Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

Valens stared into the dark amber fluid, but did not taste it. “When was the last time you misread somebody, Connie?”

“I think it was your friend Casey, now that you mention it.”

“Casey's not my friend,” he answered, and now he did raise the glass, and ran the Scotch under his nose. It smelled of smoke and peat; it tasted like sugared fire when he touched it to his lips. “There can't be too much of this left in the world.”

“We'll be reduced to Kentucky bourbon when it's gone,” she answered. “Enjoy it while you can.”

“I should examine the details more closely before I jump to any conclusions regarding Charlie and Dr. Tjakamarra and the Benefactors,” he said. He turned back to face Riel, propping himself against the sideboard. She was still holding her coffee mug, staring out the window.

“The data will be made available to you.”

“Good. How did your meeting with Frye and the odious Mr. Hardy go?”

She shrugged. “Toby's going to try a power play. Or perhaps just flatly sell us out to the highest bidder. Frye can still be managed, though.”

“You're certain?”

“Don't be foolish.” Her hands dropped to her side. She kept the mug upright, but he heard the coffee slosh. She crossed to the window, standing behind the drapes as she twitched them aside. She stared out for a moment and then turned and looked back at him, frowning. “Of course I'm not certain. But that's besides the point; she can be used, and I intend to use her. I think I have the opposition figured out, Fred.”

“You're enough of a bitch to leave me hanging like that, too, unless I ask.” He softened it with a smile. She chuckled.

She crossed the room and set her mug on the edge of her desk, then began rearranging her clutter away from the access surfaces of the interface plate. “Fred, did it ever occur to you that we might lose?”

Somehow, he knew what she meant. Not her government, not Canada. But the whole human race, Earth and everybody on it. “Some days, Connie, I think maybe we already have. Some days I think it's kinder that way, and maybe we're too dumb and self-destructive to live.”

“And yet we keep kicking and shouting.”

“And scheming. It's in the blood.”

She raised her eyes to his, and tilted her head, her dark hair sticking and sliding across her forehead. “The PanChinese premier is being set up for a coup. His minister of war is behind it, and Tobias Hardy is bankrolling the whole damned thing.”

“How do you know that?”

“Do you mean, can I prove it?” She walked past him and poured herself a stiff Scotch of her own, rolling the fluid around on her tongue for a moment before she swallowed. “No. It's a stone cold hunch. But I'm willing to bet Premier Xiong will be dead or in a labor camp by the end of the year. And it may very well wind up looking like Canada's fault.”

Genie sat very quietly in her chair in the corner of the bridge, hoping Papa wouldn't notice her and send her away. Jenny had seen her, raised an eyebrow and winked on the side of her face where her scars used to be, and now seemed to be making a little game of keeping Papa's attention away from Genie, teasing him, keeping his hands busy on the console. In the ready room, on the other side of the airtight hatch, Patty was doing… something. Nobody had explained to Genie what was going on.

But nobody had been able to conceal his worry either. And she did think it was weird that both pilots were hanging out by the bridge when Wainwright wasn't there. Jenny said once that out of Leah and Genie, Genie got the curiosity for both girls, and Leah got the stubborn. Genie didn't really think that Leah had been all that much more stubborn than Genie. But that was Aunt Jenny, and Genie supposed she had a right to her point of view.

Besides, Jenny wasn't very much like a grown-up, most of the time. And often a willing coconspirator, although not as much fun as Elspeth. Still, when Genie snuck mouselike out of her chair, and Jenny's eye caught her as she turned, Genie wasn't surprised at all when Jenny cleared her throat and leaned forward to ask Papa a question about whatever he was doing with the holographic computer interface, his fingers flying like bee's wings through the projected images as he shuffled code.

Normally, Genie loved to watch him work. He coded like some people danced, glitter-eyed concentration and confident grace and never a hesitation. But now she turned her back on him and edged toward the ready-room hatchway, and undogged it silently, and opened it just wide enough for a twig of a girl to slip through. She made sure it shut behind her without clanging, but Patty heard her, of course, just like Jenny would have, or Leah.

Patty turned around too quickly and tripped on the carpet, but she caught herself without ever lowering her arms. Her fingers were tangled up in her hair, a comb in her teeth, and she looked like she was about to cry. She let her hair fall around her shoulders and took the comb out of her teeth and fixed Genie with a black-eyed glare. “Just tell them I'll be out in a second, would you? I can't get my damned braid to work. I should probably just cut all my hair off like Jenny—” All on a rush, and Genie thought it was only dignity that kept her from kicking the wall.

“They didn't send me,” she said. “It's okay. Papa's busy, and Aunt Jenny's keeping him that way.”

“So what do you want?”

Genie blinked at the cold hostility in her tone. It didn't scare her. Instead, it sparked a warm kind of competition. She grinned exactly the grin that would have driven Leah out of her tree, and came a few steps farther into the room. She knew what Elspeth would have said, after all. Elspeth would have said that Patty was scared and worried about failing, and that she didn't mean to snap at Genie — it was just that Genie was there.

Genie took a breath and laced her hands in front of her hips, trying to look small and not too threatening. “I came to ask if I could help you braid your hair.”

Patty blinked at her, the comb forgotten in her hand. “Do you know how?”

“Sure. I used to do Leah's all the time. Give me the comb.” She said it a little peremptorily, the way Elspeth would have, and held out her hand. Patty, a funny expression compressing the corners of her mouth, handed it over and sat down.

When that Chinese guy tapped on the hatch cover and then peered in, Genie was just twisting the elastic around the end. Before Patty got out of the chair, Genie touched the interface port at the base of her skull. “Doesn't that hurt?” Ignoring the Chinese pilot's shiny black eyes. He didn't lean through the hatchway. If the ship's pressure dropped, the decompression doors would slam down like axes across chicken necks.

“It feels funny,” Patty said, and stood up, and moved toward the door, but not before she grabbed Genie's hand and gave it a quick, painful squeeze.

Genie followed her out, far enough behind that anybody watching Patty walk toward the black leather pilot's chair wouldn't see her. Her luck didn't hold; Papa's blue eyes fastened on her, and a half-distracted frown tugged the sides of his mouth, but he didn't say anything. She dogged the door very carefully, and he looked away, watching Aunt Jenny strap Patty into the pilot's chair and seat the two snakelike control cables at the base of her spine and at the back of her neck.

Patty went limp in Jenny's arms when the cords were plugged in, and Jenny very carefully closed her eyelids so that her eyes wouldn't dry out. She laid Patty back in the chair and swung her feet up so her blood would circulate evenly — Genie knew the reasons for all of it; Jenny had started teaching her, a little, and Leah had already taught her a little more.

And Patty's voice, or something sort of like Patty's voice, but different from it in the same way Genie's own voice sounded different in her head as opposed to how it sounded in a tape recorder, said softly over the bridge speakers, “I'm inside, ma'am. And Alan's right here with me. We're ready when you are.”