Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

“Well, let's go see if they're waiting for us inside,” Jeremy said, checking the safety line before he reached out, flat-palmed the wall, and pushed himself toward the new opening. “I don't see any shadows.”

“Would you, in this light?”

“I don't — oh.” Jeremy reached out and caught one lip of the door in his right hand. Charlie drifted into his back, hard.

“Oof!”

“Shh.” Before Charlie could complain.

Charlie caught the other side of the doorway in his left hand and braced himself, and turned away from Jeremy and toward the interior of the shiptree. “Oh,” he said, blinking, trying to clear his eyes, and then realizing they didn't need clearing.

He and Jeremy had drifted into a jungle, emerging from a hole in the floor — essentially — to drift surrounded by twisted vines and heavy flowering branches thick with glossy leaves. The light glowed from the floor as well as overhead, and small creatures darted and called among the branches. Some of them had feathers or fur in jeweled colors; Charlie glimpsed something like a scarlet tanager with a snakelike neck. Animal voices rang through his helmet, shrillness muffled. Even damped by leaves and space suits the echoes made Charlie think they were in open space.

A hazy mist wound between the vines and branches, veils of silk that moved in response to air currents. “A zero-G rain forest,” Jeremy said.

“Cloud forest,” Charlie corrected automatically. “Well, I suppose it could ‘rain,' through some mechanism we're not seeing. Sprayers or something. But it looks like we're seeing plants watered by condensation, and frankly, if I didn't know that I don't know any of these species, I would think I was in Costa Rica. Look at all the pollinators and the insect eaters. They look just like hummingbirds and swifts. Convergent evolution. These critters brought their whole ecosystem with them.”

Jeremy glanced over at him, flash of teeth as he grinned behind his helmet. “I can hear the throb in your voice, Charlie.”

“It's not all that different from what we did with the Montreal and her hydroponics farms. These critters might be like us, Jeremy—”

Jeremy cleared his throat and looked around, shaking more droplets of water off his gauntlets. “They might be,” he said. “But where are they? All this landscape, and no aliens. And no indication of which way we're supposed to go, or who we need to talk to. I could do with a sign that says ‘follow the gray line to customs,' you know?”

“Maybe we're intended to find our own way in?”

And one of the leafy, glossy vines uncoiled itself from the structure of the nearest branch, or stanchion, or support pillar, and laid itself across Charlie's shoulders like a heavy, companionable arm.

0900 hours

Monday October 15, 2063

Canadian Embassy

New York City, New York USA

On Sunday, the Yankees tie it up three to three, so on Monday I'm stuck with the unpalatable choice between watching the final game of the series, or showing up at the UN to watch General Janet Frye take us all apart in person. I mean, all right, I'm still more of a hockey girl. But I did live in Hartford for over a decade, and it's not like we don't have baseball in Canada.

On the other hand, I have a coiling feeling in my gut that tells me I should be at the UN when the shit hits the fan. Besides, Riel and Valens are going, and it's not like those two can be trusted out on their own.

So we wind up making a bit of a funeral festival of it.

Captain Wu finished his testimony on Saturday, after Patty's second half-day. He remains at the embassy, but Min-xue, whose evidence promises to take nearly as long as mine did, is scheduled for after Frye. Both men join Riel, Valens, Patty, and myself in the lobby, all of us nearly unspeaking as we wait for General Frye. Min-xue's hands are clothed in white leather gloves like the ones Patty and I wear. The gloves are a little too small, kidskin strained over his knuckles, even though he has fine hands. The gloves are probably Patty's spare pair, and the look she gives him when she notices confirms it.

Min-xue's eyes are unreadable behind dark glasses, but he's wearing a Chinese military uniform. Captain Wu straightens his collar flash for him before we leave, which makes me wonder what's what. It's odd, being outside all these alliances. I'm too old for Patty and Min-xue, not patriotic enough for Valens and Riel. I'm not part of any system at all, I guess. Not anymore.

Fred clears his throat after five minutes, and we all look at him. He glances from Patty to me and back, and folds his hands behind his back. “While we're waiting for Janet, I don't suppose you've heard from Richard about Drs. Forster and Kirkpatrick.”

“Of course we have, Papa Fred. Don't be silly.”

He grins at her. They connect; I can almost hear the click when their eyes make contact, and the cloaks of exhaustion and grief all of us wear fall off them for an instant. Christ, I can't believe how much I miss Leah, just then. And not just Leah. Razorface, too, and Mitch, and Bobbi Yee…

Dammit.

I am not losing any more family to this toothy monster that is history. Enough is enough.

I'm thinking so hard about my gritted teeth that I almost miss Patty's precis of the action on the shiptree. It's a pretty simple one, still: Jeremy and Charlie have brought in a tent and oxygen and food and set up a base camp in the jungle they've discovered, from which they have been launching exploratory jaunts. Their samples have been returned to the Montreal for analysis, and other than a particularly vicious pollen-analogue that looks guaranteed to produce hay fever bad enough that you'd wish it was terminal, nothing that even remotely qualifies as a pathogen has been discovered. Yet.

Everything in the shiptree is crawling with nanosurgeons, though. According to Charlie, he can feel the entire ecosystem working around him, as if it were all one tremendous organism. He compares it to something he calls the Gaia hypothesis, but I haven't had time to look that up yet, and apparently neither has Patty. Of course, I could just ask Richard—

“You could, at that.”

Good morning, Dick. I straighten my cuff and pick a bit of lint off it. What's the good word?

A broad smile crinkles his cheeks. “I've been invited to testify before the General Assembly of the United Nations, regarding my knowledge of events leading up to and including December 23, 2062.”

My crow of victory turns the heads of everybody in the room, including General Frye, who has just appeared at the top of the stairs. Patty's recitation breaks off midsentence; she turns to me with a grin for just a second before she glances down at her hands, twisting gloved fingers together.

“What's the occasion?” Frye calls, coming down the stairs like a queen walking to the guillotine. The shadows under her eyes make me wonder for a minute if she's broken her nose, and the eyes themselves are so bloodshot the whites look pink. Gray skin and a gray expression. She looks like she wants to throw up, and only pride and grim determination are keeping her jaw locked.

It's profoundly unsettling to see an expression like that one someone else's face, especially when you've felt it from the inside once or twice.

“Richard can testify,” Patty answers, before I marshal my thoughts. I think I'm the only one who notices the way Frye's hand tightens on the banister, or how she turns her attention very definitely to her feet. Well, Riel probably does, too. It's her job to catch stuff like that, and the shift of Frye's weight is definite enough to make me think of somebody bracing for a fight. Maybe even spoiling for one.