Goddamn it, I am sick of watching people I like get killed. I am even sicker of getting people I like killed. It's not an acquired taste, let me tell you; every drink is bitter as the last. And they never get any easier to swallow.
“Aw, Christ,” Peterson says, turning to fix her lines to Letourneau for the slow sail back to the Buffy.
I can feel Richard in my head; I can feel him thinking, but he doesn't seem to have anything to say. I don't either, and Jeremy's just as silent.
But he's not retreating any more than I am. Instead he hangs at my shoulder, just looking at all that fluid silver, and our colleagues buried somewhere inside. And Wainwright's stopped shouting in my head, and Peterson's silence tells me she's conferring with the captain privately. Which is fine with me. The officers are welcome to it.
Finally, she clears her throat. “Master Warrant Officer?”
“Lieutenant?”
“The, ah. The captain ordered us to clear the scene.”
“Ma'am.” I start backing away. I don't want to turn my back on that thing. Not for a second.
“Wait,” Jeremy interjects. His gauntlets wave like an upturned bug's legs, hard enough that he wobbles until his gyros straighten him out. “Wait, wait—”
“Jer?”
“Get a sample,” he says. “Les said get a sample.”
“Dr. Kirkpatrick.” Peterson's voice, rich with warning.
Insubordinate as always, I follow Jeremy back toward the cage. “We won't go inside, Lieutenant. We may as well salvage something out of this mess.”
I hear her sigh. I rather imagine she's getting an earful from the captain, and I'm not entirely certain why I'm being spared it. Maybe Wainwright's afraid she'll say something she's likely to regret if she talks to me directly. Richard, do you think we can get away with this?
“Insufficient data, Jen,” he answers.
When did you get replaced by a bot?
“You know, the more upset you are, the more sarcastic you get.” Sensation of a raised eyebrow, and I bless him silently for knowing what I need, archness and sharp diversionary tactics instead of sympathy. “In any case, I think you're right about an attempt to salvage… Jen.”
Dick? Feeling more like a straight man every second, I hesitate, shaking the lines to slow Jeremy down. What is it?
“Jen, I don't want to get your hopes up. And I don't want to give you a false impression that I have any control of this situation at all, much as I wish I could do something—”
Dick. Out with it already. Jeremy moves forward again, a scraper and a vacuum bag in his hands.
“You know I have some limited, some very limited communication with the Benefactor nanotech.”
Yes?
“Jen, I think Charlie and Leslie are alive in there.”
I've got to give Wainwright credit. She doesn't say I told you so. She doesn't even think it real loud, although the vertical line over her shapely little nose advertises restrained wrath. The funny thing is, I don't think she's angry with me.
I don't know what she is angry with, though, and I'd be just as happy not to get between her and the object of her wrath until she's done reducing it to scrap metal. There are forces of nature I'm willing to fuck with, and those that I'm sensible enough to give a wide berth — and right now, Wainwright falls into the latter category.
Even if she doesn't trust me, Wainwright's a good CO. She knows me better than I know myself sometimes, and she's got to be aware that left to my own devices, I'd be stalking the halls of the ship making a terror of myself, keeping my own kind of walking vigil for Leslie and Charlie. And since she knows that, and she knows Richard will tell me if the status changes, she heads it off at the pass by giving me a job to do.
She appoints me Xie Min-xue's guardian, and gives me—us—the run of the ship. Under Dick's supervision, of course. But then, we always are.
Pilot Xie waits in the pilot's ready room, the one I took Leslie to when he first came on board. Xie stands when I enter; he's just barely eighteen, and he could pass for fifteen when the light hits him right. He's a fragile, girlish sort of a boy with eyes like watchful black jewels. It occurs to me, looking at him, that Leah probably could have broken him over her knee, and Patty would have no problem at all.
His eyes track me but he doesn't speak at first, just presses his arms tight to his sides and bows, his body language indicating as clear as an eight-sided sign, stop there. Beyond this point there be dragons. Something about the distance in those eyes tells me he's talking to Richard, which is no skin off my nose. If it comforts him, more power to him.
If I remember Richard's briefings right, the Chinese pilots are wired even closer to tolerances than we are, because they don't have access to Canada's performance-enhancing drugs. And moreover, their wetware isn't adrenaline-sensitive. Rather than moving through the world in a fairly normal fashion until something triggers their enhancements, they live their lives like hummingbirds, vibrating on the verge of flight.
All things considered, then, I have to think that Xie Min-xue comes across as a remarkably normal young man.
And just as I'm thinking that, with no warning whatsoever, Richard drops me into his skull.
Just like that. Bang. The same way he gave me Leah, for the last thirty seconds of her life, the same way he steps into me and I step into him, through the quantum communication between the microscopic robots that live under my skin and Pilot Xie's, and that make up Richard's body, if a body, precisely, is what he can be said to have. For a second or two I'm feeling the air on Xie's skin, the way it prickles the hair at the nape of his neck and the way the ready-room lights are too bright. I can barely pick up the flicker, untriggered and well rested; to Xie it's a strobe. We've got to do something about that, I say to Richard. Rip out every fluorescent light on the Montreal if we have to—
I realize too late that Min-xue — which is his name, after all, and the way he thinks of himself — can hear me when his lips peel back from crooked teeth in a most engaging grin, and bows even more deeply.
“I would be in your debt, ma'am,” he says inside my skull, the same way Richard does. I shake my head, amazed.
I have to try it myself. Please. Call me Jenny.
“With great pleasure, Jenny.”
Dick, how long have you known about this?
“Since Leah, more or less. The practical implications, however, are just starting to work themselves out.”
Practical applications beyond telepathy?
“Beyond worldwide, instantaneous communication, Master Warr— Jenny?” Min-xue is smiling, enjoying his advantage.
Galaxy-wide. Instantaneous. Your word, ansibles. Ansibles in our heads. Completely private — or is it, Dick?
“It's as private as I make it,” Richard says, and I can see from the way Min-xue angles his head that his smile is for the AI whose image we both see real as if he were in the room, and who would be transparent as a ghost to any unmodified human who stepped in beside us.
Once again, you rule our destiny. I mean it to be mocking, but I can't help it if it comes out a little defenseless, as well. This is going to change the world. This is… this is the Net writ large.
“The global village,” Richard says quietly.
“The what?” And I'm not sorry Min-xue's wired a little faster, if it means he got to be dumb quicker. I must think it out loud, because he ducks his chin and tilts an apologetic smile at me, and Richard laughs.