Worldwired (31 page)

“Captain,” Elspeth said calmly, unfolding her arms. “Have you thought about the potential costs if we fail?”

And Wainwright swallowed and looked down. “I'm not authorizing anything unless the prime minister says so,” she said. And then she looked up, fixed Elspeth with a cool, crinkled stare, and smiled coldly. “And don't presume you understand my personal leanings in this matter, Dr. Dunsany. Or in the matter of Dr. Tjakamarra. Some of us
do
draw a line around our personal feelings when we pull our pants on in the morning.”

“Ma'am,” Elspeth said, after a few moments. “I'll message the prime minister at once.”

By the fourth day of testimony, there's a small child in the back of my head whining over and over again
I wish I wish I wish I wish Gabe and Ellie were here I wanna go home I don't want to answer any more questions waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
. Goddamn.

Can't you shut that kid up, Jenny?

I mean, I'm good at this. I know I'm good at this. It's not even exactly testimony, although everybody calls it that. And it's not speechifying either; mostly, I stand up there behind the podium and field questions for hour after hour after hour. They seem to have some sort of a protocol worked out, too, where it's the big dogs—the permanent security council members—who get to ask things when they want, and the representatives of other nations pass notes or tap shoulders or send e-mail and get whoever they're tributary to or sending aid to or receiving aid from to ask their questions. It's an elegant demonstration of patronage, if you squint at it right. My Grandpa Zeke would have approved.

But sweet Mary Mother of God I am so goddamned tired. Would it kill them, you think, to give me a chair?

Besides, this is the day when I'm going to have to talk about the things I'd rather pretend never happened. So standing up there, facing that enormous seashell room packed with delegates from 213 nations and five supranations, is something more than just an exercise in stage fright. It's like exhuming Leah's grave.

It's the only grave she's going to get, because her body never made it down. She's part of the planet now. Part of the atmosphere. I push her in and out with every breath, since I came home. Her, and Trevor Koske, too.

At least Koske had the decency to do what I couldn't, and die with her. I wouldn't have thought he had it in him.

It's a little disconcerting to think about, nonetheless.

Especially when I'm in the middle of explaining to a room full of politicians why she had to die, and how her death—her sacrifice—resulted in the worldwide contamination of the oceans with Benefactor nanotech. And how it's spreading to people and plants and topsoil and little terrier dogs all over the world.

And how, no, really, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I was smart enough to bring a handkerchief.

A thin Asian man in a narrow mahogany-colored suit leans forward on his elbows as I reach for a drink, waiting for the next question. I've lost track, but he's somebody in the PanChinese delegation. A shark, I think. Not an interpreter, because the UN handles that itself; there are a few dozen people in the glass-walled booths over our heads providing simultaneous translation on multiple-language channels, and I can access any one of them on my ear clip with a glance at a menu. I'm listening in French, because the interpreter has a sexy dark-chocolate voice and I like his Parisian accent better than the harsh midwestern drawl of the Chinese-to-English translator—who is getting a workout today.

Anyway. The shark says, in Chinese—whatever dialect they're using—and the interpreter says in French: “And you expect us to believe that the government of Canada has no intentions of using this tech as a weapon, when it's already responsible for the infection of millions, and the death or injury of thousands?”

He catches me with my water glass in my metal hand, just tilted to my lips. I couldn't have
planned
the snarf better; titters and at least one guffaw from my stodgy audience of diplomats attest to the perfection of my comedic timing.

At least it goes in the glass, and not all over my uniform. “The infection of, and the death or injury of,
Canadians,
sir. Canadians who were in desperate need of medical assistance in the wake of the attack upon Toronto.” Valens spent hours drilling me not to say
Chinese attack
. Or
terrorist attack,
for that matter. Apparently the official explanation of who kicked whom in the balls is still a matter for high-level negotiation.

Which is why I'm surprised. I'd thought these particular questions would be reserved for Fred. Or Riel. But what the hell.

“American citizens were affected as well.”

“Because American cities were affected by the attack. No one who was not ill or injured has been subjected to the treatment, sir, to the best of my knowledge.” I switch to English to answer this question, because it's the American shark talking, or maybe the American shark's diplomat boss. There's too damned many of them to keep track of. Or did I say that already?

The American is a round-faced Latina in her fifties, in a suit just the right bluish shade of power red to remind me uncomfortably of Alberta Holmes. She shields her mouth with her hand as she confers with her boss, or her lawyer. She leans back in her chair and steeples her hands in front of her, her knuckles furled tight as her brow. “Of course, the USA would have been less significantly affected, by your own testimony, if you and the
Montreal
had not diverted the projectile from its course.”

Valens is seated in a chair off to my left, which means I can see him moving in the periphery of my prosthetic eye's vision much more clearly than I could on the right-hand side. Better than the real thing. I don't know why everybody doesn't run right out and buy a set, frankly.

Fred leans forward, his eyes on me rather than the American. Fortunately, I have the podium to hold on to. And I really
do
have better control of my temper than Fred thinks I do. I mean, okay, I broke his shoulder back in the thirties. But he deserved it then, and I'm sure as hell not going to feel bad about it now.

Dick? What do I say to that steaming pile of horseshit?

“You could just stand there with your mouth open and blink at her as if she's out of her mind.”

Got that covered already, thanks.

“Just be yourself. You're under oath, after all.”

