Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

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WORLDWIRED

Elizabeth Bear

Acknowledgments

It takes a lot of people to write a novel. This one would not have existed without the assistance of my

very good friends and first readers (on and off the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction,

Fantasy, and Horror)—especially but not exclusively Kathryn Allen, Chris Coen, Jaime Voss, James

Stevens-Arce, Michael Curry, Ruth Nestvold, Chris Manucy, Bonnie Freeman, Holly McDowell, Ejner

Fulsang, Larisa Walk, John Tremlett, Amanda Downum, and Leah Bobet. I am also indebted to Stella

Evans, M.D., to whom I owe whatever bits of the medical science and neurology are accurate; Peter

Watts, Ph.D., for assistance with questions of biology; M.Cpl. S. K. S. Perry (Canadian Forces), Lt.

Penelope K. Hardy (U.S. Navy), and Capt. Beth Coughlin (U.S. Army), without whom my portrayal of

military life would have been even more wildly fantastical; Leonid Korogodski and Claris Cates-Smith

Ryan for linguistic assistance; engineer Catherine Morrison and recovering biologist Jeremy Tolbert for

fielding questions about rising sea levels, alien microbiology, and decontamination procedures; safety

engineer Wendy S. Delmater; Meredith L. Patterson, linguist and computer geek, for assistance with

interspecies semiotics; Melinda Goodin for Australian Rules English assistance; Stephen Shipman, for

AI geekery; Chelsea Polk and Kellie Matthews for bolstering my knowledge of the native music of

Soviet Canuckistan; Celia Marsh for emergency, just-in-time delivery of vintage Kate and Anna

McGarrigle; Steven Brust and Caliann Graves, for advice and tolerance; Dena Landon, Sarah Monette,

and Kelly Morisseau, francophones extraordinaire, upon whom may be blamed any correctness in the

Québecois—especially the naughty bits; my agent, Jennifer Jackson, my copyeditor, Faren Bachelis, and

my editor, Anne Groell, for too many reasons to enumerate; and to Kit Kindred, who is patient with the

foibles of novelism.

For the sake of accuracy, I should note that in the interests of drama, my United Nations bears about the

same resemblance to the real one that an episode of Perry Mason bears to an actual criminal proceeding.

The failures, of course, are my own.

ALSO BY ELIZABETH BEAR

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HAMMERED

SCARDOWN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Bear shares a birthday with Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, and very narrowly avoided being named

after Peregrine Took. This, coupled with a tendency to read the dictionary as a child, doomed her early

to penury, intransigence, friendlessness, and the writing of speculative fiction. She was born in Hartford,

Connecticut, and grew up in central Connecticut, with the exception of two years (which she was too

young to remember very well) spent in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, in the last house with electricity

before the Canadian border. She attended the University of Connecticut, where her favorite classes were

geology and archaeology, although she majored in English and anthropology.

After six years in southern Nevada, she is currently in the process of relocating to Michigan, where

messages from travelers report trees and snow.

Elizabeth has been at various times employed at: a stable, a self-funded campus newspaper, the

microbiology department of a 1,000-bed inner-city hospital, a media monitoring service, a quick-print

shop, an archaeological survey company, a doughnut shop (third shift), a commercial roofing material

sales company, and an import-export business, with a somewhat flexible attitude toward paperwork

among her achievements.

She's a second-generation Swede, a third-generation Ukrainian, and a third-generation Hutzul, with

some Irish, English, Scots, Cherokee, and German thrown in for leavening. Elizabeth Bear is her real

name, but not all of it. Her dogs outweigh her, and she is much beset by her cats.

A DF Books NERDs Release

WORLDWIRED

A Bantam Spectra Book / December 2005

Published by

Bantam Dell

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A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of

Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 0-553-90212-1

www.bantamdell.com

v1.0

To Kit

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Editor's Note

BOOK ONE

BOOK TWO

BOOK THREE

About the Author

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Also by Elizabeth Bear

Preview for Carnival

Copyright Page

Editor's Note

In the interests of presenting a detailed personal perspective on a crucial moment in history, we have

taken the liberty of rendering Master Warrant Officer Casey's interviews—as preserved in the Yale

University New Haven archives—in narrative format. Changes have been made in the interests of

clarity, but the words, however edited, are her own.

