“Yeah.” Seth sounded less convinced, despite his hope-talk. “This is a temporary situation.”
“How is she?” Gretyl said, and was alarmed by how small her voice sounded.
Remote noticed, too. Her voice lost its flippancy: “She’s resting. Withdrawn.” Then: “Would you like to talk to her?”
“Can I?” The thought made her heart thunder.
“One sec.” Gretyl noticed a tic of Remote’s voice. When she finished speaking, the sound cut off too perfectly on the last syllable, cleanly clipping at the end of the sound-wave, without open-mic hiss while the sound duplexing algorithm made extra certain the squishy human was finished, not wool-gathering. When you conversed with someone hosted on a machine, metadata became data. She wondered what a conversation between Remote and Local would sound like, then realized they wouldn’t use sound at all, then realized that she was trying to distract herself from the fact that she was about to speak to –
“Okay, put them on.” The voice was thready.
“Dude!” Seth said. “How’s prison?”
Tam slugged him. He grunted and Iceweasel said, “You’re such an asshole, Seth.”
“But I’m a lovable scamp, you have to admit.”
“I admit it.” Her voice quavered.
“How are you hanging in, darling?” Tam said.
“I, uh—” A pause, shuddering breath. “I’m scared. I don’t see how they can ever let me go now.”
“We’ll get you.” Gretyl surprised herself.
“Gretyl?” Iceweasel’s voice quavered more, cracking on the second syllable.
“I love you,” she blurted. Tears coursed down her cheeks. “I love you, Iceweasel. We’re coming for you. Be strong.”
“Oh, Gretyl.” Full-blown sobs now.
Gretyl sobbed too. The rest waited in respectful silence.
“The worst part—” Iceweasel began, then was lost to tears. “The worst thing is that it gets so normal. Like I’ve been sick for a long time, and I’m in a hospital, getting better. There are times when I can’t remember—”
“I won’t forget you.” Gretyl’s chest convulsed at the thought of the hours that passed without a thought of Iceweasel; working on the engine, just brutish stubbornness of the material world, inconvenience of weather and the suit, the brain-teaser of solving the mechanical puzzle of the stricken machine. The focus felt good. It was freedom from the grief she’d carried so long.
“But.” Gretyl couldn’t speak for sobs. “But.” She mastered her breathing. “If it makes it easier – if it hurts less, it’s okay to forget about us. About me. If you can find a way to be happy, I won’t be hurt—” Oh, no? “I’ll understand.” Because you do it, too. “It’s okay.”
No reply, then sobs, then nothing. Then: “I won’t ever forget. It’ll never be okay. If I die here, I’ll die with you in my mind.”
“Don’t die,” Gretyl blurted. “Just hang on.”
“I’ll hang on.”
Gretyl’s world telescoped to the two of them, minds reaching across space, piercing walls, transcending the channel set up by the simulated Dises. It was like they were touching again. “I—”
“Yeah,” Iceweasel said. “Yes. Me too. You too.”
“Yes.” A terrible weight lifted from Gretyl.
“Uh,” Remote broke in.
“Yes?” they said together, still in synchrony.
“I can get you through the tunnel – I can even get you shoes. But I can’t help once you’re outside.”
“I know,” Iceweasel said.
“Let us try and find something,” Gretyl said. “We’re going to default tomorrow, a First Nations reservation, we’re delivering – never mind what we’re delivering. We’re going to be there for a day or two. Then everyone’s coming here, from all over for...” She swallowed. “A party.” She felt like she was betraying Iceweasel.
“Will you bridge me in?”
“What?”
“The party. Can you bridge me in?”
“It’s bad opsec,” Remote said. “Every time we open a channel to the world, there’s a chance that someone’s going to notice the traffic.”
“I thought you pwned the whole network?”
“Yeah, but there’s the upstream. I’ve got the connectivity contracts here, read ’em all. They’re with a Redwater subsidiary, one of your cousins, the big timers. It’s for another Redwater property, a place across the ravine they use for secure storage, and there’s a point-to-point microwave link with line-of-sight laser backup, so anyone who used the contract to figure out what building to storm to kidnap Jacob and his family would find themselves three hundred meters away, in a building with remote monitoring and nasty surprises.
“The upstream provider’s got to run intrusion detection. That’s basic opsec. It’s tolerant – didn’t go nuts when your dad brought in his team, but the more anomalous traffic we generate, the higher the likelihood it’ll fire an alarm at some ops center and generate a warning to Daddy’s security people and then—”
“I get it,” Iceweasel said. She drew a shuddering breath. Gretyl could hear how close to tears she was. Tears sprang in her eyes. “I’d be alone again, and the party would start for real. I don’t think Dad’s security knows what’s going on here. I know that dude. He runs a tighter ship than this. My dad brought in specialists, deprogrammers for rich girls who join the walkaway cult. Someone who’d insist on running his own show.”
“Pretty sure you’re right,” Remote said. “Fits available evidence. We can’t assume your dad would tell his security not to worry about alerts. Even if Boss Cop doesn’t know what your dad’s doing in his dungeon, he’s got to know that something’s going on.” She paused. “I wonder...”
“What?” Local said. Gretyl had a moment’s disorientation. She’d started to think of them as aspects of one person, which they were, but not in the sense that they both had the same knowledge. Remote could wonder something and Local couldn’t know what it was until Remote told her.
“Jacob Redwater’s not the baddest zotta, not even in the top tier, but he’s still rich and ruthless. I can’t imagine him giving up his little bolt hole without having another one. I just bet there’s another place like this, only 2.0—”
“Heard anyone discuss it? Seen any traffic?”
“Nope, but if it’s there, maybe that’s something we could use.”
“Push it onto the stack,” Local said, sounding irritated, which also made Gretyl’s head ache. She could get upset with herself. Why should that stop once there were multiple instances of herself? “Come back to it later.”
“They’re coming. Jacob and his security, that woman merc—”
Silence.
Tam took Gretyl’s hand. Gretyl hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye, to again tell Iceweasel that she loved her.
[X]
THE LAST TIME she’d seen her father, he’d been stalking out of the room, with rare, visible fury. Usually he kept it icy and only let it emerge as a dangerous calm tone. When Jacob Redwater’s face twisted into a rage-mask and he raised his voice and clenched his fists, he was at the point of snapping.
Once, she’d have quailed at the thought. Her mother always assured her Jacob Redwater was a good and patient man, though not a man she had any particular affection for. Natalie and Cordelia were in good hands with him. Anything they did that made him snap was their own fault.
She could not have given fewer fucks about his rage. She’d flopped on the ground, trying to scream as her skin burned and her muscles contracted, a pain-seizure eclipsing every emotion except for self-pity and towering fury.