Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

Another slow roll of his shoulders. “Shit, Maker. I don’t know if I can do that.” He’s one of my boys, one of my kids, his eyes tell me. I wonder if Mercedes is Face’s son. I wonder if he knows. Half the bastards in Hartford are his, likely as not.

“I can,” I offer. His eyes flicker from mine down to the piece strapped to my thigh, and then back. The muscles in his face tense and go slack.

“No,” he says after a moment. “He’s mine.”

He hands me back my mug and scoops Mercedes into his arms, letting me hold the door. I lock up after they go, and watch on the monitors as his back recedes into the blood-warm predawn drizzle, leaving me alone with my thoughts and most of a bottle.

That bottle looks back at me for long seconds before I take it and climb into the front seat of a half-restored gasoline convertible, getting comfortable for a long night of thinking.

Lake Simcoe Military Prison

Boyne Valley, Ontario

Friday 1 September, 2062

Dr. Elspeth Dunsany folded her prison coveralls for the last time and set them on the shelf above her bunk. Denim jeans and a peach-colored button-down shirt felt strange against her skin, and the colors were garish after over a decade of unrelieved blue and gray and khaki. She had no mirror, but she was willing to bet that the pastel shirt made her dark bronze complexion look brassy. She wondered what it would be like, to look at walls that were not gray, to taste different air.

“Hurry up, Doc,” the guard by the barred door ordered, not unsympathetically.

The prisoner looked up at her guard and grinned. A single lock of once-black hair curled out of Elspeth’s ponytail and hung down before merry eyes. “Officer Fox. You’ve been keeping me here for twelve years. Now you can’t wait to get me out.”

“Fear of freedom?” The guard rattled her keys. “Truth is, I’m sad to see you go.”

“I’m not sad to be going.” Elspeth Dunsany picked an army-green duffel-bag up off the floor, puffing a little under the weight. “I thought I’d be here until I was a much older woman than this.” She stepped through the door as Fox slid it back and fell into step behind Elspeth and to her right.

“What’s happened with that? Warden said your sentence had been commuted.”

Elspeth laughed low in her throat. “I cracked under the pressure, kid. Times have changed.”

“Yeah, but — Elspeth. We’ve known each other a long time.” Fox’s boots rang on the concrete floor. A few catcalls followed them down the corridor, but the women on this hallway, notoriously, kept to themselves. Quiet, well-educated, model prisoners. Some of them had cried a lot, at first. The ones with families. “I’ve never seen anybody charged with espionage just… released before.”

Elspeth stopped and turned toward Fox. She chewed her lip for a moment, gathering the dignity she knew made her short, chunky frame seem larger and powerful. “Not espionage.”

“Military Powers Act violation, sealed,” Fox replied. “What’s that if not espionage?”

“If I told you that,” Elspeth answered, “it would be espionage.”

Fox grinned and challenged her again. “Most of population swears they’re innocent. You never made a peep.”

Elspeth turned back slowly and resumed walking toward the barred daylight streaking the far end of the hall. “That’s because I’m guilty as charged, Officer Fox. Guilty as charged.”

• • •

Elspeth leaned her face against the sun-warmed glass of the bus’s side window and watched the trees spin over, a leafy tunnel just touched with traces of cinnabar and gold. The soft electric hum of the engine lulled her, and she breathed deeply, hair rumpled by the wind trickling in the open vent. A strand blew across her eyes and she shoved it back with a sigh. Between the leaves of sugar maple and towering oak, the sky overhead was blue as stained glass, golden sunlight trickling through it.

The bus wasn’t crowded, but Elspeth nevertheless closed her expression tightly and did not raise her eyes or fidget, except when she reached up to run her thumb across the thin gold crucifix that hung over the hollow of her throat.

Forty minutes later, she disembarked on oil-stained concrete at the Toronto bus station, retrieving her duffel-bag before she started toward the passenger pickup area. She scanned the crowd for a sign with her name on it— a car will be provided —but saw nothing. Elspeth checked her fifteen-year-old watch for the third time, and almost walked into the broad chest of a uniformed man.

“Sir, excuse me…” Her voice trailed off as she raised her eyes to his face. The hair was thinning now, distinguished silver she thought he probably brightened. The jowls were a little more pronounced, and the deep lines running from nose to mouth cut through a face reddened across the cheeks. Mild rosacea, she thought. “Colonel Valens,” she stammered. “It is still Colonel, isn’t it?”

“Dr. Dunsany. It’s been a long time.” He lifted the duffel out of her numb fingers, hefting it easily despite having more than ten years on her. He offered her a smile, which she returned cautiously. Remember what a charming bastard he can be when he decides to, Elspeth. He may have gotten you out of jail, but he’s also the one who put you in there.

“I wasn’t expecting you to come in person.”

He laid a strong, blunt-fingered hand on her shoulder and moved her easily through a crowd that parted for his height and uniform. “I couldn’t do less. It’s good to have you back with us after all this time.”

I was never with you, Valens. Elspeth tilted her head to examine his face, trying to determine if any irony colored his tone. The old ability to read people’s souls in their faces was still there, and it pleased her to feel as if she understood him. “I’m surprised that you still have any interest in using me, Colonel. After all this time, my skills are very rusty. And my research dated.”

“Please. Call me Fred. Or Doctor Valens, if you can’t stomach the familiarity. I want you to think of me as nothing more than another researcher. I’m only an officer to the army, and I’d like to put history behind us. If we may.”

His insignia glittered in the late afternoon sun. Elspeth nodded as he led her to the car. She breathed deeply before she spoke, savoring the diesel-scented air. “Let’s be brutally honest, then, Doctor Valens. If we may.”

The driver opened the trunk of the car, and Valens placed the duffel inside. “Of course, Elspeth.”

He helped her into the front seat of the sedan, closing the door firmly as she pulled her legs inside. The jeans were too long. She had cuffed them over white sneakers so new they seemed to glow. Her casual clothing left her feeling awkward in the face of Valens’s dark uniform and gleaming brass. He slid into the seat behind her, buckling his safety harness before he leaned over the chair back to talk. “It was time we got you out. For one thing, the war is over.”

“The war has been over for three years. I like to think of myself as a conscientious objector.”

He laughed, as well he might.

She pulled her chair forward to make room for his longer legs. It would have made more sense for her to sit in the back, but she would take any inch he gave her and call it a mile. “And unless somebody else has solved artificial intelligence while I’ve been incarcerated…” She stopped and turned back over her seat to meet his eyes. “Someone has duplicated my research?”

He studied her face for some time before the corners of his eyes crinkled, and he laughed. “The government is nothing if not transparent in its motivations. No, we haven’t solved it. But now that you’re willing to work with us, finally — Elspeth, I bet you will.”