“Yeah,” I say. “What was up with that?”
Marshall jabs a finger in my direction. “Quiet, Barnes. I’ll deal with you when I’m finished with Gomez.” He turns back to Berto. “Look, son, your orders are to explore the dome’s immediate surroundings, and to make observations of the things you’ve taken to calling creepers where and when it is prudent to do so. However, I expect you to use some damned judgment in your execution of those orders. In particular, if in your estimation there is a reasonable probability that the Expendable may be killed in the course of carrying out his duties, I expect you to make provision for the recovery and recycling of his body. Do I make myself clear?”
Nine years ago I might have been offended at the clear inference that the problem was not the fact that Berto got me killed, but rather that he didn’t put sufficient effort into dredging up my corpse afterward. At this point, though, I would have been surprised if Marshall hadn’t put it that way.
Berto opens his mouth to reply, but Marshall’s eyes narrow, and I guess Berto thinks better of it, because his jaw snaps closed again and he nods mutely.
Marshall turns to me. “Now, Barnes. What do you have to say about all of this?”
“Me, sir? I’m afraid I don’t have any opinions on this matter at all. If you’ll recall, I just came out of the tank, and Seven apparently hadn’t uploaded for several weeks prior to his death last night. I have no idea what the two of you have been talking about.”
“Hmm,” Marshall says. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. I forget sometimes that you’re simply a construct.”
Ordinarily I’d argue that point—but again, this really doesn’t seem like the time for it.
“In any case,” Marshall says, “I’m sure you’re both aware that our Agricultural Section has been having great difficulty getting virtually anything to grow properly in this environment, and that as a result we are currently operating on a very thin margin, calorie-wise. Your activities of the past several weeks have permanently removed nearly three hundred thousand kilocalories from our energy budget. Unless and until we are able to bring our agricultural base up to full production, this loss will necessitate a further reduction in our calorie rations.” He pauses then, and leans forward again with his elbows planted on his desk. “I’m sure you’d agree that it is only equitable that the two of you should bear the brunt of this reduction.”
“Sir—” Berto begins, but Marshall shakes his head.
“No, Gomez. I don’t want to hear it. Both of your ration cards are hereby permanently docked by twenty percent.”
“But—”
“I said,” Mashall grates, enunciating each word, “I do not want to hear it.” He stares Berto down, then turns to me. “Do you have anything further, Barnes?”
“Well,” I say, “to be honest, sir, it’s not clear to me why I should be sanctioned for the failure to recover my own corpse.”
Marshall stares me down for a long five seconds, then blinks and says, “Allow me to rephrase my question. Do you have anything further that is not simply an inane bit of smart-assery?”
I do, but it’s pretty clear there’s no real point, so I shake my head and say, “No, sir.”
“Good,” Marshall says. “Perhaps your growling bellies will remind you to take better care of colony assets in the future. Dismissed.”
* * *
“SO,” BERTO SAYS when we’re safely out of Marshall’s earshot, “how does it feel to be a colony asset?”
“Good question,” I say. “Here’s one for you: How does it feel to be a lying sack of shit?”
He stops walking. I wheel around to face him. He actually manages to look hurt.
“Come on, Mickey. That’s not fair.”
“You told me I got eaten by creepers, Berto.”
He looks away. “Yeah. That wasn’t exactly true.”
“Exactly? It wasn’t true at all. You left me to die down there, didn’t you?”
A woman from Bio scoots past us in the corridor, clearly doing her best to ignore whatever is going on between us. When you spend nine years crammed into an ark together like rabbits in a hutch, you learn to do whatever you can to grant one another at least a tiny modicum of privacy.
“Please,” Berto says. “Keep your voice down, huh?”
“Fine.”
I turn and start walking again. He hesitates, then hurries to catch up.
“Look,” he says. “I’m sorry. Seriously. I should have told you the truth.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You definitely should have.”
“Right,” he says. “That’s on me—but I did not leave you to die, Mickey. That fall you took must have been at least a hundred meters. By the time you hit bottom, you were already dead. I wasn’t going to risk my ass for Marshall’s seventy-five kilos of protein, but if there had been any chance of getting you out of there alive, I would have done it. You know that, right?”
Good God, I want to hit him right now. He was sitting right there when Nasha said she was in contact with me after the fall last night. It’s like he thinks that spouting bullshit sincerely enough will make it true. If it weren’t for the fact that he can’t know that I know exactly what he actually did, and also that he’s taller, faster, and stronger than I am and could probably break my neck like a chicken’s, I might actually do it.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know. You’d never leave your best friend to die, Berto. I mean, you might leave one iteration of a colony asset to die. What’s the harm in that? If a friend was in trouble, though? You’d definitely be all over it.”
He grabs my shoulder, pulls me up short, and spins me around. He lets me go, though, raises both hands in surrender, and takes a step back when he sees my face.
“Woah,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Mickey, but you need to get a grip. It sucks that you went down last night, but come on, in your line of work, that’s just part of the job, right? I mean, Marshall’s killed you deliberately at least three times now. I don’t remember you getting all pissy about any of those. What are you so worked up about now?”
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I am angry, Berto, because I live an extremely messed-up life. Every so often I wake up in my bed, hungover and covered in goo, and I realize that something horrible just happened to me, and I don’t have any memory of what it was, or why it happened, or what I could possibly do to prevent it from happening again. And when that happens, I trust you and Nasha to fill me in, to tell me what happened. I have to trust you, because I have no way to remember this stuff for myself. And now I know for a certain fact that you have lied to me about what happened at least once, and that leads me to wonder how many other times you’ve lied to me. Can you understand that?”
Maybe that got to him, because now he can’t meet my eyes.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “I understand that. I’m sorry, Mickey. Honestly, I am. I never thought about it that way.”
He actually seems sincere. Maybe he wouldn’t be such a terrible poker player after all.