Hammered (35 page)

I drift off to sleep wondering how the Census would abbreviate that.

September thirtieth is my fiftieth birthday.

Gabe brings me a card. Barb sends more flowers, again with no signature on the card.

And I breathe unassisted for almost twenty minutes.

Leah leaned back in the recliner, the nap of the dark fabric catching her fingertips as she rubbed them across the armrests. She grinned, sneaking a glance around the room. She was the youngest student present, and the only girl. She liked the flavor of that realization. It tasted like victory.

As Leah made herself comfortable a smiling technician
came up to her, ponytail a berry-red stain on the shoulder of her labcoat. “All set? Do you need orange juice or anything before we put you under?”

“No, thank you. Will you help me with the cradle, please?”

The woman nodded, leaning close enough that Leah saw the coarse weave of her white coat and smelled vanilla and musk in her perfume. She laid slender fingers against Leah’s braided blonde hair and tilted her head forward, settling the cradle against the nape of her neck. It was chromed along the inside curve, shining and cold, and the technician adjusted it a little bit tight. “Does that pinch?”

“No.” Leah reached up and moved her braid. “Should it be that squeezy?”

“It’s safer to have it as tight as possible. I don’t want you rocking your head while you’re in VR, if the muscle relaxants and so forth aren’t 100 percent effective. You could damage your neural implants, or worse yet, your nervous system.”

“Like Aunt Jenny,” Leah said absently, closing her eyes. She’d been to the hospital that afternoon. Her dad had brought her and Genie up to see Aunt Jenny, and the three of them had given her a stuffed wolf the size of a cocker spaniel. Jenny’s eyes had sparkled with strange mirth when Leah’s dad tucked it in next to her, and she’d turned her head slightly to press her cheek against the soft, synthetic fur.

“Something to look forward to, Maker,” he had said, smoothing her hair off her forehead in a way that made Leah’s stomach feel funny. “I’m flattered you hung on to that nickname, by the way. I remember how much you hated it when I gave it to you.”

It must be one of those things I’ll get when I’m older
, Leah thought, because she knew Jenny’s mother had been Wolf Clan but that didn’t explain why she got the feeling that Jenny would have been choking sick with laughter if she were able. It hadn’t lasted, because then Dad had to tell her
how the Hartford police had found Barb’s body, and that the flowers had actually come from Valens.

“Aunt Jenny?” the tech asked.

Leah opened her eyes and looked up. “Sorry, I was thinking. Jenny Casey. She works here.”

“Well,” the tech said. “I never would have guessed. You don’t look a thing like her. But if you are related, I see why you qualified for this program. She’s something else again.”

“Yeah, she is.” Leah smiled privately. “She’s not my real aunt. She’s my dad’s best friend.”

“Cool.” The tech grinned and flicked her ponytail back over her shoulder. “Funny all of you ended up in the same place, though. That must be interesting.”

Funny
, Leah thought.
It is funny, isn’t it?

And then the tech pressed the IV needle into her arm, and Leah felt her body start to go numb.
This is what Aunt Jenny’s going through
, she thought,
except in reverse. Soon she’ll be able to feel her fingers and her toes again.

And what will happen then?

Leah didn’t know. But she had a funny feeling it would be
Something.

Elspeth looked up from the wrought-iron table under the red-streaked maple tree and sighed under her breath. Colonel Valens set his paper cup down before her and smiled. “Do you mind if I sit?”

Not if you’re sitting on a garden rake.
“Please,” she said. “Did you follow me down?”

“Am I so transparent?”

I could wish you a little more transparent, frankly.
She forced her lips into a curve. She never used to have much skill at lying, but a decade in prison changes a person. She thought about Richard, and she smiled—a smile that came easier.
Is it weird that you trust a computer program more than a person?

No. Not when it’s this computer program. Not when it’s this person.
“Colonel Valens, transparent may be the one thing I would never call you. You want to know how our attempts to contain the Feynman AI are proceeding?”

“I wanted to let you know that we’re going to power down and purge the intranet tonight. We think the rogue AI somehow seeded a subprocess into our network. There’s been unexplained usage.”

