Worldwired (28 page)

0800 hours
Monday October 8, 2063
Thanksgiving day (Canada)
Canadian Embassy and Consulate
New York City, New York USA

On Monday morning, I testify.

It's so much like the last time that the face I see in the walnut-framed mirror over my bureau shocks me when I glance into it. I expect the glossy black hair of a child in her third decade, the furrowed, meat-colored scars of fresh burns turning the left side of her face into a Halloween mask. As if the intervening twenty-six years don't exist. As if, when I go downstairs with Frederick Valens to get into the official car that will deliver us to the site of the hearing, it will be
Corporal
Casey and
Captain
Valens, and it will be a simple court-martial that I am to testify before, rather than the assembled eyes of the world.

The problems get bigger and bigger. But the level of nausea in my gut remains the same.

That's growth of a sort, I suppose.

I look down to adjust the shining buttons in the cuffs of my professionally pressed dress uniform. The blue steel of my left hand contrasts the deep, mellow richness of the gold. There are no scars on my face anymore, just a mottled patch that doesn't tan evenly, and my hair will be white in another three or four years. And the steel armature on my left side is light and silent and moves like my own hand and wrist, rather than like a clattering horror of an obsolete machine. And it's beautiful, too: a smooth, graceful design.

I clench my long steel fingers into a fist, and feel them press the heel of my metal hand, and close my eyes.

Bernard told me to change the world for him.
After
I took the stand and said the words that killed him.

I really wonder that I don't feel more irony—more anything—at the fact that it's not going to be my testimony that makes the difference today, this week, this month, but rather the testimony—from beyond the grave—of his niece, Indigo. Who once tried very, very hard to murder me.

I open my eyes. I open my hand. I point my forefinger at the mirror, cock my thumb, and say “bang” under my breath. And then I check the lie of my uniform one more time, pick my cover up off the dresser, flick my thumbs along the brim to make sure it's sitting right, and go downstairs to meet Fred Valens and my fate.

I suppose it's equal parts gift and torture that I'm the first witness. I mean, I've never seen the United Nations before, despite twenty years spent wearing its goddamned baby blue hats, and I'd like the time to look around and get a feel for the place. My overwhelming impression, as the car pulls into the drive, is a confused riot of flags like children shouting for attention, lined up snapping in a breath-frosting wind, below a teal glass curtain wall. The driver gets out to open the door. I stand, and then I stop, looking up, long enough for Fred to clear his throat heavily.

Fat flakes drift from a dirty slate-colored sky and my boots crunch snow in the gutter as I move forward. It's not a big building—especially in comparison to its neighbors, enormous apartments that dwarf it—but the severe hundred-year-old slab shape reminds me of a tombstone. The old building is a little streaked and shabby around the edges, and I can see where the panes have been replaced by less mottled ones. They don't quite match the facade. The marble on the narrow sides is soot stained and showing erosion on what should be fine edges, and the fluid lines of the long concrete Assembly building spilling away from the teal blue high-rise look a little weary, too.

It looks worked hard, that structure.

And yet it's difficult to walk forward into. The damned thing looks
heavy.
And it might not be all
that
big, but it's a damned sight bigger than I am.

Escorts take charge of us at the doors, however, and once we step inside my whole impression changes. The broad lobby is airy and bright, the worn silver-and-white marble floors polished until they glow like jade. Mostly I regret the display cases that Fred and I are hustled past too fast for me to get a really good look inside. There's a Moon rock and a Mars rock and a chunk of asteroid and another chunk of one of Saturn's rings, I see that much, and a long display on a destroyed city whose flat, motionless gray photos mark it as something from another era, almost another world. Dresden or Hiroshima, maybe. Mumbai's footage would be in color, if there is a display for Mumbai.

I wonder how long it will be before Toronto is memorialized.

There's a hush about the place, the taste of serious business under way. A woman in a sari hurries through as we cross the lobby, a bindi gleaming red between her brows. She catches my eye as we pass, notices the steel hand, and does a visible double take. Her stride never slackens, but I turn my head, pretending for a minute that I'm not in uniform, and I see her staring over her shoulder as she walks away from us, twisting from the hips to get a better view.

Nice to have a place to go where everybody knows your name.

A young man in hanbok—a dark embroidered jacket and flowing, flame-colored trousers—hurries toward us, his feet scuffing on the marble. A little puddle of melting snow drips from the sole of one of my boots, although I stomped them before I came inside. Valens, of course, looks like he was delivered fresh via teleporter. I tighten my arm against my side so I don't drop my cover in the mud puddle I'm making while I greet our new friend. He's got very dark, very bright eyes, and something faceted winks near the edge of the iris of the left one—a hypoallergenic implant under the clear surface of the cornea, a platinum bauble shaped like a stylized rocket ship. Genie says they're all the rage this year.

Valens's amusement is palpable when the young man stops in front of me, rather than him, and makes a little formal gesture. “Master Warrant Officer Genevieve Casey?”

He has an accent smooth as the silk of his jacket, and I could listen to him say my name all day. “I am. And this is Brigadier General Frederick Valens.”

He offers Fred his hand and Fred takes it, giving me a look over our guide's head that's both charmed and bemused. I half get the feeling he's enjoying being snubbed. “I am Dongsik Jung. I will be your escort—”

“I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Dongsik—”

“Mr. Jung,” he says, and winks at my transparent blush. “Master Warrant Officer, it's an honor to make your acquaintance. And you, Brigadier General, a very great honor as well.” He steps back, looking from one of us to the other, and lifts an eyebrow at each. “Have you been to the United Nations before?”

