Gods of Risk: An Expanse Novella Page 5

  He chanced a look at Hutch’s face. The man was expressionless as stone, turned in and silent. It was more threatening than bared teeth.

  “She came to you.” David had promised himself that he wouldn’t tell Hutch about the message, and technically he didn’t, but the silence implicated him. Hutch drew a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. “Don’t worry about Leelee. I’m taking care of Leelee.”

  “She seemed like she was in trouble.”

  “Okay, little man. You don’t follow what’s happening here, so I’m going to help. I own Leelee. She’s mine. Property, see? And she screwed up, started being with the wrong crowd. She got political. People like us don’t do that. Earth. Mars. OPA. That shit is for citizens. It just draws attention for people like us.”

  “She looked scared,” David said. He could hear the whine in his voice, and he hated that he couldn’t keep it out. He sounded like a kid. “She said she needed money.”

  Hutch laughed. “Don’t ever give that bitch money.”

  “Property,” David said. “She wanted…she wanted to buy herself. Didn’t she?”

  Hutch’s expression softened to something like sympathy. Pity, maybe. He leaned forward and put a hand on David’s knee.

  “Leelee is a slice of poison with a pretty mouth, little man. That’s the truth. She did a bad, stupid thing, and now she’s working that mistake off. That’s all. I know how much money you have because I’m the guy that gave it to you. You don’t have enough to clear her debts.”

  “Maybe I could—”

  “You don’t have half. You’ve got maybe a quarter. There’s nothing you can do for that girl. She gave you a hard-on, and that was nice for you. Don’t make it more than that. You understand what I’m saying to you?”

  The deep, sickening tug of humiliation pulled at David’s heart. He looked down, willing himself not to cry. He hated the reaction. He was angry with it and with himself and with Hutch and his parents and the world. He burned with embarrassment and rage and impotence. Hutch stood up, his shadow spilling across floor and wall like spent engine oil.

  “Best we don’t talk for a while,” Hutch said. “You got a lot in the air. Don’t worry about the cooking. We’ll get that all smoothed out when you’re in Salton. Then we can go into production for real, eh? See some money worth having.”

  “Okay,” David said.

  Hutch sighed and pulled up his hand terminal. As he tapped at its keyboard, he kept talking.

  “I’m going to slip a little something in that account of yours, right? Call it a bonus. Take and get yourself something nice, right.”

  “Right.”

  And then Hutch was gone, walking out toward Martineztown and the tube station and the world. David sat alone where he’d sat with Leelee not all that long before. The sense of peace and calm was gone. His hands balled in fists, and he had nothing he could hit. He felt cored out. Hollowed. He waited ten minutes the way he was supposed to and then took himself home.

  The next night was the party. His party. Pop-Pop was there, smiling a little lopsided since the stroke and thinner than David had ever seen him, but still strong voiced and chipper. Aunt Bobbie sat on one side of him, David’s father on the other, like they were propping him up. Muted sounds of silverware against plates and voices raised in conversation competed with a three-piece band set up on a dais by the front doors that filtered into the private back room. Green and gold tablecloths stretched over three tables to make it all seem like it connected. The meal itself had been chicken in black sauce with rice and fresh vegetables, and David had eaten two helpings without really tasting them. His father had taken on the expense of an open bar and Uncle Istvan’s new wife was already well on her way to drunk and sort of hitting on one of the older cousins. David’s mother paced the back of the room touching shoulders, dropping in and out of conversations like she was running for office. David wanted badly to be anywhere else.

  “You know, back in the ancient days,” Pop-Pop said, gesturing with a glass of whiskey, “they built cathedrals. Massive churches lifted up to the glory of God. Far, far beyond what you’d expect people to manage with just quarry stone and trees and a few steel knives, you know. Just a few simple tools.”

  “We’ve heard about the cathedrals,” Aunt Bobbie said. She had a drink too, but David couldn’t tell what it was. Legally, David wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol for another year, but he had a bulb of beer in his hand. He didn’t actually like the taste of it, but he drank it anyway.

  “The thing that’s important, though, is the time, you see?” Pop-Pop said. “The time. Raising up one of those cathedrals would take whole generations. The men who drew the plans, who envisioned the final form of the thing? They would be dead long before it was finished. It might be their grandsons or their great-grandsons or their great-great-grandsons who saw the work complete.”

  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.

  Una Meing stared out at him, soulful and erotic. David turned out the lights, grabbed a pillow, and pulled it over his head. As his mind began to fragment down into sleep, Leelee kept coming back to him. Her face. Her voice. The soft, almost gentle way Hutch had said, I own Leelee and You don’t have enough to clear her debts. He wished that he did. He walked into a bleak, prison-like room that was half dream and half imagination. Leelee shied back from the sudden light and then saw who it was, and her face lit up. David, she said, how did you do it? How did you save me?

