Chapter Seventeen: Alex
A
lex had spent a fair amount of his training time at Hecate Base, and going back now was strange in a couple ways. There were the sorts of changes that he’d become accustomed to on Mars – old bars gone, new restaurants in place, the crappy handball courts converted to an administrative center, things like that. But driving his cart through the wide corridors, the thing that struck him most was how young everyone was. Cadets strutted in front of the bar that had once been the Steel Cactus Mexican Grill and sold to-go cups of Thai food now, their chins up and their chests out looking like they were playing dress-up. The ads on the screens were all for weapons and churches, singles services designed for people on tours of duty, and life insurance tailored for the families they left behind. They were the sorts of things that promised control or comfort in an uncertain universe. Alex remembered ads like that from decades before. The styles had changed, but the needs and subterranean fears that fueled them were the same.
Alex had worn the uniform, told the jokes. Or at least the same kind. He’d wondered whether there would be violence when he got out with a mixture of hope and dread. He’d pretended to be tougher than he was in hope of becoming tougher. He remembered how serious it had all been. The time Preston had gotten drunk and started a fight with Gregory. Alex had been pulled into it, and they’d all ended up before the MPs, certain their careers were over. The time Andrea Howard got busted cheating and had been dishonorably discharged. It had felt like someone died.
Now, looking at these kids, of course there was brawling and stupid decisions. They were children. And so he’d been a child when he was there too, and his choices had been made by a guy who didn’t know any better. He’d married Talissa when he was about that old. They’d made their blueprints for how he’d serve his tours and then come home. All their plans had been made by kids this young. Looked at that way, it made sense how nothing had worked out.
The other thing that surprised him was that everyone seemed to know who he was.
He parked his cart outside a teahouse called Poush that had survived the years since he’d served. The blue-and-gold awning put a gentle shadow over the glassed doorway. Faux-aged paint on the window curved in art nouveau framing with phrases in French. Alex figured the intention was to evoke the idea of some Parisian café of centuries before for people who’d never so much as stepped on the same planet as France. It was strange that the quaint feeling translated so well.
Inside, a dozen small tables with real linen cloth crowded together. The air was thick with the scent of the local qahwa – almonds and cinnamon and sugar. Captain Holden had a thing for coffee, and Alex felt a moment’s regret that he was off on Tycho Station where he couldn’t smell this. Before he could finish the thought, Fermín boiled up out of his chair and wrapped his arms around him.
“Alex!” Fermín shouted. “Good God, man. You got fat.”
“No,” Alex said, returning the hug and then breaking it. “That was you.”
“Ah,” his old friend said, nodding. “Yes, that was me. I forgot. Sit down.”
The waiter, a young man of maybe eighteen, looked out from behind the kitchen door and his eyes widened. The smile pretended to be the customary politeness, but when he ducked back Alex could hear him talking to someone. He sounded excited. Alex tried not to feel awkward about that.
“Thanks for this,” Alex said. “I don’t like to be the guy who doesn’t keep in touch until he needs a favor.”
“And yet,” Fermín said. The years had turned his stubble gray and thickened his jowls. Alex felt like if he squinted, he could still see the sharp-faced man he’d served with hidden somewhere in him. It was easier to see him in his gestures when he waved Alex’s concern away. “It’s nothing. Happy to do a favor for a friend.”
The waiter came out of the kitchen, nodding. The wide-mouthed cup in his hand steamed. He put it in front of Alex almost shyly.
“Specialty of the house,” the boy said. “For you, Mr. Kamal.”
“Ah,” Alex said. “Thank you.”
The boy nodded again and retreated. Alex chuckled uncomfortably at the cup, and Fermín grinned. “Come on now. You’ve got to be used to this kind of thing, right? You’re Alex Kamal. First pilot through the Ring.”
“Naw, just the first one that lived.”
“Same thing.”
“And I surely didn’t want to be,” Alex said. “They were shooting at me.”
“And that makes it less romantic?”
Alex blew across the surface of the cup and sipped at it. Chai with honey and cardamom and something else he couldn’t quite place. “That trip was a lot of things,” he drawled. “Romantic wasn’t one of ’em. And usually since then I’ve had the captain around to soak up the attention.”