The motives of the other individuals involved are not as well documented, although we have had the

benefit of our unique access to extensive personal records left by Col. Frederick Valens. The events as

presented herein are accurate: the drives behind them must always remain a matter of speculation,

except in the case of Dr. Dunsany—who left us comprehensive journals—and “Dr.” Feynman, who kept

frequent and impeccable backups.

Thus, what follows is a historical novel, of sorts. It is our hope that this more intimate annal than is

usually seen will serve to provide future students with a singular perspective on the roots of the

civilization we are about to become.

— Patricia Valens, Ph.D.

Jeremy Kirkpatrick, Ph.D.

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10:30 AM

27 September 2063

HMCSSMontreal

Earth orbit

I've got a starship dreaming. And there it is.Leslie Tjakamarra leaned both hands on the thick crystal of

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the Montreal 's observation portal, the cold of space seeping into his palms, and hummed a snatch of

song under his breath. He couldn't tell how far away the alien spaceship was—at least, the fragment he

could see when he twisted his head and pressed his face against the port. Earthlight stained the cage-

shaped frame blue-silver, and the fat doughnut of Forward Orbital Platform was visible through the

gaps, the gleaming thread of the beanstalk describing a taut line downward until it disappeared in brown-

tinged atmosphere over Malaysia. “Bloody far,” he said, realizing he'd spoken out loud only when he

heard his own voice. He scuffed across the blue-carpeted floor, pressed back by the vista on the other

side of the glass.

Someone cleared her throat behind him. He turned, although he was unwilling to put his back to the

endless fall outside. The narrow-shouldered crew member who stood just inside the hatchway met him

eye to eye, the black shape of a sidearm strapped to her thigh commanding his attention. She raked one

hand through wiry salt-and-pepper hair and shook her head. “Or too close for comfort,” she answered

with an odd little smile. “That's one of the ones Elspeth calls the birdcages—”

“Elspeth?”

“Dr. Dunsany,” she said. “You're Dr. Tjakamarra, the xenosemiotician.” She mispronounced his name.

“Leslie,” he said. She stuck out her right hand, and Leslie realized that she wore a black leather glove on

the left. “You're Casey,” he blurted, too startled to reach out. She held her hand out until he recovered

enough to shake. “I didn't recognize—”

“It's cool.” She shrugged in a manner entirely unlike a living legend, and gave him a crooked, sideways

grin, smoothing her dark blue jumpsuit over her breasts with the gloved hand. “We're all different out of

uniform. Besides, it's nice to be looked at like real people, for a change. Come on. The pilots' lounge has

a better view.”

She gestured him away from the window; he caught himself shooting her sidelong glances, desperate not

to stare. He fell into step beside her as she led him along the curved ring of the Montreal 's habitation

wheel, the arc rising behind and before them even though it felt perfectly flat under his feet.

“You'll get used to it,” Master Warrant Officer Casey said, returning his looks with one of her own. It

said she had accurately judged the reason he trailed his right hand along the chilly wall. “Here we are—”

She braced one rubber-soled foot against the seam between corridor floor and corridor wall, and expertly

spun the handle of a thick steel hatchway with her black-gloved hand. “Come on in. Step lively; we don't

stand around in hatchways shipboard.”

Leslie followed her through, turning to dog the door as he remembered his safety lectures, and when he

turned back Casey had moved into the middle of a chamber no bigger than an urban apartment's living

room. The awe in his throat made it hard to breathe. He hoped he was keeping it off his face.

“There,” Casey said, stepping aside, waving him impatiently forward again. “That's both of them. The

one on the ‘left' is the shiptree. The one on the ‘right' is the birdcage.”

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Everyone on the planet probably knew that by now. She was babbling, Leslie realized, and the small

evidence of her fallibility—and her own nervousness—did more to ease the pressure in his chest than

her casual friendliness could have. You're acting like a starstruck teenager, he reprimanded himself, and

managed to grin at his own foolishness as he shuffled forward, his slipperlike ship-shoes whispering

over the carpet.

Then he caught sight of the broad sweep of windows beyond and his personal awe for the woman in blue

was replaced by something visceral . He swallowed, throat dry.

