Cat made some mystic gestures and two drinks appeared beside them.
‘Shall we sit?’
She strode to the nearest table, which by the time they sat down had become unoccupied, wiped clean and furnished with a translucent ashtray.
‘Cheers.’
‘Live long and prosper.’
‘I—’
‘I—’
‘No, you—’
Cat smiled. ‘All right. This probably sounds terrible, but if I don’t say it now it’ll be on our minds, you know? Moh’s death was a shock to all of us. It just came up on our screen, against his name. Well, that’s how it does,’ she added, defensively. ‘Killed in action. Soldier of the Republic. Sincere condolences and hasta la victory and all that…’ She blinked hard and sipped her drink. ‘The thing is, Janis, we—’ She stopped again. ‘These things happen to us, to people like us. Like Moh. You get used to knowing it’ll happen – hell, you get used to it happening. No, you never get used to it, but…you get to have ways of dealing with it. And you, you were just sort of thrown into it. I mean, I want to say I understand you must have felt it so much more—’
‘Aw, Cat, don’t say that. But I know what you’re saying, and—’ She clasped Cat’s hand. ‘I loved him, and I know you loved him.’
Cat took a deep breath through her nose and smiled. ‘Yes. And I’m sure you know how he thought. Last thing he’d’ve wanted would be for two of his old girlfriends to be crying in each other’s drinks about him. He loved life so much because he knew and believed so strongly that it’d go on without him. That’s how he responded to other people’s deaths: comrades, people he was close to. Mourn them and…go on. Don’t act as if they’re hanging around like ghosts, watching what you do and resenting you having a good time.’
Janis nodded. That sounded like Moh all right. She sighed, relaxing, and raised her glass. Cat nodded and raised hers, too, and they both drank, smiling at each other.
‘Well, Cat,’ Janis said, ‘what you been doing since the revolution?’
Cat was about to reply when some other guests crowded around the table and led her off. ‘Long story,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Catch you later, Janis.’
Janis stood up, saw her glass was empty and went to the bar. Once the glass had been filled the table was no longer vacant.
Jordan appeared again.
‘Hi, Janis,’ he said. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’
The woman he’d been talking to stepped forward and stopped just beside him. Janis took an instant liking to her. She had rough-cut red-brown hair and a sun-exposed, freckle-dusted face, and she was wearing as her only jewellery a blue enamel star pinned to the shoulder of her red silk shift. At the moment the expression on her frank, open face was one of frank, open reserve.
‘Janis, Sylvia,’ Jordan said. ‘Sylvia’s the first person I met in Norlonto. She actually pointed me towards this pub.’ He looked at Sylvia, apparently oblivious to how she felt. ‘I’d probably never have met you, or Cat, if it hadn’t been for her. Talk about chance, huh? The blind matchmaker.’ He grinned, then seemed to realize that the phrase had painful echoes. ‘Anyway, she’s in the space-movement militia.’
He waved a hand between them and turned away.
Sylvia leaned an elbow on the bar and ordered a beer.
‘Well, hi there, soldier,’ she said. ‘So how does it feel to be doing me out of a job?’
‘What?’ Janis stared at her, bewildered.
‘Don’t tell me you don’t know,’ Sylvia said. She raised her mug and said with heavy sarcasm, ‘Ladies and gentlemen: the Republic!’
‘Oh, Christ!’ Janis put her drink down on the bar and stared at it for a moment. She shook her head and looked up. ‘Believe me, Sylvia, I didn’t know. And I don’t agree with it.’
‘OK.’ Sylvia gave a guarded smile. ‘Are you free to talk about it?’
‘Sure.’ Sure.
‘Well,’ – Sylvia slid up on to a tall stool – ‘the militia’s been ordered to disband and merge with the army. We don’t like it, but all the movement leaders say we don’t have much choice. Any day now, the army’ – so that was what people called it now! – ‘is going to move in and enforce it. Put an end to Norlonto’s so-called anomalous status.’
‘But why?’ She knew why.
‘Officially, it’s because it’s a security risk, full of refugees and conspirators from the Free States.’
‘Hah!’ If she knew anything about Norlonto the objection was that its militias and defence agencies could maintain law and order, could stamp on any terrorism or other clear and present danger, and do it a lot more effectively than any occupying army.
‘Indeed,’ said Sylvia. ‘It’s because it’s outside their control and they don’t like it. A decadent blot on the face of the earth.’
‘Yeah. A fun-loving, freedom-loving decadent blot.’
‘You said it.’
‘Well, actually, Wilde said it,’ Janis acknowledged. ‘And now they’re going to wreck the only good thing to come out of the Settlement. Goodbye to the fifth-colour country.’
Sylvia looked surprised, then smiled in agreement.
Janis noticed Jordan standing just a metre away, listening, and decided she’d underestimated his awareness of what was going on. She swung her head to indicate to him to come closer, and leaned inward to talk in a low voice to them both.
‘I know what you think I’m thinking. That it’s all very well doing this sort of thing to unpleasant little Free States, breeding grounds of reaction, but Norlonto’s different, Norlonto’s special because Norlonto’s free.
‘That’s not what I think at all.’ She took a long swallow, enjoying the looks they were giving her. ‘I think what we’re doing is wrong all down the line.’ There, she’d said it.
‘So what do you want then?’ Jordan asked, frowning. ‘Another Settlement? Let places like BC go on tyrannizing their inhabitants, poisoning their minds and screwing up their personalities? God, Janis, you don’t know what that kind of power is like!’
‘You don’t—’ she began. Then she recognized the song The Precentors were playing, just starting into the refrain again. She held up her hand. ‘Listen.’
If you had been whaur I hae been
ye wouldnae be sae canty-oh.
If you had seen what I hae seen
on th’ braes o’ Killiecrankie-oh…
They heard it out. Jordan turned to her, his ears burning.
‘Point taken,’ he said.
‘Is it that bad?’ Sylvia asked.
‘It’s bad,’ Janis said. ‘Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like it’s Afghanistan. I’m not talking about atrocities. But people’s lives are being devastated just to make a political point.’
‘But we had all of that under the Hanoverians,’ Jordan said. ‘The enclaves fought all the time—’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘Not all the time, and not like this. OK, OK. But it’s hard to stop. There’s a big sentiment for national unity, and against the mini-states.’
‘If the Republic wins,’ Janis said, ‘it isn’t going to be like Norlonto with taxes. It’s going to be like one big mini-state!’
She laughed for a moment at her own contradictory phrases, but Jordan looked at her sharply.
‘If—’
Janis felt her shoulders slump. ‘The fact is,’ she said, ‘we’re losing.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Jordan said lightly, catching someone’s eye and moving away. ‘I knew that.’
‘So what do we do?’ Janis said.
Syvlia snorted. ‘I know what I’m going to do. Move out.’
‘Move out – oh! To space.’
‘Yeah, while this place is still a spaceport, where you can hook on to something moving. While we still have space.’