“Ah.” Elspeth swallowed, and met his gaze directly, and understood.
He knows I know Richard was in there. You don’t suppose I’m lucky enough that he still thinks Richard is?
“We’ll lose data.”

“We’ll do a blanket save-and-capture first. We have the original AI captive in a clean system—this way, if there’s a problem”—
if you destroy him
—“there are other options. You’re making progress with the programming?”

“Gabe is. He’s very good.”
Calm, level, open. Dad’s dead now; Fred has to trust
me.

“I wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t.” The iron chair scraped across paving blocks as he pulled it out and finally settled in. “You know I can’t afford to trust you, Elspeth.”

“I know,” she answered. She turned her cappuccino bowl on the saucer, frowning at her own bitten fingernails. “You know I’m never going to like you.”

“I rather thought that was a given. You’re not going to screw up this program on me, Elspeth, are you? I know
you’ve been talking to Holmes, and you have some idea of what’s at stake.”

She chuckled and looked up, meeting his eyes. The stoneware was warm and smooth. It felt
white
, as an eggshell feels white. “Much as I’d like to spit on your shoes, Fred, and as stupid and pointless as I thought the fighting Canada was involved in when we first met was—no, I’m not going to destroy your program. I think it’s morally bankrupt. I think
you’re
morally bankrupt. But I’m also a Canadian first and foremost, and a humanitarian, and I see the need for us to get into space. However, I think intentionally crippling an intelligent life-form is a piss-poor way to do it.”

He snorted, an ironic smile reflected in his eyes. “Damn, woman, I admire you.”

It was intended to disarm her, and she made it look like it had worked, sitting back in her chair and straightening her shoulders. “You’ll get your slave. You’ll get Casey, too, I think. And if it ever comes down to the court-martial you so richly deserve, I really hope I’m called upon to testify.”

Barbara’s dead. Dead, in Hartford. Nauseated by the knowledge, I know what she went back there for, the same way I knew it was her bullet that ended Mashaya Duclose’s
life. You experience somebody enough, for long enough, and you just—know.

Barb always was a hell of a good shot. We all were. Grand-père taught us to shoot a .22 from when we were old enough to hold it up to our shoulders. Both she and I made a career out of that, in different ways. So I know.

I know because if Barbara Casey goes someplace for no good reason, and somebody turns up dead there, you know what her reason was. Because my sister made her living much the same way Bobbi Yee does, and Barb enjoyed it a hell of a lot more. And took the kind of high-paying jobs I’ve never known Bobbi to take. The ones I wouldn’t have taken myself, if they were offered to me.

God, I hope Mitch and Razorface are alive.

Barbara’s dead. It’s a funny feeling. An empty feeling. As if some part of me has been scraped out with a rubber spatula, the way you scrape the bowl out when you make cupcakes. An empty feeling, like all the closets and cupboards in my head are standing open. Like somebody’s moved out and taken all his stuff, and I haven’t got enough of my own left to fill in the vacant corners of my mind.

Barbara’s dead. Chrétien is dead. Is that one of the signs of getting old? Running out of enemies?

There’s still Valens. Valens, and Dr. Alberta Holmes. But I can’t muster the kind of fury for Valens that I used to carry without thinking, and I don’t have enough dirt to be sure of nailing his ass as thoroughly as I want.

I feel so drained. Helpless. Fragile. Richard is smart enough to let me forget he exists, and I close my eyes and stretch my head back on the pillow, trying to confront the slick emptiness that seems to line my skull.

Which is when the door opens, and Elspeth Dunsany comes in.

She sits down at my bedside and leans forward, hand
like a brand on my arm. I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but from the intensity of her expression, it isn’t going to be good. I don’t particularly want company right now.

Chrétien is dead. Barb is dead. Who the hell does that make me? If I don’t exist in opposition to them, to Valens … what, then, am I?

“Genevieve,” Elspeth says, and I think of Maman. Three syllables, big trouble. Her eyes look into mine, very bright. “You’re getting better. Gabe says you’ll be on your feet again soon.”

