Worldwired (48 page)
“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.”
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.
“Bloody hell,” Leslie said out loud. “Charlie, I hate it when you're right.”
“Leslie?”
He didn't jump as Jeremy laid a hand on his shoulder, leaning down a little. He'd felt the linguist coming up behind him. “Yes, Jer?”
“Come on,” he said, letting his hand fall away. “These guys are going to be here all night. Let's get something to eat, and flicker our flashlights at the shiptree for a couple of hours. Maybe we can teach it some nursery rhymes.”
Leslie grinned and got up. Beginner stories.
Sure.
Three years later
1746 hours
Wednesday 15 December 2066
HMCSS
Montreal
LaGrange Point, near Valentine
Elspeth has stationed herself by the far wall of the room, where she can see everybody. She keeps looking back and forth between Wainwright, Charlie, Gabe, Patty, Genie, and me. It's a measuring look, as if she's trying to figure out which sand castle is likely to crumble first, so she can shove some more mud up against it. Her irises gleam like polished agate, excitement thrumming through her, giving a lie to the new gray in her hair, coarse wiry strands that go this-way and that-way, oblivious to the direction of her long coiling ringlets. You'd think it would be Gabe who would hold this mad little family together.
You'd be wrong.
She's looking at him when I wander over to her and slouch against the wall, my upper arm against her shoulder. She sighs and leans into the touch, warmth pressing my jumpsuit into my skin. She pushes a little harder, leaning in to me. Neither one of us looks down from the planet on the monitor. “Ugly fucker,” I say, while the whole bridge holds its breath in quiet awe.
The dusty brown planet spins like a flicked bottle top, the ringed, sky-killing bulk of its gray-green motherworld hanging in crescent behind it. The light of the star that warms them isn't quite right either, and from what I understand the bigger planet's orbit is so erratic that the little Earth-like world we plan in our infinite arrogance to colonize will have summers like Phoenix,
And based on the first long-range surveys, there's some kind of life down there smart enough to build cities. Still, we learned to talk to the birdcages and the shiptree, and we'll learn to talk to these guys, too. And
“Bet it will look okay to the crews of those generation ships, when the
Huang Di
starts retrieving them.”
“When does Min-xue . . . pardon me, Captain Xie . . . leave?”
It's become seamless. I don't have to ask Richard; the information is just there, waiting for me, as if I always knew it. “Oh five hundred.”
Thank you, Dick.
He feels different now, bigger: talking to him is like talking to a reflection in a still pool. It's right there, close enough to touch, but you can feel how deep the water is underneath it.
And how long before we start taking him for granted, too?
“Genie already has.” A rueful acknowledgment, and he dissolves in a shiver of pixels. He'll be back if I need him. Or hell, even if I don't.
I snicker. Elspeth tilts her head against my arm.
Somewhere down there, there's a mountain or a sea that's going to be named after Leah Castaign. Once we pick it out. Koske gets one, too, and the crews of the
Li Bo
and the
Lao Tzu.
And after them, the crews of Soyuzes and Apollos that Richard could tell me numbers for, if I bothered to ask him, and some American space shuttles destroyed around the turn of the century, and a Brazilian tug crew killed capturing the rock that anchors the far end of the Clarke beanstalk, and the crew of the first Chinese Mars lander, and then there's twenty years of in-system accidents to get through . . .