This is different. He's hit a dead halt, and he's thinking. I can feel it. Feel the seconds ticking over like boulders gathering momentum down a hill. Dick? What did I say?
“A river,” he says, that topographic smile rearranging his face like plate tectonics. This one's at least a 6.5. “Ma'am, I do believe you've just given me an idea.”
And you're going to sit there and look smug about it, too, aren't you?
“I want to run some simulations first.” The sensation of his virtual hug is like a passing breeze brushing my shoulders. “I've been looking at the problem the wrong way. When change is inevitable, the solution isn't to fight it, but to work inside the new system and learn to live in the world that's changed.”
I've heard cruder versions of that sentiment.
He laughs, twisting his head on his long papery neck. “You look beautiful. Now go beard the captain in her den.”
“Great, the AI's blind as well as insane.” But he can feel my grin as I can feel his, and together we move spinwise and inwheel, toward the captain's conference room.
Wainwright looks up, glowering, as I duck through the hatch and dog it behind me. Momma bear with only one cub, and I square myself inside the door and wait for her to indicate my next move.
We have a funny relationship, Captain Wainwright and me.
She shuffles papers across her interface panel and stows them in a transparent folder mounted on her desk. You never can tell if the gravity will last from minute to minute, or so they say, although I've never seen it fail. She sighs and stands up, coming around the desk, as starched and pressed as me and eight inches shorter. “I want to thank you for not springing your radical idea on me in front of the scientists, ma'am.”
“I think Elspeth and Richard deserve equal credit, ma'am.”
Arms folded over her chest ruin the line of her uniform. She tilts her head back to stare me in the eye. It doesn't cost her a fraction of her authority. “I'm sharp enough to know who the suicidal lunatic on my ship is, Master Warrant Officer.”
Eyes fixed straight ahead, pretending I can't see the little curl twitching the corner of her lip. “Yes, ma'am.”
“So what do you think sending astronauts over there will accomplish that our drones and probes haven't?”
I shrug. “Pique their interest, ma'am? It's not so much about information retrieval — we've done and can do that remotely. It's about letting them know we do want to talk to them.”
She doesn't answer; just looks at me, and then looks down and plays with the stuff on her desk. “You're going to go out there and make me proud in front of our new guests. Aren't you?”
“Yes. Ma'am.”
“Good.” She steps back, her hands dropping to her sides, standing tall. “At ease, Casey. I'm done yelling at you.”
“Yes, ma'am.” But this time I let her hear the humor in it.
She nods, then shakes her head and taps her knuckle on her chin. “Casey, you're a shit disturber. You know that?”
“It's a gift, ma'am.” As I let my shoulders relax, my hands curl naturally against my thighs.
She sighs and rubs her palms together. “You've proved your instincts to me—”
“But?” The hesitation is implicit in the lift-and-drop of her gaze. She doesn't quite meet mine directly. We're thinking of the same thing; me refusing a direct order, at gunpoint, and making that refusal stick. And I was right, dammit. And she knows I was right. And I think she's grateful I was right, deep down in the light-starch, creased-trouser depths of her military soul.
But it kind of fucks up the superior/subordinate thing, and we're both still working our asses off trying to pretend it doesn't matter. “There is no but,” she says, after a longer wait than I'm comfortable with. “As long as I know I can trust you.”
“You can trust me to take good care of your ship, ma'am. And your crew.”
“And Canada?”
“That goes without saying.”
“Consider it said anyway.” She's working up to something. She looks at me again, and this time doesn't look away. “I think Genie Castaign should enter the pilot program,” she says. “She's already partially acclimated to the Benefactor tech, her unaugmented reflexes are at least as good as her sister's, she gets along with the Feynman AI, and she's bright. I want you to talk to her father. He'll take it better from you.”
“Captain—”
“I didn't ask for your opinion, Casey.”
“Yes, ma'am.” The ship's spinning. And all I can feel is Leah, there in my arms and then gone.
They used to say give one child to the army, one to the priesthood, and try to keep one alive. Gabriel only has one daughter left. Wainwright's gaze doesn't drop from mine. “Yes, ma'am.” I know I'm stammering. Know there's nothing else I can say. And Gabe won't even hate me for it, because he's army, too, and because Gabe knows. “She's too young still to induct.”
“Get her started on the training. We'll take her when she's fourteen.” She stretches, and ruthlessness falls off her shoulders like a feather dancer's cloak. “Come on. It's time for the meeting. Let's go see if there are any canapés.”
Toronto Evacuation Zone
Ontario, Canada
Friday 28 September 2063
1100 hours
Snow is supposed to be a benediction. A veil of white like a wedding dress, concealing whatever sins lie beneath.
Frost on the chopper's window melted under Valens's touch. He leaned against the glass, his shoulder to Constance Riel, who sat similarly silent and hunched on the port side. They both looked down, ignoring the pilot and the other passengers.
The snow covering the remains of Toronto lay not like a veil, but like a winding-sheet — one landscape that even winter couldn't do much for. He stared at it, trying not to see it, careful never quite to focus his eyes.
The prime minister stirred. She shifted closer to Valens, closer to the center of the helicopter, as if unconsciously seeking warmth. He glanced at her. Her trained politician's smile had thinned to a hard line in her bloodless face, and her head oscillated just enough that her hair shifted against her neck.
“It doesn't look any better than it did at Christmas. I thought it would look better by now.” She glanced first at him and then down. She retrieved her purse from the seat, dug for a stick of gum he didn't think she really wanted, offered him one that he didn't accept. She folded hers into her mouth and sat back. “Did you feel it in Hartford, Fred?”
“I felt the floor jump,” he said, carefully looking out the window and not at Riel. “It woke me. The sound came seconds later. It sounded like—” Words failed. Like a mortar.
You never hear the one that gets you.
And then, unbidden, Georges wouldn't have felt anything at all. He nodded, remembering the rise and fall of solid earth, the thump of the bedframe jolting against the wall. “It woke me.”
“I was closer,” she said. “It knocked me down. I saw the fireball first, of course. If I'd had any sense, I would have sat down.” She shrugged. “You're not really looking, are you, Fred?”