Hammered

by Elizabeth Bear

  9:30 A.M., Wednesday 27 September, 2062

  National Defence Medical Center

  Outpatient Surgery

  Toronto, Ontario

  Elspeth leaned her head against Gabe’s shoulder in the white-tiled waiting room and sighed as he embraced her. “Tomorrow,” she said. “He’s decided. He wants the life support turned off.”

  He held her awkwardly, she thought, as if he wasn’t sure exactly how much latitude he had. Which is just fine with me. After a moment, she slid out of the embrace. “Any word on Leah?”

  He shook his head. “They said she should be in the recovery room within ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Do they sedate for this?” She sank down into a tubular steel chair, harsh with orange upholstery. Her hands fretted the smoke-colored cloth of her trousers, folding it into spindles like a paper fan.

  She didn’t look up, but from his tone she imagined him staring toward the door, unfocused. “Mildly. She’s to be conscious throughout the procedure, though. Apparently it’s just an introduction of nanosurgeons and a little stabilization. The bugs build everything over the course of days. You’re a physician—shouldn’t you know this?”

  She snorted. “I’m a psychiatrist, Gabe. Med school does not a doctor make.”

  “Ah. Oh, here they come.”

  She looked up as he stood, checked the doctor’s expression—smiling—and laid a hand on his arm. “I’m going up to see Jenny for a minute. Then I’m going to sit with my dad. Come up when you’re done?”

  “Of course.” Gently, he shook her hand off, and walked away.

  Hours later, when Gabe had come and gone, Elspeth leaned her forehead against the back of her father’s fingers and closed her eyes. The ventilator hissed softly at his bedside. She was not sure how much time passed, but she didn’t think she slept.

  Allen-Shipman Research Facility

  St. George Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  Wednesday 27 September, 2062

  Evening

  Gabe and Elspeth settled themselves while Valens’s assistant brought coffee and mugs into the conference room. The colonel was already seated, waiting for them, and Elspeth took her time pouring coffee and fussing with the creamer. She pretended to listen while Gabe updated Valens on their progress with identifying candidates, but something about Valens’s smile made her think he wasn’t paying any more attention than she was.

  She glanced away, scanning the over-air-conditioned conference room. The leather of her chair creaked as she leaned forward, idly flipping through notes on her HCD. I shouldn’t be here. I should be at the hospital. She glanced up again, looking toward Gabe but watching Valens.

  Valens waited until Gabe finished, then let his smile widen a little bit. “It sounds like you two are starting to get some traction on this project. Excellent.” He paused and tapped the table edge with his light pen.

  Here it comes, Elspeth thought. I wonder if he knows what Alberta told me about the starship. I wonder if I can use that …

  “Unfortunately, our timetable has been stepped up—”

  She took a breath. “Because the Chinese are moving faster than expected?”

  He stopped midsentence and blinked. It was worth it just for the momentary look of surprise breaking through his control. “Where did you hear that?”

  Gabe was staring at her, and she couldn’t read his face. “Doctor Holmes,” she answered.

  “Ah. Of course.”

  She thought he might be concealing a frown, but she wasn’t perfectly certain. So there is friction between Valens and the estimable Doctor Holmes. I wonder if that can be bent to our advantage. Dammit, I wish I could talk to Richard myself. She knew she couldn’t justify stalling the program further, not considering the Chinese competition.

  She let Valens watch her while she thought, carefully and consciously smoothing her expression. “Timetable,” she prompted at last, and he nodded.

  “We need an AI by Thanksgiving.”

  “We can’t do it, Colonel.” She shook her head, a long, thoughtful sway. “Even if we started programming today, or tried again with one of the previous failures—”

  “Which is why you’re not going to do that.” Making it Elspeth’s turn to stare. This is it, then.

  She caught the warning, worried glance from Gabe from the edge of her eye. He knew where the conversation was going, too. Elspeth laid her light pen down across the face of her HCD. “What do you have in mind, then?”

