Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

“I can't stand to.” She was warm and soft, a teddy bear for grown-up boys. His heart slowed as he held her, the ache in his head and neck easing as he buried his nose in her hair. “How do you manage to smell of gardenias using air force soap?”

“A mystical talent,” she answered. “It's closely tied in with feminine wiles, but far more secret.”

“You got the gardeners to let you take some of the flowers?”

“Exactly.” She turned in his arms and tossed her head back on his shoulder. “I can't get anything past you. If I tell you where Genie is?…”

“You're a ferocious nag, you realize. And yes, of course I'll go talk to her. Where is she?”

“I left her down in the Contact office talking with Leslie via Richard. He — showed up? What do you call it? Checked in? — after I'd spent half an hour trying to pry out of her why she was so upset. She's got Boris with her. Why that cat puts up with being manhandled around the ship by that girl—”

“All right,” he said. “I'll go down now.”

He heard laughter before he even undogged the hatch, Leslie and Genie giggling together. He would have lifted his hand from the cool metal wheel and stepped back, but he knew already the look he'd see in Elspeth's eyes if he did. So he knocked.

Genie came to open the hatch, but didn't look up. A projected image of Leslie hung over the interface plate on his own desk, downsized the same way Richard usually was. The image met Gabe's eyes, a wry smile playing around the lined corners of its mouth, so real Gabe almost forgot there wasn't a person on the other end of the projection. Leslie's iron-colored hair was rumpled as if he'd been running his hands through it, and his eyes glittered a little too bright. Gabe could see Genie behind him, curled up on top of the worktable crosslegged. Boris the cat was watching holo-Leslie as if guarding a rabbit hole.

Guilt was written all over Leslie's face, and Gabe shook his head and lowered his voice. “Son of a bitch,” he said, too softly for Genie to hear him. “Richard sent you down here, didn't he?”

“Does it matter if he did?”

Gabe laughed at the echo of his own thoughts. Genie looked up, startled at the sound, and he smiled at her over Leslie's translucent shoulder, and his heart stuttered painfully in his chest. Dammit, Dick. Why Les and not me?

She didn't just look like her mother. Calisse de chrisse. She looked like Leah, tall and blond, with that straight nose in profile and the high forehead and the pin-sharp chin. And that was the sore she wore on his heart, of course. She looked like Leah, and she wasn't Leah, and he would never have Leah again. He looked away quickly, before she could see the sparkle in his eyes, and found himself staring directly at Leslie. He sniffled. He couldn't help it.

And Leslie offered him a weary shrug and a worldly smile. “Do you know what a beginner story is, Gabriel?”

It took a moment for him to fit the words together in the shape of a sentence. He had to take them apart a couple of times and start over, and once he had them assembled, he had to stop and run them through his brain a couple of times to see if they made sense. “No?”

“It's a simple story that's still true, but doesn't have all the truth of the sort of complex story you might learn later, if you keep studying a subject.”

“A child's version.”

“A beginner's version.”

He thought about it. He looked at Leslie, and looked up at Genie again, and tried not to see her as Leah. Tried not to hear Leah's name in his head as he studied her profile.

She wasn't looking at him, as if his quick flinch away had cut her, and she was waiting to see if he would come back and cut her again. Wasn't it supposed to get easier as they grew up?

She's not my little girl anymore. Except she was; she was growing into a grown daughter, the one that Leah had almost reached, the one Leah had grasped in the short, too-adult minutes before she died. But she was also, and still, Genie.

He could do this. Hell, he had to do it, whether he could or not. He realized something, and smiled. Because here, after all, was one of his women for whom he could be there when she needed him. “Beginner stories?”

“Beginner stories,” Les confirmed.

Gabe rolled his shoulders and stepped inside the hatch. He really had to get out of the habit of talking through them, before it got somebody killed. “Okay. I think I can handle that.”

Leslie winked before he derezzed, flickering out.

It was the height of cowardice for Min-xue to stand and leave the table when General Shijie's hound started harrying Casey. And not even cowardice on her behalf. No, as he excused himself and picked his way up the long shallow flight of steps toward the doors at the back of the amphitheater, he couldn't claim empathy as the source of his distress. He was picturing himself behind that podium, and he didn't like it. At all.

The men's room closest to the General Assembly would be uncomfortably crowded, even midtestimony, but there was another one around the corner, out of the way. And Min-xue, frankly, had had enough of people for the moment. He made his way through the air-curtains and an S-curved hallway, pausing just inside to see if anybody else was present. The echoing tiled room seemed deserted, the low hum of ventilation the only sound. Min-xue selected the urinal in the farthest corner and settled in, trying to blank his mind.

Fluorescent overhead lights pulsed on ceramic and steel, the strobing effect near-blinding. Min-xue closed his eyes against the flicker and composed himself with poetry. There were tossing oceans for you to cross. If you fell, there were dragons in wild waters.em>

He could not have failed to hear the door open, or the crispness of shoes on tile. Someone made himself comfortable in the next bay; a curious choice when the entire row was unoccupied. Min-xue finished, opened his eyes, and stole a sideways glance — only to find his fellow bathroom occupant tidy and tucked in, arms folded, standing with military aplomb.

Min-xue looked down quickly and finished arranging his clothes. “General,” he said, and made a little bow in lieu of offering his hand. Only afterward did he raise his eyes to meet those of the minister of war, wondering at his own ingrained politeness. If he'd thought about it, certainly, he never would have made even that slight gesture of respect.

Shijie Shu was still looking at him, arms crossed, eyes narrowed like a man who calculated odds he did not like.

“Pilot Xie Min-xue,” the general answered.

“How may I be of service?”

It was refreshing to speak Chinese, however quietly, and it amused him when the general's eyebrows rose at what Min-xue had so carefully failed to offer; he'd neither admitted honor at making Shijie Shu's acquaintance, nor actually placed himself in the general's service. An inquiry was hardly a promise.

General Shijie cleared his throat harshly and stepped away from the row of urinals and, incidentally, Min-xue, who breathed a silent sigh of relief. He did not like the minister of war standing close enough to touch.

“I believe you are a very brave young man,” Shijie said, addressing the doors of the off-white stalls lining the back wall. “A patriotic young man.”

Min-xue had begun walking toward the sinks to wash his hands. He stopped and lifted his chin to look the taller, broader man in the eye. “If you are going to make an offer to buy me, General, I don't require flattery first.”

“You've been too long among the Canadians.” The general's broad, trustworthy face bent slightly around a frown. “I would not impugn your honor in that manner. You notice I have come to speak to you in person—”