“I think the Chinese expect their sudden capitulation, and demand for a speedy resolution, will catch us flat-footed.”
“That sounds like the prime minister's opinion, Captain.”
She lifts her chin, and the corner of her mouth flickers up: a brief, transformative smile. “You have a good ear.”
“And has it?”
“Caught us flat-footed? No.” She stands, compactly strong, exuding energy and confidence as she paces, the rug scuffing as it compresses and releases under her step. She stops and turns toward me, solid and four-square. “Your boy—”
“Not mine, ma'am.”
Her shrug says whatever. “Have you talked to him yourself?”
“No, ma'am. Richard has. Mr. Xie is still in protective custody at Lake Simcoe.” The fingers of my right hand twitch toward my chest. The beaded feather my sister Nell gave me when we were kids is in my breast pocket, where it lives a lot of the time now. I want to pull it out and look at it, stroke its creamy brown and ivory bars and jewel-bright glass beading, or at least press it against my body through the cloth so I can feel it. Like a little kid rubbing a rabbit's foot in his pocket. Marde, Jenny. If you need to fuss with something, get a rosary.
Now, there's an unlikely image.
“Richard thinks he can be trusted.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Richard's judgment has proved pretty good so far.” She turns to look at that holomonitor, at the long lacy sprawl of the Montreal gleaming slender and uncanny as a suspension bridge across the void. She didn't want to trust the AIs at first. She ran out of choices when the rest of us did. “Do you think Riel would let us spring him? Bring him Upside?”
“I think the prime minister could be convinced, ma'am. I think she or I could convince F — Brigadier General Valens.”
“Do it.” Just like that, snap decision and she turns back to me, hands hanging open. “As for the other thing—”
“The EVA, ma'am?” Breath tight in my throat. I don't let her see it, but from the way her eyes narrow, she knows.
“Patty stays inside. You take somebody EVA certified for every member of the contact team—”
“And?” I can hear it hanging.
“And you're not taking more than three of my crew. I won't risk more. It's your baby, Casey. Sort it out.”
“Beg pardon, ma'am…”
“Casey?” She's turned away, but I need clarification.
“Am I to participate in this mission?”
“I can't think of anybody more likely to bring them home alive, Master Warrant.”
“Ma'am.” One more question. Just one, trying the patience I see fraying in the slow rise of her shoulders toward her ears. “Am I contact team, or crew?”
“Are you EVA certified, Casey?”
She knows I am. It was one of the first things I saw to, once things settled a little. No way I'm going to be stuck inside a tin can in a universe full of very aggressive nothing without knowing I can survive if I have to go out. “Thank you, ma'am.”
“Dismissed.” I catch the reflection of her smile in the crystal of the holomonitor as I salute, turn on my heel, and go.
1100 hours
Saturday September 29, 2063
HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
Charlie Forster had been living in space for so long that he'd forgotten what it was like to work in a lab with windows and a door that could be left open to catch a cross breeze, and he wondered if he really remembered how a full G would feel. He still had good muscle mass, though — partially a function of his somewhat heavier-than-ideal weight, and partially because he was religious about taking the mystotatin blockers that prevented muscle loss — and he was willing to bet that, given advances in low-G health care — his time on orbital platforms, starships, and Mars had raised his life expectancy. And, as he opened the hatch of his lab for Leslie Tjakamarra and Jeremy Kirkpatrick and ushered the Australian and British scientists inside, he had to admit that he wasn't immune to a certain pride of place: as one of the team who had uncovered the Benefactor ships on Mars, as the contact team's expert in the nanotech, as the guy whose lab space was housed in a starship. There was pleasure in that.
Especially when meeting fresh new faces, eager to be awed.
Or fresh old faces, he chuckled to himself. It's not like any of us are going to see forty again. Nor are any of us particularly easy to awe anymore.
The men's ship shoes scuffed on the deck plates as Charlie palmed the light on. He'd spent a good part of the last nine months moving his base of operations from Clarke over to the Montreal, and he finally had his lab set up the way he wanted it. Richard had helped him engineer the mounts for the biospheres that held his experimental subjects. The possibility that the Montreal's “gravity” might fail or shift rendered storage of fragile objects that needed indirect light into something of an engineering challenge.
The space he had appropriated was one of the hydroponics bays that helped supply the Montreal with food and oxygen. It had full-spectrum lighting already installed, and the biggest ports on the ship. Charlie hadn't bothered to move any of the tanks where radishes and sunflowers and soybeans grew in a transparent gelatinous medium; the fertilized profusion didn't interfere with his work and he rather enjoyed the green leaves, moist air, and the buzz and flutter of the Montreal's pollinators — honeybees and butterflies. The ship's entomologist visited, too. That was nice.
Besides, Charlie's work used otherwise wasted space, and almost every inch of the Montreal served double or triple duty. The lab's interior bulkheads gleamed with rows of glass biospheres like Christmas ornaments, held under the grow lights in lacy titanium frames. Inside those baubles was the flicker of movement; colorful shrimp darted around snails and filigrees of algae, each sphere a discrete ecosystem. And all of them, save the controls, infected with unmodified Benefactor tech.
Jeremy Kirkpatrick grimaced and looked around. “So this is where the tofu comes from.”
“Tofu,” Charlie said, “and the salad oil, and the spinach…”
“A very impressive setup.” Tjakamarra nevertheless didn't seem to be paying much attention to it. He crossed to the broad crystal port and leaned his hands against it, pressing one cheek to the glass to get a better look at the Montreal from this angle. “Is all this foliage infected?”
“Only what you see in the biospheres,” Charlie answered. “The rest is natural flora.”
“Wouldn't it make more sense to use the nanotechnology to… what, protect? bombproof? the hydro tanks and so forth?”
“You mean, like we've already infected the planet?” Charlie laughed. “We're trying to follow a policy of conservative use on the nanosurgeons. Only a few people on Montreal have had the full treatment; most of us are natural, and several of the ones who are infected — like Genie, for example — aren't enhanced. Although she's on the worldwire, she doesn't have the augmented reflexes or the full VR package. The plants stay natural unless there's a reason to make them otherwise.”