Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

And furthermore, she'd told Genie she was going to bed, because otherwise Genie would have hidden that big-eyed look behind her hair, never meaning for Patty to see it, and Patty probably would have broken into a thousand pieces all over the ready-room floor. And she didn't really need a crying jag.

Especially not when she was trying to be strong for Genie, and what she really felt like was moping about ostentatiously. Preferably somewhere where somebody could yell at her for it and make her feel suitably misunderstood. But that wouldn't be professional. And it would embarrass her grandfather. And disappoint her mother, if her mother…

Well, anyway. Which was why she was standing in the lounge, pretending to look at the magnified view of the shiptree in the holoscreen nearest the porthole. Which didn't help, so she closed her eyes and pressed her face against the crystal. It wasn't cold, though; the Montreal was bathed in sunlight, though it was the middle of the night and the ship, lightly staffed as she was, seemed almost deserted. And that was the problem, really.

Because Patty didn't want hero worship. Or sympathy. Or to be treated like blown glass.

All she really wanted was for somebody to yell at her, like a normal person with a normal family and normal problems. Like she was getting a C in physics or moping over a boy or…

Anything, really. As long as it didn't involve people walking on eggshells around her. She pushed herself away from the too-warm glass and went to get a disposable of lemon water from the dispenser. She was still fussing with the panel when the wheel on the entry started to spin, undogged from the outside, and the hatch came open.

Jeremy Kirkpatrick folded his long body almost double to peer through the hatchway, and then stepped over the knee knocker quickly and stood up inside the lounge. “You don't mind if I join you, I hope.” He paused for a moment before he closed the hatch, giving her a chance to say no.

“I don't mind,” she said, and finally fought the dispenser into producing her drink. “I'm not very good company, though.”

“I just came to look at the ship.” He dogged the hatch and walked past her, stopping where he could contemplate both the screened and the naked-eye views. The magnified one had the advantage of not spinning.

Patty bit the tip off her disposable. Dr. Kirkpatrick — no, Jeremy —folded his arms together and shoved his hands into his opposite sleeves. “Be nice to be telepathic about now,” he said.

“It doesn't help.”

He glanced at her, brow crinkling. “You can feel them, too?”

“Sort of.” There's a bright answer. She waved her left hand in a lopsided infinity symbol. “When Alan lets me. It doesn't make any sense, what they think, though. It's just like—”

“Muttering?”

“—traffic noise.” Which wasn't quite right either, but the best she could do. She stayed a few steps behind Jeremy, looking past his shoulder rather than standing beside him.

She wasn't expecting him to turn and fix her with a complicated stare. “You're up late. Aren't you lonely up here?”

“I'm a pilot.” She covered her expression by taking a drink from the bulb. “It's my job.”

“Huh.” He looked back out the window. “I hear you're a very good pilot, too. But they sure start you kids young.”

“Most of them even younger than me.” Like Genie. Who would probably be Leah's age when they did the surgery on her, and…

Jeremy let that hang there for a while without comment, spreading his long-fingered hand against the glass. “I'm just surprised you don't have… I don't know. What do girls your age have?” It could have been insulting, but the way he said it, it wasn't. Soft and thoughtful, like he was actually trying to remember what he'd been like at seventeen. But then he kept talking. “Boyfriends, and best girlfriends, and—”

“I don't .”

He jumped when she snapped at him. “I beg your pardon.”

“I just haven't got anybody like that. Just my grandfather and me. He's in Vancouver.” Nobody. Not Carver, and not Leah.

“No, it's all right,” he said. He turned, framed against the moving brightness. “So why'd you decide to be a pilot?”

She'd finished her drink somehow, and the limp sticky bubble annoyed her. She hadn't moved far from the panel; she just turned and recycled it. “My grandfather wanted me to do it,” she said. “And my mom wanted me to be a scientist.”

“What kind of a scientist?”

“Not an ethnolinguist. If she'd ever heard of one, I mean.” She pushed her hair behind her ears and flipped the ends out of the way, smiling when he laughed.

“That's okay,” he said. “Ethnolinguistics isn't necessarily considered what you'd call a particularly hard science. Or even a science at all, depending on who you talk to.” He paused. “So what did you want to be, if it wasn't a pilot?”

“I don't know,” she said. She suddenly decided she wanted another drink, and looked down, unable to meet his eyes. “I guess I never thought about it much. And it's too late now, isn't it?”

He fell quiet again, not speaking while she dialed another water. It worked on the first try this time. She looked at the disposable, not at Jeremy, when she asked, “So what about you?”

“What about me what?”

“Up late. Shouldn't you be sleeping if you're going to EVA tomorrow?”

“Today.”

“Oh, right.” She paused. “Well?”

“If I weren't going to EVA tomorrow,” he said, and shrugged, “I might be able to sleep.”

“Oh.” Suddenly full of questions, she glanced at him and frowned. “Why'd you become a linguist?”

“Fate,” he said, coming over to dial a drink for himself as she stepped away from the panel. “Would you believe I didn't learn to talk until I was four?”

She shouldn't say it. It was unfair and funny and not even accurate. She knew she shouldn't say it. She couldn't help it.

She grinned widely, bit her drink open, and before she tasted it asked, “And have you shut up since?”

0900 hours

Sunday September 30, 2063

HMCSS Montreal

Earth orbit

Three of the Montreal 's crew, counting myself, and three very nervous civilian scientists are clipped to a line by the air lock of the Buffy Sainte-Marie, sweating into our helmets because the cooling systems don't kick on until we're EVA. We drift in random orientations; Jeremy and Leslie are still trying to keep their feet toward the floor and their heads pointed in the same direction as the head of whomever they're trying to talk to, like spaceships crossing paths in a holodrama, bobbing nose to nose. It's ingrained in us from the moment we squeeze out of the womb: you keep the shiny side up, and the rubber side down.

Old spacers laugh at you when you do it, though, which helps break you of the habit pretty quick.

I move down the row, checking clips, checking the lines. Leslie is locked in to Lieutenant Peterson and Charlie's firmly attached to Corporal Letourneau; I give the carbon filaments a good hard yank to be sure. They're supposed to be unbreakable, but all sorts of equipment doesn't live up to its spec sheets. And the lieutenant may technically rank me, but I have twenty years on her, and she doesn't complain when I check her rig.

And I don't complain when she checks mine. It's cold out there, and not a place we go idly.

My line goes to Jeremy; we clip back and forth, our equipment indistinguishable from carabiners and climbing rope. I wouldn't be all that surprised to discover that's exactly what it is; I'm sure Unitek makes harness, and it would certainly be more profitable to rebid it and jack the price up for the military than to design a whole new clip for zero G.