  And with an almost electrical shock, he knew the answer.

  He sat up, turned on the light. Una Meing’s sly-sad smile seemed more knowing than it had before. Took you long enough. He checked the time: well past midnight. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t wait. He listened at his door for a few seconds. No voices except the professional enunciation of the newsfeed announcer. David took his hand terminal out of his satchel, sat on the edge of his bed, and put in the connection request. He didn’t expect an answer, but Steppan’s face appeared on the screen almost instantly.

  “Big Dave! Hey,” Steppan said. “Heard about your placement. Good going, cousin.”

  “Thanks,” David said, keeping his voice low. “But look, I need a favor.”

  “Sure,” Steppan said.

  “You have lab time?”

  “More time than sleep,” Steppan said ruefully. “But you’ve got placement. You don’t need to scrounge for lab hours anymore.”

  “Kind of do. And I could use an extra hand.”

  “How long are we talking about?”

  “Ten hours,” David said. “Maybe a little more. But some of that’s waiting, so you can do your own stuff too. And I’ll help with your work if you help with mine.”

  Steppan shrugged.

  “All right. I’ve got hours tomorrow starting at eight. You know where my space is?”

  “Do,” David said.

  “See you there,” Steppan said and dropped the connection. So that was the first part. David’s mind was already leaping ahead to the rest. He had enough tryptamine to build from, and the catalysts were always easy. What he didn’t have was sodium borohydride or amoproxan in anything like the volume he’d need. Closing his eyes, he went through the inventory of his secret locker, thinking about each reagent and what he could gracefully change it into. Carbon double bonds cleaved, ketones formed, inactive isomers were forced into different configurations. Slowly, certainly, a clear biochemical path formed. He opened his eyes, jotted down a quick flowchart of the reactions, and built a wish list. When he was done, he switched his hand terminal over to the main distributor’s site and ordered the reagents he’d need with immediate delivery to Steppan’s lab. The total bill was enough to clean out his secret account, but that was fine with him. He’d never cared about the money.

  When his hand terminal chirped the morning’s alarm, he’d managed a two-hour nap. He changed into clean clothes, ducked into the bathroom to wet down his hair and shave. His mind was already three steps ahead. His hand terminal chimed with breaking news, and he almost dreaded to look, but for once it was something good. Eight people had been arrested in connection with the pressure loss on the tube system and were being actively questioned about the bomb in Salton. While David brushed his teeth, he watched the newsfeed play. When the scroll of mug shots came, he had a moment’s anxiety—What if Leelee was one of them? What if that was what Hutch meant
by her getting political?—but none of the faces was familiar. They were young people, none of them over eighteen, but well-worn. Two had black eyes and one of the women had been crying. Or else she’d been teargassed. David dismissed them.

  “Where are you going?” his mother asked as he walked, head bowed and shoulders hunched, for the door.

  “Friend needs help,” he said. He’d meant the lie that Steppan needed an extra hand at the labs, but halfway to the lower university, he noticed that by not elaborating, he’d sort of told the truth. The fact was weirdly disturbing.

  The day was a massive cook. With the two of them in the space, it was crowded, and Steppan, sleepless, hadn’t showered recently. Between the chemical vapors that the fume hood didn’t whisk away and the stink of adolescent boy, the heat of the burners, and Steppan’s constant, nearly intimate presence, the day passed slowly. But it passed well. Steppan didn’t ask what David’s experiment was, and during the quiet times, David ran Steppan’s datasets and even pointed out a flaw in the statistical assumptions he was making that made the final data prettier when he corrected it. When the early afternoon came and they were flagging, David measured out a small dose of amphetamine and split it between them. When his mother requested a connection, he didn’t answer, just sent back the message that he’d be home late, to eat dinner without him. Instead of the usual indirect disapproval, she sent back a note that she supposed she’d have to get used to that. It left him sad until the timer went off and he had to cool the batch and add catalyst and the work took his attention. There was a real pleasure to the work, something he hadn’t felt in years. He knew each reaction, each bond he was breaking, each molecular reconfiguration. He could look at the milky suspension, see a subtle change in the texture, and know what had happened. This, he thought, was what mastery felt like.

  The last of his run was finished, the powder measured out into pale pink gelcaps and melted into sugared lozenges. His satchel was thick with them and heavy as a bowling ball. At a guess, he had the equivalent of his father’s retirement account on his hip. The public LEDs were dim as he walked home. His eyes felt bloodshot and gritty, but his step was light.