He also wondered if the birdcages could see through his eyes, now, could hear through his ears, as he felt through their nameless organs of sense. He hoped so. He hoped they could see the way the sunlight refracted through the bars and the veils of their ship, casting rainbows over the entire interior. He hoped they could see how lovely they were, their bodies merging and separating again like drops of mercury shaken on a plate.
His wondering was answered when the shimmering veils between the struts of the birdcage vanished like popped soap bubbles, revealing the Montreal, the shiptree, and the brown-gray marbled sphere of the Earth behind them, all limned from behind with sunrise. Leslie caught his breath as slanted rays dusted his faceplate with gold and refracted in sprays of color through the prismed latticework that was all that stood between him and naked space, and he felt as if all the voices within him caught their breaths as well — not that they had voices, in particular, or breaths. Yes, he thought. This is my world. This is what light looks like, my friends.
The shiptree was right there, so close he could see the whorls of light along its plume-shaped length. He could feel it out there, feel it press against the curve of space, as if he could reach out and touch it. Oh, if Richard could see this—
Leslie started smiling inside his helmet almost before the idea finished unraveling. Maybe he couldn't tell the Benefactors what he needed. But maybe he could show them.
He wasn't finished yet. He shaped the map for them, let them feel it in his mind. Showed them the way the mass of his body would move, from the birdcage to the shiptree, and asked them for their help in getting there.
And they sang in his head, the answer, the throb and cadence of their voices that were not voices, but a sensation like the press and lift of the surf. (go) they would have said, if what they said was words. (Go) and (go) and (heal) and (go) and (rejoin your mind) and (go) and (heal) and (go) and (come and sing to us again)…
(Come and sing to us again)…
“I will,” Leslie answered. And so they pushed him forward, into night.
When Min-xue lifted himself off her back, Patty was ready for it. She got her toes under her and her hand on the prime minister's wrist and tugged while Min-xue and Jenny crouched scuttling toward the end of the long line of curved tables, and hauled Riel into a squat with an ease that surprised them both. They froze, eye to eye, and Riel licked her lips, her bloodied business suit rising and falling with measured breaths. Riel ducked at a popping, scattered sound. Patty didn't realize it was gunfire until Riel's palm flattened her head against Riel's shoulder, holding her under the level of the tabletop. It won't stop bullets. Will it stop bullets? Alan?
They leaned together hard, but the flat shattering impacts arced away from them, in pursuit of Min-xue and Jenny. The bullets weren't anywhere close; Patty leaned out for a quick glance as the other two pilots clambered over floor-hugging diplomats, leapfrogging each other like 3-D cops. Alan?
Alan still wasn't there.
“Where the hell is security?” Riel asked. “They can't have bought everybody.”
Which was right, wasn't it? The General Assembly hall should be full of men and women with guns. Men and women on their side, security who worked for the UN. “I don't know. I don't know where Alan is either. I don't know—”
“Hell,” Riel said, softly. “The Chinese did something to the security forces. Nanotech, poison, something, something weaponized, I don't know…” her voice trailed off.
“Why them and not us?”
“They got to them. We've been unavailable. This is the part where they're trying to get to us.”
Riel's grip tightened on Patty's wrist, and Patty ducked back under cover. She'd gotten a look at the way the wood of the desk fronts had splintered when the gunfire struck them. “The tables won't stop a bullet.”
“Might.” Papa Fred didn't lift his head off the floor when he spoke, and his voice was thready with pain, but it was strong. “That's small-caliber stuff. Just keep your heads down and run.”
Good advice. Easy advice. If his blood wasn't all over her hands and knees — okay, it wasn't, maybe, all his own blood, some of it was the Mountie's, but some of it was—
Breathe, Patty. She squeezed Riel's hand, and Riel squeezed hers back, and she realized that the prime minister was shaking just as hard as she was. That helped, somehow, despite the blood squishing in her shoes, her stockings sliding against wet greasy leather. Riel glanced left and right, and leaned forward like a sprinter from her crouch. She'd kicked her shoes off, the pearl-gray high heels tumbled on their sides, and blood scattered her feet as if she'd done a particularly terrible job with her toenail polish. “Ready?”
“Go!” Terse and low, and Patty lunged out of her stoop into a cramped, crablike run, ears straining, zigzagging up the long naked aisle and hauling Riel along behind her, both of them ducking and skidding and trying like hell not to trip over any of the people huddled against the edges of the furniture or over any of the furniture itself.
This time the gunfire was for real. Not intermittent, but staccato, a rhythmless drumbeat that hurried her feet and kept her head ducked between her shoulders. Riel wasn't fast enough, and it was no good dragging her. The bad guys were behind them, still spread around the area where the PanChinese delegation had been sitting. Jenny, where are you? Jenny Jenny Jenny—
Quit waiting for somebody else to save you, Patricia, she snarled to herself, and grabbed a startled Riel by the wrist and shoulder and pushed her ahead, getting her own body in between the prime minister and the bullets, the way Papa Fred and the Mountie had. Patty laughed as she did it, realizing that her own life might be as important in the long run, especially if Alan and Richard were — she didn't think dead. Not dead, because they couldn't be dead. They hadn't ever been alive.
If Alan and Richard weren't coming back, Patty and Jenny and Min-xue were the only pilots Canada had left. If Min-xue was really Canadian. Which hadn't been settled yet.
Oh. I bet it was worth it to the Chinese, if they could get all three of us, and Riel, and the Chinese guy who shook her hand and smiled—
Yeah. She could see how that would be worth a really big risk. Especially if you had a way to get guns and wired fighters inside the UN. But it didn't matter. It was her job to get Riel out alive. Riel and herself, and to trust Jenny and Min-xue to save themselves, and Papa Fred.
Who saves me? Well, of course. Patty had to save herself.
The gunfire stopped and she heard somebody yell, and somebody hit somebody. She heard running footsteps behind her, gaining fast, coming up the aisle the same way she and Riel had.
It wasn't going to work. They weren't going to make it to the door before he caught up with them, and the mob was still shoving through it anyway. Riel was already turning around, ducking into the shelter of another long curved row of desks, when Patty realized that she'd run out of time.
It was dark where the Feynman AI collectively found himself — what threads he was able to maintain, as a crash reduction in resources caused him to slough most of himself in a frantic effort to regain stability — and it was very, very still. The transition was shockingly fast, even — especially — by his inhuman standards. Instantaneous, not a word Richard chose lightly.