Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

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.