“Always,” Cyn agreed.
The door slid open, and Cyn ducked to pass through. It was impossible to see around his bulk. Naomi followed.
“Got here and no further,” Cyn said over his shoulder. “And best we don’t float too long. Plan had us back with Marco a month ago.”
“Marco’s not here?”
“Nobody here but us chickens.” There was a smile in the words.
The chamber they stepped into was wide and cold. A portable scrubber moved stale air and left the smell of rubber. Formed plastic shelves held rations and water. A thin laminate table had five stools around it, and an old network repeater hung from a hook by its wires. A set of bunks leaned against the wall four high. There were bodies curled under the blankets, but if they were sleeping, Cyn didn’t take notice of them. His voice carried at the same volume.
“Thing is, better we don’t be where anyone can reach us when it all comes down, sa sa?”
“When what comes down?” Naomi said.
Cyn sat at the table, reached out a long arm, and pulled an unlabeled bottle from the shelves. He pulled the cork from its neck with his teeth.
“Ay, Knuckles,” he said with a laugh, “you said he didn’t tell you much, you weren’t singing low, were you?”
Naomi sat on one of the stools as Cyn poured amber liquid into two glasses. The fumes smelled of alcohol and butter and burned sugar. Naomi felt her mouth responding to the scent. The taste was like coming home.
“Nothing like Tia Margolis’ brandy,” Cyn said with a sigh.
“Nothing, ever,” Naomi said. “So, now that I’m here, why don’t you fill me in?”
“Well,” Cyn said. “It’s these pinché ring gates. You know better than anyone. Another thousand inner planets, and a whole new set of reasons they may as well fuck the Belt, que si? And half the Belt sucking the Butcher’s cock and making themselves out noble and official and political. So we, and by we I mean Marco, yeah? We decide about two, three years ago —”
“We don’t talk about it,” a young man’s voice said sharply. Cyn looked at the door. Thick with dread, Naomi turned too. The boy looked terribly old and terribly young at the same time. His skin was darker than Marco’s, and his hair had more curl. The eyes were the same, though. And the mouth. Something huge – larger than oceans – moved in her chest. Emotions she’d buried rose up, and the rip threatened to pull her away. She tried to hide it, but she had to put a hand flat on the table to steady herself.
He stepped into the room. The sand-colored shirt was large on him, but she could see that his body was in the place between the coltish growth of adolescence and the thickening muscle of a man. One of the figures on the bunk stirred and turned, but didn’t otherwise react.
“We don’t talk about it until we’re safely back. Not even in here. Not at all. Sabez?”
“Savvy mé,” Cyn said. “Jus
t thought since —”
“I know what you thought. It passes, but we don’t talk about it.”
For the first time, the young man’s eyes turned to hers. Her own struggle was mirrored in his eyes. She wondered what she looked like to him. What was in his mind and heart where hers was joy and guilt and a venomous regret. This was the moment she hadn’t allowed herself to want. She’d known it was coming since the message from Marco arrived on Tycho. She wasn’t ready for it. He made a small, quick smile and nodded to her.
“Filip,” she said carefully, as if the word were fragile. When he answered, his voice could have been her echo.
“Mother.”
Chapter Ten: Amos
The high-speed rail station in Philadelphia was near the center of a middle-income commercial area. Wage earners wandered the streets between strip malls, buying the semi-fashionable clothes and petty luxuries only available to those with currency. Only not too much currency. High-end shopping would be somewhere else, protected by security designed to keep people like these out.
Even on Earth, there were people with money, and then there were people with money.
It was weird for Amos to think that he might have enough in his account to pass for the latter. It amused him to imagine wandering over to some highbrow shopping center in his unstylish Belt-made clothes just to give the sales staff a fit when he dropped a couple grand on something useless. Maybe a nice solid platinum drink shaker. For that once or twice a year when he felt like drinking a martini.
Maybe later. After.
He headed out of the mall and toward the residential district that his hand terminal’s map said Lydia’s old house was in. At the short, tunnel-like exit he was accosted by a boy of eleven or twelve wearing a cheap paper jumpsuit, the kind that basic kiosks dispensed for free with a thumbprint. The boy offered him a variety of sexual services at rock-bottom prices. Amos grabbed the boy by the chin and tilted his face up. There were the fading yellow marks of a not-too-recent beating on his cheek, and the telltale pink around the eyelids of a pixie dust habit.
“Who’s your walker?” Amos said.