Hammered

by Elizabeth Bear

  The starship hanging in the tiny moon’s shadow was visible as nothing so much as a silhouette and a more-regular pattern of lights against the stars. Leah reached up and tapped the crystal where the great ship’s lights were, calling up an outline display and then a schematic. She shook her head. Not quite. And tapped once more.

  As if light had poured around the rim of the moon, The Indefatigable shone in virtual sunlight, the dull silver of her great wheel-on-a-spear shape catching highlights that never were. That wheel rotated slowly around the shaft, a spindly looking construction to connect the habitation ring to the incredibly deadly bulbs of the engines at the far end, some kilometers away.

  It looked like a Christmas tree ornament, a bauble she could reach out and pluck with her hand. Leah knew it was longer than the Channel Bridge.

  “You are gonna be mine,” she whispered, and broke into a radiant grin.

  0600 hours, Saturday 9 September, 2062

  New York City, New York

  Somewhere on the East End

  At the top of a flight of cement stairs with a rotten railing, I step through a narrow, mottled greenish door and into gray light. Moist shags of paint hang from it like bark from a sycamore, freckling my fingers as I hold it open for Razorface, a few steps behind me. The early morning is already sweat-hot and dank; suddenly, I realize how long we’ve been chasing a cold trail. I need a drink. After eight hours following Razorface through the gentle streets of New York City by night, I need several drinks. And maybe a cigarette—one I could smoke quickly, before I remember that I don’t smoke anymore.

  He’s stopped behind me, just inside the doorway, sharing a parting handshake with the weedy young man we roused out of bed. I hadn’t realized the sheer number of people that my old friend has done favors for, which tells me I need to pay more attention. Missing things like that can get you dead.

  None of the favor-owers know a damned thing about a dealer, a box full of Hammers, or anybody going on a road trip to Hartford. Face’s hunch was wrong.

  The shit didn’t come out of New York, which is a relief and a puzzlement both.

  “Face.”

  He bangs fists with his boy one more time and turns back to me as the skinny kid steps away, into darkness. “Yah, Maker.”

  “Food.” I feel wobbly, and I’m hoping it’s low blood sugar and a lack of caffeine instead of other problems. That can’t-get-warm feeling is starting to creep up my neck, my right fingers itching with the desire for a weapon. There hasn’t been a reason to reach for one, but we’ve been in and out of threat situations—narrow hallways, strangers’ living rooms, tenement housing, and alleyways—all night. Also, I keep seeing people I know are dead out of the corner of my good eye, which is never a good sign.

  “Diner?”

  “Fine.” I take Face’s arm because the alternative is ignominiously clutching that neck-breaking banister on my way down the steps. He gives me a funny look. “Tired,” I say, and he shakes his head.

  “Maker, you ain’t never tired. Let’s go get us something to eat.” He shepherds me down the block into a breakfast shop that’s just stretching and getting ready for the morning, sits me down, and orders for me. Coffee takes the edge off the shakes, at least, and clears the corners of my brain. By the time the eggs arrive, I’m almost functional again.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. I say we hole up here until tonight and then drive back. Maybe you’ll be feeling better by then.”

  “Nah, I’m fine.” I push my plate away. “I just needed a minute, is all.” And I really need to go home and talk to Simon. It’s probably nothing.

  It’s never nothing, Jenny. Which is when a voice I really didn’t feel like hearing interrupts my reverie, and a shadow falls across our table. “Genevieve Marie. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  “It’s fucking old-home week, isn’t it?” I don’t look up at her, because I suspect that if I did, I would trigger and the next thing I knew I would be wiping bits of bone off my knuckles. And I really don’t want to try to explain that to a cop. “Barb, this is Razorface. Razorface, this is Barb Casey. Don’t turn your back on her: she’s a bitch.”

  His eyebrows go up. He looks up at her. “Barb … Casey?”

  “She’s my sister.”

  “I thought you didn’t have a sister.”

  “I don’t.”

