“Limpopo,” she said.
Both of them answered, which would have been funny and might be later.
“Sorry, not the house spirit, the living one.”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Tam.”
“Tam? No fucking way! Tam! You’re still there? Still with Seth?”
She smiled and squeezed Seth’s hand.
“Yes, he’s here, too.”
“You poor fucker.” Everyone knew she was kidding, even Seth.
“I’ve got him trained. He’s gotten old and slow, and I’m mean.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Where are you, Limpopo? I mean, physically?”
“Near Kingston, north a bit. Past Joycetown. Kingston Prison for Women.”
“Are you safe?”
“You mean, are there murderers about to come and kill me? Not that I can see. I’m not worried about that. There are plenty of sketchy people in here, but there are plenty of sketchy people out there. Most of these women are my friends. Some are like sisters.”
“Can we come and get you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, can we come and bring you here? Pocahontas is still here, and Gretyl and Iceweasel, and their kids, and Big Wheel, and Little Wheel, and even Kersplebedeb, though she calls herself Noozi now—”
“Hold up a sec. I don’t know who half those people are. Shit, I don’t even know where you people are—”
“Gary.”
“I don’t know who that is either.”
“Gary, Indiana. Nice place. World leaders in bringing back buildings from the dead. Colonized brickwork, smart trusses, big old places that haven’t been maintained in fifty, seventy-five years.”
“A state that begins and ends with a vowel? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“You’d love it here, Limpopo. You’re a hero.”
“It’s true,” said Limpopo-the-house-spirit. “You’re a saint around here.”
The other Limpopo groaned. “You’re killing me.”
“Sorry, Limpopo,” Seth said. “We thought you were dead. Martyrdom was in order.”
She groaned again.
“Seriously,” Tam said. “Come and see us. Or we’ll all come see you. I don’t care which. We love you. We’ve missed you.”
“Hey!” said house-spirit Limpopo.
“Missed hugging and holding you,” Tam said. “And you should meet this other Limpopo, our Limpopo, she’s wonderful.”
“Don’t suck up,” said the house spirit. “You’re getting mouse turds in your cornflakes for a week, asshole.”
The other Limpopo laughed. “She sounds like my kind of person. Literally, I suppose. Fuck, who knew this week could get any weirder.”
There was a crash and thunder of feet on the stairs, and Gretyl and Iceweasel burst into the room, preceded by their boys, who were comets of snot and destruction, squabbling over a toy even as they came through the door, the little one pulling the big one’s hair. Gretyl fluidly pried his fingers out of the curly mop, hauled him into the air and set him down away from his big brother.
“She’s alive?” Iceweasel said, grabbing the bigger one and swinging him around—he laughed and flung his head back.
“We’re talking to her now,” Tam said. “Limpopo, Iceweasel and Gretyl are here.”
“Iceweasel is alive?”
Iceweasel laughed. “I guess we have a lot to catch up on.”
The younger boy suddenly looked at her seriously and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “You aren’t dead, Mommy.”
“I’m not dead. Don’t worry, Jacob.”
“Mommy?”
“There’s two of them,” Gretyl said. “Boys. Jacob’s seven and Stan is ten. Say hello to Limpopo, boys.”
“Limpopo?” Jacob screwed his face up. “The house spirit?”
“No, another Limpopo. She’s a long way away and we haven’t seen her in a long time. We love her.”
Jacob shrugged. Stan rolled his eyes at his younger brother’s slow uptake. “Hi, Limpopo! Hi, other Limpopo!”
Far away, Limpopo cursed imaginatively, which made both boys’ eyes go wide and put smiles on their faces. Tam could see them storing away the language for future deployment. “Hello, boys. Hello, Gretyl. Hello, Iceweasel. It’s good to hear everyone’s alive and thriving.”
“What’s it going to be,” Tam said. “Are we coming to you or are you coming to us? Because, darling, we have some catching up to do, and for all we know, default is going to get its shit together and come in there and kill or lock up every last one of you.”
“That’s a possibility we’ve considered. There’s one more thing—the root auth tokens were left in the control center by a guard, that’s what we figure. We have this place pwned from asshole to appetite. Thing about a jail, it’s just as good at keeping people out as it is at keeping people in. Anyone who wants to take this place away is going to have a hell of a time.”
Tam bit her lip. Everyone looked at everyone. Even the boys were quiet. “Limpopo. We don’t want you hurt. We’re walkaways. There are plenty of big, dumb institutional buildings you and your friends can occupy.”
“Bullshit.” She surprised them with her vehemence. “They stole our lives. Locked us up. We earned this place. It’s ours. If we walk away, if we fragment, they’ll pick us off, one at a time. We’re never going to be anyone’s captive, never.”
“You’re going to stay in jail to stop yourself from being a captive?” Seth’s mouth, as always, ran ahead of his sense.
“It’s no joke. We bought this place with blood, with our lives. It’s ours. It was our captivity. Now it’s our freedom.”
“Limpopo,” Iceweasel said, softly. “It’s not like that anymore. Default isn’t the default. I know what it was like. It looked like war, they were going to lock us away or kill us. It changed. The zottas went to war against each other, fought for control over countries whose people refused to fight for any side, walked away with us, turned refugee living into the standard. It was the people who stayed in one place and claimed some chunk of real estate was no one else’s became weirdos. Everyone else hit the road when those people showed.”
“Bullshit,” Limpopo said. “Maybe in your corner of the world. The state doesn’t just wither away. Someone paid those guards’ salaries for all those years, kept the slop coming into our fabbers’ ingesters. Victory isn’t a thing that walkaways will ever have. Walking away isn’t victory, it’s just not losing.”
“We haven’t lost,” Iceweasel said. “There are enclaves of people who pretend that it’s normal and things will go back the way they were or were supposed to be soon. These days, it’s not about armed conflict, it’s war of norms, which of us is normal and who are the crazy radicals.” She paused. “Did you hear about the Iraqi invasion?”