The Montreal 's habitation wheel spun grandly, creating an imitation of gravity that held them, feet-

down, to the “floor.” Leslie found himself before the big round port in the middle of the wall, hands

pressed to either rim as if to keep himself from tumbling through the crystal like Alice through the

looking glass. The panorama rotated like a merry-go-round seen from above. Beyond it, the soft blue

glow of the wounded Earth reflected the sun. The planet's atmosphere was fuzzed brown like smog in an

inversion layer, the sight enough to send Leslie's knuckle to his mouth. He bit down and tore his gaze

away with an effort, turning it on the two alien ships floating “overhead.”

The ship on perspective-right was the enormous, gleaming-blue birdcage, swarming with ten-meter

specks of mercury—made tiny by distance—that flickered from cage-bar to cage-bar, as vanishingly

swift and bright as motes in Leslie's eye.

The ship on perspective-left caught the earthlight with the gloss peculiar to polished wood or a smooth

tree bole, a mouse-colored column twisted into shapes that took Leslie's breath away. The vast hull

glittered with patterned, pointillist lights in cool-water shades. They did not look so different from the

images and designs that Leslie had grown up with, and he fought a shiver, glancing at the hawk-intent

face of MWO Casey.

“Elspeth—Dr. Dunsany—said you had a theory,” she said without glancing over.

He returned his attention to the paired alien spaceships, peeling his eyes away from Genevieve Casey

only with an effort. “I've had the VR implants—”

“Richard told me,” she said, with a sly sideways grin.

“ Richard?The AI?” And silly not to have expected that either. It's a whole new road you're walking. A

whole different sort of journey, farther away from home than even Cambridge, when there was still

more of an England rather than less.

“Yes. You'll meet him, I'm sure. He doesn't like to intrude on the new kids until they're comfortable with

their wetware. And unless you've got the full 'borg”—she lightly touched the back of her head—“you

won't have to put up with his running patter. Most of the time.” She tilted her head up and sideways, a

wry look he didn't think was for him.

She's talking to the AI right now.Cool shiver across his shoulders; the awe was back, with company.

Leslie forced himself not to stare, frowning down at the bitten skin of his thumb. “Yes. I spoke to Dr.

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Dunsany regarding my theories . . .”

“Dr. Tjakamarra—”

“Leslie.”

“Leslie.” Casey coughed into her hand. “Ellie thought you were on to something, or she wouldn't have

asked you up here. We get more requests in a week than Yale does in a year—”

“I'm aware of that.” Her presence still stunned him. Genevieve Casey. The first pilot. Leaned up against

the window with me like kids peering off the observation deck of the Petronas Towers. He gathered his

wits and forced himself to frown. “You've had no luck talking to them, have you?”

“Plenty of math. Nothing you'd call conversation. They don't seem to understand please and thank you.”

“I expected that.” Familiar ground. Comfortable, even. “I'm afraid if I'm right, talking to them is

hopeless.”

“Hopeless?” She turned, leaning back on her heels.

“Yes. You see, I don't think they talk at all.”

Leslie Tjakamarra's not a big man. He's not a young one either, though I wouldn't want to try to guess

his age within five years on either side. He's got one of those wiry, weathered frames I associate with

Alberta cattlemen and forest rangers, sienna skin paler, almost red, inside the creases beside glittering

eyes and on the palms of big thick-nailed hands. He doesn't go at all with the conservative charcoal

double-breasted suit, pinstriped with biolume, which clings to his sinewy shoulders in as professional an

Old London tailoring job as I've seen. When London was evacuated, a lot of the refugees found

themselves in Sydney, in Vancouver—and in Toronto.

God rest their souls.

He shoots me those sidelong glances like they do, trying to see through the glove to the metal hand,

trying to see through the jumpsuit to the hero underneath.

I hate to disappoint him, but that hero had a hair appointment she never came back from. “Well,” I say,

to fill up his silence. “That'll make your job easier, then, won't it?” What do you think of them apples,

Dick?

Richard grins inside my head, bony hands spread wide and beating like a pigeon's wings through air.

The man's brains would jam if you tied his hands down. Of course, since he's intangible, that would be a

trick. “That's got the air of a leading question about it.” He scrubs his palms on the thighs of his virtual

corduroys and stuffs them into his pockets, white shirt stretched taut across his narrow chest, his image

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fading as he “steps back,” limiting his usage of my implants. “I'll get in on it when he talks to Ellie. No

point in spoiling his chance to appreciate the view. I'll eavesdrop, if that's okay.”

