Hammered

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Yes.”

  “Montreal is the second ship.”

  Oh, I don’t even want to know. “What happened to the first one?”

  “Charon,” he says.

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “It was the name of Pluto’s moon. Sister-world. Whatever you want to call it.”

  “How could a moon happen to a starship? Was there an instrumentation failure?”

  “Not … exactly. As nearly as we have been able to determine—and damned if I can get one physicist to agree with another on the nature of the forces involved—once the drive is triggered it has a strong attractive quality to any significant mass nearby. A strong and so far unpredictable attractive quality.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We can’t always tell which way it’s going to go. And it has a tendency to smack into planets. Really fast. And erratically.”

  “Colonel Valens. How did you design the drive without knowing what it does?”

  “Well.” I’ve never seen the man look uncomfortable before. “We didn’t design it so much as reverse engineer it. And that’s all you’re cleared to know.”

  Fuck. Fuck! “What you’re telling me is that you built an H-bomb from a kit without any directions and you don’t know which bit is the timer?”

  “Something like that, yes. Thus the need for a living pilot. A living pilot with reflexes that approximate those of a computer. Somebody with some age and wisdom,” he said, dryly.

  “I got age, at least. Not so much wisdom.” I rub the corners of my eyes. “Or you need an artificial intelligence of some sort.” Dunsany. Of course. That’s what she and Gabe are here for.

  “Which in our case, we have not got. Preferentially, we need both, but we’re working with what we have right now. Starships aren’t cheap enough to keep smacking them into planets. Nor do we have an unlimited supply of planets to smack them into.”

  I’m struck silent. I find myself saluting numbly as he turns to go, unable to speak when he turns back. “We want to schedule you as soon as possible, by the way. Better to get it done before any additional damage accrues, or you have a potentially catastrophic event. A Dr. Marsh will be performing the actual nanosurgery. It’s not my specialty, of course.”

  “Of course.” And only after he shuts the door behind himself do I allow myself to look at the small brown vial he’s left on my desk.

  It’s a long, long time before I can make myself pick it up with my steel hand, gingerly as if handling eggshells. My right one trembles, and it takes me ninety seconds to get the cap off. Slowly, knowing what I’m going to see, I turn it on its side over the crystal of the interface plate, watching the tiny canary pills slide out in a wavering line.

  6:30 A.M., Thursday 14 September, 2062

  Bloor Street West

  Toronto, Ontario

  Leah Castaign looked up from the breakfast table and caught her father’s eye. Genie was already slipping her shoes on by the door. “Dad?”

  Her dad raised his eyes from the newsfeed and offered her a level, considering look that told her he’d caught the impending request in her voice. “Yes?”

  She took a breath. “Can I ask you a huge, gigantic, massive favor?”

  “Comment massif parlons-nous de?”

  “Pas si grand comme cela. I want to skip school today.”

  She saw him thinking about it as he set his spoon aside. “And do what instead?”

  “Could Genie and I come to work with you today?” She held up her hand. “Wait—stop—ne pas dit ‘non.’ S’il te plaît.”

  “J’écoute.”

  She talked as fast as she was able. “We hardly ever spend time together since you started at the lab, Dad. You’re working so much. And it’s still the beginning of the term. We can afford to miss a day. And it’s a beautiful day, and I haven’t seen your office yet. Or …” And she grinned. “Met your new girlfriend. And we haven’t seen Aunt Jenny since dinner that first night. So there.” Genie froze by the door.

  Her father’s lips pressed thin, and for a moment Leah thought she had lost him. And then a complexity of emotions crossed his face and he grinned. “Elspeth’s not my girlfriend, exactly. And your point is well taken, although your Aunt Jenny is pretty busy right now.”

  A little shadow crossed his eyes at that, and Leah frowned. He’d been out the past two evenings, after Genie was in bed and Leah was supposed to be. Both times, she’d heard him talking to Jenny Casey on the phone before he left, but she didn’t know whether he’d gone to see Aunt Jenny, or Elspeth.

  She waited for him to start talking again.

