The Wire

I

He wasn’t alone.

At first this realization, triggered by a muffled sneeze in the locker behind him, brought more relief than fear; and he suddenly realized that the dread he'd been feeling came not from the ticking of the clock, nor with the terror waiting thousands of klicks ahead in the icy darkness, but from a deeper place. Till now he's put it out of his mind, so that he could focus on the job ahead of him.

He'd been alone, more alone than any other human being, more alone than the seven hundred people at Sheffield, more alone than any of the ten billion behind him.

Six thousand klicks of carbon nanofilament receding; thirty-four thousand still ahead; infinite chilled blackness in all directions as the tiny gondola raced into the cold at two-and-a-half times its rated maximum speed. He hadn't turned inward to face it. He'd ridden the Wire more than a hundred times, was qualified in every car designed for it. But he'd never been alone, and never heard of anyone else riding alone.

His relief at the presence of another human being was short-lived, as a new apprehension took hold. Whoever it was could be aboard for only one reason - to end his mission, by damaging or destroying the T-blade, or disabling the gondola. Whoever it was surely meant him harm - and was surely remaining hidden to burn up as much time as possible, so that no follow-up rescue effort would be possible once this one was undone. He had been a soldier, once; but at his best, he would have difficulty defending himself here, in such a tiny car. There was no more space than one would find in a ground delivery van, Downside. Hand-to-hand would be comical. The intruder was certainly armed.

Then again, the intruder actually need do nothing: the mass of another adult alone would kill this mission. The gondola was running far beyond its intended speed, racing up the Wire with battery augmentation of its solar power source to reach Sheffield with the T-blade in time. It could travel no faster, and had already been stripped to absolute minimal mass. He himself was only aboard as a failsafe, since no gondola had ever been decelerated and docked remotely following such a frantic run, wide-open with safeties off. Even so, his own mass had been traded off almost with the flip of a coin in the risk assessment, and it was pure desperation that drove this entire scenario. The mere presence of another person would introduce enough error into the equations to delay his arrival at Sheffield beyond the already-dwindling window of hope; neither of them could exit the gondola in transit, dead or alive. It had no airlock, just a pressure cuff, too small to accommodate an adult.

These thoughts came to him unbidden. The Wire had been his life for years now, and the practical considerations of Wire travel were second nature to him.

And yet - the intruder is a terrorist. Destruction is the agenda. This is a suicide mission.

He frantically cast about for a weapon. The T-blade? It easily had the juice to cut through a full-grown man's legs, and the resolution to cauterize as it went ... and it would take four minutes to unpack and assemble, another three to power up and configure. Not an option.

The bulkiest object he could reasonably use as a club was a long wrench, in the tool bin. He hefted it; unbreakable unimolecular, but lightweight, naturally. It weighed not much more than a metal butter knife back home. If there was anything else, he couldn't think of it. He took a deep breath.

"Come out."

He tried to sound formidable. The walls of the gondola soaked up his voice and buried it beneath the quiet hiss of air and muted drone of the drive. Too late, he realized he should have sent word of the intruder Downside before making a challenge.

No sound came from the locker.

"Come out now!" He heard his own fear.

Another long pause, and then an uncertain stirring. Suddenly there was a banging, the sound of struggle, and a high, panicked cry.

With the end of the wrench, he pressed the latch. The locker swung open.

"I'm sorry! Please! I'm sorry!"

Nested in the locker's interior was a small child, dark in its shadows. He peered inside.

She was small, no more than eight or nine years old. Her hair was long and black; her eyes were big and chocolate-colored. Her skin was somewhat lighter.

She was trembling.

He reached toward her with his empty hand. She recoiled, with a frightened moan. He slowly set down the wrench.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said slowly. "It's okay. Can you come out?"

With agonizing slowness, the child emerged from the locker. She wore a colorful, stylish tunic, much like what the children at the school at DownHome wore. Much like what Caiti wore ...

He nodded to the seat behind her. She eased onto it, never taking her eyes from him.

"I'm sorry, mister," she said again. Her voice trembled, and tears were forming. Her accent placed her nationality in the Middle East.

"Jack," he said gently. He couldn't quite form a smile. "My name is Jack."

She just stared.

“What's your name?"

She swallowed, and frowned for a moment, as though trying to remember.

"Ari."

"How old are you, Ari?"

"Nine. Almost."

He hardly knew what to say next. "Ari," he began, "do you know where you are?"

She nodded. Involuntarily, her eyes darted to the transparent half-shell hull of the gondola, and the vast emptiness beyond.

"I got in when nobody was watching."

