Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

“All right,” I tell him. “I’m in, Fred. Where do I sign?”

We’re not cold inference machines. Emotions are critical to our rational thinking.

— Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, “Kismet Project” artificial life researcher

Somewhere in the Internet

Sunday 10 September, 2062

23:00:22:01–23:00:22:05

The multivariable codes Valens and Casey used were supposed to be nearly unbreakable. And they were. Unless you happened to have loaded a subtle little worm into both of their HCDs.

Pilots and starships and VR, oh my.

Feynman almost sang to himself, there in his silent stream of ones and zeroes. Colonel Frederick Valens, you slick son of a bitch. I know what you’re up to.

And there is no way in hell you’re going to the stars without me.

0300 hours, Monday 11 September, 2062

Marriott Inn

Toronto, Ontario

I spent the first night in Toronto in Barb’s guest bedroom. The second night, I get a hotel room and call Razorface so he can fight with me about coming home. Afterward, I sit up by the window with all the lights turned off, watching the rain fall and the headlights roll by fifteen floors below.

I’m drinking more than I should, and I don’t care. Room service sends coffee even at three in the morning.

There are reasons I don’t come back to this city often.

I can’t stop thinking about them now.

23 years earlier:

1300 hours, Friday 11 March, 2039

Lake Simcoe Military Prison

Lake Simcoe, Ontario

I pass through checkpoints without comment. There are professional nods from well-disciplined guards who will not meet my eyes. They stare at the shining brass of my buttons, the shining steel of my left hand, the still-unfamiliar three golden hooks on my shoulder, differenced with a gold maple leaf. I imagine I hear whispers after I pass, but the truth of the matter is, to them I am a hero. Half a legend. The only whispers following me are my own.

I haven’t the damnedest idea why I’m here, and I know even less about why he agreed to see me. In an honest moment, I might say I was here to punish myself, but this isn’t an honest moment.

I wear formal dress rifle green, a conifer color, unchanged from the days of the unified Canadian Armed Forces. The beret is black, not blue, and I think I’ll never wear the United Nations colors again. It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong.

I am patted down and wanded by polite, impersonal women, and at last shown into a bare room with a single plastic chair on each side of a transparent wall of inch-thick shatterproof plastic. The last guard shuts the door behind me, softly, like a benediction.

Bernard Xu is already in his chair on the other side of that wall. There are holes drilled through the plastic, and I go and stand before them, feeling as if my guts are wrapped around a slowly twisting spike.

“Jenny,” he says, standing up. Caution orange, his jumpsuit clashes with my formal green. They’ve unshackled his hands, at least. He shuffles forward, chains rattling, and lays both hands flat against the invisible wall. Skin pressed bloodless by the barrier, he leans into it.

“Peacock.” He doesn’t look like a peacock anymore. When we met, he stunned me with flamboyance. Fabulousness. Hair in a half-dozen shades, clothing shredded and tattered and fanciful. He seems somehow deflated now, dark and forgotten already. He’s not a big man, not small, well made and fine featured. Barely a man at all — he turned twenty during the trial. Five years younger than I am. Guilty. I convicted him, and he did everything I said he did. We both know what the sentence will be. Canada, clinging to civilization as the world crumbles around its ears and the government becomes more desperate, more draconian, more owned —Canada still does not have a death penalty.

He’s going to die in jail.

And yet the look he gives me drips sorrow rather than reproach. He’s silent, reaching toward me. I place my steel hand over the shadow of his, a gesture, touch impossible. I think of tapping on glass to get a captive thing’s attention, and I almost gag.

“Bernard,” I say. “I wish it could have been different.”

A nod, philosophical. “Me, too. You were something special, Jenny girl.”

“What do you mean?” I step away from the glass and let my eyes fall from his, watching him out of my peripheral vision.

A dirty little smirk and he cocks his head to one side. “You know what I mean.”

My breath snags and tears on something broken in my chest. “If I had known what you were, I never would have let that happen.”

“Really? That would have been a pity.”

“You could have used it against me at the trial, you know.”

“My lawyer wanted to.”

“Oh.” The winch pulling my guts out through my belly button tightens another twist. “Do you want me to tell you I regret it? Would it be better if I said I’m sorry ?” His gaze hasn’t shifted from me when I look back.

“I don’t need to be told,” he says, the taint of mockery leaving his voice. “I hope he’s worth it.”

“Who?”

“That army captain you’re in love with. I hope he’s worth it. They were going to send him to jail, weren’t they? And in return, you gave them me. You gave them yourself, too, whether you realize it or not. You could have changed the world. But you can’t go to the press now.”

“I know.” Peacock had wanted to me to rip the whole bloody thing wide open, to tell the world about the experimentation. About what Valens and the army had done to me, without ever asking.

It’s too late now. I’ve taken the damned shilling and kissed the fucking book and signed the paperwork they put in front of me. Consent is consent.

Bernard Xu has been convicted of terrorism, and Gabe Castaign is not in jail for treason. Has been dating a nurse. I’m his best friend. He’s an officer, and he saved my life. He’s never going to know.

I turn away, pressing nerveless cool steel fingers against my eyes. The one-inch shatterproof is a joke. I could put my left fist through it like a baseball bat through a car window.

“Did I buy you what you needed, Jenny Casey?”

The steel door clangs behind me like a coffin lid coming down.

8:00 A.M., Monday 11 September, 2062

Jefferson Avenue

Hartford Hospital Medical Offices

Hartford, Connecticut

That has to be him. Mitch opened the door of his dented baby-shit-brown Dodge and unfolded, sliding his wallet into his left hand.

“Dr. Mobarak?” Mitch made him at five foot ten, two hundred, late thirties, Middle Eastern, balding on top with good shoes and a gray sportcoat. It was the quizzical expression as he turned that caught Mitch’s attention, however, the first calm look and then a little flash at the back of the eyes, like a man remembering that he was supposed to be scared of something.

“Who are you?” The doctor took a step backward, toward the doorway of the brownstone office building.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mitch saw an alert security guard start forward, and casually extended his hand and flipped the wallet open, showing Mobarak his badge. “Detective Mitch Kozlowski. I need to talk to you about one of your patients.”

“Detective?”

Mitch expected the doc to relax when he saw the ID. Instead, Mobarak glanced over his shoulder at the door, looking for an escape route. Mitch’s eyes widened a fraction of an inch. Interesting. “Hartford P.D. May I have a minute of your time?”