  Valens indicated Gabe with a tilt of his chin. “Your daughter’s recovery from her nanosurgery—no complications?”

  “I expect she’ll be in school tomorrow,” Gabe answered, as if laying each word on the table in a cautious line.

  “She’s been spending time in Avatar with an individual who we’ve determined has no existence outside of Game-space.”

  Oh, damn. This is not where this was supposed to go.

  Gabe licked his lips. “How is that possible?”

  “Well …” Valens let his voice trail off and sipped his coffee. Elspeth realized that hers had probably long gone cold. He continued, “There has been some indication that the proto-AI which Elspeth attempted to destroy back in 2048 actually managed to escape and has concealed itself in the Internet. If this is true, then the proto-AI has attained either sentience or a semblance thereof.”

  “I don’t understand how this helps us,” Elspeth countered, stalling. Her agile mind flipped through scenarios, possibilities. He’s going to use Gabe’s daughter to catch Richard. That’s why she got the scholarship. She let her lower lip bell out and blew a wiry coil of hair back. This is all happening too fast, and there are no good choices.

  She could help Valens catch and enslave Richard. Or she could essentially hand the future to a rival government. One without the finest of human rights records, at that. And there’s still the Richard-clone. And Jenny.

  She wished she knew which way Jenny was going to jump.

  Assuming Jenny ever walked again.

  Her next thought made Elspeth reach for the cold coffee and down it anyway. Oh, hell. They don’t need her mobile to fly a ship through a VR link.

  No, Elspeth. But they need her more or less willing. And that’s not something you can control, so let it go.

  “It helps us,” Valens answered, “because we can use Leah to get a trace on the AI program so as to isolate and capture it.”

  “No,” Gabe said, but Elspeth could hear the lack of force behind it. Knowing the kind of pressure Valens could bring to bear, she nodded slightly when Gabe looked to her for reassurance. He turned his attention back to Valens and she squeezed his knee under the table.

  “It’s a matter of national security, I’m afraid.” Valens folded his hands neatly on the desk. “I’m prepared to do what I have to do to bring the AI under control. We know it’s been in touch with your daughter. We believe that the Feynman AI is also the hacker you were tracking at the beginning of the month. And there are similar lapses in the surveillance we’ve been keeping on Master Warrant Casey.”

  “Since she’s been in the hospital?” Elspeth interrupted, turning her water glass with her fingertips. The faceted sides felt cool and slick.

  “We have her monitors very heavily protected. There was one incursion, but we believe we’ve contained it.”

  Gabriel’s jaw tensed. Elspeth sat back in her chair and watched him think through the possible answers. “I’m not going to let you use my daughter as bait.”

  “Gabe.” Valens shook his head, sadly. “You don’t have an option. And neither do I. I need that AI. And uncontrolled, loose on the Internet, and interested in our program and Leah—and Jenny—well, the thing’s unpredictable. Quite frankly, it’s a threat.”

  “And a tool,” Gabe said, leaning forward over the table. “I don’t buy your justifications, and I’m not—”

  Valens held his hand up and then stretched, rolling his shoulders back. “I’m just saying that we’ll put a watch on her and
if the AI contacts her again, we’ll trace it. That’s all.”

  Elspeth swallowed, her throat dry enough to hurt. She let her gaze shift back and forth between the two men and frowned. Tingling paralysis touched her fingertips, and she didn’t think she could speak if she tried.

  “You could have done that without telling me.”

  “And did, frankly.” Gabe held his tongue while Valens pushed his chair back and stood, his reflection broad-shouldered and dependable on the surface of the boardroom table. He crossed to a credenza, which ran the length of the room before a window shrouded in linen-textured vertical blinds, and poured water from a thermal carafe into a glass. “But we need you for the next stage in the program. Water?”

  Elspeth held up a finger. “Please.” God, don’t let him have thought of it.

  Valens served her before bringing his own glass back to his side of the table. He pushed his HCD and light pen aside and sat, centering the glass precisely and drumming his fingers on the sweat-dewed sides. “We’ve been watching her since you came on board here—for your protection and her own. That’s the interesting part: there are gaps in the logs.”