He couldn't imagine when that would have been. DownHome was a pretty informal community, but the Terminal itself had been almost frantic when they'd been prepping for this mission.

"Do you understand where we're going?"

She nodded. "To Sheffield Station. That's where my father is."

That made sense. If the girl lived at DownHome, it was because one or both of her parents worked the Wire. It also explained how she'd circumvented security: if she was a DownHome resident, she'd been inside the secure perimeter already when they'd learned of the threat and buttoned up.

"Terrorists put a bomb there. Everybody might die. My father needs me."

By now the terrorists themselves had announced the presence of a bomb on Sheffield to the entire world, but the news hadn't yet reached the media when he'd launched. Where had she - from her mother, of course, he realized. He reflected again on the good fortune that Sheffield was so remote: the bomb was on a timer and hadn't gone off unannounced, because the people who'd put it there wanted the world to see Sheffield die, and it takes time to train the world's eyes on a point forty thousand kilometers out in space. All the world's telescopes would capture the shattering of Sheffield Station, and the subsequent collapse of the Wire ... It would be the most spectacular terrorist act in human history.

Suddenly he realized what she'd said. He frowned. "Why does your father need you?"

Her eyes widened again, this time with a sense of purpose. "Because I have the Cloak of Allah," she said solemnly. "When we were at Damascus my father was running and he was carrying me and he stepped on a bomb. They fixed his legs but they couldn't put his arm back and I didn't get hurt at all, and he said it was because I was wearing the Cloak of Allah."

He shuddered. Twenty-six thousand people had been killed at Damascus. To be a child, so small, in the middle of all that ...

"The Cloak of Allah keeps people safe," she continued with authority. "I have to take it to him and to all the other people at the station so the bomb won't hurt them."

Her face was so determined, so innocent, so unblemished that he could think of no response. Suddenly she was blond and blue-eyed, and he turned away.

"Mister? Are you going to take me back?"

This brought him to the moment again. Of course he had to report her presence. Of course she was in it with him now, whatever happened -

No. Surely not.

He looked her over. She was small for a nine-year-old. She couldn't possibly weigh thirty kilos. Surely not ...

"DownTown, this is GS Twelve," he was saying moments later. "Priority to WireBoss."

"GS Twelve, hold for WireBoss."

He found he was breathing rapidly as he waited for the contralto voice of his superior.

"GS Twelve, this is WireBoss."

"WireBoss, I'm calling to report a passenger."

Reply was not immediate.

"Say again, GS Twelve."

"WireBoss, GS Twelve is carrying an unscheduled passenger."

Another pause.

“GS Twelve, are you under duress?”

"Negative, WireBoss. Passenger is a nine-year-old girl."

Very long pause.

"GS Twelve, say again."

"WireBoss, Passenger is a nine-year-old. Her father is at Sheffield."

Yet another pause. Then he heard other voices.

"Understood, GS Twelve. Jack, can you give us a picture?"

He touched a panel and two-way visual communication came to life. A woman's face filled a screen before them, and a number of people could be seen behind her, populating Wire traffic control. He turned and motioned for the girl to come forward to join him. Tentatively, he offered his arms, and lifted her into his lap.

"Jack, do you have an ID?"

"First name, Ari - can you tell me your last name?"

"Hadir."

"WireBoss, she tells me her father is at Sheffield. You may wish to notify him."

"Not at this time, GS Twelve," WireBoss replied. "We are verifying identity. Is your cargo intact?"

He hadn't even thought to check. Of course, they would wonder if the child had damaged the T-blade. Children of terrorists had long been used as weapons. And that may yet be the case, his rational mind told him, though a deeper voice dismissed it.

It took two minutes to satisfy him that the T-blade, in its case, hadn't been touched. He passed the information on.

"WireBoss," he said carefully, "Request you adjust ETA to allow for additional mass."

He saw the uncertainty in WireBoss's solemn reply.

"Jack, can you give us a specific mass estimate?"

He didn't look down at her as he held her in his lap.

"WireBoss, I would estimate twenty-seven to thirty kilos, no more," he replied. "Surely within safety margin."

WireBoss's expression didn't change. "GS Twelve," she replied, "Stand by ... "

II

Every time he closed his eyes, he watched her die again.

She had been five, big blue eyes and long hair and full of sass, like her mother. She told people she was Caiti, not Caitlin, because she loved to spell it for them.

It was an upheaval like no other, an unstoppable shifting of earth beyond prediction, and the chain of entropy cracked like a whip, with the mall and its glass and its concrete walkways at the tip and he lived again that split second of eye contact, twenty meters between them, when she bolted from behind the kiosk in fright as hundreds screamed around her and saw him, and paused, and vanished beneath two tons of stone, and his skull split with a shriek that woke him in sweat every night thereafter. And his chest ached and his will died and her mother slipped away, now years gone, and he'd come to the Wire, embracing the comfort of endless distances.

