“Hmm.” He leaned forward, busy with his shoes. “Look at it another way. Most people back home sit around with their families and friends and lead a cozy life, doing three or four different things at the same time — gardening, designing commercial beetles, painting landscapes, and bringing up children, that sort of thing. Entomologists picking over the small things in life to see what’s twitching its legs underneath. Why the hell aren’t we doing that ourselves?”
“I used to.” He glanced up at her curiously, but she was elsewhere, remembering. “Spent thirty years being a housewife, would you believe it? Being good God-fearing people, hubby was the breadwinner, two delightful children to dote over, and a suburban garden. Church every Sunday and nothing — nothing — allowed to break with the pretense of conformity.”
“Ah. I thought you were older than you looked. Late-sixties backlash?”
“Which sixties?” She shook her head, then answered her own rhetorical question: “Twenty-sixties. I was born in forty-nine. Grew up in a Baptist family, Baptist town, quiet religion — it turned inward after the Eschaton. We were all so desperately afraid, I think. It was a long time ago: I find it hard to remember.
One day I was forty-eight and the kids were at college and I realized I didn’t believe a word of it. They’d gotten the extension treatments nailed down by then, and the pastor had stopped denouncing it as satanic tampering with God’s will — after his own grandfather beat him at squash — and I suddenly realized that I’d had an empty day, and I had maybe a million days just like it ahead of me, and there were so many things I hadn’t done and couldn’t do, if I stayed the same. And I didn’t really believe: religion was my husband’s thing, I just went along with it. So I moved out. Took the treatment, lost twenty years in six months. Went through the usual Sterling fugue, changed my name, changed my life, changed just about everything about me. Joined an anarchist commune, learned to juggle, got into radical antiviolence activism. Harry — no, Harold — couldn’t cope with that.”
“Second childhood. Sort of like a twentieth-century teenage period.”
“Yes, exactly—” She stared at Martin. “How about you?”
He shrugged. “I’m younger than you. Older than most everyone else aboard this idiotic children’s crusade. Except maybe the admiral.” For an instant, and only an instant, he looked hagridden. “You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.”
She stared at him. “You’ve got it bad?”
“We’re—” He checked himself, cast her a curious guarded look, then started again. “This trip is doomed. I suppose you know that.”
“Yes.” She looked at the floor. “I know that,” she said calmly. “If I don’t broker some sort of cease-fire or persuade them not to use their causality weapons, the Eschaton will step in. Probably throw a comet made of antimatter at them, or something.” She looked at him. “What do you think?”
“I think—” He paused again and looked away, slightly evasively. “If the Eschaton intervenes, we’re both in the wrong place.”
“Huh. That’s so much fun to know.” She forced a grin. “So where do you come from? Go on, I told you—”
Martin stretched his arms and leaned back. “I grew up in a Yorkshire hill farming village, all goats and cloth caps and dark satanic mills full of God-knows-what. Oh yes, and compulsory ferret-legging down the pub on Tuesday evenings, for the tourist trade tha’ knows.”
“Ferret-legging?” Rachel looked at him incredulously.
“Yup. You tie your kilt up around your knees with duct tape — as you probably know, no Yorkshireman would be seen dead wearing anything under his sporran — and take a ferret by the scruff of his neck. A ferret, that’s like, uh, a bit like a mink. Only less friendly. It’s a young man’s initiation rite; you stick the ferret where the sun doesn’t shine and dance the furry dance to the tune of a balalaika. Last man standing and all that, kind of like the ancient Boer aardvark-kissing competition.” Martin shuddered dramatically.
“I hate ferrets. The bloody things bite like a cask-strength single malt without the nice aftereffects.”
“That was what you did on Tuesdays,” Rachel said, slowly beginning to smile. ‘Tell me more. What about Wednesdays?“
“Oh, on Wednesdays we stayed home and watched reruns of Coronation Road. They remixed the old video files to near-realistic resolution and subtitled them, of course, so we could understand what they were saying. Then we’d all hoist a pint of Tetley’s tea and toast the downfall of the House of Lancaster.
Very traditional, us Yorkshirefolk. I remember the thousandth-anniversary victory celebrations — but that’s enough about me. What did you do on Wednesdays?” Rachel blinked. “Nothing in particular. Defused terrorist A-bombs, got shot at by Algerian Mormon separatists. Uh, that was after I kicked over the traces the first time. Before then, I think I took the kids to soccer, although I’m not sure what day of the week that was.” She turned aside for a moment and rummaged in the steamer trunk under her bunk. “Ah, here it is.” She pulled out a narrow box and opened it. “You know what? Maybe you shouldn’t have used that sober patch.” The bottle gleamed golden beneath the antiseptic cabin lights.
“I’d be lousy company though. I was getting all drunk and depressed on my own, and you had to interrupt me and make me sober up.”
“Well, maybe you should just have tried to find someone to get drunk with instead of doing it on your own.” Two small glasses appeared. She leaned close. “Do you want it watered?” Martin eyed the bottle critically. Replicated Speyside fifty-year malt, a cask-strength bottling template. If it wasn’t a nanospun clone of the original, it would be worth its weight in platinum. Even so, it would be more than adequately drinkable. “I’ll take it neat and report to sick bay for a new throat tomorrow.” He whistled appreciatively as she poured a generous measure. “How did you know?”
“That you’d like it?” She shrugged. “I didn’t. I just grew up on corn liquor. Didn’t meet the real thing till a job in Syrtis—” Her face clouded over. “Long life and happiness.”
“I’ll drink to that,” he agreed after a moment. They sat in silence for a minute, savoring the afterbloom of the whisky. “I’d be happier right now if I knew what was going on, though.”
“I wouldn’t be too worried: either nothing, or we’ll be dead too fast to feel it. The carrier from Septagon will probably just make a fast pass to reassure itself that we’re not planning on spreading any more mayhem, then escort us to the next jump zone while the diplomats argue over who pays. Right now, I’ve got the comms room taking my name in vain for all it’s worth; hopefully, that’ll convince them not to shoot at us without asking some more questions first.”
“I’d be happier if I knew we had a way off this ship.”
“Relax. Drink your whisky.” She shook her head. “We don’t. So stop worrying about it. Anyway, if they do shoot us, wouldn’t you rather die happily sipping a good single malt or screaming in terror?”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re cold-blooded? No, I take it back. Has anyone ever told you you’ve got a skin like a tank?”
“Frequently.” She stared into her glass thoughtfully. “It’s a learned thing. Pray you never have to learn it.”
“You mean you had to?”
“Yes. No other way to do my job. My last job, that is.”
“What did you do?” he asked softly.
“I wasn’t joking about the terrorist A-bombs. Actually, the bombs were the easiest bit; it was finding the assholes who planted them that was the hard part. Find the asshole, find the gadget, fix the gadget, fix the dump they sprang the plute from. Usually in that order, unless we were unlucky enough to have to deal with an unscheduled criticality excursion in downtown wherever without someone mailing in a warning first. Then if we found the asshole, our hardest job would be keeping the lynch mob away from them until we could find out where they sourced the bang-juice.”