“Never,” Fred says, shrugging out of his overcoat.

“Wonderful,” Mr. Jung says, turning neatly on the ball of his foot and falling into step between and a few steps in front of us. Even if he fell back, I could still see Valens over the top of his head. “We just have time for a little tour before you're due in the General Assembly chamber. Would you like to see the Peace Bell or the famous Chinese ivory carving first?”

The two security guards following us are so seamlessly professional I hardly even know they're there unless I catch their reflections in some polished surface. “The Peace Bell,” I say, at the same second Fred says, “The carving, please.”

“We have time for both,” Mr. Jung tells us, his stride fast enough that Fred and I both have to hustle to keep up. “And we will pass the Foucault Pendulum when we enter the lobby of the General Assembly. You wouldn't want to miss that.”

Fred catches my eye when I glance toward him and mouths a few words I don't catch. I shake my head. He smiles, stretching the papery skin on either side of his mouth into lines that show his exhaustion more than anything else about him. “I hope you polished up your medals for your big hero fan club, old girl,” he murmurs, leaning close enough that I feel his breath on my ear.

“I only brought the salad bars, actually,” I answer. “All that pewter doesn't mix well with my osteoporosis. Old man.”

I'm reasonably sure a couple of ancient warhorses aren't supposed to bray like donkeys when they laugh in public places, but what can you do? A disgrace to the uniform. Both of us.

The Foucault Pendulum—Mr. Jung is very explicit that it's
Foucault
and not
Foucault's
—is definitely worth the pause to collect ourselves before we enter the General Assembly. It's a huge coppery sphere swaying at the end of a nearly invisible wire, something like a waltzing cannonball, and it's downright hypnotic. The way it moves reminds me of the giant game of crack-the-whip going on overhead, the orbital platforms slung out at the ends of their beanstalks, the whole thing whirling in space. For a second, I fantasize I can feel the whole universe moving around me like the works of a giant clock. It makes me want to run right out and build an orrery.

Maybe when I retire. If they ever let me.

Mr. Jung gives us a few moments to ooh and aah over the pendulum before he abandons us in a ready room, both security types planted solidly outside the door. From there, we'll proceed to the General Assembly chamber. I wonder what machinations Riel and the PanChinese and the UN itself wrangled through to arrive at this solution—open hearings, and open testimony, in front of the entire body. I can't remember ever hearing of anything being handled exactly this way before.

On the other hand, nobody's ever obliterated a city and triggered a global climate change with a nickel-iron meteorite before. Or unleashed a tailored nanotech infection on the entire planet. I guess it's not really the sort of thing the UN was designed to deal with, was it?

“Nuclear proliferation,” Richard supplies inside my head. “That, and the idea that an avenue of public discourse would prevent World War III.”

So we skipped straight to number four and five, is what you're telling me?
It's an old joke; I
fought
in World War III, but nobody calls it that. Richard gives me a
look
. I sigh out loud, and Valens gives me a
look
as well.

“Casey? Are you going to handle this?”

“I'm good, Fred.”

His hazel eyes are doubtful, turned down at the corners like a sad old hound's, but he nods and turns away from me, pacing from one wall to another with his hand clenched around his opposite wrist in the small of his back. It's sort of restful watching him go back and forth. Like the pendulum. “Give them hell,” he says, so quietly I almost don't hear him.

His tone makes my intestines knot. “You want them to pay.”

Just a sideways look, arresting, glitter of cold eyes over the bridge of his handsome nose. “Tell me you don't.”

I can't. I mean, I drew the line at bloody vengeance once. But let them go unpunished? No. That isn't an option either.

“I want justice.”

His lips twitch into the semblance of a smile. It flickers on his mouth for a moment, then flutters away just as fast. “I never ask for justice anymore,” he says. His fists unknot from behind his back and fall to his sides. “I just ask to win.”

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to say in answer. I knew that about him. Knew it in my bones, I mean, down to the roots of my hair; Fred and I go way, way back. But for some reason, twenty-six goddamned years later, it just, finally,
really
sank in. Fred's the sort of guy who does what it takes and counts the cost well lost against whatever it was he gambled to win. If he's not prepared to pay, he doesn't put his money on the table.

“Damn.” It's written all over his face. And he's letting me see it, because he knows I just figured it out anyway. “That e-mail wasn't from Razorface, was it, Fred?”

“The encoding on something like that would be impossible to fabricate, Casey. We've validated the packet history in every manner known to man, and all the records will be turned over with the evidence. It's the only way to establish provenance.”

Of course they have. Of course they are. I could ask Richard. Richard might even tell me the truth.

Valens is still staring at me, the picture of quiet relaxation. I ask Richard something else instead, something I won't have to lie under oath about.
Why?—no, wait. Don't answer that. Just answer this: Are those documents real?

“They're real. I'm not Fred Valens, Jen.”

Dick—

“With any luck, they won't ask the right questions.” It's not quite a smile, what crosses Richard's face, but a strange, tender expression I can't put a name to. It's the sort of look you expect to see before somebody messes up your hair, but of course he hasn't got the fingers to do it with, so he just looks at me for a second, and then looks down.

I hadn't known you were such a patriot, Richard.

“There's an old catchphrase. My country is the whole world.”

I've heard it.

“In my case”—he grins—“it's quite absolutely true.”

Fred still hasn't blinked. Come to think of it, neither have I. I breathe out slowly, over my tongue, through my teeth, and look down at the spit-shined tips of my shoes. Before I get the breath back in, somebody knocks on the door and the handle starts to turn. I don't look over; I just tug my jacket straight one last time. “Lucky for us Razorface thought to mail that off before he died.”