Nothing anyone could have done, they had said, thinking it a kindness ... No one can stop Nature ... Nowhere anyone can hide ...

... and it came to him suddenly that the universe was a far deadlier terrorist than the puny beasts who had etched a nuclear bomb into the fabric of Sheffield. A true Beast, insidious, cold, oblivious to consequence. He opened his eyes, felt the ancient familiar ache, and let hatred begin bubbling into him again ...

"GS Twelve, this is WireBoss ... GS Twelve ... "

"WireBoss, GS Twelve."

"GS Twelve, I am turning you over to BlueRoom ... wait one ... "

Engineering.

"GS Twelve, this is Vaughn," came a male voice he knew. "We've got telemetry from the checkpoints, you were falling behind our predictions from Go but within margin so we didn't flag it ... cable friction and bearing resistance are higher than projected at your present speed ... "

"Say it, BlueRoom." He felt hot with impatience.

"Jack, you're too heavy. Best prediction puts you off by seventeen minutes."

He felt dizzy. His stomach contorted.

"BlueRoom, are you sure?"

There was a pause. "Confirmed, Jack. We've run it four times and we're running it again. Everybody's on it. We'll come up with something."

"Put me back."

"Sorry."

The picture shifted back to WireBoss.

"GS Twelve, we are examining possible mass adjustment scenarios," she told him in a neutral voice, "Do you understand worse-case scenario?"

He started to argue. He opened his mouth to protest that there was no way to do the unthinkable, that the gondola didn't have a true airlock, only the pressure cuff, and even though he could temporarily seal it and release objects to space without depressurizing the gondola, the risk -

... was acceptable, under the circumstances, and he didn't force her to say it.

"Copy, WireBoss," he said heavily. "I understand."

He was sure she knew his next question, and would have an answer ready.

"WireBoss, how long to breakpoint on mass adjustment?"

"GS Twelve ... ninety-nine minutes," she replied softly, "plus or minus three ... "

His head began to spin.

Behind him, the girl spoke.

"I shouldn't be here," she said timidly, "Isn't that right?"

"It's nobody's fault," he answered, not looking at her. "You just want to help your father."

"I know it was wrong to sneak," she said. "Here. Maybe this will make them not be mad."

He turned to see what she meant. She held out a handful of credit notes.

"This is all my allowance," she told him. "You can use it to pay for my ride."

III

He knew that at Sheffield, they were assuming he wouldn't make it. There were eighteen astronauts on site. Some of them would be on the station's outer skin at this moment, beyond the rock, trying to come up with a way to remove the nuclear device. Encased in unbreachable fullerite, it had interwoven its surface into the metal of the station's spine, adjacent to one of the gargantuan struts that grasped the Wire. On detonation, the station would vaporize, the struts would melt, rock would rip free of its earthly tether and the Wire's counterbalance would be gone in a heartbeat, sending a shockwave propogating inward, dissipating rapidly but not before destroying the low-orbit platforms and their four thousand occupants. Eighteen astronauts, all qualified in countless maintenance operations using dozens of tools, none of which could wrest the device from its cold metal nest. It needed to be cut free, and he was certainly they were frantically trying, with low-power hand-held torches that could not possibly do the job in time. The T-blade resting behind him could do what all of them combined could not ...

Ninety-nine minutes ...

"WireBoss, GS Twelve," he said, "I am going to attempt random mass reduction."

"GS Twelve, WireBoss," came the reply, "Jack, we've already pulled your net inventory and done a simu - "

"WireBoss, I am proceeding with random mass reduction," he said forcefully. "I'll report upon completion and request recalculation of ETA."

"GS Twelve, WireBoss," she answered, "Acknowledged."

He turned to the girl. She was standing behind him, looking out at the stars. He wondered how they must look to her.

"Ari," he said, "would you like to play a game?"

This puzzled her, but she nodded.

"We're going to look all around us, everywhere we can reach, and take everything we can find and put it in a pile," he said, trying to make it sound fun. He could tell she wasn't fooled, but she also had nothing else to do.

She found two cushions and a pen. He went through the toolkit, which was already sparse, and took out almost everything. Every tool was as strong as diamond and weighed almost nothing, and he cursed organic chemistry. He was able to peel away some flooring. Two plastic access plates were expendable.

He pulled the first aid kit. There was nothing they would need between now and ... he came across and immediately pocketed several doses of sedative, and far more of painkiller. He reflected on that for an instant; disaster-related injuries in space, the ones that were survivable, were agonizing.

