“You don’t have to do that,” Naomi said, but – eyes blank and empty – Filip floated over and pecked her cheek with dry lips before returning to the lift. The guards went with him, except for two that took up stations behind her.
“It’s been a long time,” Marco said. “You look good. The years have been kind to you.”
“You too,” she said. “Sound different too. When did you stop talking like a Belter?”
Marco spread his hands. “In order to be heard by the oppressing class, one must speak as a member of it. Not only the language, but the diction. The accusation of tyranny, however well-founded in fact, is dismissed unless it is delivered in the manner that power recognizes as powerful. That’s why Fred Johnson was useful. He was already iconic of an authority that the authorities understood.”
“So you’ve been practicing, then,” she said, folding her arms.
“It’s my job.” Marco reached up, pushed his fingertips against the upper deck, and floated down toward the control couches. “Thank you for coming.”
Naomi didn’t answer that. She could feel him already rewriting the past. Treating her like she’d chosen to join him. Like she was responsible for being here. Instead, she nodded toward the ops deck. “Nice ride. Where’d you get it?”
“Friends in high places,” Marco said, and then chuckled. “And strange, strange alliances. There are always people who understand that when the world changes, the rules change with it.”
Naomi tugged at her hair, pulling it down over her eyes, and then, angry with herself, pushed it back. “So then. To what do I owe this setup bullshit?”
Marco’s hurt expression could have passed for genuine. “No setup. Filip was in trouble, you were in a position to get our son out of a bad place that had the potential to get a whole lot worse.”
“And paid for it by being pulled on your ship against my will? I can’t really thank you for that.”
“You should,” Marco said. “We brought you because you’re one of ours. To keep you safe. If we could have explained it all, we would have, but things are delicate, and you don’t stop to explain why you’re protecting someone when the danger’s close. The stakes are the lives of millions of Belters, and —”
“Oh please,” Naomi said.
“You don’t think so?” Marco said, a harshness coming into his voice. “You’re the one who killed us. You and your new captain. The minute those gates opened, all the rest of us were dead.”
“You’re still breathing,” Naomi said, but her anger sounded like petulance even to herself. He heard it that way too.
“You didn’t grow up down a well. You know how little the inners cared about us. The Chesed. Anderson Station. The Cielo mine fire. Belter lives don’t mean shit to inners. Never have. You know that.”
“They’re not all like that.”
“Some that pretend they aren’t, yeah?” The accents of the Belt slipped into his voice. And a rattling anger with them. “But they can still go down the wells. There’re a thousand new worlds, and billions of inners who can just step onto them. No training, no rehab, no drugs. You know how many Belters can tolerate a full g? Give them everything, all the medical care, the exoskeleton support mechs, nursing homes? Two-thirds. Two-thirds of us could go be cripples on these brave néo worlds, if the inners pulled together and threw all their money at it. You think that’s going to happen? Never has before. Last year, three pharmaceutical plants stopped even making their low-end bone density cocktails. Didn’t open the patents. Didn’t apologize to any ships don’t have budget for the high-end stuff. Just stopped. Needed the capacity for colony ships and all the new ganga they’re making with the data coming back from the rings.
“We’re leftovers, Naomi. You and me and Karal and Cyn. Tia Margolis. Filip. They’re moving on, and they’re forgetting us because they can. They write the histories, you know what we’ll be? A paragraph about how much it sucks when a race of people go obsolete, and how it would have been more humane to put us down.
“Come. Tell me I’m wrong.”
It was the same ranting he’d done before, but perfected by years. A new variation of the same arguments he’d made on Ceres. She half expected him to say The Gamarra had it coming. This is war, and anyone who helps choke out the enemy is a soldier whether they know it or not. Her gut felt like it was made from water. It was a feeling she remembered from the dark times. Something in the back of her head shifted. The serpent of learned helplessness long asleep starting to wake. She pretended it wasn’t there, in hopes that if she denied it enough, it wouldn’t exist.
“What’s it got to do with me?” Naomi asked, less forcefully than she intended.