Part 39 (2/2)
”Redistribue, yeah? Alles la food and supplies they got heading out for the Ring? Mas a anyone ever gave the Belt. Take that, feed the Belt, build the Belt. See what es vide when we're not scrabbling for air y ejection ma.s.s. Gardens in the vacuum. Cities make Tycho Station look some rock hopper's head. New world without a world to it, yeah? None of this alien bok. Blow the Ring. Burn it. Get back to people being people, yeah?”
Two women walked by, heads bent toward each other in pa.s.sionate conversation. The nearer one glanced up, then away, then back. There was venom in her gaze. Hatred. The contrast was stark. On one hand, Cyn's vision of a future where Belters were free of the economic oppression of the inner planets of the central axioms that had formed everything in Naomi's childhood. In her life. Civilization built by them and for them, a remaking of human life. And on the other, actual Belters actually hating her because she had dared to act against them. Because she wasn't Belter enough. ”Where does it end, Cyn? Where does it all end?”
”Doesn't. Not if we do it right.”
There was nothing in her cabin that could help her, but since she was confined there and alone, it was where she searched. Hours. Not days.
The crash couch was bolted to the deck with thick steel and reinforced ceramic canted so that any direction the force came from was compression on one leg or another. Any individual strut might have been usable as a pry bar, but she didn't have any way to unbolt the couch or break one free. So not that. The drawers were thinner metal, the same gauge, more or less, as the lockers. She pulled them out as far as they would open, examining the construction of the latches, the seams where the metal had been folded, searching for clues or inspiration. There was nothing.
The tiny black thumb of the decompression kit, she kept tucked at her waist, ready to go if she could just find a way. She felt the time slipping away, second by second, as she came up blank. She had to find a way. She would find a way. The Chetzemoka was so close to still be too far away.
If she didn't try to go when they pulled the umbilical? If she could sneak across now and hide there until they separated... If she could get to the armory instead, and maybe find a demolition mech that could act as an environment suit... or that she could use to cut through the bulkheads fast enough that no one shot her in the back of the head...
”Think,” she said. ”Don't spin and whine. Think.”
But nothing came.
When she slept, it was for thin slips of minutes. She couldn't afford a deep sleep for fear of waking to find the Chetzemoka gone. And she lay on the ground with her hand clutching the base of the crash couch so that it would tug her awake if they went on the float.
What would Alex do? What would Amos do? What would Jim do? What would she do? Nothing came to her. She waited for despair, the darkness, the sense of overwhelming failure, and didn't understand why it didn't come. There was every reason to be devastated, but she wasn't. Instead there was only the certainty that if the dark thoughts did return, they would come in such strength that she wouldn't stand a chance against them. Oddly, even that was comforting.
When she knocked to go to the head, Sarta opened the door. Not that it mattered. She followed Naomi down the hall, then waited outside. The head didn't have anything of use either, but Naomi took her time in case inspiration came. The mirror was polished alloy built into the wall. No help there. If she could take apart the vacuum fans in the toilet...
She heard voices from the other side of the door. Sarta and someone else. The words were too soft to make out. She finished was.h.i.+ng her hands, dropped the towelette in the recycler, and stepped into the corridor. Filip looked over at her. It was her son, and she hadn't recognized his voice.
”Filip,” she said.
”Cyn said you wanted to talk to me,” Filip said, landing the words equally as question and accusation.
”Did he now? That was kind of him.”
She hesitated. Her hands itched with the need to find some way to put her hands on an EVA suit, but something in the back of her mind whispered If they think you're alive, they'll come for you. Anger and diffidence made the planes and angles of Filip's face. Cyn already thought she was bent on self-slaughter. It was why he'd sent Filip.
Her belly went heavy almost before she understood why. If Filip thought it too, if when she went missing, her son went to Marco and stood witness to her suicidal bent, it would be easier to believe. They might not even check to see if a suit was missing.
”Do you want to talk here in the hallway?” she said, her lips heavy, her mouth slow. ”I have a little place nearby. Not s.p.a.cious, but there's some privacy.”
Filip nodded once, and Naomi turned down the hall, Sarta and Filip following her. She rehea.r.s.ed lines in her mind. I'm so tired that I just want it to be over and What I do to myself isn't your fault and I can't take it anymore. There were a thousand ways to convince him that she was ready to die. But beneath those, the heaviness in her gut thickened and settled. The manipulation was cruel and it was cold. It was her own child, the child she'd lost, and she was going to use him. Lie to him so well that what he told Marco would be indistinguishable from truth. So that when she disappeared to the Chetzemoka, they would a.s.sume she'd killed herself, and not come after her. Not until it was too late.