  “Quoi? Missing data?”

  “Data that appears never to have been recorded to the writable media. Data that appears, more or less, to have just vanished. As if”—Valens smiled—“it never was.” Elspeth thought he was watching her, and she made her expression intent and ungiving, resisting the urge to toy with her crucifix

  “Ah.” Gabe nibbled on his lower lip, resting his chin on his knuckles. “So how do you expect to be able to track this AI, if it can slip between the cracks so thoroughly?”

  “I expect you to do it for me, Gabe.”

  Gabe took a long, slow breath and looked over at Elspeth. She sipped her ice water and nodded once, hoping like hell that he could read her mind.

  He blinked, looked down at his own reflection in the table, and rubbed his fingers across it. “Valens,” he said, meeting the other man’s pale hazel eyes. “I have a better idea.”

  7:30 A.M., Thursday 28 September, 2062

  National Defence Medical Center

  Toronto, Ontario

  Elspeth had opened the curtains in her father’s hospital room to let the morning light spill in. She sat by his bedside, the plastic chair’s embrace more familiar than Gabriel’s, and leaned her cheek against her father’s hand. The ventilator hissed in her ear.

  What am I going to do about Richard?

  Albert Dunsany’s skin almost seemed to rustle, cool and papery against her face. He slept most of the time now, as his organ failure progressed. Dad, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I can’t fix everything.

  She leaned back and slapped at burning eyes. That’s right. I can’t fix everything. I can’t save my father’s life. And then there’s Richard. And Jenny. And all of this is so desperately wrong.

  She laid her father’s hand down carefully on the white chenille bedspread. This is a morally ambiguous situation, and I need to think it through as such. What Valens proposes is slavery, pure and simple, if I accept the fact that Richard is a sentient being. And I don’t see how I cannot. And then there’s Jenny.

  “Dammit,” she whispered, and stood as the door opened. I didn’t want to like you, Jenny. I didn’t want to pity you, and feel even worse about it because you don’t want anybody’s pity.

  “Hey.”

  “Morning,” Gabe said. “Do you want company?” He held a paper cup of tea out to her like an offering. She curled her fingers around it, amazed at how cold her hands were.

  “I don’t not want company,” she answered, but she moved away when he rested his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know how to do this, Gabe. I don’t know what to do.”

  He swallowed and moved closer to her anyway, not quite touching but close enough that she could feel his body heat. “Nobody does.” He shook his head, gray streaks flashing among fair curls. “You just do it, is all.”

  They weren’t talking about her father, really, and she saw from the worried expression in his eyes that he knew it. “Because it has to be done.”

  “Yes. You do what it takes. I learned that …” He chuckled, a sound like kicked leaves. “I learned that from Jenny, come to think of it. Sometimes, when you don’t know what to do, you just put your head down and push until you run out of things to push against.”

  “I’m not like that. I’ve always been very analytical.” She sipped her tea, swirling it over her tongue. It was bitter, tannic, stinging. “I think about it and think about it and think about it before I ever do anything.”

  “You seem,” he said, studying the flowers on the night-stand, “pretty spontaneous to me.”

  “You don’t see the two-week pondering process that leads up to the snap decision.” She put her hand on his arm. “Are you happy, Gabe?”

  “That’s a silly question.” His eyes looked bruised when he glanced down at her. “Well, no it’s not, is it? I mean, my kid may not live to see thirty. My other kid is thirteen and being sucked into a political nightmare. She could get her brain fried, get killed in half a dozen different ways, wind up like Jenny. And Jenny. She’s my best friend, Ellie.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Gabe. She’s more than that.”

  He didn’t answer, and he looked away. “It’s complicated.”

  “So what isn’t?” She twined her fingers through his, squeezing hard, balancing the tea in her other hand. “I’m pretty good at human nature, you know. I just … I really hate hurting people. I hate getting hurt. I like to float.”