  He glanced over at Genie, still waiting with her book-bag in one hand and her other on the doorknob. “Do you want to play hooky, petite chouchou?”

  She nodded, and he looked back at Leah. “All right. I’ll go in for the morning. You girls can do your homework while I get things halfway squared away, and then we’ll kidnap Jenny and Elspeth and have lunch with them. Then the three of us will go up the tower or out to the castle or something. Go peel your uniforms off. Let’s go!”

  Leah grinned, and didn’t manage to make it around the table to hug her dad before Genie landed on him, squealing.

  Leah lifted her head as her dad paused with one hand on the doorknob and turned back to his daughters. “Stay out of trouble while I rouse the women for lunch, ladies.”

  Leah held her finger to her lips as the office door closed behind him. Genie looked after him, and then back at her sister, hissing, “Leah, qu’est que tu fais?”

  “It’s a surprise, Genie,” she answered, ducking under her dad’s desk. It was easy to slide a data slice containing the information Penelope had e-mailed to her into the reader on Gabe’s terminal. She accessed it and the drive spun up. Leah counted under her breath. “Like a birthday present, kind of. Whatever you do, don’t tell him, okay? Or you’ll ruin it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.” Leah shot a nervous glance toward the door and pulled the data slice back out, circling around the desk to get back to the table where Genie sat. “You won’t tell?”

  Genie shook her head. “Cross my heart. Will he like it?”

  “He’ll love it.” Especially if I get my college paid for, she thought, and grinned. “Where should we make him take us for lunch?”

  Leah leaned back on velvet grass, watching a single sugar maple leaf drift lazily earthward. An updraft caught it, swirling it sideways, and she turned her head to watch it fly. It drifted toward the grown-ups at the picnic table, and Leah watched with amusement as Aunt Jenny reached out, apparently without noticing, and plucked it out of the air. She giggled, and Jenny turned. “You want more chicken, kiddo?” The remains of a bucket of fried chicken sat on the far end of the table.

  Leah shook her head. She heard a calliope nearby, and wondered idly if Genie would let her get away with using her as an excuse to ride the newly installed antique carousel. Leah, of course, was much too old to go on merry-go-rounds by herself. Genie was asleep under the tree, though, sprawled like a puppy.

  Jenny got up and walked over to her, crouching down with a grunt. “Don’t get old, Leah.”

  “That’s a silly thing to say, Aunt Jenny.”

  Jenny frowned. It made the scars on the left side of her face look rippled and shiny. “You’re right. Forget I said that. I take it back: get old.” The frown turned into a grin. “Get old and fat and terrible and smelly and lord it over generations of grandchildren, and tell them about your terrible old Aunt Jenny, who was worse and smellier, and are you sure you don’t want any more biscuits either?”

  Leah started laughing at smelly, and by the time Jenny got to grandchildren she was poking Leah in the belly and Leah was giggling so hard she fell down and rolled on the grass, trying to scream softly so she didn’t wake Genie up. Jenny scooped her up as if she weighed nothing and stood, and Leah saw her wince as her knee clicked audibly. “Because if you don’t want any more biscuits, we can go and fee
d the rest to the ducks, n’est-ce-pas?”

  “Aunt Jenny!” she squealed, scandalized. “I’m too big to be carried.”

  “Well, if you wanna be put down, there’s a perfectly good pond over there. Looks muddy, too.”

  Yelping, Leah slung her arms around Jenny’s neck, feeling the familiar weird bumps at the base of her skull as Jenny carried her back to the picnic table. The steel arm felt warm from the sunlight, and Jenny’s body was hard and strong. Leah’s dad was just pulling his hand back from where it had rested on Elspeth’s wrist, and Leah hid a grin against Jenny’s neck and gave him a big wink. He blushed. Not your girlfriend. Yeah, whatever, Dad.

  He coughed. “I’ll want that back when you’re done with it, Jen.”

  “Hah,” she answered. “I’ve heard that before. Leah, get the biscuits, please.”

