Elizabeth Bear: Worldwired

“Sorry.”

In present company, it wouldn't do for Jen to drop that steel arm around Elspeth's shoulders and give her a hard, infinitely careful hug, but she managed to make her answering jostle almost as comforting.

They had moved into the captain's reception hall after dinner, and Captain Wainwright herself was propping up a wall in the corner by the room's two big ports. It was too cold for Elspeth's taste, that close to the glass, and she'd joined Jen in her relentless stakeout of the nibbles-and-dessert table. Both Jeremy Kirkpatrick — the commonwealth ethnolinguist — and Dr. Tjakamarra were sticking close to the windows, although Elspeth could tell the Australian was shivering. He stood hunched like a worried cat, his arms folded over each other, and divided his attention between Jaime Wainwright and Gabe Castaign, whose hulking presence manned the canapé bucket brigade for the newcomers, in courtesy to their temporary role as distinguished guests. The ecologist Paul Perry — long-fingered, slight, and dark — almost disappeared behind Charles Forster, a paunchy xenobiologist with his vanishing hair shaved close to a shiny scalp. One little, two little, three little Indians. Or should that be we few, we happy few, we band of brothers?

Five scientists, a programmer, a pilot, and an artificial intelligence. And a partridge in a pear tree. And the biggest scientific puzzle of the century.

You've come a bit far for a bout of impostor syndrome, El.

“What do you think of the new kids?” Jen said, dropping her half-full glass on a passing tray with a grimace of distaste.

“They made it through the rubber-chicken dinner with a minimum of fuss.” The tilt of Elspeth's head indicated the mess hall on the other side of one of Montreal 's few irising doors.

“Especially since it was rubber tofu.” Jen grinned, that wry mocking twist of her mouth that was as contagious as the common cold, and Elspeth had to grin back. “I haven't had a chance to talk to Kirkpatrick yet, but the Australian's all right.” She shrugged. “My heart's not in it, Doc—”

“No.” Elspeth reached for a drink herself, tomato juice and a stalk of celery, wishing there were less Virgin and more Bloody in it. “I don't think any of our hearts are in it, after last Christmas.” After Toronto. “But it's got to be done. They scare me.” She tipped her head to indicate the long ornate outline of the shiptree, visible beyond the port, winking lights and elegant curves like hand-smoothed wood. “And Richard says Fred says something has to break on the PanChinese front shortly. Riel's going to demand restitution for Toronto—”

“She wants to get Richard admitted as a witness.”

“Right. And there's that Chinese pilot, the one who tried to prevent the attack—”

“He's safe at Lake Simcoe,” Jen said, her voice dripping mockery. Both she and Elspeth had a longstanding acquaintance with the high-security military prison there. “Protective custody.” She cocked her head, that listening gesture that told Elspeth — to Elspeth's infinite frustration — that she was talking to Richard.

Their eyes met for a moment, a shared frown. “You heard that Fred is Brigadier General Fred as of this afternoon, I assume?”

The irony in Jen's expression made her eyes glitter like a bird's. “Richard says to let him and Fred and Riel handle Earth and China, and worry about talking to the Benefactors.” Jen swallowed and glanced about for the drink she'd discarded. Thwarted, she shoved her hand into the pocket of her uniform.

“Can't we worry about everything at once?” Elspeth wandered toward the snack table, Jen trailing, and picked up a plate. She started loading it with canapés, inspecting each one.

“Richard says it might not be a bad idea to have figured out how to talk to the Benefactors by the time the PanChinese start shooting at us again. If they start shooting at us again. In case the Benefactors take that as evidence that the hairless apes are too uppity to be permitted to roam the universe at large, and decide to do something permanent about us.”

“Richard is a bloodthirsty son of a bitch.” Elspeth bit a cracker in half and chewed in an unladylike fashion. So much for the lipstick. I need to get VR implants at least. She hated not being able to listen to Richard directly, the way that Jenny and Patricia Valens, the Montreal 's apprentice pilot, could. “Very well. ‘We cannot weep for the whole world.' I guess we hold up our end of the table and trust in Fred to hold up his. We'll have a summit meeting tomorrow, us two and Gabe and Charlie and Paul and the new kids. And Dick, onscreen so everybody can talk to him.” She swallowed the other half of the canapé, cracker corners scratching her throat. “What're you doing for your birthday?”

“Birthday?”

“Sunday? The day you turn fifty-one?”

“Don't remind me—”

Elspeth grinned. “Okay, I won't. Gabe and I will plan something. It'll be just us and Genie.” Her voice wanted to hitch on Genie's name; it wasn't supposed to be just Genie. It was supposed to be Genie-and-Leah, but the second name hung between them, chronically unsaid. Elspeth brushed it aside with the back of her hand. “You just promise to show up and be a good sport.”

Jen's expression warred between resignation, delight, and trepidation. Finally, she nodded and studied the carpeted floor, scrubbing her gloved iron hand against her flesh one as if dusting away a fistful of crumbs. “Patty,” she said. “Patty Valens. Invite her, too? She's all alone up here—”

“More than fair.” Elspeth's hesitation was strong enough that Jen looked up and frowned, meeting her gaze directly.

“What?”

“This meeting tomorrow—”

“Yes?”

“Is it too much to ask for you to brainstorm and come up with something we can do to get the Benefactors' interest, other than balancing our checkbooks back and forth at each other?”

Jen laughed dryly. “I've got an idea you're going to love, if Wainwright doesn't shoot me for suggesting it.”

“Well, don't leave me hanging.”

Genevieve Casey arched her long neck back, stared at the ceiling, laced her hands together in front of her, and said with studied casualness, “I want to find out what happens if we EVA over to the birdcage and wander around inside.”

Thursday 27 September 2063

HMCSSMontrealprocessor core

HMCSSCalgaryprocessor core

Whole-Earth Benefactor nanonetwork (worldwire)

21:28:28:35–21:43:28:39

When Dick took over the planet, he'd been prepared for surprises. But the ache of the Toronto Evac Zone like a runner's stitch in his side had not been one of them.

He'd comprehended the scale of the damage, of course; of all the sentiences in his sphere of experience, he was uniquely qualified to do so. He'd understood that the global nanotech infection that Leah Castaign and Trevor Koske had given their lives to engender would be a mitigating factor at best, and not even the temporary magic bullet of a penicillin cure. He'd thought he understood what spreading his consciousness through a planet-sized, quantum-connected worldwire would entail. If he could call it his consciousness anymore, as he evolved from a discrete intelligence into a multithreaded entity that might be compared to a human with disassociative identity disorder—

— if such a disorder were a native state of affairs, and if the various personalities carried on a constant, raucous, and very rarified debate regarding every serious action they undertook. If portions of that entity brushed feather-light fingertips across the waking and sleeping minds of certain augmented humans, and other portions moved through the ruined waters of Lake Ontario, and hovered in the well-shielded brain of Her Majesty's Canadian starship Calgary in its position of rest at the bottom of the ocean; if other portions infected fish and birds and bushes and topsoil and atmosphere, and extended like a meat intelligence's subconscious through eleven-dimensional space and into the alien nanotools of the far-flung Benefactor empire, or confederacy, or kinship system— or whatever the hell it might be, Richard mused, with the fragment of himself that never stopped musing on such things. If.