  “I’ve noticed. I remember what you told me, about why you wound up in research. And—yes. To answer your earlier question. I’m happy. I mean, not right this second.” He let her hold his hand, however. The other one rose and swept a gesture that took in, she thought, seas and continents. “Heads get busted and hearts get broken and sometimes you get your hands burned. But you can take a bullet just as easily doing everything right and carefully and hanging back as you can taking chances.”

  He met her eyes again and grinned. “There are consequences for screwing up, and there are consequences for being too scared to try. And somewhere out there, awhile back, I figured out that you do what you want to do when you think of doing it, or you don’t get to do it at all.”

  It was Elspeth who dropped the eye contact. She glanced down at the bed. Her father still slept, motionless. “If you’re trying to tell me you want some kind of a commitment from me, this is a poor time to ask it.”

  Sighing, Gabe let go of her hand. “Ellie. I get the message. No traps, all right? Je suis content. Things are what they are, and I’m glad to have you as a friend.”

  “Right. I don’t know what I’m going to do, Gabe. Don’t count on me too much.” She stopped short, let her arms swing back and forth like a frustrated child. “I’m going to try to wake my dad up so I can talk to him one more time. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

  “If you want me to,” he answered, “I’ll stay.”

  Early morning, Saturday 29 September, 2062

  National Defence Medical Center

  Toronto, Ontario

  Gabe comes early, before the smiling West Indian nurse starts his shift, and sits down at the bedside. He takes my hand—which I cannot feel—and tells me that I look like shit.

  “Jenny,” he whispers in my ear. “Trust me.” I can’t turn my head to see, but there’s a rustling as he reaches into his pocket and a soft click as he turns something on. “Don’t panic. This is going to look worse than it is.”

  Clicking. His hands moving on an old-fashioned keyboard. The colored lights on the monitors mounted beside my bed coruscate momentarily and then level off. “I’m hacking into the hospital patient-care system. Don’t tell anybody.” A broad wink. I’d like to be able to take a slow deep breath to calm myself, but the ventilator pushes air in and out impartially. Oppressively. He leans close, whispering in my ear. “Richard will explain.”

  How does Gabe
know about that? I would yelp as I hear a voice inside my head, but I cannot even turn my face away. “Jenny, it’s Richard.” Through the VR link, I see the familiar lined face wrinkle into a smile. “I have information on Chrétien for you. And I need a favor.”

  I can’t talk.

  But I can think about talking, and that’s all it takes. Name it.

  “I need to borrow your brain.” He raises both eyebrows, lifts and opens his hands.

  What? What!

  “Your wetware, more precisely. I need to hide in your head, Jenny. I’m going to let Valens catch me. The other me. There’s two of me now.”

  Richard, I’m not much for sharing living quarters. I’m trying to wrap my brain around what he’s saying, and not understanding it.

  “I didn’t have to ask, you know.”

  I know. What the hell. At least he’ll be company if I wind up trapped in a body that can’t breathe for itself for another thirty years. How long?

  “Until we get to the Montreal.”

  Oh. Oh! And in the theater of the mind, I see him wink, and then the door to my private room bursts open and he’s holding a fingertip to his lips, smiling like a boy with a stolen apple in his pocket.

  I’m expecting Valens, but I didn’t think Elspeth would be with him. There’s another short series of clicks as Gabe locks whatever he has in his hand onto the terminals of the monitor. He looks up at Valens.

  Valens, just at the edge of my field of vision, raises an eyebrow. “Did he take the bait?”

  Gabe nods, frowning. “It worked. I’ve got him.”

  “Good,” Elspeth cuts in, coolly. “Let’s get the life-support equipment switched over before he decides to take it out on Master Warrant Casey.”

  Valens moves forward, and as he does, Gabe leans over far enough to kiss me on the forehead. “Brave girl,” he whispers before he stands.

  Explain this?

  “The original Richard copied himself into the Unitek network. I’m the second one. Gabe just arranged things so that I got to transfer information with my other self. The price is, one of us had to get caught.”