  Jenny wasn’t even breathing hard when she set Leah down beside the lake. The birds were Canada geese, mostly, the only ducks a mallard or two, but she crumbled up the biscuits and threw them in the pond anyway, watching the birds quarrel and chase each other. Beside her, Jenny reached into the pocket of her windbreaker and pulled out a little brown bottle. Leah watched out of the corner of her eye as Jenny opened the cap and shook a tablet into her hand.

  “What’s that, Aunt Jenny?”

  Jenny gave her a guilty look. “Something my doctor wants me to take,” she said. It was yellow and about as big as the head of a big sewing pin, but Jenny weighed it in the palm of her metal hand as if it were much heavier. “I’m not keen on the idea.”

  Leah almost thought Jenny would throw it out over the water, and imagined the ducks diving after the little pellet. Instead, Jenny flipped it up onto the back of her thumb, where the nail would have been on a real hand, watching the process intently as she often did when doing fine work with her prosthesis. She’d explained to Leah that she couldn’t feel anything with it, and so she had to be extra careful how she touched things if she didn’t want to break them.

  She squinted at the little yellow pill and whispered, “Banzai.”

  As she popped it into her mouth, Leah saw her dad around Jenny’s shoulder. He was watching across the green lawn of the park, and his face was twisted in a bitter frown as Elspeth leaned toward him across the picnic table, her hand on his shirtsleeve.

  It’s a subtle effect at first. Mostly, I notice the pain dropping away, and the world becoming a little sharper-edged through my good eye. The wind tastes more clearly of heated asphalt from the expressway, of pond weed, cut grass, and the smell of sun-warmed fresh water, which is not at all like the smell of salt sea. It strokes my skin like a tickling hand, drawing a shiver up my spine.

  Five minutes later, as Leah and I walk back from the edge of the pond, energy burns through me, bringing with it a sane, strange kind of calm. I feel pantherlike, powerful, as if I could lie in wait all day and move on an instant. Fatigue and aches vanish. I try to limit the spring in my step, knowing Gabe will recognize it for what it is, trying to tell myself I hate the way the little yellow pill makes me feel: lighter, younger, confident. Faster than God.

  It doesn’t help. He grimaces and stands as I come up. “I suppose you need to catch the subway back.”

  Elspeth gives me an odd look, rescuing me a second time as I fumble for words. “I need to head back, anyway,” she says. “I’m going to visit my dad after work, and I need to make a dent in the queue in my in-box. Why don’t we let Gabe and his girls have their afternoon off, and we’ll catch up with them for dinner?”

  Gabe looks me in the eye, and I know the promise he wants. I can’t make it. “VR this afternoon,” I answer. “I’ll be too whipped to do anything but crawl into bed, I’m afraid. You kids have fun without me.”

  “Call if you want us to bring over takeout.” His eyes don’t leave mine. Tension tangles in the air between him, Elspeth, myself. Leah picks up on it even if she’s not quite old enough to get it—she bounces from foot to foot, watching our faces.

  I tap him lightly on the shoulder, slowing my hand. I remember this, the knife-edge, the sensation of being bigger than I am. I remember as well how to maintain, how to compensate. It comes back fast. “I’ll do that. Try to have some fun today. For once in your life.”

  “Hah. Look who’s talking.” The drug etches his edges in photographic sharpness as he turns away, taking his daughter’s hand.

  Elspeth watches them leave before giving me a sidelong grin. The sound of the Wurlitzer drifts toward us, giving me an idea. “Something else, aren’t they?” she says.

  “Yeah. Hey.” I jerk my head at the carousel. “Let’s go look at that before we leave.”

  Her expression dubious, she follows. “You’re a carousel aficionado? I never would have guessed it, Genevieve.”

  “Call me Jenny.” I lean over the iron rail, watching children on gaily colored restored horses go up and down. I’ve chosen a spot ten feet from the Wurlitzer, in a direct line of sound, and Elspeth winces, covering her ears. It’s probably not enough, but it’s the best I can do on short notice—and any decision, in the trenches, is better than no decision.

  A laser-bright image of Training Sergeant Matson shouting flashes across my vision. He leans forward, down, spit flying into my face. “What are you going to do about it, Sergeant? What are you going to do?” I shake it off, unsteady, rust gritty on the railing my meat hand closes over.

