Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

What you were saying about unstable systems.

“Exactly. It'd be like cutting the life support on a patient in surgery.”

Leslie started humming again. Resonance buzzed in his ears. He stopped for a second, hoping to catch the direction it came from. The sound wasn't repeated, and a moment later, he realized he couldn't have heard a sound anyway. Not physically. “Bugger.”

“What?”

Oh, I just thought I heard an echo to my humming.

“Les—”

Leslie had a funny feeling that he knew what Dick was going to say before he said it. Which wasn't all that surprising, given that he seemed to have become part of Richard's brain. Dick, I think the Benefactors were singing to me.

Patty's got her back to the door when I walk into the room. The door's unlocked and I know Alan will tell her I'm coming long before I get there, so I don't bother knocking. And she doesn't bother looking up. She's just sitting still, her hair banded into a glossy mahogany snake the length of her spine, her chin resting on the interlaced fingers of her hands. She stares at a two-dimensional photograph in a clear plastic frame pierced with flower cutouts. There are two people in it. The man looks like Fred did when he was younger, only not as good looking, although you'd never get me to admit that Fred Valens was a handsome man. The woman has Patricia's hair.

“Patty?”

She sits back in her chair, braces her fine-fingered hands on the edge of the table, and stands. “I thought you did really well out there today, J-Jenny.”

My cheeks prickle with the blush that must be creeping across them. I won't let her use my title, and she gets all bashful and stares at the floor when she tries to say my given name. Mother Mary, tell me the child doesn't have a crush on me. “It was pretty bad.”

“It looked like it. Are you coming to get me for supper?”

“Yeah. The prime minister arrives tonight. Apparently she's decided she needs to keep a closer eye on her lackeys, lest we turn out to have unknown weaknesses.”

“I guess I'd better wear my good shoes, then.” She squats down and starts digging under the bed. She finds one black loafer and one tennis shoe, and sighs, looking up. “I'm such a flake. It's just not that big of a room!”

“Are they in the closet?”

“You know, I bet they are.” Gods, she sounds like a grown-up. She keeps a careful arm's distance between us as she moves across the room, edging around me as if I were a big dog of uncertain temperament, and I don't crowd her. It must be my body language, or maybe she's just psychic, because she breaks out in prickles every time I get close to her, and I really think I'm doing an okay job of hiding the twist of breathlessness in my chest.

On the other hand, grown-ups always think they're better at hiding things from kids than they are.

The other shoes are in the closet. She picks out the loafers, and bends down in front of the mirror to brush her hair. “I have to do that tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“Do they always…”

“Assassinate your character? If they can.”

She nods, biting her lip in the mirror, thinking about gloss and mascara. I let her; I don't care if we're late to dinner. I can almost see her cataloguing her sins, trying to decide if there are any skeletons in her closet. I want to reassure her, and for a moment I have a grown-up's idiot confidence that anybody so young must be secure in her innocence. I was younger than she is when I did what I did, so really, it's not safe to assume.

“It must have been hard surviving.” She puts the hairbrush down and does her face efficiently.

“It was.” I never got to have this conversation with Leah. For a moment, I'm seasick with relief, and then I remember that Gabe and Elspeth are probably having it right now, with Genie. Crap . “You do what you have to do, you know?”

“Yeah,” she says, and stands up, ready faster than any seventeen-year-old girl has the right to be. “I do. Any idea what's for dinner?”

A soft chime from her interface draws our attention. A swirl of cool colors shot through with silver materializes over the plate, reminding me of the sky before a thunderstorm. “Patricia? Genevieve? If I may interrupt?”

It's Patty's room. I look at her. “Sure, Alan,” she says, scuffing into her loafers, toe-and-heel. “Is it a crisis?”

“No,” he says. “We thought you'd both like to know that Dr. Tjakamarra's found a way to communicate with the birdcages.”

Patty and I share a look, and she nods that I should talk. She can probably read the question in my eyes. “What is it? And didn't we already have a way to talk to them?”

“Well, we had a pathway for communication. Although, to be fair, we're still not talking. We're playing music. But we're — Dr. Tjakamarra and Dr. Fitzpatrick are building a lexicon of symbols and meanings. Writing a joint language, rather than teaching them ours or us learning theirs.”

“That's huge progress,” Patty says.

“But it sounds like it could take awhile. Why music?”

I can almost see him shrug, the way the color ripples across his icon. “They started with math. The two aren't unrelated.”

“And it took us this long to think of music ?” Patty clears her throat, and when I look at her I realize I've managed to make an idiot of myself again. I finish lamely. “… and we didn't have a way to play them music before that they'd hear.”

“It's a wonderful new alien art form,” Alan says. “Translated for the first time, for creatures with no ears.”

He nails me with it. I had no idea Alan had a sense of humor, let alone a wit. The shock's good for a guffaw, and then I settle down to a nice, long, loud laugh that's total overkill for the funniness of the joke.

But, God, it's been a long day.

Dinner is strained, quickly finished. General Frye doesn't show up. Neither does Min-xue; since Captain Wu isn't there and neither is his escort — that is to say, guard — I assume Min-xue is eating with the captain in his room. It's really too noisy down here for the Chinese pilot, anyway. His wiring's wound tight enough to make mine look like a placeholder.

Riel keeps her eyes on her plate and seems to find the china coffee cups an annoyingly scant measure. She doesn't touch her wine. Fred pours Patty half a glass, and Patty drinks it as if it's a duty, some grown-up ritual she doesn't like or understand, but is willing to play along with. The plates are barely off the table when she excuses herself to get ready to testify. She doesn't even finish her dessert.

“Come on,” Riel says. “Let's go to the lounge.” She makes a little business of pushing her chair back from the table and smoothing the white linen tablecloth afterward, pouring herself another scant cup of coffee from the carafe, and lifting the translucent bone china cup and saucer to take with her.

Fred gestures me to precede him. I wait, and notice it takes him a little more effort than it should to get out of his chair.

He's moving like his shoulder hurts. The cold's gotten into his bones. I remember what that felt like.

It's been a long year for the both of us. I don't ask and I don't wait for permission. I just grab him by the elbow on my way past and hoist. It's always a shock that he doesn't flinch away from my hand. He knows better than most what I'm capable of doing with it. “Thanks. None of us are getting any younger, are we?”

And then he grins, lines forming across his perpetually flushed cheeks, because that's not true — in some very odd ways, I am getting younger. And it's as much his fault as my metal hand and my prosthetic eye and the fact that I'm walking at all, let alone standing up straight and free of pain.