But no agony was ever like this.

He was already in a cotton jumpsuit, rather than a standard duty uniform. He pulled off his boots and added them to a pile. He said nothing as Ari removed her shoes.

The pile looked meager. The prep crew had, of course, already done this, and already stripped away most everything. Emergency batteries, oxygen bottles, diagnostic gear, hull patch kit, pressure suit - had all been removed before launch, to lighten the gondola.

He'd held his breath when the hatch had opened, knowing intellectually that the cuff seal would hold briefly but fought back an anxious tremor anyway. They watched for the ejected objects in the window but saw nothing.

The answer was swift in coming.

"GS Twelve, your mass is reduced by about four kilograms," he was told. "Your ETA is still above the line."

He swore to himself. He felt a burning, a rage building inside him. It was a fire beyond all the hatred he had stored for the nameless, faceless assassin that had crushed the life from his little girl, this same cold adversary now bloodlessly bearing down on another child. There had to be something ...

There was the T-blade itself, of course, more precious than either of them, and in a macabre flash it occurred to him that the T-blade could reduce him to small pieces, and his own eighty-eight kilos of mass could then be ejected through the pressure cuff in several passes. He was expendable; the only reason this mission suffered his mass in the first place was because of the possibility that some component of the gondola would not respond properly to remote piloting from Sheffield at such high speed. He was a redundant system, but an essential one, because so much was at stake.

He would accept the T-blade option without hesitation. But that option was, of course, impossible for his passenger.

This isn't happening ... this isn't happening ...

There was something he could do.

"Ari ... would you like to talk to your father?"

IV

"Sheffield, this is GS Twelve."

"GS Twelve, Sheffield."

"Sheffield, has WireBoss apprised you of my situation?"

"GS Twelve, our tracking shows you behind projected schedule, WireBoss says your mass is off. We have no further details."

He took a deep breath.

"Sheffield, please go to visual. I need to speak with Omar Hadir?"

There was a pause. Terry Walther filled the screen, another familiar face. He was solemn as he turned and listened to someone aside for several moments.

"GS Twelve, stand by ... "

He turned back to the girl, who sat on the desk holding her knees up to her chin. He realized he was holding his breath and exhaled.

"Have you been on the Wire before?" he asked her, trying to sound casual.

She looked up at him and solemnly shook her head.

"My father said I could go with him on my next birthday," she replied. "He was supposed to come home next weekend, and I was going to go back with him next month. That's when my birthday is."

My god, what it must have taken for her to decide to do this ...

"Is this your first time to go in space?"

He smiled at the question, shook his head.

"I've been on many, many rides into space," he said. "I've even gone on rockets."

Her eyes widened. "I've been to the moon twice. And I've been up and down the Wire more times than I can count."

"When did you start going into space, Mister?"

"Jack."

"Mister Jack?"

He smiled again, looking down into her big eyes. Trying to be brave ... trying not to look out the window ... trying not to feel the trembling of the deckplates ...

"Long ago ... "

... and her eyes went blue and her hair went blond and he turned away.

There was a loud, inarticulate sound from the panel. Walther stepped out of view.

A man with black hair and mustache, olive skin and brown eyes stepped into view. His eyes were wet, his expression barely contained.

He knows.

"Ari?"

The voice was like a prayer.

At the sound of it she bounded up, jumped into his lap. She was torn between joy and trepidation.

"Hello, father."

The man could not speak at first. His face contorted, at war with itself, struggling to suppress agony and project joy at once. He knows this is the last time he will ever speak with her ...

"Ari, it is so good to see you. Are you enjoying your ride?"

"Yes, father." She could see his distorted feelings. She shrank.

"Father, are you angry with me?"

This was more than the man could take, and tears burst forth.

"Oh, no, no no, my Ari, my sweet flower, no," the man said in a rush, "Oh no, no no ... there is nothing I would rather see than your face ... "

He could feel her confusion. She ventured forth, hopefully.

"Mister Jack says he can't take me back, father, so I will see you soon! I'm coming to protect you, father! I have the cloak!"

The man's eyes closed and he choked a bit. Someone else's hand gripped his shoulder.

"Yes ... yes. We will see each other again, my little love. We will." He said some words in their language. She clearly was not as fluent there as with English, and faltered as she responded.

The man took a breath and straightened a bit.

"What is your name, sir?"

"Jack Reese, Mister Hadir."

The man's expression contorted again, and again he saw emotions at war, a struggle between the deepest love and darkest hatred, and he felt waves of it coming at him, a howling hatred and suddenly it was a mirror, and within himself he echoed the rage. For the thousandth time, he howled his rage at the Beast. And he realized that in the eyes of the staring man ahead, he was the Beast.

