Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

Frye lifts her eyes. She's looking directly at Connie when she does it, but her gaze slides off as she reaches the landing, and settles on Patty. “Did you finish your book?”

I think Patty's going to glance at Fred for strength, but she doesn't. Instead, she looks at me, and when I meet the glance directly, she looks immediately back at Frye. “The one about the dog? I did. It didn't take very long.”

“I saw it was back on the shelf. I thumbed through it.”

“You did? What did you think?” Again Patty sneaks me a look. There's some subtext here, something I'm meant to understand. I remember her testimony, the calm, serious voice in which she'd talked about Leah, Leah's death, our own refusal — hers and mine — to retaliate after the Chinese destroyed Toronto. I remember the way she'd refused to look at me or at Fred while she was doing it. And I remember how pissed off Riel was that she told the assembly that Riel had called for retaliation, and the way she'd shrugged afterward and said, “But I was under oath.”

Somehow, the questioning of me never got around to that. I've got a feeling I might be called back to clarify. I think I would have preferred a formal trial, after all. With rules of evidence, and a few against self-incrimination.

Ah, well. You know, some days, going to jail doesn't sound all that bad.

Patty's comment gets that kind of a raised eyebrow and a slight little smile from General Janet Frye. “I still think it's too sentimental,” Frye says, as the doorman brings her overcoat. “I would have preferred a more realistic relationship between the man and the dog. What do you think?”

“I think that I liked what it had to say about loyalty,” Patty says — very unlike Patty, because she doesn't look down when she says it. General Frye, in fact, lowers her eyes first, ostensibly to button her cuffs. But I can see from the way Patty leans forward like a hound on a scent that there's more here, and I'm not getting it. “Even if it was sappy.”

“What book are you talking about?” Fred asks, looking all polite interest, but I notice the way his eyes catch at mine over the top of Patty's head. He doesn't know what's up here either.

“ Lad: A Dog ,” Patty says, taking Min-xue's elbow in her white-gloved hand and turning him toward the door, while he looks at her in shock. “Come on, General Frye. You're running late, and I think the limo is waiting.”

Fred grabs my elbow as I'm about to walk past him, and makes a little show of escorting me toward the door. He leans in close, his breath tickling my ear. “Casey—”

“The answer is no.”

A snort of laughter moves my hair, but his hand tightens over my metal fingers where they tuck into the crook of his arm. “Find out what the hell they were just talking about under our noses, like kids with a secret code.”

“Go piss up a rope, Fred.”

He pats my hand. “I knew you'd see it my way.”

Riel must have caught those last two sentences, or maybe she's just as shocked as Frye is by the sight of a brigadier general squiring a noncom around like his date for the ball.

Dick?

“Patty says she's playing a hunch that the general's unease has to do with her testimony, and whatever parts might not be a little… exaggerated. Apparently they had a long conversation the other night, and Patty twigged that something was up.”

Frye was pumping her?

“Yes, and no. She says that Frye seemed troubled and introspective, and flinchy on the subject of the testimony. And very interested in Leah and how Patty felt about Leah, in a… thoughtful kind of way.”

What does Alan say?

“Alan says to shut up and give her the rope she needs.” Richard sighs, spreading his hands helplessly wide. “He's very protective of Patty.”

He didn't phrase it quite that way, I bet.

“I don't gamble when I'm only going to lose,” Richard answers. “Look up, Jen. There's the car—” as Fred tugs my arm lightly, to get my attention.

“Well?” he asks, as he hands me in.

“I'll tell you in private,” I say, and duck my head to climb into the limo. Frye's not the only one giving me a funny look when I lean my head back against the cushions, close my eyes, and echo Richard's sigh.

Frye's still staring at Patty when the six of us and a handful of unhappy Mounties pile out of the motorcade on the Lower East Side. Staring at Patty, and chewing on her lip, with a completely transparent that-kid-knows-more-than-I-think-she-should-know look plastered all over her face. I've got to admit, Patty's performance would have me apoplectic, too. It's perfect — just a little underplayed, smug, seemingly more interested in the coffee and the scenery and the scraps of torn blue behind a skyful of clouds twisting like gray rags in the wind than in the sidelong glances Frye is shooting her.

It amuses me for the whole of the chilly walk into the UN complex, especially since I quietly let Fred take point and I take tail-end Charlie, the two of us shepherding the rest of them along the ice-scattered sidewalk inside our ring of plainclothes protectors. I never would have thought I'd watch a middle-aged military professional played like a fly-fished trout by a seventeen-year-old girl.

“A seventeen-year-old girl and a nine-month-old artificial intelligence,” Richard reminds. I snort into my coffee.

Frye doesn't have any kids, does she?

“Nary a one. And she's an only child.”

Lucky dogs, the both of you. That wouldn't work for half a second if she did. You don't actually think she's going to break and tell you anything?

“I'm just hoping Alan and Patricia can make her sweat hard enough on the stand that she looks like she's lying.”

The chances are slim.

“The choices look grim,” he answers, with a funny hiccuping rhythm, like he's quoting a song. If he were real and standing in front of me, I'd fix him with my bug-eyed look. “Never mind. Someday my cultural referents will catch up to yours.”

And by then I'll be in my grave, and you'll be confounding Genie's children.

“I'll need new personalities to confound Genie's children. The Feynman persona would leave them a bit too baffled.”

It's a little creepy, hearing the AI talk about what I think of as himself as if it were an accessory, a shirt that could go out of fashion. Just another brutal reminder of how inhuman he really is. I'd miss you, Dick.

“Dick's not going anywhere.”

Except to the stars, I answer, and we share a pleased interior laugh at that.

There's something of a kerfuffle when we get to the UN; more security personnel than I expected, and a few discreet questions between Riel and our charming guide, the same Mr. Jung (in green and red hanbok, this time), turn up the not-too-surprising information that the Chinese delegation has arrived, and the premier is with them today.

The PanChinese group catches sight of us in the General Assembly lobby, in the shadow of the enormous pendulum. Three of them break away as soon as we enter, attention obviously caught by the three rifle-green uniforms, the darker, richer green of Min-xue's kit, and Patty and Riel in civvies, flanked by the stiff spines of a couple of Mounties in plainclothes. Two Mounties. Not nearly enough to keep this crew out of trouble, but all they let us bring inside.

The good news is, the PanChinese also get only two.

From the way the dark-suited individuals who look to be the security team are hustling to keep up, the slender-shouldered man in the lead has to be Premier Xiong. I'm more sure of it because he looks familiar, if bigger than he does on the feed, and I've gone from somebody who wouldn't recognize Minister Shijie if he fell at my feet to being able to pick his sad-bulldog face out of a crowd at two hundred paces. A thousand, if you gave me a sniper scope.