Limpopo wasn’t ready to go and might never be. She wanted to build an onsen. The mention of this put a gleam in the eyes of those who’d known her at the B&B, including Iceweasel. They emerged a consensus that they’d stay and help. The boys had never seen an onsen—they’d gone out of fashion in Gary—and avidly watched videos about them. They were committed to the project. Gretyl could have headed home, but there was no reason to be there as opposed to here. She could teach her classes anywhere. The little serious math work she did with colleagues was geography independent.
She didn’t like it here. It was too close to Toronto, to Jacob Redwater. It was weird that Iceweasel named their son after him, but being this close to what Gretyl thought of as “Jacob’s lair” made her edgy. That’s why Iceweasel wanted to stay. She needed to prove—to herself, to the world, to her monstrous father, who knew her every move—that she was unafraid. This had been hashed out during the naming thing. Gretyl understood there was no new information to be gleaned by refactoring that painful discussion. Once, she’d been foolhardy enough to argue with Iceweasel about this—a pregnant Iceweasel at that—and learned her lesson.
She still jumped at shadows.
“You hate this.” The boys were at the onsen job site, clicking fabbed bricks together. They’d been promised a salvage expedition to a site where a drone cataloged a whole butt-load of useful matériel, on condition of diligent work and good behavior that morning. Iceweasel had come back and flumfed on the camp bed, swooning, sipping her pack’s straw and glowing prettily with sweat.
“I don’t hate it. I totally understand—”
“Hating and understanding aren’t opposites. I want to let you know I know you hate this, and I’m grateful you’re doing it anyway.”
Gretyl shook her head. “I love you, too.”
Iceweasel stretched out an arm and felt blindly for her, patted her on the butt. Gretyl took her hand. It was nice to have a kid-free moment. It had been a while. They held hands and Gretyl closed her eyes.
“I got a new scan today,” Iceweasel said. “The boys, too.”
Gretyl opened her eyes. “Oh.” She tried very hard to keep her voice neutral and failed.
“Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
Iceweasel took her hand back and sat up. “There was a crowd doing it, moms and kids, now the scanners are burned in and working. You know it’s harmless.”
“I know you can’t be harmed by the scanning process, but—”
“But someone could steal your scan and do something terrible to us. I know. We’ve been through it. They’re locked to my private key, or a supermajority of our friends’ keys, the usual group, same one we use for the rest.”
Gretyl shook her head. “Fine.”
“Obviously, it’s not fine.”
“Explain why you would feel so threatened that you got yourself scanned, but not so threatened that you wouldn’t just leave?”
“Getting a scan gives us some insurance.”
“Insurance? As in, if your father kidnaps you, I can run a sim of you to raise our sons? If we all die, maybe our friends will run us in simulation and wear us around their necks and we can talk out of their tits for the rest of time?”
“My dad’s not going to kidnap me.” In the first five years of their relationship, Gretyl got good at spotting when Iceweasel changed the subject. In the years since, she’d got better at figuring out when to mention it. She didn’t mention it.
“How do you know?”
Iceweasel moved her arm off her face, spat out the straw and sat. “Because I heard from him.”
Gretyl literally boggled at her wife. “Say that again?”
“I heard from him. Come on, you know he’s sent me messages. I don’t answer. I never answer.”
“Before, we weren’t in his backyard.”
“You’re being superstitious. It’s no harder for Jacob Redwater to get to any place than it is for him to get any other place. Distance isn’t what keeps us safe.”
Gretyl had also been married to Iceweasel long enough to recognize when her wife was right. She shut up and tried to stop fretting. The boys returned, looking for clothes suitable for a salvage mission. They were distracted by hosing them down and dressing them up. Then all was forgotten, or at least they could pretend.
[ii]
The onsen rose, brick by brick. Things got going when some of its crew fabbed construction mechas, which, of course, the boys wanted to pilot. The mechas ran automatically, and had fail-safes. Everyone agreed the boys were good at them and, unlike adults, never bored of repetitive manual tasks, provided they got to pilot robots while they did it.
At first, they insisted the boys have nearby adult copilots holding dead-man’s switches, but there were no adults with the stamina to keep up with the boys’ drive to build. Also, the onsen was going up fast as it was thanks to their contribution. It would have been a dick move to slow them down.
“Parenting,” Iceweasel pronounced, “is the art of getting out of the way of your kids’ development.” That settled it.
Besides, it gave them more time together than they’d had since Stan was born.
It was a second honeymoon, spent in the heady first days of a—very small—new nation, former prisoners and their families adding more each day, powdering the steel bars of the jails for fabber feedstock, pumping out support struts, spun for minimum weight/materials, structural versions of the bikes they’d ridden, but with more fail-safes. Hoa and friends came for a three-day stay, cycling on more of the same. They found a group of excited ex-cons who wanted to know how the weird bikes worked. Now there were three workshops making variations on the theme. It was getting to the point where serious arguments were brewing about bicycle/pedestrian etiquette.
Gretyl had forgot how energizing revolutionary life was. Back in Gary, they were set in routine, the kind of thing you have to do if you’re raising kids and keeping some life for yourself. Here, no two days were alike. Every day brought new challenges, new solutions. It had been years since Gretyl was part of a place where there were serious arguments on the message boards. Here they raged, even erupting into fistfights, cooled out by peacemakers who rose to the challenge.
Just as she was getting pleased with it all—
“Gretyl.” The way Iceweasel said it froze her. She’d heard Iceweasel sad, afraid, even panicked. But never had she heard that note in her wife’s voice.
“What?” Gretyl waved her interface surfaces clear, flicked her wrists to shake off the tasks she’d queued. Their shelter felt cramped, not cozy.
Iceweasel was sweating. Her eyes were wide. Gretyl felt her heart pick up the pace.
Another woman stepped through the doorway. She was … coiled. Not very tall, hair cut short and stylish, face all planes, maybe Slavic. Her posture was like a cat about to pounce. Gretyl couldn’t guess her age: older than Iceweasel, but in such excellent physical shape it was impossible to say by how much. She had small, square teeth, which she displayed in a quick smile. Gretyl knew who she had to be.
“You’d be Nadie?”
Nadie nodded minutely. “Gretyl.” She extended a hand. Dry. Strong. Calloused. Perfect manicure, dun-colored polish, blunt tips.
Gretyl looked from Iceweasel to Nadie.
“How bad?”
“Limpopo is bringing the boys. Nadie has a helicopter.”