Gee. Thanks.
I make sure my mouth is closed, and turn away for a moment to collect myself. A functionary brings me a fresh glass of water. Perfect timing, and a perfect excuse. “Ma'am—” I try to steal a discreet peek at her nameplate, but she's pushed her HCD against the back of it and angled it away. I bet she did that on purpose, too. She's got a mean glitter in her eye. I take a breath and get the outrage out of my voice and a dry kind of mockery that served me well as a drill instructor in. “Ma'am, are you suggesting that it would have been a more prudent course of action
not
to attempt to prevent a ten-hundred-ton nickel-iron asteroid from slamming into Lake Ontario?”

It's not just titters this time. Somebody in the African section is roaring with laughter, and I see the Mexican delegates eye each other and grin. Yeah, nobody likes the Americans: not even their next-door neighbors.

I wonder if it really used to be different, when the border was unguarded, or if that's just more cheerful propaganda. History's not my strong point, except the bits I've lived through, but I do remember the jokes from my childhood about how Canada wouldn't let the northern U.S. states join during the famine because of the expense of putting French on all their road signs. Of course, Maman also claimed that the reason Quebec never seceded was the expense of taking all the English
off
. I suspect she may have been pulling our legs.

I didn't get my sense of humor from my father, that's for sure. “In any case, my point stands, ma'am. Sir.”—with a nod to the Chinese representative in the brown suit, who is leaning forward again—“With all due respect, the Benefactor tech is not weaponized. There is to the best of my knowledge no intent to weaponize it, on Canada's side—”

Valens is on to me. He's shooting me that look, the one that means
shut up while your tongue's still in your head, Casey.
I ignore him, of course, blithe spirit that I am.

“—and in point of fact, the nanite infestation is not under Canadian authority.”

Dead silence, then, so quiet that I can hear the click of plastic as the American's fingers trigger the holographic keypad of her hip. I could almost swear I can hear the whisper of cloth as one of the guys at the Canadian table closes his eyes and leans back in his chair.

“Would you care to expand on that, Master Warrant Officer?”

The look on Fred's face promises me a stretching on the rack and possibly a slow roasting over coals, but Richard's amused pleasure in the back of my head means more. In any case, all this skullduggery and manipulation works two ways. And if Riel wants an excuse for an effective world government, and a common concern and worry . . . well, Dick's big enough to give it to her. And scary enough to keep everybody busy for quite awhile, at least until a generation grows up that doesn't know how to live without him.

“It's controlled by the artificial intelligence known, somewhat inaccurately, as the Feynman AI.”

“Which is a Canadian construct.”

“He's not a subject of the commonwealth, sir.”

Silence. Longer, this time, and it's the tall, mop-haired Russian delegate who straightens his spine and speaks. “Then what are his affiliations? Who owns that machine?”

It's all I can do to keep the grin off the corners of my lips. “He's self-determined, sir. And as for his loyalties—I wouldn't care to speculate. I would suggest that you ask him yourself. He's prepared to testify under oath.”

Three beats before the uproar: I know because I'm counting. It washes over me like surf. It sounds like surf, rising and falling, so many voices they amount to white noise. It breaks around the podium, the beautiful acoustics of the assembly hall amplifying and echoing every voice.

I'm absolutely unprepared, once order is restored, for the Chinese delegate to give me that smug little smile across twenty meters of open space and say, “On a more immediate note, Master Warrant Officer. Perhaps we could discuss the matter of your criminal record now?”

Gabriel Jean-Marie Benoit François Castaign was getting just a little tired of this
particular
bête noire. Specifically, the one where he—with all his brains and all his brawn, fifteen years and a captain's commission in the Canadian Army, unarmed combat and firearms instructor certification, two master's degrees and five languages and eleven years of practical experience as a single parent—was left powerless, sitting on his middle-aged ass while a woman he loved faced dragons he couldn't do a damned thing about.

The blankets were wrinkled and sweaty. His jumpsuit was carving creases in his skin. And he leaned forward on the edge of his bunk, his eyes locked on the real-time holofeed that Richard was projecting over his interface, and cursed. He knew how to do it by now, how to watch and love and feel them slip out of his hands like so many fistfuls of feathers, lifted on a gentle breeze. He knew how to grant them the dignity of not looking down, and not looking away from the pain. He knew how to lend strength when he couldn't do the fighting himself.

He'd done it for his wife, Geniveve, and after he'd buried her he'd done it for Genie when Genie was dying by centimeters from cystic fibrosis. He hadn't done it when Leah sailed the
Calgary
into Earth's atmosphere with the brittle unholy courage that only an adolescent could muster—
C'est la raison que nous les envoyons pour mourir dans la guerre, dans le cas òu tu ne le savais pas
—because Gabe couldn't reach Leah. But Jenny could, and Jenny had stood in his place, and Gabe had been there for Jen. As he'd done it before, again, and again, and again.

But, he was tired of it. He said it to himself, sitting motionless on the edge of his bunk, his feet dangling, the cold metal edge of the rack cutting the backs of his thighs and his hands clenching and unclenching on the blankets. He thought it as he leaned forward and watched Jenny answer those invasive questions with dignity and aplomb that he knew had to be borrowed at loanshark rates against that night, against tomorrow.

Je suis fatigué lui.

He needed to be there. Even without the ability to stand beside her on that stage and squeeze her hand behind the podium, he needed to be in the room. Jenny was a professional; she was cool, and collected, and gracious: the picture of a warrior who has lived long enough to learn both honor and its price.

The Chinese
fils de putain
was coming after her like a mangy feral dog, and no matter how well she was handling it, Gabriel would have liked to wring his neck instead of the dark wool blankets. “I understand,” the man in the mahogany suit said, “that there are arrests for prostitution and possession of drugs that are not mentioned in your military records. Would you care to explain why those records were purged?”

The speaker kept leaning over to confer with a jowly middle-aged man in a Chinese uniform.
That must be General Shijie.