“They might call it hearsay.” Riel couldn't quite stop the amused snort. “But it's never too early to start establishing precedent. You realize if he testifies, that means the planet is a person, more or less?”
“Yes.”
Which, Riel realized, was Dunsany's intention all along. “You'll lead this team?”
“I'm—” Riel almost heard her swallow the words, not qualified. “I'm an M.D. A shitty one, but sometimes shitty is better than nothing. I'll do what I have to do.”
Late December 2062
HMCSS Montreal
I'll say this for Wainwright. When she chooses a side, she doesn't screw around. Acting on Gabe's belief that Ramirez was the sole saboteur — Richard calls it the Lone Programmer Theory, which apparently is a joke — the captain releases her crew to normal duty, although she assigns every member a buddy with whom he eats, sleeps, bathes, and goes to the head.
It's not a bad stopgap measure, as stopgap measures go.
On the twenty-third, the Benefactor ships start signaling.
Dit. Dit. Dah.
Dit. Dit. Dah.
Radio frequencies, and pulsed signals through the nanotech. Richard filters it after the first ten minutes, merci à Dieu. Dit. Dit. Dah.
What the hell does it mean?
“I don't know,” he answers. “But the last pip is twice as long as the first two, so I'm going to presume it's math and see if I can establish a dialogue.”
Keep me posted.
“I will.”
How are things on Earth?
“Bad,” he says. “Proceeding.” And leaves us to our vigil.
After the third day, it blends into a sort of nightmare. The pills keep Patty and me half alert. We trade off six-hour shifts and sleep when we can, often curled in a observer's chair on the corner of the bridge. We eat what's set before us with wooden mouths. Sometime on Christmas Eve, Gabe pronounces the Montreal's systems clean, and Richard concurs.
Dit. Dit. Dit. Dit. Daaahhhh.
One plus one plus one plus one is four.
Then Gabe walks off the bridge and I don't see him for eight or ten hours. When he comes back, he's clean and I hate him, until Wainwright orders me to the showers.
“If they try anything,” she says, “Patty is here. And chances are there's not a damned thing we could do about it anyway.”
Dah. Dah. Daaahhhh.
Two plus two is four.
Wake me up when they get to the square root of negative one, Richard. Soldiering makes you damned good at waiting. And at least they want to establish a dialogue, instead of pitching rocks. Or whatever.
That's something. And there's hot water down there with my name on it, and right now that's the only thing that matters.
Dit. Dit. Dit. Dit. Dit. Dit.
Dah. Dah. Dah.
Yeah, and like that. I'd better hurry in the shower so Patty can get a turn.
I'm toweling off when the second wave of ships shows up.
A different design.
Dit. Dit. Dah.
Richard? Didn't we do this part already?
“Well, there's the odd thing.” A thoughtful pause, and it's really more Alan's voice when he comes back. “They seem to be signaling not us, but the first wave of ships.”
I see.
What does that mean?
“I wish I knew.”
A clean jumpsuit is like a personal favor from God. I seal it up to my throat; the damned thing has somehow gotten too big. “Richard, make me eat more.”
And Richard-for-real, not Richard-flavored-with-Alan. I'm getting used to his — malleable personality. “I'll try.”
Late December 2062
Somewhere in eastern North America
It was worse than Elspeth could have possibly imagined, and she was glad that Genie had gone to a shelter for displaced military dependents in Vancouver. PanMalaysia, Japan, the European Union, and United Africa sent doctors, nurses, troops in blue U.N. helmets that made her think of Jenny in the moments when she thought.
She lost track of where she was. What city, what nation, which way east lay. She ate when someone peeled her gory gloves away and shoved food in front of her, and she got on a plane or a truck when someone told her to, and she slept when someone pushed her over, and she lost more than she saved.
No finesse. No skill. Butchery. Oceans of blood. They died on the operating table and they died from the nanosurgery treatments and they just died for no reason at all, sat down in corners and stared and fell over, gone. It amazed her that there were any wounded at all, given the scale of the catastrophe, until she realized that some of the casualties had been hundreds of kilometers from the impact. And still she lost more than she saved.
She leaned on the edge of a steel table during a moment's lull and breathed out slowly, controlled, the smell of antiseptic churning in her empty gut. I'm a fucking psychiatrist. What the hell am I doing here?
“I'm a forensic pathologist.” Elspeth looked up, into the desperation-reddened eyes of an Oriental woman about her own age who wore a dust-clogged surgical mask. “Damned if I know.”
“I didn't realize I was talking out loud.”
“I'm amazed that I can talk. Kuai Hua.”
“Elspeth Dunsany.”
The woman's eyes widened a touch, as if adrenaline jerked her awake. “Really?”
Elspeth sighed and turned tiredly away as stretcher-bearers staggered in, but they walked past her station to the back of the room. Burn victim. Not mine, thank God. And then a rush of shame at the thought. “My moment of infamy was a long time ago.”
“No—” Dr. Hua stopped, confused. “I heard your name from a Canadian Army doc named Frederick Valens.”
“You know Valens?”
“Hell. He said to keep an eye out for you. Last I saw him he was over in the triage shed.”
“Oh.” Oh. “Kuai, could you cover for me for a second?”
“Don't worry,” the other doctor said, exhaustion flattening her voice. “We won't run out while you're gone.”
Fifteen meters from surgery to triage, and the unnatural cold settled into Elspeth's lungs like a fluid, grit bouncing off her goggles in a bitter wind. Blood froze and cracked from her gloves as she turned them inside out and tossed them into a red-bag container by the door of the triage shed. Shed: a Quonset hut on an unevenly poured foundation, ice glittering on a roof like the metal rib cage of some long-dead beast. Elspeth pushed the double-hung rubber door open with her shoulder, blinking in the brightness of the artificial lights as she ducked inside.
Valens was easy to find, even with a surgical cap hiding his distinctive silver hair. He looked up as Elspeth entered, and when she tugged her mask down he got up from a crouch amid the rows of stretchers and the walking wounded seated on the floor and started moving toward her, his catlike stroll reduced to a dragging stagger.
“The prime minister has people looking for you. Don't you check your messages?” He didn't hold a hand out, and she didn't offer hers.
“I haven't exactly had time. What do you want?”
He blinked, voice grinding as if the words were buried somewhere very deep, and he had to go after them. “She wants you at the provisional capital in Vancouver. And from there, the Montreal.”
“What good am I there?”
He snorted. “Congratulations, Elspeth. You, Charlie Forster, Paul Perry, and Gabe Castaign are suddenly the world's foremost practical experts in communicating with nonhuman intelligences. The United Nations has demanded Canada assign you to their contact team.”