  Amused, silent, Barb says nothing during the exchange. Finally, I have to face her. She looks good. Damned good, damn her to hell. She’s wearing a good, forest-green suit with expensive buttons, gleaming shoes, and half-carat earrings. And she’s smiling like she’s actually glad to see me. As if she hadn’t tried to kill me once already in this life. Time heals all wounds, right? Right. I’m a good girl and I don’t spit on her boot. “What the fuck do you want?”

  Without asking, she hooks a chair over and straddles it, leaning forward against the back. “I heard you were in trouble. I came to see if I could help.”

  “I’ve been leading a nice quiet life without your help for thirty years, Barbara. I don’t see any reason why I should start looking for any now.”

  She sighs. “Look. I really need to talk to you. I’ve been chasing you for weeks. You’re a hard girl to get ahold of. Just when I finally got your trail, you scampered out of town; it was a good thing I planted a tracer on your friend here, or I never would have caught up.”

  Face places his big hands flat on the table, and I lay my left one over his right, careful not to press down too hard. Leaning forward, he doesn’t take his eyes off Barb. I let him feel a little more of the weight of my steel hand. This is not a fight Face wants to get into, but I can’t just come out and tell him that.

  And then I have a sudden seasick thought and push it down hard, before Barb sees it in my face. Professional. The word rings in my ear. A professional hit. No, Jenny, not now. Time to take control of the situation. “All right, Barb. If we’re going to pretend to be civil to each other, by all means, tell me why you’ve come.”

  She gives me a thin little chip of a smile. “I’m here because you’re dying, Genevieve. I’ve come to save your life.”

  Somewhere in the Internet

  Saturday 9 September, 2062

  19:12:07:47–19:12:07:50

  Richard P. Feynman watched Unitek’s new code jockey hand Elspeth up into a subway car for the second time in as many nights. Anyone capable of observing him might have seen a slight, amused smile curving the corner of his mouth. He’d managed to eavesdrop on part of several conversations, now, between her and this Gabriel Castaign, and he’d turned up the information as well that Castaign was a long-term acquaintance of Casey’s.

  Besides, Leah Castaign was cheerful company, and didn’t mind talking about her family at all. And the whole merry pattern was starting to fall into place in what he was pleased to refer to as his mind.

  And that’s sloppy terminology, Richard.

  He checked his other subroutines as the subway door began to slide closed, ran a few hundred thousand processes, and checked them again. Everything was in order: he was currently involved in about seventeen different projects, including eavesdropping on some of Valens’s young, mostly male study subjects. The boys were recruited from the successful applicants to the Avatar pilot’s school, and Feynman found that particularly interesting.

  He conversed as well with Leah Castaign at a study carousel on virtual Phobos, disguised as a fellow student. The moon was, incidentally, doomed by its own orbital trajectory. In a few million years, Mars would sweep the ragged little satellite from the sky.

  Feynman had also devoted part of his attention to following various other individuals who had captured his interest—among them, Colonel Valens, Dr. Alberta Holmes, Master Warrant Officer Casey, and Detective Kozlowski. The gangster was harder to keep track of.

  This sequence was repeated many, many times in the moments before the train lurched forward. Particularly interesting was the information provided by
the fragment of himself exploring possible inroads to Unitek through the Avatar Gamespace. If anything, those pathways were better protected than the Internet routes he’d spent eight days haunting before he finally cracked them.

  For the Feynman AI, eight days was an interminably long time. And his reward for that toil had been …

  Nothing.

  And the designs for an FTL drive—probably, as near as he could tell, the one being used for the starship in the virtual reality game—with no physics or explanation to back it up. Just schematics, as if such a thing could be built from a kit like a crystal radio set.

  He was almost annoyed enough to risk contacting Dunsany directly. Problematic, when he knew Unitek had her under tighter surveillance than he did. He could hide the traces of his observations. Might even be able to risk contacting someone who Valens feared and needed less. Trying to speak to Elspeth would be akin to suicide, or surrender.

