Elizabeth Bear: Worldwired

Min-xue pricked a finger on the pins holding one of the decorative ribbons to Xiong's breast. More blood dripped and vanished into the silk, scarcely darkening the color. As a lucky color, red proved an irony under the circumstances. He pushed two fingers into the hollow softness of Xiong's throat.

Min-xue jerked his hand back in shock; Xiong's pulse beat steadily under the angle of his jaw, strong and slow and not thready or fluttering. He shook his fingers, not quite believing what he'd felt, and pressed them back against cool skin.

If anything, the premier's heartbeat was steadier than his own. Carefully, Min-xue tilted the man's head back, straightening his throat, and, gagging on the rankness of blood, began to breathe for both of them.

A welcome presence bloomed in Min-xue's head, and he hissed relief. Richard. How very, very nice to have you back.

His cheer was short-lived. “Min-xue,” Richard said, his moth-wing hands uncharacteristically knotted in front of his belt buckle. “Unfortunately, I must recommend that you surrender immediately. The PanChinese agent has Prime Minister Riel.”

They'd only been linked for a matter of days, and still when Leslie kicked himself out of the air lock, knocked the condensation off his helmet, and saw Charlie floating before him, and could not feel him, the strangest seasick sensation of something broken — something severed —twisted his guts.

“Charlie.” He said it quietly, but the suit radio turned it into an accusation. “What are you doing with your helmet off?”

“Leslie,” Charlie said, raising both eyebrows. “What the hell are you doing wandering around loose like that?”

It helped. Leslie chuckled, and reached up to undo the clasps on his own helmet. Air hissed in as soon as he cracked the seal, pressure equalizing. “I figured out how to ask real nice. I just… I showed them an image of my… shape, my gravitational signature, moving from the birdcage over here. And they showed me to the door and handed me my suitcase. You?”

“Took a calculated risk,” Charlie answered. He hesitated, a bizarre figure in a pair of blue cotton trousers, barefoot, the back of his T-shirt floating out of his elastic waistband. Worry creased his forehead. “You know the worldwire's down.”

“So's my suit radio. And some other stuff. The Benefactor network is still working beautifully, though. Had enough of hanging around with my finger up my arse while you did all the work, so I came here because…” He shrugged. “I wasn't all that sure Wainwright would let me in, frankly.”

“You were worried about me.” Charlie slapped him on the shoulder, rebounding him lightly against the closed air lock. The air smelled impossibly sweet, earthy, rich. He picked up notes of fermentation products, and other things, things he didn't have words for — the weight of the shiptree around him, the belly and roll of the curves of space. He closed his eyes.

“Les, you—”

“All right?” The air stung his senses like liquor. He laughed, giddy and half-hoarse. You can't go home. “I don't know. Tell me about the worldwire. Are we under attack? Is it Richard?”

“No,” Charlie answered, quite crisply. “I spoke with Ellie via coded transmission. Gabe has managed to hack through to Dick. He hasn't gotten contact with the worldwire yet, but he's working on it. Dick thinks it's sabotage.”

“I am getting really sick of hearing that word.”

“How do you sabotage a quantum network?”

Leslie shrugged. “I can guess. Jam its communications. Flood it with nonsense information, so the signal gets lost in noise.”

“Primitive. Brute force.”

“But effective. Where's Jeremy?”

“Base camp. Follow me. We can radio back and let them know you're safe inside.” A long pause followed, which Leslie didn't mind; he was absorbed in the eerie beauty of the weightless garden they moved through, and the strangeness doubled and redoubled of everything glowing, shimmering faintly, leaving currents he could feel through the Benefactor sensorium. Synesthesia. Only not.

“Hey, Charlie?” The suit speakers were much too loud. Birds — bird-analogues — darted away, shrieking. “What made you decide it was safe to take your helmet off?”

Charlie stabilized himself with a grip on a branch and turned back to Leslie, bobbing in midair like a red-cheeked apple. “Because I'm a biologist, Les. And I was sick of the effing helmet, and playing the odds. Scientific wild-ass guess.”

“And you risked your life on that?”

“I've risked my life on crazier things.”

“You've a point, mate,” Les answered.

“What made you decide to take your helmet off, Les?”

“You can't drown a man who was born to hang.” Leslie took another breath. It went to his head. “High-oxygen environment.”

Leslie tossed Charlie his helmet — more a cup-handed shove than an actual throw — in free-fall, and pushed off to follow him. They brachiated in silence, Leslie feeling as if the fresh air had rejuvenated his thinking process. It was Richard. Something to do with Richard, and the worldwire, and—

“Hey, Charlie. You know more about the nanotech than I do.”

“Yeah?”

He caught a branch as Charlie let it snap back, using the recoil to add a little push to his own forward momentum when it oscillated. “Is it weird that we're affected, too, when our nanosurgeons came courtesy of a direct transfer from the Benefactors, rather than through your lab? I mean, if the Chinese and their guy, um…”

“Ramirez.”

“Right. Cracked the operating system—”

Charlie chuffed, using Leslie's helmet like a shield as he bulled through the undergrowth. Leslie envied Charlie the freedom of movement and obvious comfort of his shorts and T-shirt, and blinked another bead of sweat off his lashes. “Well, we know they cracked the OS. But we rewrote it, Gabe and Richard and me, and our network — Dick's network — and the PanChinese one and the Benefactor system don't really talk to each other. Beyond Richard being able to hack them enough to talk to people — oh.”

“Yeah, you see what I mean?”

“I think I do, Les. If the Benefactors can rewrite their system to communicate with ours, which they must have done… how the hell do we let them know it's okay for them to rewrite our system to communicate freely with theirs ?”

“Is it?” The smell of the air was addictive, a faint hint of ozone, the silken texture of the wind before a thunderstorm, and mild, shifting floral and herbaceous perfumes. Leslie's hands still tingled inside his gloves. He'd swear he could feel every individual cell zooming through his arteries, scalp to toes. He couldn't tell if there was something wrong with his body, or if he'd simply been deprived of it so long that he was hyperaware.

“Is it what?”

“Is it okay?”

Charlie stopped so suddenly that Leslie almost drifted into his back. “You know…I think we'd better radio back and have Gabe ask Richard about that.”

“You explain it to Dick,” Leslie said. “I'm going to try to explain it to the birdcage.”

My fists are knotted as hard as my heart. The air I can get, past the pressure in my chest, comes in shallow little sips, painful. Connie's looking at me across all that space, her chin lifted up so I can see her throat bob when she swallows. I wish I knew what the hell she was trying to beam into my brain with that steady, too-calm eye contact.

The only scrap of reassurance I can muster is Richard's presence, his ghost standing just off to the left and out of my line of fire, where I can see him without being distracted. Merci à Dieu, Dick. Tell me there's something you can do about this.