Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

The image is too much. I'm laughing hard enough that I have to set my coffee cup down. I expect any minute now a concerned Mountie is going to bust down the door. “Mary Mother of God, woman. The expansionist Chinese government has wiped itself out, the EU, the commonwealth, and PanMalaysia are going to sign your cogovernance agreement so they have a crack at the Montreal and her sisters, and the Latin American states aren't far behind. You've got your treaty organization. And we walked out of the whole damn thing with our hands clean—”

She looks down at hers, holds one out palm-up. “Our hands aren't even remotely clean. Just because the blood doesn't show doesn't mean it's gone.”

Yeah. Well, you know what I mean. “They look clean. And that's all the world cares about. And we need you. Because if it's not you, it's people like Shijie. And Hardy. And Fred.”

I turn my back on her, which is more effort than I like. Dammit. Much as I'd like to feed her her own superior smile sometimes, I still want the woman to like me. And I want her to like herself enough to keep doing what we need her for. Because, God knows, I haven't got it in me to try.

I make it three steps toward the door before she raps out my name. “Casey!”

“What?”

“I'm going to have a plaque made for the front door of this place, you know that? ‘The men who love war are mostly the ones who have never been in it.'”

“Send a wreath to Minister Shijie's funeral, won't you? From the both of us?”

She catches my gaze when I would have turned away. “I'm sending Fred. And you. Lay the damned wreath yourself.”

It stops me short. I haven't been to see Fred in the hospital. I had no intention of going. “Valens is on his feet? Did he take the nanosurgeons?”

“He's on his feet,” she says, with a smile that narrows her eyes. “But he refused the Benefactor tech. Categorically.”

“Huh.”

She doesn't say anything, just gives me a second to chew on my lip and think. I snort. “He always was kind of a pussy. Always willing to stand back and let somebody else step up.”

“Not like you.”

“No.” It hurts to say it. It hurts to think it. “I'd rather it was me, all things considered.”

“Jenny,” she says, and she puts her coffee cup down, and she comes across the rug, and she tilts her head back to look at me. “You ever think about a career in politics?”

It isn't so much that my mouth goes dry as that it is dry, suddenly and completely, like there was never any moisture in the world.

“You get to stay here, Gabe and Elspeth stay with the contact program, Genie gets to finish out school and go to college.” She sparkles at me a little, certain of her own powers.

Bernard Xu once told me to save the world. Good Christ.

I'm a madwoman. I stop, and swallow, and I think about it for ten long, hard, aching seconds, while Riel stares at me, and I swear I can hear the world creak slightly as it spins a little slower than it usually does.

Peacock told me to save the world for him. But you know something? I did that. And I really want to see what's on the other side of all those rocks up there, and all that empty space.

“I'd be wasted anywhere but the Montreal, Madam Prime Minister,” I say, and stick out my right hand.

It's another good ten seconds before she manages to put out her own, and take it.

Nine months later

8:30 AM

28 July 2064

Clarke Orbital Platform

Leslie leaned both hands against the chill crystal of Clarke's observation deck as the Montreal 's fretted golden sails bore her away, the Huang Di trailing her on a parallel line of ascent, chemical engines smearing the sky behind with light. He didn't bother to magnify the image as the two ships shrank to pinpoints, rising out of the plane of the elliptic. Leslie didn't need to see them go. He could feel their weight like an indenting finger dragged across the infinitely elastic substance of space.

Looking good, Charlie.

I'm going to miss you, Les. What if we find even weirder aliens where we're going?

Don't be daft. And I've got enough aliens to talk to right here. And it's not like we'll be out of touch.

They were both very quiet for a little while. Leslie dusted his palms on each other and turned away from the glass, past the reporters and the dignitaries and the trays of canapés. Past Prime Minister Riel and Premier Hsiung and General Valens, who were clustered with other VIPs near the screen.

Leslie kept walking. Funny sort of leave-taking, this.

Is it really? Leave-taking, I mean?

Now that you mention it— There was coffee to be had, self-heating vacuum mugs being handed out by caterers. Leslie availed himself of one and staked out an inexplicably empty chair. Well, whatever you run into out there, I hope it's as easy to get along with as the Benefactors.

Charlie laughed inside his head. Through Charlie's eyes, Leslie could see the Montreal 's familiar hydroponics lab, the receding image of Earth on a wall screen, the changing angle of the sunlight through the big windows. Why should what they want be so different from what we want?

They're aliens?

Yes, but look at it this way. We're not species in competition; there's nothing a birdcage needs that competes with or conflicts with anything we need . We don't use the same resources. And there's a lot of room up here.

That doesn't explain why they came running to see what was up when we started playing with the tech they left on Mars. Or why they left it there in the first place.

Charlie rubbed the bridge of his nose. Leslie caught himself mirroring the gesture and smiled.

Charlie shrugged. Why does a kid poke anthills with a stick?

To see what the ants are going to do. To see what the inside of the nest looks like. Leslie paused. Oh, bugger it, Charlie. You want to know what I think? I think Elspeth's right. I think they wanted us to teach them how to talk to each other. I think they needed somebody to translate. And they got it. And I feel like an idiot just saying it, because that implies they've been wandering around out there for umpteen million years, unable to talk to each other except by grunts and pointing, and a bunch of chimpanzees stagger in and accomplish it in nine months. And that's just ridiculous.

Why is it ridiculous? Leslie could feel Charlie's encouragement, his agreement. We've been walking around in gravity for the last umpteen million years, and they showed us how to manipulate it in brand-new ways in a couple of months. They never had to learn to talk.

Leslie didn't have an argument for that. Or not a good one, anyway. They're critters that manipulate gravity, and we're critters that manipulate symbols.

That's what I said.

It doesn't make you nervous?

It doesn't make you nervous, and you're the Jonah who spent his time in the belly of the whale.

Because I feel like it ought to scare somebody.

The Montreal kept climbing. Charlie stood and glanced out the port; Leslie shared the view. They could just catch the red flare of the Huang Di 's engines reflected against the Montreal 's vanes, although they couldn't see the Chinese ship herself. You're the one who keeps talking about beginner stories, Les. You just don't like being on the beginner side of the damned things any more than anyone else does.