Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

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.”

“What am I, his errand boy?”

“Something like that,” she said. She lifted her hands in a graceful gesture. What can you do?

What can you do indeed, Mitch thought. He waved to the bartender and ordered tequila. “What do you need to talk to us about?”

“Problems, problems. Is the man at home?”

“He’s in the car.”

“Then drink your drink, Michael, and let us go to see him.”

Razorface lounged against the passenger door of the shining, dark vehicle, cleaning his fingernails with his bootknife and frowning. Dark shapes moved in the shadows near him, wolves waiting behind the alpha male. Mitch hung back a few steps as Bobbi approached, dwarfed by the big man’s hulking shape. She thrust her right hand out and he gripped it.

“Razor.”

“Evening, killer.” He cocked his head to one side and favored her with a closemouthed smile. “You wanna go for a ride, pretty lady?”

“Hah.” She reached past him, and he stepped aside as she opened the door of the car. She slid into the passenger seat. Mitch opened the rear door and climbed in behind. He drummed his fingers on the back of her seat until Razorface climbed in the driver’s side and shut the door. The big gangster laid his thumb alongside the steering column; the fuel-cell-powered drive hummed to life.

“Where?” Razorface asked, moving the shift out of park.