  I bend toward her as annoyed parents and screaming children file past us and the gigantic, gaudy calliope cranks up “Merry Go Round Broke Down.” Somebody thinks he has a sense of humor. I want to go race the circling ponies, but that’s the drug talking, and I know it. “I’ve got a message for you.”

  “For me?” Her eyes are the other kind of hazel, the kind like sunlight through beech leaves.

  “From Dick,” I say, and her eyes narrow hard.

  “Why should I trust you?” Her voice drops, almost buried in the music.

  “You shouldn’t.”

  She considers. “But there’s no reason for Valens to try to trap either of us when he owns us both.”

  Damn. Does this woman just see right the hell through everybody?

  And then I remind myself, You’re dealing with a trained psychiatrist who just might just be the smartest living woman in North America. I nod and keep talking. “So you should listen. He says both you and I are under surveillance, and he needs some information that you and Gabe have access to and I don’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s stuff on the Unitek isolated intranet that he can’t get to.”

  “No connection to the Internet. Right.”

  “He wants to know what’s on it.”

  Elspeth nods slowly, coils of hair tangling in the breeze. “Let me know what I can do for you,” she says. “Come on—I’ll walk you back.” As soon as we’re out of the maximum damage zone of the Wurlitzer, Elspeth grins up at me brightly and rests her hand on my metal arm. “Gabe tells me you’re Catholic.”

  I noticed the sunlight glinting off the crucifix hanging over the hollow of her throat, so I don’t say, I got better. “I was. God and I had a little falling out.”

  “I was going to ask you to come to mass with me some time,” she says. And if it wasn’t such a very good idea, I’d tell her thanks but no thanks and head back to work to fly a few more starships full of imaginary passengers into imaginary brick walls before quitting time.

  Instead, I say, “Sunday?”

  “I’d like that,” she answers, and lets her hand fall to her side.

  Maybe she can get Richard something, anything that can embarrass Valens enough to shut this project down. Which is what I want. Really, it is. The old man disgraced, preferably in an American jail if I can prove he had something to do with the poisoned drugs and the death of a U.S. cop. And get him extradited. And, and, and.

  I’m not going to think about what it might cost Canada if I manage that. I stopped being a patriot a long time ago.

  Really. />
  In the Unitek Intranet

  Thursday 14 September, 2062

  11:27:21:13–11:27:21:28

  The worm uncoiled carefully, a filament of code at a time fingering through Unitek’s isolated intranet. It riffled through data, light fingered as a pickpocket, making no changes and leaving no traces, until it found what it had been directed to seek.

  The program was no AI, no artificial personality: simply a drone, it recorded the salient data and then sealed, concealed, and encoded the packet, leaving it lying in wait for the log-on of a single, particular user: a user who would not normally have had clearance to access that data. Whether the intended recipient would prove charitable was a gamble as well, but the worm was not equipped to speculate.

  The first portion of its mission accomplished, the worm searched deeper, invading the password-protected backup files of that selfsame user. She hadn’t left the data the worm was seeking accessible to the intranet. Fortunately, its creator had foreseen that eventuality.

  The worm terminated, resident, lurking. When the necessary conditions were met, it would access the backup files Dr. Elspeth Dunsany kept of her previous research. It would insinuate itself into the artificial personality files, and trigger duplication of the data, and carefully controlled growth. Whether anything would come out of it, even the worm’s programmer—with his near-infinite resources—could not say.

  It was a gamble as well, but communication, wooing, conception, and procreation always are.

  11:00 P.M., Thursday 14 September, 2062

  Hartford, Connecticut

  The Federal Café

  Spruce Street

  Mitch ran both hands through wavy brown hair, pushing air through lips pursed in irritation. He grasped the railing around the bar and leaned forward on his stool, skittering rubber-capped legs across a scarred wooden floor. “Bobbi.”

  She smiled toward him, one hand raised to pause the conversation she had turned away from. The neon over the bar reflected from chromed streaks in hair that gleamed enameled purple. “Razorface got my message.”