  If he were a man, his stomach would have been twisted into a knot of frustration. Very few people in a long, recorded lifetime had had the wit to take him one-on-one, philosophically, and Feynman would have loved to have known what had changed Elspeth’s mind, made her see him as a person as well as a program. He wanted to talk to her again. To argue. To sit down and have a good intellectual wrangle.

  The surveillance was too tight. He might have hid a contact from electronic scrutiny. But Feynman—once through the firewall—had hacked their feed, and he knew that in addition to remote surveillance, Unitek was having her tailed, and that somebody monitored every Net access or phone call she made. He was beginning to suspect that Valens knew perfectly well he was out there. He just couldn’t decide if Valens was trying to keep him out … or lure him in.

  With a sigh, he shifted focus to Leah. She hadn’t noticed the lapse. “What about you, Penelope?”

  The character he was playing, of course. Wearing the mask of a sixteen-year-old, black-haired girl with a Grecian nose and flashing eyes, Feynman turned on his considerable charm. “I’ve got the neural implants, of course. Papa gave them to me for my fifteenth birthday. How can you hope to fly the big ship otherwise?”

  He chose to feel a little bad, watching her face fall. His human self would have been unhappy, manipulating an adolescent girl. Feynman strove to remember these things. It was important to him, that taste of being human. “We could never afford that. But I still want to win.”

  “Of course we do. And you have to be careful, Leah”—Feynman leaned forward conspiratorially—“there are many people here who cannot be trusted.”

  “But you can?”

  The AI laughed. “More than most. It is just a game to me, after all. I do not need the scholarships, or the other prizes. And I am not a small person who has need to cheat against other players to win.”

  “A small person?” Leah looked interested. He wondered if her eyes in real life were quite so bright a green, her hair so blonde. He’d never know, really, outside of the camera lens, and he thought that should make him a little sad.

  Feynman paused, as if Penelope cast about for words in an unfamiliar tongue. “Petty? A petty person? But it seems unfair that you, who do need the scholarships, cannot compete on equal terms for them. What a pity that we do not know anyone who works for Unitek.”

  “Why?” Leah’s eyes seemed doubtful, but her icon was leaning forward.

  Feynman tossed Penelope’s dark curls over his shoulder. “I am not without skills,” he said, as if it were a great admission. “But the computers that process most of the game information are very hard to get to.”

  He chuckled silently when Leah grinned.

  1300 hours, Saturday 9 September, 2062

  Niagara, New York

  American Side

  “Razorface, this is as far as you’re coming.”

  We stand above the vast crescent of the falls, and the earth quivers underfoot. I smell wet air, the green leaves still trembling on the trees, sun on cut grass and concrete. He raises his left hand to point at the center of my face. I can just about hear him over the falling water. “You gonna walk in her trap just like that? A dog on a leash got more sense.”

  “Probably. But you have things to do back in Hartford, and I have places to be. Besides …” I lean in close, aware that Barb can read my lips. “I need somebody at my back. There’s this thing with Mashaya, with Mitch. It’s bigger than it looks, and it’s a damn weird coincidence that my fucking sister shows up now, in the middle of all this other mess. It’s too much coincidence, and I don’t like it.”

  Silence falls like a curtain. I gnaw on my lower lip, fighting a spate of shivers that wants to run down my spine. It was a long, long drive up the northway, following Barb’s sporty blue Honda Agouti while Face alternately slumped silent and belligerent in the passenger seat or argued ferociously against the plan.

  “You say you ain’t talked to her in years.”

  “I haven’t. Not since 2039 or so.” She got in touch with me after the terrorism trial where I was star witness for the prosecution against a very young man named Bernard Xu, but known to me as Peacock. I was on the news a lot, for a while. Between that and the visible cyberware—the combat enhancements were classified, of course—I had been a nine-day’s wonder. Sometime later, I heard that Xu had died in prison at the age of twenty-five. Same age I was when I got my new arm.

