‘More imminent gunplay,’ Morag told him.
‘Can we not shoot at crates full of munitions?’ Cat said, sounding more reasonable, but then she went back to glaring at me.
‘What’s going on?’ I demanded, finally mastering speech again.
‘How could you, you piece of shit?!’ Morag hissed at me. She looked like she would be holding back tears if she could still cry.
‘I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about!’ I shouted.
I was holstering my guns when the portable monitor landed on the crates I’d been using as cover. I glanced down at the image. I didn’t need to run the viz to know what the story was. The frozen image at the start of the viz was me on top of Fiona, whose features had been obscured. I felt the sick feeling of being found out. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in a while because I hadn’t really cared about what I’d done and how it would affect others for a long time. It was like ice had replaced sluggish blood in my body. I felt pressure in my chest, as if someone was slowly but surely crushing my augmented heart.
‘It’s all over the net,’ Morag said more quietly now. ‘The crew were laughing about it in the galley when I went in.’
‘You bastard,’ Cat said.
‘Yes, thank you, Cat,’ I said, but I was trying to think of something sensible to say.
Mudge walked over, picked up the monitor and spent a few moments tapping at it and scrawling through the story. I steeled myself for some inappropriate and insensitive attempt at humour.
‘It’s a slander piece. It’s designed to undermine what we did in Atlantis. These things are easy to mock up,’ he said. I couldn’t quite work out the significance of the look he gave me.
‘But it’s not mocked up, is it?’ Morag asked quietly.
‘No,’ I said. Mudge shook his head sadly.
‘She looks so fucking trashy,’ Morag said, trying not to sob. Then she stared at me, angry again. ‘But I guess she was a step up from an ex-whore from the Rigs, aye?’
I felt like I’d been stabbed. I think I would have preferred stabbing. I was almost looking around for an airlock to leave by.
‘Morag, don’t say that. She was horrible…’ I started and then realised that wasn’t a good thing to say. Mudge almost flinched.
‘But you’d rather fuck her than stay with me. Thanks, Jake. I feel much better now.’ The anger was easier to deal with.
‘That wasn’t what I meant. Look, I thought you’d gone…’
‘I hadn’t gone anywhere; you left us.’
You shit, I told myself.
‘I thought that we… that you…’
‘How did you put it? “We’re off to die under some alien sun”? Morag’s gone; let’s have sex with some trashy blonde.’
‘Look, Morag, I’m sorry, but I’m new to all this, I really am. I’ve never-’
‘And I fucking have?!’ she screamed at me. ‘I may have been a fucking whore but at least I know not to fucking cheat on the person you love!’
When she realised what she’d said she looked stricken. I think the last thing she needed now was to show any vulnerability. Unfortunately dry sobbing racked her small frame. The sort of crying that made your implanted eyes hurt. I foolishly moved towards her.
‘Stay away from me!’ she screamed. The anger was back and seemed even more intense. I actually took a step back at the look of blazing hatred on her face. ‘I swear to God, you come anywhere near me and I will find a way to fucking kill you!’ At this she stormed out of the hold.
Cat gave me one last baleful look and went after her.
I slumped against the cold of the hull’s external bulkhead. I could feel the nothingness on the other side of the metal. I felt hollow. I felt like I did before all this happened except I didn’t think the respite of the sense booths would help now.
‘I’m sorry, man…’ Mudge started.
‘Not now.’ Then I realised what he’d said. ‘Oh.’ Mudge was being sympathetic, time to buy a lottery ticket.
‘Was it a bad night?’
‘Yes, I guess. I’ve had worse. You know, I just didn’t think. I never really had to before.’
‘I can sort of see how it went down, but she’s never going to get that. I wouldn’t try trancing in anywhere soon though. For what it’s worth, I think her expectations are pretty high. You should get what you can when you can from this world.’ I wasn’t sure if that was what Mudge believed or just what he wanted others to think he believed.
So this was their revenge. But whose? I couldn’t really see it as being Calum’s. Surely he wouldn’t want his daughter splashed all over the net like that. Even with her features distorted it wouldn’t take God long to work out who it was if anyone asked. Alasdair? Maybe, but how did he get the footage? Then again, maybe people like that shared these things — what did I know? Fiona herself? Would she get off on this kind of notoriety? I thought maybe she would.
Mudge said, ‘I’ve never really got this. It’s a fucked-up world in a fucked-up system. Every one of us does fucked-up things, most people just to survive. Everyone I’ve ever met has a kink and the more straight-laced the person seems to be then the dirtier their kink tends to be.’ I started to protest. ‘Let me finish. See, this is about what we did and God. The subtext is, how dare we sit in judgement on our masters when this is how we act in private? How can people in this world be shocked by this? I mean it’s taking the piss. The thing is, is any of it anyone’s business?’
‘Someone’s just done to me what we did to everyone.’
‘We didn’t put cameras in people’s bedrooms.’
‘Oh well, that’s all right then. How many people do you think we’ve killed over shit like this?’
He paused for a moment and then said, ‘Look — cheating aside, and I can’t quite make up my mind if Morag’s being unfair or naive — I think maybe all this stuff — who we really are — should all be out there and we shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed of it. I mean, who’s this supposed to shock? This doesn’t shock; it titillates. We should be shocked that people kill each other to feed their kids. We should be shocked that vets serve our race and then all the systems that were forcibly implanted in them are harvested and they’re left crippled. We should be shocked at the disparity between the poor and the rich-’
‘Mudge.’
‘Yeah, sorry. I got a little carried away. That said, I’ve got the name of the so-called journalist, and I’m going to do something bad to him when we get back.’
‘He’s one of many and we’re not coming back.’
Mudge just looked at me for a while, the camera lenses that were his eyes whirring one way and then the other.
‘Thanks for trying,’ I finally said.
‘Want me to talk to her?’ he asked.
‘Definitely not.’
‘Want to get fucked up?’
‘Yes, but I’m not going to.’
‘What’s going on?’ Pagan asked, coming out of his trance. He was looking around at the scorch marks on the hull and the holes in some of the crates.
‘Morag and Jake’s relationship has entered an exciting new phase. Now they’re using firearms as a method of conflict resolution.’
‘What? What did you do?’
I sighed.
‘Jakob fucked some trashy blonde. It’s all over the net.’
‘Oh.’
So that was day one of our trip.
And then things got really difficult. We hadn’t been given much room on the freighter because the crew wanted to give most of their hold over to more lucrative machine parts. This meant that Morag and I were forced into close proximity. She wasn’t speaking to me at all but she was giving good glare. Sometimes she used night vision to glare at me in the dark as I slept. She did this with sufficient intensity to wake me up. This meant a shitty atmosphere and I felt sorry for the other three.