Elizabeth Bear: Worldwired

“No.” No, but he's not quite what he used to be either. “You've figured out what happened, then?”

“We have a theory, Dick and me. Care to guess what it is?”

Not really, but it beats poker. “I can guess what the official story will be. General Shijie took advantage of the proceedings to try to execute a coup against Premier Xiong, take control of the worldwire — which the Chinese hate passionately — and put an end to the Canadian colonization effort. Close?”

“Close,” Riel says without looking at me. “The unofficial story is that Janet Frye was involved as well, and there was a back-door deal to unify the Chinese and Canadian colonization efforts. After Xiong and myself were gotten out of the way — the plan was to maneuver us into political and legal disgrace, but apparently Janet wasn't as duped or as greedy as they thought, so they defaulted to plan B and hoped they could blame it all on Premier Xiong and me once we were too dead to protest. That's our theory, anyway, and we're sticking to it.”

It makes sense. As much as these things ever do. “Was the general behind the Impact?”

“We'll never know for sure, but that's the polite fiction. There was an assassination attempt on Xiong two days ago.”

“Shijie's people?”

“Why them?”

“Revenge for the minister of war's ‘accidental' death.”

She snickers through closed lips and pushes a lock of hair out of eyes that still want to know What did you have to do with this, Casey ? “Shijie Shu is not the first inconvenient member of the Chinese government to die in a convenient plane crash.”

I wait. She fusses with the knickknacks on her desk. Finally, she straightens again, comes around the desk, and pours me a drink without offering first. “Don't stand there like I'm going to dress you down, Casey. It's disconcerting.”

“It's meant to be.”

She's still pouring her own Scotch, so she doesn't snort it, but she does laugh like a fox for a good thirty seconds. When she stops, she toasts me crookedly and lowers the glass to her lips, her eyes dark and serious. “You really don't know.”

“I'm on tenterhooks, Madam Prime Minister.”

“Captain Wu and Pilot Xie were introduced to the premier upon his return to PanChina, a special invitation to dine with him, to celebrate their homecoming. It appears that the captain managed to conceal a weapon on his person, a hollow needle containing a perforated platinum pellet loaded with less than a thousand micrograms of a poison, possibly ricin. The premier only survived because of emergency intervention, and the application of Benefactor nanotech he'd received after his scalp wound at the UN.” Her tone is cold, level. It's a report she's memorized. “After due consideration, Captain Wu apparently did not feel that General Shijie was the only one to blame for the Impact.”

“Calisse de chrisse—”

“As you say, Casey. Drink your Scotch before it gets cold.”

It's not cold at all. It burns. I limit myself to one slow, shallow sip before I answer. “What does this mean for Min-xue?”

She's already finished her drink. “He'll command the Huang Di when she goes out.”

“Did Wu have proof, Connie?”

She shrugged, one shoulder only. “He would have shared it if he did, I'm sure. Now ask what we're going to do about Xiong.”

The gleam in her eyes tells it all. “We'll make a deal with him. We're going to split that planet with him, aren't we?”

“Well,” she says, folding her hands around each other, “he does already have ships under way. And he's proven tractable… of late.”

“Where's Wu now?”

“‘Awaiting trial.'” Her fingers describe quotes in the air.

“Christ.” All right. The man's a mass-murderer. But I kind of liked him, in a quiet sort of way. Dick, you listening? Is there anything we can do for Captain Wu?

I feel him hesitate, feel him think. And then feel him decide to answer with the kind of sick joke anybody else would find reprehensible, but which serves as a sort of comfort to me. “I'm sorry, Jen. I can't let you do that.”

Don't be an asshole, Dick. Bitch-ass computer. “Christ.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I keep meaning it, too.” I want coffee more than I want whiskey. Fortunately, there's a carafe of that, too. “You know Xiong set you up, Constance. He meant to use you to get rid of Shijie, and Shijie to get rid of you. And the order to attack Toronto didn't originate with anybody's minister of war.”

“You have a nasty, suspicious mind, Casey.”

“Anything for détente, Constance?”

“Anything for peace,” she says, and looks me dead in the eye. Her eyes look weird for a minute, and then I realize they're light brown, sherry-colored. She's not wearing those artificial green contacts. It makes her look softer.

I almost believe she means it.

The coffee's good, dark, redolent. The surface is clotted with broken rainbows. I raise it to my mouth, pause, breathing in the steam. Just the smell of it is energy. “Pity justice wasn't served, though — although there's an irony I don't like in it coming from Captain Wu's hand.”

“ Justice might have complicated negotiations. No cream?” Dryly. She arranges a cup to her own liking. If I were polite, I suppose I would have asked.

“What's this going to mean for your plans for world domination?”

“World cooperation. That other was the PanChinese.”

“Hegemony is as hegemony does—”

“Ooo,” she says, and drinks half a cup of scalding fluid in one swallow. “She knows big words for a dropout.”

“Bitch.” I can't get any heat into it, though. “Some of us read more than mash letters from our contributors.”

“Touché.” She grins like she means it, swills the rest of the coffee, and pours herself more. I'd hate to be the guy whose job it is to keep that carafe full. “It's not going to happen. It's too big a goal, and there's too damned much us and them. At least the Russians are cheerful — although they'd rather we gave the Huang Di to them, I think.”

“I can't blame them. The Russians are cheerful about the PanChinese?”

“Officially, they're cheerful about the PanChinese withdrawal from the same stretch of Siberia they've been fighting the Russians over since the dawn of recorded history, and the UN's decision to send observers in, and the fact that we're soaking PanChina for enough reparations that they'll barely be able to afford an army for the next twenty years. Although why anybody would want a few thousand miles of permafrost is too complex a question for me.” She stops, tilts her head to one side, looks me in the eye, and shrugs, her hands knotting on her coffee mug. I've seen that look before, and I know what she's gonna say before she says it. “I think I'm done, Jen.”

“Done?”

It even looks like an honest smile, this time. “Yeah. I think I'm going to call an election and let the voters throw me out. I bet the Conservatives and the Home party can swing a coalition, and I'm ready to pack my socks and undies and go home to Calgary. I'm just too proud to say I quit.”

You know, I don't really want to kick her in the teeth, for once. But on the other hand, she so very obviously needs it. “Oh, for Christ's sake, Connie. Get off the pity wagon already, would you? The seat's full enough with me up here.”

Riel blinks at me. The bruises under her eyes are dark enough for Min-xue to dip his brush in and write poetry. I stop midrant and try again, softer. “You're ready to walk away from your dream on the eve of success, you realize.”

“I considered it more saving enough face so it didn't look like I was slinking home with my tail clamped over my groin.”