James Corey - Gods of Risk

Across the room, one of the younger cousins was crying, and David’s mother sloped over and knelt, taking the squalling kid’s hand in her own and leading him to his mother. David choked down another mouthful of beer. Next year, he’d be in Salton, so busy that he wouldn’t have to come to these things anymore.

“There’s a beauty in that,” Pop-Pop said earnestly to everyone and no one. “Such a massive plan, such ambition. A man might be setting the final stone and think back to his own father who’d set the stones below him and his grandfather who’d set the stones below that. To have a place in the great scheme, that was the beauty of it. To be part of something you didn’t begin and you would not see completed. It was beautiful.”

“I love you, Dad,” Aunt Bobbie said, “but that’s bullshit.”

David blinked. He looked from Pop-Pop to his own father and back. The men looked embarrassed. It was like she’d farted. Aunt Bobbie took another sip of her drink.

“Bobbie,” David’s father said, “maybe you should ease up on that stuff.”

“I’m fine. It’s just that I’ve been hearing about the cathedrals since I was a kid, and it’s bullshit. Seriously, who were they to decide what everyone was going to be doing for the next four generations? It’s not like they asked their however many great-grandkids if they wanted to be stonecutters. Maybe some of them wanted to…be musicians. Hell, be architects and do something of their own. Deciding what everyone’s going to do…what we’re going to be. It’s hubris, isn’t it?”

“We’re not talking about cathedrals anymore, are we, sis?”

“Yeah, because it was a really obscure metaphor,” Aunt Bobbie replied. “I’m just saying that the plan may be great as long as you’re inside it. You step outside, though, and then what?”

There was a pain in her voice that David couldn’t fathom, but he saw it reflected in his grandfather’s eyes. The old man put his hand on Aunt Bobbie’s, and she held it like she was a little girl about to be led off to her bath time. David’s father, on the other side, looked peevish.

“Don’t take her seriously, Pop-Pop. She was talking to security all day, and she’s still cranky.”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t be? It’s like every time anything strange happens, let’s go talk to Draper again.”

“You had to expect that, Roberta,” his father said. He only called her Roberta when he was angry. “It’s the consequence of your decision.”

“And what decision is that?” she snapped. Her voice was getting louder. Some of the cousins were looking over at them now, their own conversations fading.

David’s father laughed. “You aren’t working. What are they calling it? Indefinite administrative leave?”

“Psychological furlough,” Aunt Bobbie said. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that of course they’re going to want to talk to you when things get weird. You can’t blame them for being suspicious. We were almost killed by Earthers. Everyone in this room and those rooms out there and the corridors. And you were working for them.”

“I was not!” It wasn’t a shout because it didn’t have the gravel and roughness of shouting. It was loud, though, and it carried power along with it like a punch. “I worked with the faction that was trying to avert the war. The one that did avert the war. Everyone in these rooms is alive because of the people I helped. But with them, not for them.”

The room was quiet, but David’s father was too deep into the fight to notice. He rolled his eyes.

“Really? Who was paying your wages? Earth was. The people that hate us.”

“They don’t hate us,” Bobbie said, her voice tired. “They’re afraid of us.”

“Then why do they act like they hate us?” David’s father said with something like triumph.

“Because that’s what fear looks like when it needs someplace to go.”

David’s mother seemed to appear behind the three of them like some sort of magic trick. She wasn’t there, and then she was, her restraining hand on her husband’s shoulder. Her smile was humorless and undeniable.

“We’re here for David tonight,” she said.

“Yes,” Pop-Pop said, rubbing his palm against the back of Aunt Bobbie’s hand, soothing her. “For David.”

His father’s face set into an annoyed mask, but Aunt Bobbie nodded.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry, David. Dad, I’m sorry. I’ve just had a really rough day and probably too much to drink.”

“It’s all right, angel,” Pop-Pop said. Tears brightened his eyes.

“I just thought that by now I’d have some idea of…of who I was. Of what I was going to do next, and…”

“I know, angel. We all know what you’re going through.”

She laughed at that, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “All us of but me, then.”

The rest of the evening went just the way those things were supposed to go. People laughed and argued and drank. His father tried to call for silence and make a little speech about how proud he was, but one of the kid cousins was whispering and tapping on his hand terminal all the way through it. A few people gave David small, discreet presents of money to help him set up his dorm in Salton. Uncle Istvan’s new wife gave him an unpleasant, boozy kiss before gathering herself up and walking out with Istvan on her arm. They took a rental cart back home, his parents and Aunt Bobbie and him. He couldn’t shake the image of her weeping at the table. You step outside, though, and then what?

The cart’s wheels sounded sticky against the corridor floors. The lights had dimmed all through Breach Candy, simulating a twilight he’d never actually seen. Somewhere, the sun would slip below a horizon, a blue sky darken. He’d seen it in pictures, on video. In his life, though, it was just that the LEDs changed color and intensity. David leaned his head against one of the cart’s support poles, letting the vibration of the engines and the wheels translate directly into his skull. It felt comfortable. His mother, sitting beside him, pressed her hand against his shoulder, and he had the powerful physical memory of coming back from a party when he’d been very young. Six, maybe seven years old. He remembered putting his head in her lap, fading into sleep with the texture of her slacks against his cheek. That was never going to happen again. The woman beside him hardly even seemed to be the same person, and in a few months, he wouldn’t see her anymore. Not like he did now. And what would she have done if she knew about Hutch? About Leelee? His mother smiled at him, and it looked like love, but it was love for some other boy. The one she thought he was. He smiled back because he was supposed to.

When they got home, he went straight back to his room. He’d been around people enough. The cheesy generic wall was still up, and he shifted it back to Una Meing. Massive dark eyes with mascara on the lashes looked out at him. He dropped to the bed. Outside, Aunt Bobbie and his father were talking. He listened for a buzz of anger in their voices, but it wasn’t there. They were just talking. The water pipes started to whine. His mother taking her evening bath. Everything small and domestic and safe, and out there somewhere, Leelee was working off her debt. She’d asked for his help, and he’d failed. And Hutch. Maybe he’d always been scared of Hutch. Maybe that was what had made cooking for him seem like the right thing. The wise thing, even. Hutch was the kind of dangerous that could make people into property. Could take them and make them disappear. Being part of that world was fun. Exciting. It was a way to step outside all the good student, good son, good prospects crap that was his life. So what that it scared him now? So what that Leelee was probably being rented out to whoever had the money and David wouldn’t see her again? He’d made his choice, and this was the consequence.