“They’re not going to kill you,” Limpopo said. “Not Jacob Redwater. We’ve seen your board seats. Too many people owe you too much, depend on you too much—”
Etcetera interrupted – beyond weird, Limpopo and her collarbones arguing – “That means there’s people who would love to step into his shoes.”
Redwater shrugged best as he could. “You’re both right. If I died here with you, there would be hell to pay. But very powerful people would get the chance to make themselves much more powerful. The reason I was allowed to do what I did was that it’s a fully hedged risk. Delighted if I die, delighted if I don’t.”
“He probably makes a new scan every morning after breakfast,” Etcetera continued, with machine smugness. “He’d be up and running on a huge cluster by dinner.”
“Not that often. But I’m current, and they’ve dry-run my sims. There’s messy probate questions, so it wouldn’t be dinner, exactly.”
Gretyl hated how he could be pinned to the floor in hostile territory and still be calm and in charge.
“Gret?”
“Sorry, I kinda forgot about you. Look, darling, I should go. I love you. I love the boys. You are my world.”
“We love you, too.” She was crying. Gretyl blinked hard and made herself not cry. Jacob Redwater watched her closely.
Then Iceweasel made a surprised noise. Gretyl jumped. “What is it?” She saw the monitors and gasped.
The private cops were retreating, rank by rank, into the APCs, which were pulling out in an orderly fashion. The cops faced out, toward the prison, as they waited their turn to board their vehicles. As if this wasn’t amazing enough, a cop broke ranks, took off her helmet and dropped her gun, just as others did earlier that day, and crossed over to the walkaway lines. Two more did it. The orderly retreat stopped being orderly. Cops milled about. Many looked like they were listening intently to voices in their helmets. Some talked avidly to one another. They called out jokey, comradely farewells to the ones who’d crossed over.
Jacob Redwater was at a loss. He watched the spectacle, craning his neck from the floor. The expression on his face was the closest thing to fear that Gretyl imagined she’d ever see.
“What do you think, Jacob?” The laugh in Gretyl’s voice was involuntarily mean. “They pulling out so they can nuke us and send a message? Or are they getting out before the stock market melts down and their guard labor walks out?”
“May I sit?”
“Not my decision.”
The boys looked at each other and got up. He sat and worked his shoulders.
“I’m leaving.” He was still transfixed by the feeds. One of the APCs was disrupted by a cop who climbed back out and deserted.
Gretyl looked at him. He was still upright and unwavering, armored with dignity.
“Jacob, I know there will always be people like you.”
“Rich people.”
“People who think other people are like them. People who think you either take or get took. We’ll never be rid of that. It’s a primal fear, toddler selfishness. The question is whether people like you will get to define the default. Whether you can make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, doing for all of us before we do to you, meaning we’re all chumps if we’re not trying to do to you sooner. That default was easier to maintain when we didn’t have enough. When we didn’t have data. When we couldn’t all talk to each other.”
“Okay.” No hint of overt sarcasm, all the more sarcastic for it.
“We’re not making a world without greed, Jacob. We’re making a world where greed is a perversion. Where grabbing everything for yourself instead of sharing is like smearing yourself with shit: gross. Wrong. Our winning doesn’t mean you don’t get to be greedy. It means people will be ashamed for you, will pity you and want to distance themselves from you. You can be as greedy as you want, but no one will admire you for it.”
“Okay.” He was a little paler. Maybe that was wish fulfillment.
“I think your ride is leaving,” Gretyl said. She was elated. The fatalistic acceptance of her impending destruction uncoiled from her chest, turned to victorious song. The part of her that had been emotionally prepared to die caught up to the part of her that knew she wouldn’t have to. She wanted to drink everything that could be drunk, fuck and sing, build a bonfire and dance naked around it. She was almost dead. Now she would live. Forever, perhaps.
“Good-bye. I’ll tell Iceweasel and the kids that you asked after them.”
That hit. He oofed like he’d been gut-punched. She felt like a sudden and total asshole. Whatever kind of monster Jacob Redwater was, he was someone to whom family mattered, in a twisted, coercive way. She almost apologized. She didn’t. She thought she would, but he was gone. Limpopo hugged her ferociously, Etcetera muttered into her cleavage from his speaker. The boys whooped and danced.
“I love you,” Iceweasel said.
“I love you, too, darling. I’m coming home.” She wiped tears of joy off her face. “Unless you and the boys want to come back and stay for a while?” She knew it was a stupid thing to ask. She wanted to keep the first days rush alive for a little longer, before going back to the ongoing days default they’d built in Gary.
“No,” Iceweasel said. She groped for more words, but apparently none came. “What happened to my father?”
“He left. Intact.”
“I think I see him now.”
Gretyl looked at the screen. There he was, walking away, a phalanx of private cops escorting him behind their lines, back to the command vehicles. “That’s him.”
“Fuck,” Iceweasel said. Gretyl’s heart ached and grew two sizes when she heard the boys giggling at their mom’s swearing. What had she been thinking, putting herself in danger? Risking never seeing her wife, her beautiful boys, ever again? What madness came over her? Was she secretly suicidal? “When will you leave?”
“Tomorrow or a little later. There’s bound to be a lot of people moving around, next couple days. Hoa might bring bikes. Whatever makes sense.”
“Will you bring Limpopo?”
She looked at Limpopo, who watched with frank interest. Stooped and old, eyes blazing, take-no-shit attitude you could see from orbit. Gretyl knew from the first time she’d seen Limpopo that the woman was a fucking superhero.
“Iceweasel wants to know if you’ll come with me.”
Limpopo didn’t hesitate. “No. There’s things here I want to help with. It’s my place. I bought it with fourteen years of my life. There are lots of fights to come, and I want to be here with the people who fought for this place. I’ll stay.”
“You hear that?”
“Tell her we love her. Tell her that she has a home here, too. Any time.”
Gretyl said it. Limpopo nodded gravely. The boys watched them wide-eyed, still shocked from the sudden lifting of their death-sentence.
Etcetera added, “Tell the other Limpopo she doesn’t have to worry about me coming back any time soon.”
“I’m sure that’ll be a great comfort.”
It turned out that sims could harumph. It was a new one on Gretyl.
EPILOGUE
EVEN BETTER NATION
IT WASN’T LIKE waking from a dream, but Iceweasel was sure she had dreamed. There was Billiam, flirting outrageously with Noozi, which couldn’t be right, because poor Billiam was long dead. Noozi was in orbit, had been in orbit for fifteen years, swore she felt none of the negative physiological effects, they’d been mitigated by deadheading and pharma they printed on the station’s bioreactor. There’d been doctors, some present, more in the crowd, offering opinions on her scans, on the cancer eating her liver, threatening to spread to her blood. And her father! They’d spoken, with Cordelia. It was like old times. Nadie had been there, too, and, shit, they’d made out, in front of Gretyl. Just the memory of it made her blush.