Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

“Aliens.” There’s no such thing. “Purple elephants, too, no doubt.”

“Hah.” In my virtual vision, Richard Feynman lifts his shoulders in a powerfully suggestive shrug. He’s wearing an old-fashioned cotton oxford shirt, rolled up to show wire-strung forearms. “Least hypothesis. Where else does technology come from with no physics and no engineering to back it up?”

And I haven’t got an answer for that at all. I’m trying to find the argument, in fact, when the tips of my fingers go blank white numb. My left hand clenches on the data slice as I withdraw it from the reader.

The holographic crystal crushes to powder in my hand.

I try to open my mouth to say, Richard. No words come out at all.

9:15 A.M., Friday 15 September, 2062

High Street

Rockville, Connecticut

Bobbi insisted on calling it a suburban assault vehicle, but in reality it was a reasonably standard heavy-duty high-clearance four-wheel-drive. Razorface hadn’t wanted to abandon his limousine and switch to Bobbi’s vehicle, but she did have the first-aid kits and a cache of additional weapons. And chances were that Casey wouldn’t be looking for a dark green Bradford, newer than Maker’s, with roll bars and armor plate.

Whatever, Mitch thought, parking it beside the sidewalk, guardrail and chain-link fence that separated the edge of the narrow street from a twelve-foot drop into brambles. He turned off the radio in the middle of the weather report— eighteenth named storm of the Atlantic season menaces the Outer Banks— and unlocked the doors. “This hill must be a pig to get up in the wintertime, killer.” Razorface just grunted from the passenger seat.

“That’s why I have the four-wheel,” Bobbi answered from where she reclined in the backseat with her hastily bandaged leg propped up. “And I wish to hell that doctor friend of yours had let you know he was running out of town so soon.”

“Yeah,” Mitch answered. “Me, too.”

Razor opened his door and walked around the car to help Bobbi. Pale lines were etched across her forehead, but she didn’t so much as whimper when he picked her up as easily as lifting a bag of groceries.

“Please get the first-aid kit, Michael.”

Mitch did it and locked the Bradford up. Thin-lipped, Bobbi directed them up a narrow flight of cement stairs to a woodframe house built into the side of the hill. Classic New England milltown architecture, he thought with a bitter grin. Awkward, inaccessible, and picturesque.

“Is this where you live? It’s a little out of the way.” She handed him the pass card and he opened the lock. Razorface held her up so she could disable the security system.

“Just a safehouse,” she answered. “There are MREs in the cabinet. You’re going to have to do my leg, Michael.”

“Yeah. I know. Will that table hold your weight?” It looked sturdy enough.

“It is oak. I don’t think it will be a problem.”

There was nothing on it. “Are there sheets?”

“Linen closet in the bathroom. Set me down please, Razorface.”

Mitch marveled at the calmness of her tone.

Bobbi leaned back on her elbows while Mitch cleaned the wound in her calf. The bullet had creased muscle and gone through. If it had struck bone there would have been nothing Mitch could have done for her. She stared at the ceiling, talking through the pain; he barely heard the strain in her voice.

She seemed to be striving for dryness as she said, “You didn’t get a chance to look around the garage bay, did you?”

“No.” The vinyl gloves he was wearing bunched and slid and stuck in clotted blood. He didn’t look up.

“There was a white van parked there. Newer Ford, no windows. Looked like a delivery van.” She grunted as Mitch’s hand slipped.

“Did you get a look inside?”

“No.” No further noises of protest, even as he slathered the wound in antiseptics. “But I took cover under it. The undercarriage is stuck full of mud and grass, Michael.”

“Oh.” He wound the bandage tight before he leaned back and closed his eyes. “I know a cop I can call in West Hartford. Last night might be covered up, but he might be able to make things hot for the corporate offices. Maybe he can even get a warrant and look inside.”

“Do it,” Razorface said. “And tomorrow we’re going to Bridgeport.”

2:30 P.M., Friday 15 September, 2062

Toronto General Hospital

Emergency Department

Toronto, Ontario

Gabe surged down the white-tiled corridor, his strides only shortening when a plump, shirtsleeved Middle Eastern man stepped in front of him. “Gabriel Castaign?”

Gabe recognized him from the phone conversation. “Doctor Mobarak. What are you doing in Toronto?”

“I had planned to come up to observe Jenny’s surgery. Come with me.”

“How is she?”

The doctor sighed, struggling to keep up with Gabe’s longer strides. “Refusing treatment.”

“ Quoi? You can’t have the hospital do something?”

“You’ll see. She is as stubborn as a cow moose. And I’m not affiliated with Toronto General; the fact that they’re letting me play doctor at all is nothing but a courtesy. Valens went to bat for me once he figured out that Jenny wasn’t speaking to him.”

“Valens is here?”

“She threw him out of the room. He was recommending immediate nanosurgery. Apparently, she collapsed in seizures at the public library.”

Que faisait elle à la bibliothèque? Gabe didn’t think now was the time to ask stupid questions. “What did she say?”

“No surgery. She needs it, Gabe. She won’t make her birthday without it.”

“She told me five years. Maybe ten.”

Mobarak paused, his hand on the steel doorknob. Gabe, heart in the pit of his stomach, read the younger man’s eyes with a helpless sensation he knew all too well.

“That was then,” the doctor said. “This is now. The myelin breakdown in her motor cortex is becoming acute. I don’t know what triggered it. It could be exposure to the drugs Valens was providing for her.” Mobarak’s voice dripped disgust. “It could also be the stimulation from the VR exercises.”

“What does that mean?”

Mobarak’s shoulders rose on an indrawn breath, and he slowly shook his head. Then he opened the door.

Gabe, braced for the worst, swore out loud when he saw Jenny sitting upright in a chair beside the examining table, buttoning the cuff of her right sleeve with frowning care. Pain burst so bright in his chest that for a moment he thought his heart had stopped, and he looked up at the wall, calling fury back up over the relief that threatened to smother it. Oh, no.

He didn’t dare think about what that relief meant.

14:30 hours, Friday 15 September, 2062

Toronto General Hospital

Emergency Department

Toronto, Ontario

I’m about to put my boots on and stand up when Simon comes back into the room. This time, Gabe is at his heels. Valens has already delivered his prognosis and I imagine, knowing Valens, is trying to arrange for me to be moved to NDMC and for an operating theater to have been set up five minutes ago. Even after I told him no. It’s enough. It’s enough to put Valens in jail, and Barb with him. And maybe Mitch will manage to prove she shot his girlfriend. That’s still a death penalty in Connecticut. I’ll take the court-martial for refusing orders and go to jail. Maybe they’ll give me Peacock’s old cell.