Free Worldwired by Elizabeth Bear Page A

year had changed him, and not in comforting ways.
Should my loyalty to my country cease because she is mastered by selfish men?
    “I knew translating the Yevtushenko for you was a bad idea. Min-xue, you can do China more good in the long run if you stand with us, and try to bring her current leaders down.”
    That is neither obedience nor devotion,
Min-xue replied, his eyes closed, his palms pressed to the raspy cinder-block wall. But it wasn't obedience and devotion that had brought him to this place, either.
I will testify, Richard. Surely that's enough. And I can warn you that my countrymen won't give up so easily. They are hungry, and they are frightened of the worldwire, and they have ten thousand chosen men and women en route to the colony planet, and no way to call them back.
    They'll come back with another gambit. They have no choice. There's an expression, Richard, about men with nothing to lose. I think you have it in English, too.
    The AI frowned, an expression Min-xue felt more than saw, and refused to be distracted. “What if I told you that I can probably get you a shot at the
Vancouver
's pilot's chair, when she's commissioned?”
    The prime minister would never permit that.
    “The prime minister has exactly two trained Canadian pilots left. You're in a better position to bargain than you think.”
    The pilot's chair.
Min-xue hushed his thoughts, keeping them from Richard's hearing, a trick that had mostly to do with simply willing not to be overheard. In the final analysis, he did not wish to die for his crimes, although he had been prepared. But a Canadian girl had died in his place, and there were some who might argue that as such, it was his debt to live in hers.
If you can arrange it, I will bargain,
he answered.
But you must see to it that there is a trial, and that I have the chance to testify.
    “I'll speak to Casey,” Richard said. “We'll do what we can.”
     
    0900 hours
Saturday September 29, 2063

HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
     
    Some twelve hours later, Richard's focus was abruptly returned to the captain's ready room when Jaime Wainwright lifted her head, stared directly at the nearest security mote, and said, “I know you're up there, Dick. I can hear you breathing.”
    He spawned a thread just to deal with the captain, and then he laughed out loud, choosing his speakers to make the voice seem to come from the place where she was looking. “Neat trick, that. Can you feel me looking at you, too?”
    She glanced down at her sinewy hands. “And now you're going to tell me that ‘up there' is a subjective term.”
    “And that I always am. What can I do for you this morning?”
    She used her flat-spread hands to push herself to her feet and began to pace before she began to speak, her heart rate, skin conductivity, breathing, and a dozen other signs revealing chronic stress. “I wanted to talk to you about our trainees. I presume you've been following my communications with the prime minister with regard to the incoming cadets.”
    “Captain. Would I eavesdrop?”
    “Yes,” she said. She finished a lap and wheeled. Because of the geometry of the
Montreal
's habitation wheel, her circuit of the cramped cabin required acute and obtuse angles rather than the more traditional ninety-degree variety. “And you'd lie about it, too. What do you think of them?”
    “The cadets?”
    “Don't think I don't know you haven't been hovering paternalistically over the lot of them since they went in for nanosurgery. They're all going to make it this time, I hear. No Carver Mallory in this group.”
    “Yes,” Richard said, mocking. “Only one sense-deprived quadriplegic so far, out of eighteen subjects. Such
excellent
odds for all those young people the commonwealth means to modify and train as starship pilots. And don't think I've forgiven you that Genie still has to undergo the full treatment. I know where the request to have her inducted came from.”
    “All of the current cadets are injured