She shook her head and turned inside his embrace, leaning her shoulders against his chest, her head against his shoulder, winding his arm around her like a ribbon when he didn't let go. The weight of her body pressed him harder against the door handle. He grunted and stepped to one side, arm around her midsection to move her with him, and she came along like a dancing partner, smooth and light.
“It gets her off the planet,” she said.
Jenny was tall enough that he had to stand up straight and tilt his head back to tuck her under his chin. She sighed when he did it, and melted against him as if his warmth had unmoored whatever emotional props kept her stiff-backed and upright. He nodded into her hair.
“Dammit, Gabe. I'm tired. Je suis fatiguée.” She shook her head. “When do we get to take a break?”
He snorted and pulled her closer, breathing in the shower-clean scent of her skin. “When they push us over and shovel dirt on our heads,” he answered, holding on tight.
1400 hours
Friday September 28, 2063
Lake Simcoe Military Prison
Ontario, Canada
Xie Min-xue stared at the wall of his cell, which was beige and featureless, but he wasn't seeing it. He wasn't feeling the headache caused by the fluorescent lights, his enhanced senses turning what was supposed to be a flicker too fast for perception into something more akin to the stutter of a strobe light, because all his attention was turned inward focused on an old American poem. Richard was still helping him with his English, and in a little less than a year it had gotten much better than he would ever have permitted his guards — or his fellow Chinese prisoners — to realize.
As clearly as if someone who had been quietly reading a book had raised his head and fixed him with a glance, Min-xue felt the shift in Richard's attention. He'd been backgrounded, conversing with one of Richard's subroutines while Richard's core identity handled half a dozen more important things. Now the threads merged again, the AI's primary awareness focusing on Min-xue. It was the equivalent of a man clearing his throat, except Min-xue felt the pressure of that regard as an internal thing.
It prickled the hairs on his neck.
Hello, Richard.
“Hello, Min-xue…”
That polite hesitation, and it told Min-xue that Richard was serious. You're here to tell me what they're going to do with me.
“I'm here to let you know what's being discussed, and let you know what we're going to do about it. You do have friends in high places, you know.”
Not high enough. The pilot shook his head and rose to his feet. He paused for a moment, looking down at his feet in their white canvas sneakers with the thin plastic soles. You're going to ask me to defect, Richard. I will not do that.
“But you'll testify against your superiors in a World Court? That seems a little contradictory.” Richard “spoke” English, but he spoke it slowly, so that Min-xue would understand him clearly.
There was nothing in the cell except a narrow shelf made up as a bench or a bed, a steel toilet, and a tightly folded blanket. The air from outside smelled cold, musty. He could almost convince himself that he caught the reek of soot. Min-xue paused beneath the high, barred window. Along with the solitary cell that protected him from the crew-mates he'd betrayed, that window was the prison's concession to his controversial status.
“Refusing to carry out an illegal order is not treason.” Which wasn't exactly the words of a concept he'd found echoed in T'ang poetry and in subversive twentieth-century English literature, but the sentiments behind it hadn't changed very much in centuries. I am not a defector, Richard. I am not a traitor.
“If you're a citizen and a subject of the commonwealth, Riel can protect you. If you are a PanChinese national…”
Is this your way of letting me know that my government wants me back for punishment?
“They wish access to the aliens, and restitution for the nanite infestation of their waters and the damage to the Huang Di that you caused. And yourself and all the rest of the crew returned. Along with the Huang Di, of course.”
Of course. And I am to take the blame for the attack on Toronto, and Captain Wu the courageous patriot who tried to prevent my actions?
He felt Richard's sigh, saw it with his inward eye. “I liked you better when you were an innocent who liked poetry, Min-xue.”
Alas for innocence, then. But it was true; the past year had changed him, and not in comforting ways. Should my loyalty to my country cease because she is mastered by selfish men?
“I knew translating the Yevtushenko for you was a bad idea. Min-xue, you can do China more good in the long run if you stand with us, and try to bring her current leaders down.”
That is neither obedience nor devotion, Min-xue replied, his eyes closed, his palms pressed to the raspy cinder-block wall. But it wasn't obedience and devotion that had brought him to this place, either. I will testify, Richard. Surely that's enough. And I can warn you that my countrymen won't give up so easily. They are hungry, and they are frightened of the worldwire, and they have ten thousand chosen men and women en route to the colony planet, and no way to call them back.
They'll come back with another gambit. They have no choice. There's an expression, Richard, about men with nothing to lose. I think you have it in English, too.
The AI frowned, an expression Min-xue felt more than saw, and refused to be distracted. “What if I told you that I can probably get you a shot at the Vancouver's pilot's chair, when she's commissioned?”
The prime minister would never permit that.
“The prime minister has exactly two trained Canadian pilots left. You're in a better position to bargain than you think.”
The pilot's chair. Min-xue hushed his thoughts, keeping them from Richard's hearing, a trick that had mostly to do with simply willing not to be overheard. In the final analysis, he did not wish to die for his crimes, although he had been prepared. But a Canadian girl had died in his place, and there were some who might argue that as such, it was his debt to live in hers. If you can arrange it, I will bargain, he answered. But you must see to it that there is a trial, and that I have the chance to testify.
“I'll speak to Casey,” Richard said. “We'll do what we can.”
0900 hours
Saturday September 29, 2063
HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
Some twelve hours later, Richard's focus was abruptly returned to the captain's ready room when Jaime Wainwright lifted her head, stared directly at the nearest security mote, and said, “I know you're up there, Dick. I can hear you breathing.”
He spawned a thread just to deal with the captain, and then he laughed out loud, choosing his speakers to make the voice seem to come from the place where she was looking. “Neat trick, that. Can you feel me looking at you, too?”
She glanced down at her sinewy hands. “And now you're going to tell me that ‘up there' is a subjective term.”