It might be the same asinine impulse that makes English speakers talk loudly to foreigners that moves

me to smile inwardly and stereotype Dr. Tjakamarra's smooth, educated accent into Australian Rules

English. No worries, mate. Fair dinkum.

Richard shoots me an amused look. “Ouch,” he says, and flickers out like an interrupted hologram.

Dr. Tjakamarra grins, broad lips uncovering tea-stained teeth like a mouth full of piano keys, and

scratches his cheek with knuckles like an auto mechanic's. He wears his hair long, professorial, slicked

back into hard steel-gray waves. “Or that much more difficult, if you prefer.” His voice is younger than

the rest of him, young as that twinkle in his eye. “Talking isn't the only species of communication, after

all.”

He presses his hand flat against the glass again and peers between his fingers as if trying to gauge the

size of the ships that float out there, the way you might measure a tree on the horizon against your

thumb. His gaze keeps sliding down to the dust-palled Earth, his eyes impassive, giving nothing away.

“How bad is it in Sydney?” I press my steel hand to my lips, as if to shove the words back in with glove

leather. Tjakamarra's head comes up like a startled deer's. I pretend I don't see.

“We heard it,” he says, as his hand falls away from the glass. “We heard it in Sydney.” He steps back,

turns to face me although I'm still giving him my shoulder. He cups both hands and brings them together

with a crack that makes me jump.

“Is that really what it sounded like?”

“More or less—” A shrug. “We couldn't feel the tremors. It wasn't all that loud, fifteen thousand

kilometers away; I would have thought it'd be a sustained rumble, like the old footage of nuclear bombs.

You ever hear of Coober Pedy?”

“Never.”

“There were bomb tests near there. Over a hundred years ago, but I know people who knew people who

were there. They said the newsreels lied, the sound effect they used was dubbed in later.” He laces his

hands together in the small of his back and lifts his chin to look me in the eye, creases linking his thick,

flat nose to the corners of his mouth.

Surreal fucking conversation, man. “So what does a nuclear explosion sound like, Les?”

His lips thin. He holds his hands apart again and swings them halfway but doesn't clap. “Like the biggest

bloody gunshot you ever did hear. Or like a meteorite hitting the planet, fifteen thousand kilometers

away.”

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He's talking so he doesn't have to look. I recognize the glitter in his dark brown eyes, darker even than

mine. It took me, too, the first time I looked down and saw all that gorgeous blue and white mottled with

sick dull beige like cancer.

It takes all of us like that.

He licks his lips and looks carefully at the Benefactor ships, not the smeared globe behind them. “The

shot heard round the world. Isn't that what the Americans call the first shot fired in their colonial revolt?”

“Sounds about right.”

He reminds me of my grandfather Zeke Kirby, my mother's father, the full-blooded one; he's got that

same boiled-leather twist of indestructibility, but my grandfather was an ironworker, not a professor. His

mouth moves again, like he's trying to shape words that won't quite come out right, and finally he just

shakes his head and looks down. “Big universe out there.”

“Bloody big,” I answer, a gentle tease. He smiles out of the corner of his mouth; we're going to be

friends. “Come on,” I say. “That gets depressing if you stare at it. I'll take you to meet Ellie if you

promise not to tell her the thing about the bomb.”

He falls into step beside me. I don't have to shorten my strides to let him keep up. “She lose somebody

in the—in that?”

“We all lost somebody.” I shake my head.

“What is it, then?”

“It would give her nightmares. Come on.”

Toronto Evacuation Zone

Ontario, Canada

Thursday 27 September 2063

1300 hours

Richard habitually took refuge in numbers, so it troubled him that with regard to the Impact all he had

was approximations. The number of dead had never been counted. Their names had never been

accurately listed. Their families would never be notified; in many cases, their bodies would never be

found.

The population of Niagara and Rochester, New York, had been just under three million people, although

the New York coastline of Lake Ontario was mostly rural, vineyards and cow pasture. The northern rim

of the lake, however, had been the most populated place in Canada: Ontario's “Golden Horseshoe,” the

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Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

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