Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

“Min-xue?”

“Turn on the monitor? I want to see where we're going.”

Richard did it, and answered, “Don't we all.”

In a minor confirmation of the law that the perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum, it was the issue of time zones and the selection of a sufficiently closemouthed translator that prevented Riel from contacting Premier Xiong before Sunday morning. She made a major concession in allowing the PanChinese premier to choose the translator. But then again, that was the way the game was played, and machine translation was not nuanced enough for these purposes.

There were channels and there were channels, of course, and the means she was resorting to, while official in the broader senses of the term, weren't exactly diplomatic . Which was helpful, in the sense of deniability, and unhelpful — in the sense of deniability.

And once upon a time, the world made sense, she reminded herself, opaquing the reflective surface of her interface plate and checking her makeup for the third time. And then you got this job. She checked her watch, then checked the time on the heads-up display in her contact, and then rolled her eyes at her own nervousness. She was nauseated with anticipation, and it wasn't going to serve her to any advantage if she didn't get the adrenaline under control.

So what if the PanChinese premier was late? Her meeting with Hardy and Frye wasn't for ninety minutes. And if they showed up early, or she ran long, they could cool their heels out by the water fountain for a while. Which thought made her smile, and not — she noticed in the opaqued plate — not very pleasantly.

She wiped the expression off her face. The hip unit sitting on the desk beside her chimed. She jumped, took a breath, and drank three gulps of the rooibos chai staying warm in her self-heating mug before she felt composed enough to reach out and thumbprint the secure HCD. “Premier Xiong,” she said, raising her eyes as the man's pinched, expectant face rezzed in midair. “It's good of you to agree to this conference.”

“Prime Minister Riel.” A pause, for encoding and translation. “It is good of you to hear me. We have a problem.”

“More than one,” she answered. It came easier as she found her stride; this was no different, really, than any other such conference in her tenure as PM. More fraught, perhaps, and more hazardous, but the actual mechanics were no different.

It was still just a matter of two people sitting down to talk and establish common interests and points of negotiation. Constance Riel folded her hands together. It did not stop her from fiddling with her ring. “Premier, continued hostility benefits neither of us. Let us be frank; Canada is not in a position to profit from ongoing conflict, and I do not believe China is either. You have the problem of the Russians to contend with, the PanMalaysian alliance and Japan… and the same climatic issues we have. I don't want a war, sir.”

A longer pause this time, and she wondered what word the translator had been checking context on. Or if there had been a hasty consultation at a higher level. Eventually, Xiong's impassive face was softened by a blink, and the faint tilt of a smile. “None of us want a war, Prime Minister.”

She saw the sideways flash of his eyes, the faint movement of his head as he shook off some fragment of well-meaning advice. Unlike her, she realized, he must indeed have someone in the room. Other than the interpreter, of course.

“We are prepared to offer an apology,” he said flatly, unprovoked. She had expected to have to force him into that particular corner. She didn't trust it.

“In exchange for?”

“An apology in return.”

“The attack on Toronto was unprovoked, Premier—”

“The attack on Toronto was not supported by our government,” he answered, cutting her off with a wave of his hand. She blinked. It was not the translator who had spoken.

Xiong's accent was inferior to his translator's, but his English was perfectly plain as he continued, leaving Riel at a loss. “The miscreants will be punished when they are located. To that end, we require the return of the crew of the Huang Di. Surely there can be no question that this is appropriate, and that it is necessary for us to question our citizens and determine whether there were, in fact, orders — and if so, from whom they came.”

Ah. That, Riel had an answer to. “Premier, we also would like to see the crew of the Huang Di answer a few questions. In a public forum, rather than behind closed doors.”

“I see.” He glanced down, consulting his notes or concealing the green flash of an adviser's message across his contact. “We would like the compiler code to the operating system being used by the nanosurgeon infection that Canada has inflicted upon the unsuspecting nations of the earth. We profess ourselves willing to share our own codes, and to make this information available to the scientific community and to the security forces of any nation or supranation that wishes access to them. Pursuant, of course, to a security check.”

“I'm afraid that won't be possible,” she answered. Even if that weren't a back door into Richard that I wouldn't give my sister. “I am, however, certainly open to entertaining the resumption of friendly relations between our countries.” Where “resumption” is a euphemism for “we never have gotten along all that well, but I'm willing to ignore that little twenty-year dustup that we don't call World War III if you are.”

“You realize, Madame Prime Minister, that while I am amenable to… negotiations, there are elements within my nation that will be opposed.”

“I have an Opposition of my own, Mr. Xiong.”

He chuckled, his eyes twinkling like agates, the first flash of a real personality she'd seen. “I'm sure you do. There's something else you should understand, if you are determined to permit the United Nations to address this matter.”

“It wouldn't be fair to go to NATO, would it now?”

His smile was very cool, and very thoughtful. “You're aware that the same technology that is used to enhance the starship pilots can be used to create more… traditional warriors?”

“Canada is aware.” And then the bottom dropped out of her stomach, a trap door under a hanged man's feet. “Are you insinuating that China has such a program in development, sir?”

“Of course not,” he answered. “It would be classified, if we did. I'll see you in New York City on the eighth of October, then?”

“Will you be attending yourself, Mr. Premier?”

“Madame Prime Minister,” he answered carefully. “I should not miss it, if it lies within my power.”

He vanished, and Riel rolled away the ache in her neck. One down, she thought. Hardy and Frye up next. I hope this counts as a productive morning.

Patty knew why Captain Wainwright had sent her to the air lock to meet Xie Min-xue. Partially because she was young, and a pilot, too — and could be trusted not to do anything stupid like trying to shake Xie Min-xue's hand — and it was partially to get her off the bridge, where she'd been fretting since the Buffy Sainte-Marie uncoupled from the Montreal .

So she waited by the interior air lock door, her hands self-consciously relaxed, hanging palms-in against her thighs, her heart beating faster than it should, her hair braided so it wouldn't drift into her face, and one foot hooked under a grab strap. Alan? How much longer?

“He's the only one disembarking the shuttle,” Alan answered. “And they're docked. It'll just be a minute.”

Patty took a slow breath. She didn't close her eyes. She didn't need to, really; she just imagined herself armored, a golden metal robot shaped like a girl, or like a sketch of a girl on the mud flap of a truck. And the air lock cycled, and she found herself standing in front of a slender man, a boy, really, her own age or just a little older, his gleaming black hair floating above arched brows and his dark eyes glittering through his squint. He didn't smile, and he looked supremely comfortable in zero G. A duffel bag drifted from his left hand.