Scardown-Jenny Casey-2 by Elizabeth Bear Page B

their implants is seamless. It's highly unlikely that there will be any problems.”
    “How soon can your young pilots be ready?”
    He stretched unobtrusively. “Four weeks. If we start the reflex enhancement process immediately. You know my granddaughter is in the program.”
    “How could I miss her?” Holmes tossed expensively styled hair. “I've no quarrel with it. We're not going to get to go ourselves, Fred.”
    “No.” His office was paneled, but laid out for efficiency over intimidation; he hadn't been in it long enough to attract clutter, and years of traveling had kept his threshold of personal belongings low. “I know. I'll die here or on Mars. But we'll give as many a fresh start as we can. And beat the Chinese to brave new worlds as well.”
    “We can catch the generation ships easily. It's the
Huang Di
that worries me.”
    “She's a smaller ship than the
Montreal
. Or the
Calgary
will be.” Valens paused. “How fast are we building these?”
    “As fast as we can. I'm still under pressure from the board, and I mean to spend the money before I lose it. Which is a very real issue—”
    “Do they understand how critical the ecological situation is?”
    “The popular and scientific press are so divided. And people generally want to believe things will turn out for the best. It's how houses get built on sea cliffs and dictators come to power. Half of them think I'm Chicken Little, Fred.”
    “You're
paid
very well to be Chicken Little.”
    Holmes shrugged, untangling a stray feather of silver hair from the pearl stud she wore and tucking it behind her ear. “Fortunately, your girl Casey impressed the hell out of my CEO on that test flight—that bought us a few more months. The
Vancouver
swung into production last week. We're getting assistance from our PanMalaysian trade partners, who are running shit-scared of the PanChinese Alliance, and the raw materials from the asteroid mining program are just barely enough to meet the schedule. The rest of the commonwealth and Australia are on board, and Charlie's breeding up those neurosurgical nanites of his at record speeds.” Holmes, for just a moment, let him see the tired behind her eyes. “We'll salvage something. As much as we can.” She tipped her head to one side, and that strand of hair got away from her again. “We'll be dead before it gets bad, in any case, and money carries a certain—insulative—value.”
    “Get my kids off the planet,” Valens said. “That's all I ask. Beat the Chinese out there.”
    “You know they'll retaliate, Fred. We've got some unsettling data regarding
Le Québec
.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It looks like her crash was not precisely accidental.”
    He was surprised at how fast the words came to his lips. The thought must have already been there—floating, waiting to form. “Sabotage.”
    “There are always people willing to die for obscure political values and points of honor,” she said. “Frankly, I don't see the profit in it. But yes, sabotage.”
    Valens blinked, twining his broad, blunt-tipped fingers together.
There are a lot of things you don't see the profit in, my dear Alberta,
he thought.
That doesn't mean they're all without value.
But he nodded, and he smoothed his face, and he smiled. “We'll just have to make sure nothing like that happens to the
Montreal,
then, won't we?”
     
    0430 Hours

Thursday 9 November, 2062

Roupen's Bistro

Bloor Street

Toronto, Ontario
    I would have gone for five games of pinball, but the pocket I stuffed my HCD into starts to vibrate. I juggle my hip out and flip it open. “It's me.”
    “Maker.” Razorface's voice tinny over my ear clip leaves me giddy with relief, and then the pain in that voice cuts through and my stomach knots around too much greasy food.
    “Face, what's wrong?”
    “We gotta talk.”
    Elspeth gives me the concerned look. I hold my metal hand up, cupped slightly in the universal gesture for
just a sec
. “All right. Where are