“I don’t fight, though.” She wondered if he was bullshitting her.
“You walk away.”
“Indeed.”
“You seriously, totally walk away.” He looked at the receding backs of the column, tried to lever himself up, grunted, sank down. “You’d better go on.”
“Fuck off.”
“Yeah, well.” He laughed. She peered through his visor. He had a lightyears-away look. “When you walked away from the B&B, I mean.” He laughed again. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “It was beautiful. I was so pissed at you then, felt like the world’s biggest asshole. You could not have ruined me more if you’d curb-stomped me. I never recovered.” Raspy breath. “Never recovered. I’d arrived with my gang, you saw them, boys who thought the sun shone out of my ass, completely bought into meritocracy, not just as a way of figuring out who got what, but as a way of solving all our problems.” Another faraway look.
“I don’t think you got that. My guys looked at the world like Plato, you know, The Republic. Every person has something he’s good at. You find those things and help those people get there and that makes everyone happy and productive and we’ll all be better. You don’t need to order people to do jobs they hate. Just use ranking to make sure that if you’re doing a job you’re no good at, everyone knows it, including you. You get a smaller share of the collective loot than you would if you were doing something you were better at.
“Once you get hold of this idea, you can turn it into math, model its game-theory, find its Nash equilibrium. It’s such a beautiful idea. It models perfectly. Under it, everyone is happier. Everyone gets nudged into doing the thing they’re best at, which is the best way to make everyone happy.
“When you walked away, when you didn’t even argue, you made it into bullshit. For weeks, we pretended it wasn’t. But you’d had a place where everyone took what they needed. You didn’t need to police it or give people tokens certifying they’d earned the right to be there. It just... worked.”
Limpopo adjusted her crouch in the snow, flopped onto her butt. Her calves ached from crouching. “Whoops!” She brushed the snow that showered from her snowshoes off her visor. “The stuff you’re describing, it’s the kind of thing people do in emergencies, when there’s rationing. It’s like the rules for a lifeboat captain, you know, barking orders to keep everyone in line so everyone gets out of it alive.”
“It’s funny: back when no one was sending tanks after me, I felt we were in a state of emergency. There was not enough to go around, at any moment we could be nuked or starving. Now I feel as soon as we find somewhere to stop, we’ll rebuild everything we’ve had and more. Like there’s no reason to ever turn anyone away.”
“Sounds like you got somewhere good.” She welled with sympathy for Jimmy, which was funny. Maybe not. She understood him better than he did. Under other circumstances, she could be him.
“I have. That’s weird, objectively, given where I am. But I’m backed up. I feel this incredible feeling, it’ll all be all right. We’re going to win, Limpopo.”
Someone trudged through the snow. Etcetera. She waved at him, blinked open a private chat. “It’s okay.”
“Good. Can I come over?”
“Course,” she said.
“He seems like a good guy,” Jimmy said.
“Glad you approve.”
“Didn’t mean it that way, but I do. He came back for you, which is what you’re supposed to do, if you’re looking out for people around you.”
“Like I came back for you.”
“Like you did. Not to rescue me. To take care of me because we’re part of the same thing.”
She bridged in Etcetera. “Jimmy, you’ve come a long way since we met, but you’re still coming along, if you don’t mind my saying. I came back to help you because helping people is what you do, whether or not they’re in your thing, because that’s the best world to live in.”
“First days of a better nation,” he said, with a little sarcasm.
“It’s only funny because it’s true,” Etcetera said, taking her hand.
“We make fun of it, but it’s the best way I know to live. I don’t always live up to it. You get a radar for it, if you practice. A Jiminy Cricket voice tells you if you make a bit of effort, you’ll feel better for it, know the world is a better place for you being in it.”
“I misspoke,” Jimmy said. She felt bad because they’d lectured him and the poor guy was about to lose his toes if he didn’t get firebombed first. But he hadn’t misspoken.
“It’s okay.”
Etcetera popped his visor, head wreathed in steam, rooted for a squeeziepouch of scop. “Want some? It’s spacie food, weird flavors. The rabbit is really good. For a cultured fungal slime.”
“You really sell it.” Limpopo remembered she had some shake-and-heat coffiums in her pack. She got those out and they sat around in the snow and ate, looking at each other’s bare faces while the wind did its best to blast off their skin. It rattled the branches. The sun was low on the horizon, a bloody plum running to overripe mush.
“We’d better get a move on,” Jimmy said.
“Good to go?”
“Good as I’ll ever be. Rest did me good. Food too.” He clicked his visor into place. “Company, too.”
She gave his shoulder a squeeze and helped get his feet into his snowshoes, taking care with the injured one. They got him to his feet, got shoed, and they set off after the column.
They moved slowly but well, at a steady clip. After a few minutes, Dis called. “You three okay?”
Limpopo said, “Just moving a little slower than the rest.”
“They’re a klick and a half ahead, almost at the cargo train. Gretyl says if they can get it moving, they’ll come back for you.”
“That’s nice of them. What’s going on there?”
“Oh,” Dis said. There was something funny going on. “Oh, well, it’s not good.”
“Shit.”
“Lots of them, all at once. Blew three airlocks simultaneously. They’re hup-hup-hupping around the hallways in nightscopes. They gassed the place, not sure what with, but they’re wearing breathers and skin protection.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got my backups. Ready to wipe when and if. When. These kids aren’t playing.”
“Dis—” Etcetera’s voice cracked.
“Get used to it. This one’s for all the marbles. Immortality or bust.” Then: “Oh.”
“What’s going on, Dis?”
“They’re not happy at all that everyone’s gone. Smashing the crockery. They’re breaching the hull, a lot.”
“What about your cluster?”
“Underground. They have a couple dudes down in utility spaces but they’re trying to root everything and looking for tripwires. They’re not stupid. Making good progress. Maybe an hour?”
“And your power?”
“Independent backup. Shit, they’re doing the comm links. There, just emailed another diff. We probably won’t have much longer—”
Then it was silent.
“Fuckers,” Etcetera said, with feeling.
“First days of a better nation,” Jimmy said. “If you could see them now, what would you say to them?” His feet crunched irregularly through the snow. Limpopo could tell that he was stung by what she’d said.