"Can you do this thing?" Hadir asked, biting the words.

Before he could begin to think of a way to answer, Hadir continued.

"What kind of man are you?"

Hands on shoulders gently pulled Hadir from view.

"Stand by," he told the panel, and closed the connection.

V

There was nothing that he could use to make her comfortable. She sat in the chair, already cushionless, that was molded into the frame of the gondola. He couldn't even lean it back; he just let her curl up.

He held out the white tablets. She took them curiously.

"You can chew them," he assured her, since he had no water to give her.

"These will help me sleep?"

"Yes," he nodded, and pain shot through his neck. "It's still a long way. You need to get some rest."

She chewed the tablets slowly.

"Mister Jack," she said slowly, after she swallowed. "Did I do something wrong?"

He reached out and brushed her hair back.

"No, sweetheart," he said, barely a whisper. "You didn't do anything wrong." He could say nothing else.

And he looked down into deep blue eyes, stroking the bright blond hair, and didn't look away. Behind him he heard the Beast, crouching in the shadows, waiting complacently. They were going nowhere, shackled in an equation more unbreakable than any fullerite casing, there for its taking.

This is not happening ...

He knew what he had to do. With a clarity sharper than anything he'd ever known he understood what came next.

"I'm going to see my father," she whispered drowsily. "He needs me."

Without closing his eyes, he watched her die again, and again, let himself go numb from the dull pounding of her disappearance, her voiceless vanishing, the gray thud of concrete, the sting of self-loathing that he'd let her venture away from him, and with the numbing came strength, and will.

I have to do this ...

He reached into his pocket.

For her ... I must do this ...

Her eyes closed. Her breathing slowed. He watched it rise and fall. With each breath she took, his will swelled. I can do this ...

What kind of man are you?

VI

With the fading of euphoria came stinging bursts of sensation, needles in his bones, harsh ruddy light of flourescent panels assailing his unresponsive eyelids. With awareness came alarm.

They hurt ... they're still there ...

"Doctor." Deep baritone. A beat, and he sensed the room lights dimming somewhat.

There was a long pause. Cold sting in his upper arm.

"Don't try to open your eyes," came a strong feminine command. "Just relax."

Where ...

"Don't try to talk yet. You're at Sheffield, in the infirmary. You've been under for awhile now. You'll be with us till tomorrow morning, then we're sending you back Down."

The doctor let it sink in.

" ... and thank you, lieutenant."

VII

He lay in cold darkness, violated at the far wall of the ward by the gaudy orange of naked sunlight with its painted-black shadows and suffocating crawl. The pain had fled, replaced by grudging acceptance.

His eyes slammed shut as the room lights came up halfway.

He opened them tentatively, unable to move his head. After a silent moment an unfamiliar middle-aged man stepped into view at the foot of the bed. Jet-black hair and mustache, familiar brown skin and chocolate eyes ...

A man with one arm.

"Mister Reese," the man said, trying to sound formal, struggling to keep a rush of emotion from consuming him.

"What you did ... what you have done ... "

He raged against his inability to respond, imprisoned in helplessness. It made no difference; at full capacity, he would have been as helpless.

"In a thousand lifetimes ... I could never repay... " A tear escaped the man's eye.

And she was beside him, just beyond his field of vision. He saw her father look at her and nod slightly.

We beat you! he suddenly raged from his neural prison, in the direction of the unfeeling elemental fires pouring through the viewport. You'll never have us!

"Mister Jack," Ari's voice came, unbearably soft and close. "It’s me, Ari. I'm so sorry about your arm and legs. I don't know what happened, we were talking and I fell asleep ... "

Her gaze fell to where his legs had been. She leaned in, past where his left arm wasn't anymore, and kissed his cheek.

Author’s Note

I had just started high school when I came across a story in a science fiction anthology that challenged me for years. It was “The Cold Equations,” by Tom Godwin, long recognized as one of the classics of the genre. Any reader who’s read that one will note that “The Wire” is essentially a reply to Godwin, a challenge to the premise that the Universe is, in the long run, unbeatable.

I could never accept that premise. Likewise, the beloved Capt. James T. Kirk, of Star Trek fame, has famously insisted that he “doesn’t believe in the No-Win Scenario” for which Godwin argues. My own premise? It’s not that we can’t win, when the Universe faces us down; it’s that we need to go beyond ourselves, in considering our options. It’s this idea that the story is intended to serve.

Or, as another famous Trek character has put it, “There are always possibilities ...”