She could do it. She couldn't do it. She could.
In the cabin, she sat on the couch, her legs folded up under her. He leaned against the wall, his mouth tight, his chin high. She wondered what he was thinking. What he wanted and feared and loved. She wondered if anyone had ever asked him.
I can't take it anymore, she thought. Just say I can't take it anymore.
”Are you all right?” she asked.
”Why wouldn't I be?”
”I don't know,” she said. ”I worry about you.”
”Not so much you wouldn't betray me,” he said, and that untied the knot. Yes, if she lied to him, it would be betraying him, and for all her failures, she'd never done that. She could. She could do it. It wasn't that she was powerless before the decision; it was that she chose not to.
”The warning I sent?”
”I have dedicated my life to the Belt, to freeing the Belters. And after we did everything we could to keep you safe, you spat in our faces. Do you love your Earther boyfriend that much more than your own kind? Is that it?”
Naomi nodded. It was like hearing all the things Marco was too polished to say out loud. There was real feeling behind them in a way she would never hear from Marco. Maybe never had. He'd soaked up all his father's lines, only where Marco's soul was safe and unreachable in its deep self-centered cyst, Filip was still raw. The pain that she had not only left him, but left him for a man from Earth lit his eyes. Betrayal wasn't too strong a word.
”My own kind,” she said. ”Let me tell you about my own kind. There are two sides in this, but they aren't inner planets and outer ones. Belters and everyone else. It's not like that. It's the people who want more violence and the ones who want less. And no matter what other variable you sample out of, you'll find some of both.
”I was harsh to you the day the rocks dropped. But I meant everything I said. Your father and I are now and always were on different sides. We will never, ever be reconciled. But I think despite everything, you can still choose whichever side you'd like. Even now, when it seems like you've done something that can't be redeemed, you can choose what it means to you.”
”This is s.h.i.+t,” he said. ”You're s.h.i.+t. You're an Earth-f.u.c.king wh.o.r.e, and always have been. You're a camp follower, looking to sleep your way into anybody's bed who seems important. Your whole life's that. You're nothing!”
She folded her hands. Everything he said was so wrong it didn't even sting. It was like he was calling her a terrier. All she could think of it was, These are the last words you're going to say to your mother. You will regret them for the rest of your life.
Filip turned, pulled open the door.
”You deserved better parents,” she said as he slammed it behind him. She didn't know if he'd heard.
Chapter Forty: Amos.
Between walking and biking, scrounging up food, and picking a route that avoided the dense populations around the Was.h.i.+ngton administrative zone, the seven-hundred-odd kilometers between Bethlehem and Baltimore had taken them almost two weeks. The four-hundred-odd klicks from the arcology to Lake Winnipesaukee took a couple hours. Erich sent out Butch whose name was something else that Amos couldn't remember even after they told him and two others, then sent him and Peaches to wait in another room while he had some conversations.
Twenty minutes later, Amos and Peaches and Erich and ten men and women were standing on the roof of the arcology loading into a pair of transport helicopters with the Al Abbiq Security logo on the side. Erich didn't say if they were stolen or if he'd been paying off the security force, and Amos didn't ask. Pretty much an academic issue at that point.
The landscape they pa.s.sed over was bleak. The ash fall had slowed, but not stopped. The sun was a ruddy smear on the western horizon. Below them, cities bled into each other without so much as a tree or a swath of gra.s.s between them. Most of the windows were empty. The streets and highways were filled with cars, but few of them were moving. They swung out to the east as they pa.s.sed by New York City. The great seawall had been shattered, and the streets flooded like ca.n.a.ls. Several of the great towers had fallen, leaving holes in the skyline.
”Where is everyone?” Peaches shouted over the chop of the rotors.
”They're there,” Erich shouted back, gesturing with his bad arm and holding on to the strap with his good. ”They're all there. It's just there's not as many as there were last week. And more than there are going to be.”
Over Boston, someone fired a missile toward them from the roof of a commercial shopping district, and the copters shot it down. The sky to the east was the low bruise-dark that made Amos think of storm clouds. In the west, the sunset was the color of blood.
”We gonna have trouble with the rotors icing up?” Amos asked the pilot, but he didn't get an answer.
They set down at an airfield a few klicks south of the lake, but Amos got a look before they landed: low hills holding the water like it was being cupped in a ma.s.sive palm. There were maybe a dozen islands scattered across the lake, some as crowded with buildings as the sh.o.r.e, others with little tame forests if someone rich enough for the luxury lived there. The landing platform was a square of floating ceramic with red and amber lights still blinking for visual landings.
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