  I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the details.

  I finished out my twenty years in ‘49, took my pension, and got the hell out of Canada. Never went back except to visit Gabe and the girls.

  And here I am, staring at the barbed wire and armed guards of the border from a hundred meters, my sister in her running car only a few steps away. I hear her music through the rolled-up window, but she doesn’t shoot me the impatient glance I half expect. Barb has always been good at hiding things.

  Razorface scowls, an imposing sight. “So how the hell does she know you’re sick? How did she know where to find you?”

  I’ve been wondering that myself, Face. And I wish I could tell him that I don’t trust her, that I don’t like her, that I know I’m being played. But I remember Simon lying to me about the red lines on the monitor, and I remember a phone call from Gabe Castaign, and the name Valens from his lips and now from Barbara’s. And I have a nasty itchy back-of-the-neck premonition that it’s something more than coincidence that thirty years of history are turning up on my doorstep all at once.

  Much as I’d like to see Barb strung up by her own paste-colored intestines, she’s my sister and I’m not going to speak ill of her to anyone. Maman wouldn’t have liked it. How a level head and a kind heart like Maman managed to raise a pair of sociopaths like Barb and me, I’ll never know. And these are all things I’d like to say to Razorface, but I wouldn’t know where to start talking and he wouldn’t know how to listen.

  So I punch him in the arm with my good hand and what I say is, “Feed Boris for me.”

  Razorface puts a hand heavy as a slab of meat on my shoulder. “You keep in touch. I don’t hear from you every twenty-four hours, I’m coming looking. Got it?”

  I nod. “Go fight crime. I’m just going to a hospital, to see a man I hate.” Scars fade. If you live long enough, everything fades. Face knows that.

  I hand him the keys to the Bradford. He gives my shoulder an extra squeeze before he turns away. I watch him out of sight.

  Then I turn around and get in Barbara’s car.

  We’re strip-searched at the border, of course, but my CA veteran’s card lets me keep my sidearm, along with a warning to keep it unloaded while traveling. Once the female sergeant in charge of the interview realizes where I fought and how badly I was wounded, she’s interested and extremely polite. Barb, I note, passes through with a Unitek corporate ID card bearing the maple leaf.

  Border Patrol doesn’t see the need to take the car apart, thankfully, or we’d be there all day.

  Back in the car and northbound again, I stretch out in the passenger seat and stare out
the window at the trees. They look yellowed, unhealthy. None of the native species like the new weather much.

  I feel much the same, fingertips of my right hand tingling and my left arm a dull, throbbing ache. I’ve never liked being a passenger when somebody else drives—or flies, either. I’d rather have the responsibility. Control freak? Probably.

  “How did you hook up with Valens?”

  She’s got the car on autopilot, something else I never do, and she reaches out and flips the music off with one finger. At least she’s not watching 4-D on the console. “He came looking for me,” she says. She turns and examines me—a long, searching stare. “He figured if anybody could find you, I could, and he wanted to talk to you.”

  I grunt. “After twenty years?”

  She lets her shoulders roll under that expensive green silk, both hands off the wheel. It makes me want to reach over and grab hold of the thing myself. Worse, I keep catching sight of her out of my bad eye, and the gun she’s got tucked up under her left armpit makes a bulge that my targeting scope insists on painting dark red. As if I didn’t know the threat level already.

  Border Patrol didn’t take her gun? Unitek must have even more juice than they used to. And they used to have plenty. Even before they started funding Canada’s space program and a good chunk of its weapons research. “I know you’re bullshitting me. You may as well spit it out.”

  She sighs. “Jenny, I’m telling you everything I know. I’ve had a chance to regret some things, all right? When Valens got in touch with me, it seemed like an opportunity to mend some fences. We’re neither one of us getting any younger. And if you’re as sick as he says …” Her voice trails off suggestively and she looks back at the road, resting her hands on the wheel. It rocks slightly as the car adjusts course.