The reporter looked like he’d swallowed something sour and unexpected. “I’m sorry. Are you saying this attack isn’t serious?”
“This attack is the greatest tragedy in human history,” Avasarala said, her voice deep and throbbing. She dominated the screen. “But it was carried out by shortsighted, narcissistic criminals. They want a war? Too bad. They get an arrest, processing, and a fair trial with whatever lawyer they can afford. They want the Belt to rise up so they can hide behind the good, decent people who live there? Belters aren’t thugs, and they aren’t murderers. They are men and women who love their children the same as any of us. They are good and evil and wise and foolish and human. And this ‘Free Navy’ will never be able to kill enough people to make Earth forget that shared humanity. Let the Belt consult its own conscience, and you’ll see compassion and decency and kindness flourish in any gravity or none. Earth has been bloodied, but we will not be debased. Not on my fucking watch.”
The old woman sat back in her seat, her eyes fiery and defiant. The reporter glanced into the camera and then back to his notes. “The relief effort on Earth is, of course, a massive undertaking.”
“It is,” she said. “We have reactors in every major city on the planet running at top efficiency to provide power for —”
The screen went blank. Cyn put his hand terminal down on the table with an angry click. Naomi looked up at him from behind her hair.
“Esá bitch needs sa yutak cut,” Cyn said. His face was dark with rage. “Lesson á totas like her, yeah?”
“For for?” Naomi said, shrugging. “Kill her, and another one will take her place. She’s good at what she does, but even if you did slit her throat, there’d just be someone else in the same chair saying the same things.”
Cyn shook his head. “Not like that.”
“Close by.”
“No,” he said, his chin jutting a centimeter forward. “Not like that. Alles la about big social movements y ages of history y sa? Stories they make up later so it makes sense. Not like that, not real. It’s people do things. Marco. Filipito. You. Me.”
“You say so,” Naomi said.
“Esá coyo on Mars who traded us for all the ships and told us where to find supplies? He’s not ‘Martian economic despair’ o ‘rising debt ratios’ o ‘income and access inequality.’ ” With each pretentious invented term, Cyn wagged his finger like a professor lecturing a class, and it was funny enough that Naomi chuckled. He blinked at the sound, and then smiled a little shyly. “La coyo la is just some coyo. He’s a man made a deal with a man who talked up some otras, and we did things. Who people are, it matters, yeah? Can’t replace them.”
His gaze was on her now, not a professor lecturing a class, but Cyn lecturing her. She scooped the last bite of pudding into her mouth. “Get the feeling you’re saying something,” she said around it. Cyn looked down, gathered himself. She could see the effort more than she could understand it.
“Filipito, he needs you. No sabez la, but he does. You and Marco are you and Marco, but no you take the coward’s out.”
Her heart jumped a little. He thought she was in despair, that she might give in to the dark thoughts. She wondered what brought him to the conclusion, and whether it was a mistake he was making or something he could see in her that she couldn’t. She swallowed. “You telling me not to kill myself?”
“Be a bad thing to say?”
She stood up, her soiled bowl in her hand. He rose with her, following as she headed for the recycler. The weight of her body was reassuring. There was still time. They hadn’t cut the drives yet. She could still figure her way over. “What should I do, then?”
It was Cyn’s turn to shrug. “Come with. Be Free Navy. We go where they need us, do what needs doing. Help where they need help, yeah? Already eight colony ships on target.”
“Target for what?”
“Redistribué, yeah? Alles la food and supplies they got heading out for the Ring? Más 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 mass. 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?”