“So far so good.” I try to sound cheerful, inasmuch as I can when my voice is a slurred mumble. “Elspeth …”

“Shut up before you say something you’re going to regret, Jenny. I don’t want to hear about points of honor, and I don’t want you going off all noble and half-cocked.”

Everything this woman says surprises me. “What do you mean, Doc?”

She grins. It crinkles the corners of her eyes up mar-velously, like a mad little elf. I see what Gabe sees in her, the fracturing brilliance of intellect concealed beneath that quiet exterior. There’s someone in there, someone deep as Lake Ontario and sharp as a switchblade, unconventional and oddly ruthless. And I never would have suspected, to see her on the street. “Any idiot can see you’re in love with him. And he’s in love with you.”

“He likes you a hell of a lot, too, Doc.” I struggle to sit up. She lays a hand on my chest and holds me to the pillow, easier than pinning a kitten.

“I know,” she grins. “And I like—love—him. But look: I’m a grown woman. I don’t want a husband, I sure as hell don’t want kids, and I’m not looking to rearrange a life I only just got back. Not around a man. I’m just damned sick of waking up alone
every
day.”

“I see.” But I don’t. I am not in control of this conversation. “And?”

She shrugs. “You’re good with the girls. You’re good for Gabe. I have a compromise in mind.”

“What’s that?”

The thing about really smart people is that they often see solutions you never would have anticipated. “Easy. You stay the hell out of my way, I stay the hell out of yours. Once in a while we get together for drinks and talk about him behind his back, so he doesn’t think he’s getting away with anything.”

Her lips are compressed with humor, eyes alight with audacity. I shake my head. “Elspeth, I’m not in a place to get involved with anybody. He’s all yours. I mean it.”

She shrugs. “That’s up to you, even if you don’t know what you’re missing. But don’t go blaming me for your crappy decisions, all right?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Her voice drops as if aggrieved, but I can see the conspiratorial glitter in her eyes. She knows we’re being recorded, and she knows I know. Now I just have to guess what she thinks I’m smart enough to read between the lines to pick up. This woman makes me dizzy.

“You know why we had to capture Richard, don’t you?” she asks.

I dry-swallow. It hurts. Feynman chuckles in the back of my mind. “I imagine Valens brought the kind of threats to bear he usually does,” I say.

She shakes her head. “It’s bigger than that, Jenny. I sacrificed myself for Richard once. Valens knows that. He’s a thing unique in all the world, after all.”

Meaning that he isn’t. Meaning that she wants to know if he’s safe and sound in me.
What is the world going to do with three Richard Feynmans? Half a dozen? Twelve?
“There’s nothing else like him,” I slur, and a wicked smile dimples her cheeks as she reaches out and adjusts the stuffed wolf Gabe left tucked into my bed. A wolf that’s wearing his dogtags looped into an informal collar.

Madwoman.

Maybe smart people always look that way from the outside.

“You know why we had to take him? We’re crippling him, Jenny—Gabe and I. Enslaving him, bit by bit, because we have to. It’s immoral as hell. But it’s less immoral than the alternative.”

In the back of my mind, I feel Richard nodding.
What does she mean, Richard?

His voice is starting to sound like the voice of my conscience. I realize that I will miss him when he’s gone. “Among other things, the worm I planted in the Unitek intranet backdoors Elspeth into the system at administrative levels. I think she’s trying to tell us she knows something she’s not supposed to.”

What’s your guess?

“Valens or Holmes plans to plant a Trojan in the final programming for your implants, I think.” He frowns, and long fingers twist around one another.

I take a breath. It comes out a frustrated hiss.
Beauty. Can you cope with this Trojan, when it comes?

“I can only try,” he says, and waves me back to my other conversation.

Which is not the answer I wanted, but it will have to do for now. I turn my attention back to Elspeth. “Tell me about the alternative.”

She rubs a hand across her forehead. “The same reason you need to get better and get out of here. We absolutely cannot permit the Chinese to expand their control of space. We do what we have to, to prevent that.”