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Sweaty, thrilled, feeling like my body was properly oiled and running like it didn’t need a tune-up for the first time in I didn’t know how long, I slid into the booth beside Connla and his new conquest. They were grinning at each other foolishly, but Connla had waved me over, so I figured I wasn’t intruding. Maybe it was Introduction Time, which meant he might like this one enough to keep in touch via packet after we shipped out. He’d expect me to remember which affair went with which port of call—which wasn’t too onerous of an expectation, given how much time we had to float around and gossip.
“Haimey,” he said. “Do you need another drink?”
“I’d love one,” I said. “Something long and not too poisonous.”
He ordered on the screen, and his new friend extended a hand. “I’m Pearl. So you’re a salvage engineer?”
Typically, he hadn’t picked the prettiest contender to move on, but one with a mobile face and an air of curiosity that made them charismatic. It’s hard not to like somebody who’s genuinely interested in you. Or genuinely interested in things, in general.
“I’m Haimey,” I answered, and took their hand. Their fingers were long and cool. “Since Connla is too busy to introduce us.”
“Too busy fetching you things, you mean.” He stood up and winked. “Be right back.”
“What is your vocation?” I said, since the subject of my work was already apparently well-discussed.
“I make reproductions of Terran Eastern Orthodox iconographic art.”
“That a religion?”
“They were very into gold leaf,” they said. “And I’m a recyclables engineer.”
“Diverse,” I said, impressed. “Not everybody has that much drive.”
“I bore easily,” Pearl answered. They grinned sideways at Connla, who had just appeared with our drinks and a bowl of crunchy soy-sim snack things.
“How did you come into engineering?” Pearl asked.
“I enjoy it,” I said. “Admittedly, I was tuned to enjoy it, to take my designate. But I didn’t see any reason to change that program when I struck out on my own.” I shrugged. I had the skills, and making myself hate them would have been a real waste of time and energy.
“Designate?”
Connla seated himself, kept his silence, ate a snack.
“I grew up in a clade.”
Pearl’s eyes focused more closely on me, but the question that followed came in a friendly tone. “How did you escape?”
“They’re designed to avoid conflict. How do you think?”
A silence—shocked? Startled? I knew what outsiders thought of the clades, and they weren’t entirely wrong. Join, sign the contract, be assured of being surrounded by like-minded individuals working tirelessly for your mutual benefit forever. Raise children who would never break your heart, never rebel. And you wouldn’t even have to sacrifice your free will, because you’d want just that, just what everyone else wanted. Because you’d be tuned regularly to assure that it was what you wanted and that you were happy with your life choices, and all the hard decisions were made in such a way as not to challenge anyone in the group, because everyone in the group held the same beliefs in common.
Once you signed the contract, you would never be alone again.
You’d never be different again, either.
But what good was difference when it made so many people so terribly sad, so lonely, destroyed so many friendships and families and romantic relationships?
The clades liked to point out that their choices were just a more extreme version of being and remaining a productive member of the Synarche—or any society dedicated to the common good. You made social choices, or you made sophipathic choices, and if you wanted to make sophipathic choices without consequence you went off and joined the Freeports.
Clade members were generally rated among the happiest individuals, when surveyed.
If you could really call them individuals.
“It’s not hard to escape,” I explained. “It’s just that almost nobody wants to. But there are rules about these things, and free choice, and adult responsibilities and so on. Well, parents are responsible for the education and well-being of their children, and as long as they meet certain standards the Synarche will not intervene. The Synarche requires that upon attaining majority, every child be provided with one an of retreat, during which time they become responsible for their own tuning and rightminding, and at the end of that an they make their own decision whether to remain with the clade or choose another life.”
I shrugged, and wondered if Pearl could see in that simple gesture the pain of losing an enforced religion because somebody gave you the switch and you were curious enough to turn it off.
“Most of them go back?” they said.
“Almost all of them go back,” I answered. “Before the an is up, usually. Lonely-no-more is hard to put down, and harder not to pick up again.”
“Not you, though.”
“I . . . discovered I liked my own voice. So I stayed away, and then I requested another retreat an, which they were legally obligated to give. And then I decided I wasn’t going back at all.”
Connla nudged my drink at me, and I tasted it. Berries and some bright herb I didn’t recognize, and an intoxicant burn. It steadied my breathing. There were other, messier details in the story, but we didn’t need to go into those now, and here.
The full story was not for strangers in bars.
“They tried to enforce an obligation against her for her education,” Connla said dryly, while I watched Pearl’s eyebrows go up. “And force her to come back that way.”
“Did you pay it off?” Pearl asked.
“The Synarche ruled that the legal person Haimey Dz—that’s me—had incurred no debt, because the debt had been incurred by a unit of the clade due to a decision made by the clade and for services executed within the clade. You can’t owe yourself a debt. So. No. But I’m not exactly welcome home for the holidiar either. And once I stood up to them on that—well, and there was another thing after—they decided they didn’t want me back.”
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After that drink, I didn’t feel like dancing anymore, and it was getting on toward shift-end. Connla was taking his conquest to the strategy game club. I headed back to Singer, to see if he needed any help to get ready for the inspection. He didn’t, and I cleaned myself up and went to bed.
Sleeping in gravity, even station grav, is always tricky. My body wakes up achy in strange places, from pressure points, and I wind up feeling itchy and sweaty and compressed. Still, tuning the hormones helps. And retuning them when you wake helps with the inevitable grogginess and discomfiture. Singer would have woken me if there had been any trouble, and he must have noticed me stirring, because there was a hot cup of synthesized coffee waiting for me when I rolled over, dislodging two cats in the process.
Mephistopheles complained about it. Bushyasta just grumbled in her sleep and curled a paw over her eyes.
Nice work, if you can get it.
You know, I complain about the synthetic coffee. But it’s really not as bad as all that. It’s hot and brown and has caffeine, and getting your drugs per os is more satisfying than just bumping.
Given the dancing under semigrav the night before, I wasn’t as sore as I could have been. I just did a little light stretching and checked in with Singer to see if Connla had made it home. He had, but not long before, and was still awake in the common cabin. Singer also told me the inspection had been through, and been pretty cursory. He hadn’t felt the need to wake me up for it, and they’d mostly been interested in his logs.
He’d given them copies on his own senso that matched mine exactly, because they had been simultaneously recorded and simultaneously edited. Convenient, that we weren’t actually lying at all, and only omitting a few instants.
We were in the process of getting our fuel, and we had our organics. Repairs were under way as well. Now we just had to nerve ourselves up to head for the Core, and let go of Singer. Possibly with pirates in hot pursuit.
“Couldn’t get us any more real coffee, huh?” Connla had his own mug, and was huddled sleepily over it. He’d have to tune it down when I pushed him toward his bunk in about a quarter, but right now he looked tiredly pleased and cheerful, and I didn’t begrudge him a few extra moments to enjoy his buzz. I’d liked Pearl too, so that was handy.
“How often do you think this outpost gets a shipment of C. arabica?” Singer hesitated. “Do you want to run me down to the Core, as arranged? Or should I jump ship here and catch an inbound packet?”
“We’ve got a contract,” I reminded.
“How long can we push the extension?” Connla said.
Singer said, “We can try to find a prize on our way downspiral, though the closer to the Core we get, the cleaner-picked the gleanings will be.”
“Can’t you get out of it?” I asked.
Singer sighed. “I filed for the extension. I can do that once.”