She ordered a drink from the table’s system and paid with a preloaded chit. Before the thin-faced boy behind the bar could deliver it, the metal doors to the corridor opened again and Wings came in. His movements were tight and anxious, his expression closed and angry. He hadn’t followed her here. This was where he headed back to after he failed. Naomi faded back another centimeter.
Wings sat at the bar, stood up, sat again. A door hidden by shadows at the back of the club opened. The man who came out was huge. The muscles of his neck and torso were so large and defined, she could have used him as an anatomy lesson. His steel-gray hair was cut close to the scalp, white lines of scar crossing behind his left ear like the map of a river delta. A massive tattoo of the OPA’s split circle logo decorated the side of his neck. He went to the bar where Wings was waiting. Wings’ hands were already out in apology. Naomi couldn’t hear what he said, but the gist was clear enough. He’d seen her. He’d lost her. He was sorry. Please don’t rip his kneecaps off. She let herself smile a little.
The big man tilted his head, nodded, said something that seemed to relieve Wings enough that he managed a smile. The big man turned slowly, squinting into the gloom of the club. When his gaze reached her, it stopped. The boy at the bar started forward, her drink on a tray. The big man put a hand on the boy’s chest, pushing him back. Naomi sat up a little straighter, looking up into the big man’s eyes as he reached the table. They were as pale as she remembered.
“Knuckles,” he said.
“Cyn,” Naomi replied, and then his massive arms were around her lifting her up. She returned the embrace. The smell and heat of his skin was like hugging a bear. “God, you haven’t changed at all, have you?”
“Only got better, uhkti. Bigger and brighter.”
He put her down with a thump. His smile drew lines all across his face like ripples in a pool. She patted his shoulder and his grin grew wider. At the bar, Wings’ eyes were big as saucers. Naomi waved at him. The man sent to follow her hesitated, then waved back.
“So what did I miss?” Naomi asked as Cyn led her to the door at the back of the club.
“Only all of it, sa sa?” Cyn rumbled. “How much did Marco say?”
“Very damned little.”
“Always the way. Always the way.”
Past the thin door, a corridor snaked back into the raw stone of the asteroid. The sealant was old, gray, and flaking, and cold radiated out from the stone. Three men leaned against the wall, guns in their hands. The oldest was Karal. The younger two she didn’t know. She kissed Karal’s cheek as she passed. The others looked at her with a mix of distrust and awe. The hidden hallway ended at a steel door.
“Why so secret?” she asked. “You know the OPA runs Ceres now.”
“There’s OPA and there’s OPA,” Cyn said.
“And you’re that other one,” she said, but with warmth in her voice that covered her unease.
“Always,” Cyn agreed.
The door slid open, and Cyn ducked to pass through. It was impossible to see around his bulk. Naomi followed.
“Got here and no further,” Cyn said over his shoulder. “And best we don’t float too long. Plan had us back with Marco a month ago.”
“Marco’s not here?”
“Nobody here but us chickens.” There was a smile in the words.
The chamber they stepped into was wide and cold. A portable scrubber moved stale air and left the smell of rubber. Formed plastic shelves held rations and water. A thin laminate table had five stools around it, and an old network repeater hung from a hook by its wires. A set of bunks leaned against the wall four high. There were bodies curled under the blankets, but if they were sleeping, Cyn didn’t take notice of them. His voice carried at the same volume.
“Thing is, better we don’t be where anyone can reach us when it all comes down, sa sa?”
“When what comes down?” Naomi said.
Cyn sat at the table, reached out a long arm, and pulled an unlabeled bottle from the shelves. He pulled the cork from its neck with his teeth.
“Ay, Knuckles,” he said with a laugh, “you said he didn’t tell you much, you weren’t singing low, were you?”
Naomi sat on one of the stools as Cyn poured amber liquid into two glasses. The fumes smelled of alcohol and butter and burned sugar. Naomi felt her mouth responding to the scent. The taste was like coming home.
“Nothing like Tia Margolis’ brandy,” Cyn said with a sigh.
“Nothing, ever,” Naomi said. “So, now that I’m here, why don’t you fill me in?”
“Well,” Cyn said. “It’s these pinché ring gates. You know better than anyone. Another thousand inner planets, and a whole new set of reasons they may as well fuck the Belt, que si? And half the Belt sucking the Butcher’s cock and making themselves out noble and official and political. So we, and by we I mean Marco, yeah? We decide about two, three years ago—”
“We don’t talk about it,” a young man’s voice said sharply. Cyn looked at the door. Thick with dread, Naomi turned too. The boy looked terribly old and terribly young at the same time. His skin was darker than Marco’s, and his hair had more curl. The eyes were the same, though. And the mouth. Something huge—larger than oceans—moved in her chest. Emotions she’d buried rose up, and the rip threatened to pull her away. She tried to hide it, but she had to put a hand flat on the table to steady herself.
He stepped into the room. The sand-colored shirt was large on him, but she could see that his body was in the place between the coltish growth of adolescence and the thickening muscle of a man. One of the figures on the bunk stirred and turned, but didn’t otherwise react.
“We don’t talk about it until we’re safely back. Not even in here. Not at all. Sabez?”
“Savvy mé,” Cyn said. “Just thought since—”
“I know what you thought. It passes, but we don’t talk about it.”
For the first time, the young man’s eyes turned to hers. Her own struggle was mirrored in his eyes. She wondered what she looked like to him. What was in his mind and heart where hers was joy and guilt and a venomous regret. This was the moment she hadn’t allowed herself to want. She’d known it was coming since the message from Marco arrived on Tycho. She wasn’t ready for it. He made a small, quick smile and nodded to her.
“Filip,” she said carefully, as if the word were fragile. When he answered, his voice could have been her echo.
“Mother.”
Chapter Ten: Amos
The high-speed rail station in Philadelphia was near the center of a middle-income commercial area. Wage earners wandered the streets between strip malls, buying the semi-fashionable clothes and petty luxuries only available to those with currency. Only not too much currency. High-end shopping would be somewhere else, protected by security designed to keep people like these out.
Even on Earth, there were people with money, and then there were people with money.
It was weird for Amos to think that he might have enough in his account to pass for the latter. It amused him to imagine wandering over to some highbrow shopping center in his unstylish Belt-made clothes just to give the sales staff a fit when he dropped a couple grand on something useless. Maybe a nice solid platinum drink shaker. For that once or twice a year when he felt like drinking a martini.
Maybe later. After.
He headed out of the mall and toward the residential district that his hand terminal’s map said Lydia’s old house was in. At the short, tunnel-like exit he was accosted by a boy of eleven or twelve wearing a cheap paper jumpsuit, the kind that basic kiosks dispensed for free with a thumbprint. The boy offered him a variety of sexual services at rock-bottom prices. Amos grabbed the boy by the chin and tilted his face up. There were the fading yellow marks of a not-too-recent beating on his cheek, and the telltale pink around the eyelids of a pixie dust habit.