Free Worldwired by Elizabeth Bear Page B

Impact survivors,” Wainwright said, lacing her fingers behind her back and pausing in front of a holoscreen that showed a space-suited inspection crew crawling over the
Montreal
's hull. “They're all volunteers. And they'd already had the therapeutic level of nanosurgeon infection. Like Miss Castaign. Charlie—Dr. Forster—”
    “Everybody calls him Charlie.”
    She snorted, sounding honestly amused. “You think I still harbor adversarial feelings for you, Dick?”
    “I wouldn't care to speculate.” Dryly enough that she glanced up at his disembodied voice again, and looked down, shaking her head. Richard continued, “What about Charlie?”
    “He thinks it may be safer to handle the implants in two stages, actually. That if the body has already learned to adapt to the Benefactor tech, it takes the wetwiring process better.”
    “It's a heck of an insult to the system. And a handful of cadets isn't a really useful sample.” He paused, watching as Wainwright unbraided her fingers and sighed. “And you didn't really want to argue with an AI about the morals of turning teenagers into cybernetic soldiers, did you?”
    “No,” she said. She turned around and leaned against one of the few unscreened bits of wall, a lumpy protruding bulkhead that covered a main strut. “You know that repair you hacked together after the logic bomb went off last year?”
    “Intimately. I still don't trust it.”
    “And you've set up a nanonetwork to replace it.”
    “Yes.”
    “I want hard lines, too. A whole fresh structure. On the off chance something happens to the worldwire.”
    “You want me to disassemble the
Montreal
's nervous system? I'll have to take it offline to do that.”
    “Will it impair the ship's functionality?”
    “No,” he said. “We'll still have the nanonetwork. It'll only impair redundancy.”
    “For how long?”
    “Six weeks. Maybe as little as a month.”
    She folded her arms. “I'll live with it.”
    “You're thinking about the
Huang Di
.” The Chinese logic bomb had come uncomfortably close to destroying the
Montreal
, and they'd managed to purge the
Huang Di
's core before Canada claimed her as salvage. A pity: Richard would have liked to get his hands on that data. The Chinese control of the nanonetworks—and their programming skill—was still superior to the Canadians'.
    “I'm also thinking about arranging things so the
Montreal
's pilots can fly the ship through the worldwire,” she said. “Rather than having to be physically wired into the chair on the bridge.”
    “Captain.” He made a sound that would have been clearing his throat if he were human. “Weren't we just having a discussion about how you still harbor adversarial feelings for me?”
    “
You
may have.” Her mouth worked, approximating a smile.
    “The original purpose of the hard-line interface for the pilots was to prevent the AI from seizing control of the ship.”
    “I know.” She turned her back on the room as if she could turn her back on Richard, as well. She took three slow breaths before she finished calmly, “But someday you may need to.”
    A long pause. “Captain,” he said, when her pulse had dropped to something like its normal range. “I am honored by your trust.”
    She laughed, a short harsh bark, and touched the frame on the nearest holodisplay, smudging it with her fingertips. “Trust? If you want to call it that.”
     
    1030 hours
Saturday September 29, 2063

HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
     
    I pause just inside the hatchway to the captain's tasteful blue and gray ready room. “Casey. I had a feeling I'd be seeing you before too long. How did it go with Castaign?”
    “It went,” I say, and she leaves it alone.
    Wainwright sits in a floor-mounted chair behind a desk bolted to the wall. Holomonitors framed to look like windows cover the bulkheads, showing all directions. The most arresting view is aft, the long silvery dragonfly length of the
Montreal
stretching from the habitation wheel