So what's the problem? Patty undogs the hatch and we step inside. She looks exhausted, her eyes bruised and black. One of the sublight pilots is in his chair, and two security guards just like the last two stand in the back corners of the bridge, as unobtrusive as anybody in body armor and bearing weapons can be. Their sidearms make my flesh crawl, and I scrub my right hand over the holster of my own to make sure the strap's snapped down. “Hello, Patty.”
“Master Warrant,” she says. “Are you my relief?”
“Go get some sleep, kid. I'll have you rousted in twelve hours or so, okay?”
Richard gestures with his arms, a motion like a circle hung in space. His hands fall and tumble before his chest. “The crew won't survive it.”
If I close my eyes and tilt my head just right, I swear I can smell the burning. But it will work? It's the only thing that might still work? You said there were other ways, before—
“That was before the impact event. We're talking catastrophic damage now, rather than slow decay. We're out of conservative options.” Which is as close as he would ever come to saying I don't see a choice anymore, Jen.
Then forgive me if I don't give a fuck who survives the landing, Dick.
“The other problem is that the Huang Di's computers don't have the processing power to make up the difference. It would take Benefactor-style processors from at least two ships of her size to handle the load. Firewalls and controls; I think I've learned enough about the differences between the Benefactor programming, our protocols, and those of the Chinese. Maybe if we could somehow move the core of the ship tree from Mars to Earth—”
But that's not realistic, is it?
“No.”
Patty nods before she turns for the door. Gabe is already moving toward an interface terminal, affect flat except for the lines at the corners of his mouth. Oh.
Richard, what does this hulk have for lifeboats? I know the answer, more or less. The Montreal's specs are identical to those of the Indefatigable, and I've learned those cold.
“Not enough for what you're thinking.”
I cross to my chair, curl my legs up on it, and watch the white-suited figures crawl over the Montreal's vast golden solar sail. But is her computer core big enough?
“Yes,” he says reluctantly. “It is. I think Min-xue's determined to try it anyway. If we can get her down close to the impact zone, we can make a difference. Mitigate. Which is the best we could do under ideal circumstances. This is not the sort of damage that can ever be — healed. The scars will always be there.”
I press my steel hand to my cheek, taking comfort in the coolness of the metal. I know what you mean.
“Meanwhile,” he continues, “we're still trying to hack into the controls. But it's only a matter of time until security finds him. The Huang Di's not infinite.”
I can't pick out which spacesuit is Wainwright. I wonder if one of the others is one of the saboteurs. Richard, am I safe to go on-line with the Montreal?
“Your nanosurgeons seem to be becoming rather adept at fixing up the neural damage the interface does, but it's awfully soon. And you ripped yourself up pretty good with that last trick. I wouldn't recommend trying that again. You should eat something and take your supplements. And — wait. Jenny. I have news from Riel.”
A reflexive glance at Gabe. He catches it, starts toward me. I wonder if Richard's giving me a second to brace, or if Riel is slow relaying what she has to say. What?
“Genie and Elspeth are alive.”
“Yes!” I'm out of the chair as if catapulted — easier in the light gravity of the habitation wheel than it would be on Earth, and I hit Gabe chest-high and wrap my arms around him, squeaking like a girl a third my age.
Undignified.
Who gives a shit?
“They're okay, they're okay, they're okay—”
Breathless, wordless, he squeezes me tight.
“Jenny.” Richard, still serious.
Ah, shit. Qu'est-ce que le fuck ici maintenant?
“She's sending this via me so you'll know it's legit. She has a job for you and Captain Wainwright.”
Richard—
“Yes.”
Beijing? He doesn't have to answer. He's already answered it all. Revenge. Tell her we'll take out the Huang Di—that's not a lie. Remove the threat. We can — shit. Richard, what if you release the physics behind the stardrive worldwide? That should shake some things up. Maybe a few more people will make it off world before the end.
“I'd be the first AI to win a second Nobel Prize. I can do it. It will — you're right, if everybody has the stardrive tech, it removes some of the excuse for China and Canada to batter each other back into the stone age. Complicates the equation.” His dry tone hides worry. I can see it in the gull-wing arch of his brow, the way his long fingers move like a bird's feathers grasping the wind. For no reason at all, I remember the eagle at the rehab center and the chrome steel binding her wing together. Gone, too, now, where all good things go.
Is this extortion, Richard? Riel is holding Genie and Ellie hostage so I'll kill a few million Chinese civilians for her?
A long silence, while Gabe holds me tight enough to cramp my breath in my lungs, his chin resting on the top of my head. I draw strength and warmth out of him as if they come up through a straw.
I think that flutter of color in my head is Alan's equivalent of a sigh. You never quite get to talk to just Richard anymore. “She's looking out for the future in her own way. You convinced her we need to get where they're going. And I think the last twenty-four hours nicely demonstrate why.”
Why do we need to go take somebody else's planet if we can fix our own?
“They'll take it anyway, Jenny. And we don't know there's anybody out there.”
This removes the moral high ground. Remember when you asked me how much I trusted you, Dick?
“Yes.”
The Benefactors don't have AIs, you said. You've been keeping an eye on them. Do you think you have better control over this tech on a program level than they do?
“Yes again.” He's almost gone — visually, I mean. Just a voice in my head that might almost be the voice of my conscience, or the voice of my will.
I trust you a hell of a lot, I say. Richard's smart enough to keep his mouth shut — if you can call it that — while I disentangle myself from Gabe, give him an extra squeeze, and walk across the bridge to sit down in my chair. Let me know when Wainwright and the others are inside.
There's no right choice, is there? There never was. Not with Peacock. Not with Nell. Not now. Sometimes there's no choice at all.
“What are you going to do?”
What I have to. Richard, see that that data gets out?
“I will.”
Hey, Richard—The chair molds to me like an old friend. I don't call Gabe over to help with the interfaces yet. I want to just sit here quietly and watch him work for as long as I can. There's an eagle feather in my pocket and resolution like a fist clenching in my chest, and on some soul-deep level I'm dead happy I don't know what comes next. Does Wainwright know our orders yet?