

  And they could not live on their own. Gourami saw other young adults collecting egglings, one—Parrot—despite old crippling wounds, another with a broken forelimb lashed to se chest. None of them had any way of knowing which egglings were exosibs. They mostly could not even identify the endosibs. The young were all sizes, from first-hatched to almost-budded.

  Gourami worried that the eldest would eat the youngest; they were not old enough to know better yet. And that happened sometimes when there was trauma or hunger.

  So se must keep them well fed. Which was not a simple matter when one was swimming in open water.

  The warm surface of the ocean coursed over Gourami’s back, buoying. When se could not fish, se filter-fed, shunting much of the greens and chlorophyll into the pouch-water for the proper development of the egglings. They needed to establish their skin flora before they could live on their own. Although Gourami’s crossbow dragged, se was glad to have it. With a coil of humen twine, it made fishing much easier. Sometimes great schools of silver-flashing jackharley or gray-gill surrounded Gourami, and se could shoot one without breaking stroke.

  Se could not rest. Se sucked the flesh from the bones of the catch without stopping. There were larger predators in open water, and they knew the scent of blood. The fish-bones, se ground between jaw-plates until they powdered. Se enriched the pouch-water with it, so the egglings would grow strong, flexible skeletons.

  This was especially important for the two egglings who were just budding, absorbing their tails and developing limbs.

  Fortunately, the fish were plentiful. So the egglings thrived—except for three that Gourami lost and mourned and ate in the first week. Probably all the dead had been shocked or hurt beyond surviving at one-tree-island.

  Only Gourami grew thin.

  When Gourami reached the floating colony at two-half-moon-reef, se at first could not remember how to stop swimming. Se butted against the outer bladders, long muscles still twitching. The bladders floated lightly, taut, and Gourami bumped and bumped again.

  But then there was splashing, the water slapping se flanks, someone touching, stroking a back Gourami had not known was sunburned until soft hands smoothed mucous over raw flesh. Strong hands lifted and led se, their owners patting and exclaiming as they brought se before the greatparent, who floated like an enormous stinging jelly in the midst of the colony. Se had heard the news, of course; Gourami had swum farther than many others.

  But that was not the same as touching a survivor.

  Cricket—Fisher—was starting to prefer her new name. Especially the way Nouel said it, with a little twinkle, as if it were a joke shared. As he said it now, sliding a drink across the desk to rest beside her hand.

  “Fisher—” He waited for her to look up and smile. She appreciated the training. “Company’s here.”

  She appreciated the warning, too. She pushed herself upright on his couch. In the back of her head, Maurice—present only in spirit—felt the shift in her attention away from the code they were double-teaming, and pinged.

  She pinged back. All clear; your data.

  The inside of her head was a changed place. When she’d scrubbed her headset and reformatted, she’d cleaned everything. Flashed the bios, sealed the old data and wiped it, reformatted, and sent Nouel out to purchase a new drive, memory, and parser off the shelf from a shop chosen at random. Her hardware felt chromed, and in the spirit of reinvention she’d done the same kind of purge and start over with the software. Over the course of years, one layered up clutter. Dozens of half-used programs and heaps of old files lurked in the corners of one’s mind: three or four different messengers or mailers, newsfeeds about things she used to care about, security codes to a house she hadn’t lived in since she was twelve.

  All gone now.

  “Fisher,” Nouel repeated, “that company. Still need a minute? How goes the war?”

  She shrugged. Just under a month, and she was already Nouel Huc’s biggest fan. Except when she was Maurice Sadowski’s. Because Nouel could definitely beat up Cricket’s father. And Maurice could run him into the gutter. And the really shocking thing was that she honestly believed either one of them would do it for her.

  Even though neither one of them wanted to fuck her. Nouel, as far as she could tell, was perfectly happy with his long-distance love.

  Anyway, she had no glib answers for his questions. “They’ve incinerated Lucienne’s body,” she said. “Maurice thinks that if they managed to download her—I don’t know if we have any way to get that information out of André—”

  “Who is in the living room—”

  “Yes, I caught that. Thank you. Maurice thinks they’d have it on an isolated system. No connex. So hacking into it, unlikely to happen. Even for him.”

  “Well,” Jean said, from the doorway, “then we’ll just have to break in. I’ve talked to Ziyi Zhou. She can get us coverage in the Core media if we can deliver the goods.”

  She’d been braced, she realized. Ready with an emotional death grip on herself, ready to greet André Deschênes with a chill and perfect facade. She almost didn’t register what Jean said; she was too busy staring at the door.

  André limped in, fifteen pounds thinner, one leg awkward in a green and blue walking cast, leaning on an orthopedic cane. He smiled when he saw her, a sweet childish expression that caught at her composure, fuzzed up its surface like burr-prickles snagging in silk. She couldn’t answer in kind; she looked at him, and saw somebody she used to like.

  She licked her lips, looked back at Jean, and said, “That doesn’t help us if we can’t back it up, Jean Gris. If I’m legally Moon Morrow”—in the corner of her vision, André performed a perfect theatrical double take—“then I have access to Rim corporate secrets. If I can prove in court that I’m the new original. But I’ll bet you my bottom demark that my motherself has signed a nondisclosure agreement—”

  “That matters?”

  Maurice, listening over Cricket’s feed, seemed about to pop an icon into the room and explain. But Cricket beat him to it. “Technically, she has no rights,” Cricket said. “If I can prove I’m her quantum clone. When you sign the paperwork, you sign your identity over to the childself.” Cricket didn’t tell them that she remembered signing it, thumbprint and retinal scan and an old-fashioned ink pen, a thing you only used for wills and marriages and adoptions.

  Ten thousand years of literacy as a species, and there was still something about sig
ning your name that felt like a contract.

  “Draconian,” André said, the first word out of his mouth.

  Cricket almost looked at him, but stopped herself in time. “Keeps people from cloning themselves for fun, now doesn’t it? Anyway, if we’re going that route, I need to file papers. And then Rim will be after me for real. André—”

  “André is retired,” André said.

  “—is not their only gun.”

  “Oh,” he said. This time, she did look at him, and found him lip-pursed, eyes half lidded, as if studying his arrogance from an interior angle. “You have a point.”

  “The information has to come from somewhere, people.” Maurice, rezzing in the center of the room, threw up his hands. Cricket hid a smile; she’d been making herself bets on how long he could stay away.

  André leaned around his image, looked Cricket in the eye, and said, “I’ll testify.”

  The silence was palpable. Cricket heard her heart beat in her ears. The meta-visual clutter of her overhauled headset, even pruned, was suddenly unbearable. She shut it down, all of it, and focused on the three men and the one icon.

  Nouel got up and crossed the room. He poured a finger of straw-colored liquor into a squat tumbler and knocked it back. The next one, he tried to hand to André, but he might as well have been pushing it on a mannequin. For André, it seemed as if there was no one in the room but Cricket.

  “It will mean jail time,” Cricket said. United Earth didn’t have the death penalty, except for treason.

  “Maybe life,” Nouel added. “On Greene’s World. Where Charter Trade can get to you.”

  And that was a death sentence.

  Jean took the untouched glass from Nouel’s hand and brought it to Cricket, who did accept. She let the rim rest against her teeth, the smooth glass warm from Jean’s skin, and watched André breathe and think. He still hadn’t dropped his gaze from hers when he shrugged and said, “Life? What else am I doing with it?”