Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

Frye nodded. “Je comprends.”

Riel reached out and patted Frye's arm. “One crisis at a time,” she said. And don't think I'm ever going to trust you one inch farther than I can toss you, General. But if I can use you to distract Unitek while they're trying to play Canada and China off against each other, then you're a pawn I'm going to keep on the board until I have to sacrifice you. “One crisis at a time.”

She nearly jumped out of her skin when the critical-alert light on the corner of her interface plate began to blink.

• • •

I don't see what sets the teardrops off. It always seems to happen that way, doesn't it? You're cruising along, minding your own business, and suddenly things are blowing up to the left and to the right of you, and no matter how hard you were looking you never see where the goddamned rockets came from. And you just grab the wheel and floor it, and hope you don't wind up upside down in a crater. Richard. Richard! What the hell is going on?

“I don't know, Jenny. Something. Hell—”

Or, in this case, you're standing on the sidelines adjusting your cuff links, and the next thing you notice, everybody's shooting at each other. And you're too goddamned far away to make any difference at all, even if you tried.

So, suddenly, Charlie and Leslie are shouting over the suit radios, phrases broken by static, frantic scurrying, and I'm half a second from trying to get to them even though they're a klick away across the diameter of the birdcage and I'd just get my own fool self killed, except I remember a second before I hit my maneuvering jets that I'm hooked in to Jeremy by ten feet of carbon filament and by the time I get myself unhooked, it's over and everything's calm as a millbrook downstream of the paddles.

“Casey? Dammit, Casey !” But Captain Wainwright's voice-of-command over my suit radio isn't even enough to snap me out of it, and neither is Lieutenant Peterson tugging on my spacesuit, trying to drag me away from the birdcage, back to the shuttle.

You know those pearl necklaces, the ones where the jewel rolls around free inside a silver wire cage that hangs off a chain? Leah used to have one; she wore it to Mass sometimes. The pearl in hers was pink.

When things stop twisting in front of my eyes, all the mercury in the birdcage has gathered in an enormous blob at the center of the ship. It floats there, a spherical mirror, flawless and shivering, and Charlie and Leslie are gone.

God damn it, I am sick of watching people I like get killed. I am even sicker of getting people I like killed. It's not an acquired taste, let me tell you; every drink is bitter as the last. And they never get any easier to swallow.

“Aw, Christ,” Peterson says, turning to fix her lines to Letourneau for the slow sail back to the Buffy .

I can feel Richard in my head; I can feel him thinking, but he doesn't seem to have anything to say. I don't either, and Jeremy's just as silent.

But he's not retreating any more than I am. Instead he hangs at my shoulder, just looking at all that fluid silver, and our colleagues buried somewhere inside. And Wainwright's stopped shouting in my head, and Peterson's silence tells me she's conferring with the captain privately. Which is fine with me. The officers are welcome to it.

Finally, she clears her throat. “Master Warrant Officer?”

“Lieutenant?”

“The, ah. The captain ordered us to clear the scene.”

“Ma'am.” I start backing away. I don't want to turn my back on that thing. Not for a second.

“Wait,” Jeremy interjects. His gauntlets wave like an upturned bug's legs, hard enough that he wobbles until his gyros straighten him out. “Wait, wait—”

“Jer?”

“Get a sample,” he says. “Les said get a sample.”

“Dr. Kirkpatrick.” Peterson's voice, rich with warning.

Insubordinate as always, I follow Jeremy back toward the cage. “We won't go inside, Lieutenant. We may as well salvage something out of this mess.”

I hear her sigh. I rather imagine she's getting an earful from the captain, and I'm not entirely certain why I'm being spared it. Maybe Wainwright's afraid she'll say something she's likely to regret if she talks to me directly. Richard, do you think we can get away with this?

“Insufficient data, Jen,” he answers.

When did you get replaced by a bot?

“You know, the more upset you are, the more sarcastic you get.” Sensation of a raised eyebrow, and I bless him silently for knowing what I need, archness and sharp diversionary tactics instead of sympathy. “In any case, I think you're right about an attempt to salvage… Jen.”

Dick? Feeling more like a straight man every second, I hesitate, shaking the lines to slow Jeremy down. What is it?

“Jen, I don't want to get your hopes up. And I don't want to give you a false impression that I have any control of this situation at all, much as I wish I could do something—”

Dick. Out with it already. Jeremy moves forward again, a scraper and a vacuum bag in his hands.

“You know I have some limited, some very limited communication with the Benefactor nanotech.”

Yes?

“Jen, I think Charlie and Leslie are alive in there.”

I've got to give Wainwright credit. She doesn't say I told you so . She doesn't even think it real loud, although the vertical line over her shapely little nose advertises restrained wrath. The funny thing is, I don't think she's angry with me.

I don't know what she is angry with, though, and I'd be just as happy not to get between her and the object of her wrath until she's done reducing it to scrap metal. There are forces of nature I'm willing to fuck with, and those that I'm sensible enough to give a wide berth — and right now, Wainwright falls into the latter category.

Even if she doesn't trust me, Wainwright's a good CO. She knows me better than I know myself sometimes, and she's got to be aware that left to my own devices, I'd be stalking the halls of the ship making a terror of myself, keeping my own kind of walking vigil for Leslie and Charlie. And since she knows that, and she knows Richard will tell me if the status changes, she heads it off at the pass by giving me a job to do.

She appoints me Xie Min-xue's guardian, and gives me— us —the run of the ship. Under Dick's supervision, of course. But then, we always are.

Pilot Xie waits in the pilot's ready room, the one I took Leslie to when he first came on board. Xie stands when I enter; he's just barely eighteen, and he could pass for fifteen when the light hits him right. He's a fragile, girlish sort of a boy with eyes like watchful black jewels. It occurs to me, looking at him, that Leah probably could have broken him over her knee, and Patty would have no problem at all.

His eyes track me but he doesn't speak at first, just presses his arms tight to his sides and bows, his body language indicating as clear as an eight-sided sign, stop there. Beyond this point there be dragons. Something about the distance in those eyes tells me he's talking to Richard, which is no skin off my nose. If it comforts him, more power to him.

If I remember Richard's briefings right, the Chinese pilots are wired even closer to tolerances than we are, because they don't have access to Canada's performance-enhancing drugs. And moreover, their wetware isn't adrenaline-sensitive. Rather than moving through the world in a fairly normal fashion until something triggers their enhancements, they live their lives like hummingbirds, vibrating on the verge of flight.

All things considered, then, I have to think that Xie Min-xue comes across as a remarkably normal young man.