“They only take the best,” Min-xue said, without pride. He chewed his lip, feeling toward an answer that might make sense to Paiyun. “If my performance had not been acceptable—”
“That was not my implication at all.” Paiyun looked down, ostensibly to lay a tile on the board with a soft, magnetized click. China. Min-xue smiled at the boxy red ideogram.
“—no, Paiyun, I know it wasn't.” Min-xue let the smile widen. “It was the adventure, of course. And the idea that I might be good enough to be accepted. And—”
They let the pause hang in the air long enough to be notable. “And?” Gao said. He looked down then, as if afraid he had been rude to the pilot, and turned away to fetch another round of drinks in plastic bubbles.
“I'm a second child,” Min-xue said, enjoying the widening of his tablemates' eyes more than was probably fitting. He gripped the stem of the game board between his feet to keep himself from twisting as he accepted a bubble of cola from Gao. “There wasn't much place for me at home, and there was a girl, you see—”
“Ah.” Paiyun smiled. “This girl, you'll marry her when we go home, then?”
“I don't think so,” Min-xue answered, keeping his face impassive and strong. “I do not think she would like to be married to a pilot.”
“No?”
“No.” Firmly. He bit the valve on the cola and drank deeply. “No, not at all.”
The little group fell silent. Chen shuffled his tiles, click and hiss of steel against other steel.
Min-xue sighed and jerked his thumb toward the bulkhead behind him, and the cold deeps beyond it. “It's not so bad as all that, my noble PanChinese comrades and allies. This is more important. I'm doing this for her and for my sister, I think. So that their children have someplace to go.”
Paiyun blinked, releasing the valve on his own beverage. “You believe the stories, Min-xue? They're… Well. There is gossip, of course. But people have been hungry as long as there has been a China, and — well, there is always gossip.”
Min-xue shook his head. “My family is from Taiwan. It's not just rumors. I know.”
2330 Hours
Thursday 2 November, 2062
HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
My cabin has a porthole in the floor.
That may take some getting used to. But, of course, that's where the “outside” is. The gravity that isn't gravity pushes us away from the center of the wheel. It's probably a perk, although it's a little weird to walk across the optically perfect, quadruple-glazed bubble like standing on the glass floor of the CN Tower and looking all that endless long way down. Except this really is endless, and I balance on a thin sheen of February ice over the unsounded void and the bottomless well of the stars.
I hang my jacket and lie on the bunk, not yet ready to undress completely and pull the webbing over me in case the artificial gravity fails. “Lights down,” I mutter, and they drop by about two-thirds. I could dig out my holistic communications device — useless for communication here, outside the Net, but it's got a few dozen classic novels loaded. Instead I lie on my side and luxuriate in the wonderful sensation of not being in pain. If I edge my head just right, I can catch about a fifth of the moon sliding past. I'm faced the wrong way to see Clarke or Earth, so I close my eyes and pretend I'm home in my own bed. Except I haven't really had either of those things — home or a bed — for years now. Richard?
“I'm always here, Jenny,” he says with the wryness that's his alone. I get up in the blue oval of moonlight and open my locker in the bulkhead. My suit jacket hangs there like a purple worsted scarecrow, headless and sad. There's something in the inside pocket; with my meat hand, I reach inside and draw it forth, bring it over to where the moon can shine through its interlocking barbs. Glass beads press cool and precious against my skin as I hold it up to the light, since I can't burn tobacco here the way I should. Gabe probably violated half a dozen international laws bringing this to me.
Bald eagle feather, beaded to symbolize bloodshed and sorrow, wardenship and loyalty. A warrior's feather. A gift from my murdered sister. And a duty I need to start living up to again. There's something else in the jacket's side pocket — a small, smooth cylindrical bottle. I leave that where it is.
I set about making a place for the feather, and when I'm done I start unbuttoning my shirt, feeling — at last — as if I could rest. I'm interrupted by a knock on the hatch, which I open, and Gabe comes in quickly. We'll both be overly conscious of the emergency bulkheads for a while. I dog the hatch behind him and he doesn't speak, just reaches down and finishes the unbuttoning I started.
Richard is silent as he ever has been while Gabe bends down and brushes his cheek against mine. He smells like the peppermint he must have brushed his teeth with. His lips move on my skin. I lean my forehead against his chest, and for a long moment he just holds me. “Jenny.”
And for some reason it's funny. “When did I become Jenny again, instead of Maker? It was when you married Geniveve, wasn't it?” His long-dead wife, who had almost the same name I do. Don't think I never wondered about that.
“It was.” He shrugs, a big ripple of mountainous shoulders. “I must have been feeling grown up.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “Do you think Valens is on to us yet?”
“I think he's probably reviewing the videotapes,” I say dismissively, pulling away. “Have you talked to the girls?” Gabe's daughters — my goddaughters — and our friend Elspeth are on Earth, hostage for our good behavior. Unstated but true.
“Leah and Genie are fine.” He follows and wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulls me down to sit beside him on the hard narrow bunk. Moonlight, shifting as the Montreal spins, brings out the silver in his hair, washes the color from his cheeks. It's bright in here. “Elspeth is staying with them.” His hand squeezes mine. Morse code, as he passes a message to Richard from Elspeth Dunsany, his creator, through the intermediary of flesh on flesh. “She sends her love.” Gabe's fingers twined in mine tell another story. There is a worm.
An intentional programming glitch in the software that runs my wetware. Makes my metal arm do what my brain — or my combat-wired reflexes — tell it to do. Will do the same for this massive, powerful hulk of a ship. Valens doesn't trust me.
“No,” Richard says. “He knows you hate him. He knows Elspeth would love to see him on the wrong end of a court-martial. And he knows my prototype was famous for not staying within bounds.”
It's what makes you a good AI, Dick.
“It's what makes me an AI at all,” he answered, passing on the fleeting impression of a smile.
Richard. I meant to ask you. Do I need to worry about transmitting my nanite load to anybody else? Like… shit, like a blood-borne disease?
“Can Gabe catch them? Little late to ask now. No — it shouldn't be a problem. They need a controller implant, a chip; they're not designed to act independently. Which reminds me: I'm going to go check your programming again.” He's been over it a few thousand times. “You kids have fun. I won't peek.”
I bet. But he vanishes from my inner eye with a wink, and Gabe pulls me close, a casual touch I've waited a lifetime for.