“I’m sorry too,” she said. “I miss him very much. But we have always had different careers.”
“I hope to meet him one day,” Trejo said, and she relaxed a notch. He wasn’t dead. Trejo saw her response and smiled a soft, rueful smile. “It would be useful, I think, if you could help to resolve things with him. Chaos is bad for everyone.”
“I don’t have any way to reach him,” Drummer said. She didn’t go on with And I don’t know what I’d tell him if I did.
“Fair enough,” Trejo said. “We’ll have that conversation another time, yes? Right now, there’s something else I wanted to speak with you about. High Consul Duarte wants to convene the important people in humanity’s new endeavors on Laconia. A kind of permanent convocation of the best minds and most influential people. He’s asked me to extend an invitation to you.”
The politeness of it was foul. The pretense that she was still autonomous, the master of her own fate. Oh, she could probably refuse. Duarte seemed smart enough not to welcome people into his projects who were willing to openly oppose him. But there would be consequences. That they weren’t even spelled out made them more ominous.
“This is like the colonies, isn’t it?” she said.
Trejo lifted his eyebrows, answering her question with a wordless one of his own.
“You’re shifting everything to Laconia,” she said. “Not just ships or money. The culture.”
Trejo smiled. “Earth will always be the home from which humanity sprang, but yes. The high consul thinks that … fetishizing Earth is bad for the long-term future of the species. We will also put in place an accelerated repopulation scheme. Try to adjust the balance so that Sol system isn’t such an overwhelming majority of the population either.”
“You can’t put billions of people through the ring gates,” Drummer said. “It won’t work.”
“Not in our lifetimes,” Trejo said. “We’re talking about the work of generations. But … well, I was Martian before I was Laconian. Thinking for the long term doesn’t intimidate me.”
A woman in a white dress with gold at her throat and wrists sloped by, nodding to Trejo as she passed. He smiled back, glanced at her ass, and then back so quickly it might have passed for politeness.
“Your terraforming plan didn’t work out too well,” Drummer said more acidly than she should have. It just came out that way.
“It would have,” Trejo said, “if something bigger hadn’t come along. Anyway, please do consider the invitation. The high consul is looking forward to meeting you.”
Trejo put a hand on her arm like they were old friends and made his way back out to some other conversation on his list. All around her, the eyes and attention of the crowd followed him and left her behind. She drank her champagne in a gulp and started looking for someplace to ditch the glass so she could get another one.
“Getting drunk, Camina? You think that’s smart, or are you just past giving a fuck anymore?”
Avasarala was in her wheelchair. Her snow-white hair was pulled back in a bun, and her sari was a shimmer of green that almost hid the thinness of her body. She looked older than the last time Drummer had seen her. And she’d looked older than dirt then.
“I am taking the edge off the pain,” Drummer said. “Because what else can I do?”
Avasarala turned her chair and started off toward the podium and the seats. They were empty now, but the journalists were starting to filter in. The show would be starting soon.
“I’d join you, but they tell me I’m on my last liver these days,” Avasarala said. “No more liquor for me.”
“You seem to be taking the conquest fairly well.”
“The fuck option do I have?” Avasarala said. “I’m an old lady who spent her life trying to make peace between Earth and Mars. All this shit? It’s like I missed a day at school, and everyone else learned to speak Mandarin while I was gone. I don’t understand any of this.”
“Yeah,” Drummer said. “I can see that.”
“It’s the reward of old age,” Avasarala said. “You live long enough, and you can watch everything you worked for become irrelevant.”
“You’re not selling it,” Drummer said.
“Fuck you, then. Die young. See if I care.”
Drummer laughed. Avasarala grinned, and for a moment, they understood each other perfectly. For a moment, Drummer didn’t feel alone.
“Are you going to his orgy pit or whatever the fuck it is Duarte’s setting up?” Avasarala asked.
Across the room, Vaughn caught Drummer’s eyes and began walking toward the two women with purpose. Drummer didn’t want to go with him. Didn’t want to face the theater and falsehood of the next part. She turned back to Avasarala.
“I don’t know. I suppose I have to.”