“I am fighting,” she said, then grunted and pulled down hard again. “The quiet work’s still a fight. It’s a better one. It’s one we can win.”
Not in our lifetimes, Bobbie said. And that was the point, really. That was the deep, true thought that Naomi was working her own way through with all the beloved voices in her head.
Sweat was pooling at her hairline, the quarter g not quite enough to pull it down her face. Her arms were trembling with every pull. She made herself go slowly, watching her form. It made the work harder, which she liked. And it made her less likely to injure herself, which was critical. Slow, careful, focused. Avoiding damage.
Feels like it ought to be a metaphor for something, Jim’s voice said, and she laughed at his joke.
Growing older was a falling away of everything that didn’t matter. And a deepening appreciation of all the parts that were important enough to stay.
She had unhooked the bands and started repositioning them to work her back when the alert came, chirping on her couch monitor and her hand terminal at the same moment. She wound the bands up and put them away. She’d finish later. The monitor had a single notification up. The Cama had picked up an encrypted message that matched her confirmation signature. Out in the depths below Auberon’s ecliptic, the bottle had broken and its data had all spilled out. She grabbed a copy out of the ship buffer and had her system run a comparison. There would be some degradation. There always was. But there was also repetition in the signal and checksums along the way. It would take terrible luck or a very high-radiation event to swamp her work past the point of recovery. She only made sure because it was the right thing.
All the files and reports opened from the copy as they had from the original files. The system’s final verdict popped up with a click like someone snapping their fingers. NO UNRECOVERABLE LOSS.
So that was done. Another round of analysis, a new set of orders and recommendations released to the wild. She had, of course, already started on the next one. She enjoyed the sense of accomplishment all the same.
She shifted to the newsfeeds, purging the unflagged copies local to her couch and replacing them again like dipping a cup into a fountain that never ran dry. Tapping her finger against the screen, she paged through the items the system thought most likely to pertain to her. A minor election on Sanaang had gone unexpectedly to the second-ranked candidate, a move she had recommended in her bottle before last. A code farm on Mars had partnered with Medina Station to build a new security infrastructure, which wasn’t what she’d wanted, but had been on her list of acceptable fallbacks. A security alert had gone out in Sol system. A red flag, but without the details to say what it was.
Except that whatever it turned out to be, she knew what it was. Bobbie’s war. The one with guns.
Somewhere out there, far enough away that even lightspeed meant hours, Bobbie and Alex were risking their lives. Maybe losing them. There was nothing she could do. Frustration washed over her. Or maybe she just became aware of what was always there.
She’d chosen her role. She’d picked her place, helped with designing the little dried shell-game pea that she lived in. There had been a dozen other ways she could have worked with the underground. Thousands of ways she could have made a new life without them. She was here because she had chosen to be here. The container had felt like solitude, not isolation. A refuge where she could wait for the mud in her heart to settle and her mind to become clear.
It had seemed like a good plan at the time. It had seemed to work. Now, her fingertips hovering over the security alert, she wasn’t sure it did anymore.
With a tap like she was killing an insect, she shut the newsfeeds. Her data analysis was still up behind it, cheerfully reporting NO UNRECOVERABLE LOSS.
“Seems like that should be a metaphor for something,” she said, and imagined Jim’s laughter beside her. Trading the same joke back and forth between them like they had in better days.
Then, a moment later, “God damn, but I have to get out of this fucking box.”
Chapter Nine: Teresa
Carrie Fisk was the president of the Association of Worlds. It was, Teresa knew, a measure of how important she was that President Fisk was allowed to meet with her father over breakfast. Teresa sat at her father’s right at the little table, and Fisk sat opposite him, so Teresa felt a little like she was watching table tennis listening to them talk.
“A trade compact between Auberon and the five-world group does have some real advantages,” Fisk said. “By picking a handful of systems to really focus on, we can make progress quickly. Auberon or Bara Gaon can bring another three to five systems up to self-sufficiency in seven to ten years, then each of those systems can take on clients. The geometric growth model brings all the systems up much faster than having every individual colony be an equal priority.”
Her father nodded slowly. It was a gesture she recognized. He glanced over to her and raised an eyebrow. A little gesture of complicity. Teresa could feel Fisk squirming a little. The woman was so anxious for her father’s approval it was a little embarrassing. Teresa shrugged. Just a few millimeters of movement that meant Do you want me to ask? Her father nodded.
“What about corruption?” Teresa said.
Fisk laughed. “Auberon’s reputation precedes it. Governor Rittenaur assures me that it’s under control. There were a few bad apples, but that’s to be expected in an unregulated colony. Now that it’s under Laconian supervision, the problem is being addressed.”
Teresa nodded, then leaned back to see how her father responded. He was slower. Teresa took another bite of her eggs. The yolk was runny, the way she liked, and she sopped it up with a bit of toast. Kelly—her father’s personal valet—brought Fisk another coffee
. When her father sighed, the defeat was clear in Fisk’s eyes. Just for a moment, and then covered over, but Teresa had seen it.
“The architecture is good,” he said. “I’m not certain these five are the right worlds to lead with. Let me review this and get back to you next week.”
“Yes, sir,” Fisk said. “Of course.”
After the breakfast meeting was done, Fisk left and Teresa stayed. As Kelly cleared away the dishes, her father stood, stretched, and turned to her.
“What did you notice?” he asked.
“She was nervous,” Teresa said.
“She always is,” her father said. “That’s part of why I chose her. When people get too comfortable, they get loose. Sloppy. What else?”