Among The Stars (Heinlein's Finches Book 2)

by Robin Banks

  “So your solution is what, to bow and scrape and claw your way up an imaginary ladder?”

  “Imaginary?”

  “It’s only there because people believe it is.”

  “Everyone believes in it. Everyone but you. That makes it more real than your kum-ba-yah bullshit.”

  “Reality as a shared experience, hey?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t read books. I just deal with real people in the real world, and the real world has rules. Whether you play by them or not, they still apply to you. Unless you choose to hide in a hole with four people and call that a life.”

  Behind the flat expression in her eyes, I can see fury rising. She cracks a grin that looks like a knife wound across her face.

  “Ok. You wanna know how the world works? This is how it works. On any Fed tube you have three classes. Everyone knows that and everyone knows where they belong. What people don’t know, because they don’t fucking listen, is what different classes think about it.

  “The first classers believe that they’re entitled to being on top because they’re better than anyone else. They honestly believe that their privilege is a good thing, a natural thing, a manifestation of their superiority.

  “Then you get the second class. They believe that they’re better than anyone else, too. Better than those mindless drones in the third class, otherwise they’d climb their way up to second class. Better than the first class, too, because first classers are just useful parasites, too clueless to realize that the real power sits with those enforcing the rules, not with those writing them.

  “Then there’s the third class. They believe they’re better than anyone else because they’re the only ones doing any real work, because without them the tubes would grind to a halt, because they’re the ones who actually build the tubes in the first place. They believe that the reason the Fed pushes them down so hard is because they’re frightened of what the third class could do otherwise. Which is true, but that’s another story.

  “All the tubers look down at the colonists, who failed so badly at lives on a tube that they had to go grubbing in the dirt for a living.”

  “Hang on...” Tom tries to cut her off, but she talks right over him.

  “The grubbers look at the tubers, living their lives with no freedom or independence or personal responsibility or risks. Like vat-grown organisms, solely dependent on tech for their survival. As if the bubbles weren’t tech, too. As if the Fed didn’t have its boots on all of our necks.

  “And all of them, every one of them, looks down on travelers, bloody gypsies who can’t even settle down to make a living anywhere, parasites and strangers wherever they go. If they don’t hate us outright, they despise or mistrust us.”

  I shake my head. “It wasn’t like that back home.”

  “Oh yeah? Tell me that your parents are proud of you now. Tell me that they’re bragging about their precious son who ran away with the circus. That if you married one of the girls and brought her home, your mom would be proud of calling her a daughter-in-law.”

  “Ok. I can’t. She wouldn’t. But she’s an asshole.”

  “She might be, but she’s the norm, not the exception. I bet she’s just reacting to how she knows other people would respond. If other people, the majority of people, didn’t look down on travelers, it wouldn’t be a problem for her either, would it?”

  “I guess.”

  “And us travelers, you’d think we’d rally around each other, what with most other people hating on us, but no. The merchants think they’re better than the circus people, because they sell actual, real stuff, not stardust and flimflam. The circuses think that they’re better than the merchants, because they bring forth the light of civilization into the cosmos. Anyone with a ship can cart crap, but it takes an Artist to illuminate the masses. And absolutely every fucker hates on the real gypsies, those few who are left, treating them all like no-good scoundrels who give us all a bad name. You want to insult a merchant or a circus person, call them a gypsy. And the gypsies hate everyone right back, which I can’t really blame them for.

  “Circuses are even worse. We spend half our time backstabbing each other. It doesn’t matter that every time one of us fails, every time a show ends up stranded somewhere to be picked at like a carcass, it reflects badly on us all. It makes us all look that little bit less professional, that little bit more pathetic in the eyes of those who despise us already. But that doesn’t matter. The important thing is that someone else got it in the neck, that we came out on top, that we’re better than them. Even if all it took was some bad luck. Even if that bad luck could have hit us just as easily and severely. And that would be bad enough from a business point of view, but when you factor in how inbred our world is, it becomes utterly ridiculous. We’re reveling in the suffering of our own kin.

  “But practicalities don’t matter. And that’s how we get to life on show. You’ve got the boys thinking that they’re better than the artists because they do all the real work around here. You’ve got the artists thinking that they’re better than the boys because they are in the show. And neither group is willing to consider how utterly dependent they are on each other, how a circus just wouldn’t exist without both. They both hate on the bosses for being bullies and leeches. And the bosses despise everyone else for being beneath them, for being replaceable cogs in their machine, underlings to be exploited while they’re useful and discarded as soon as they’re not.

  “And then there’s you two. Every fucker is going to think they’re better than you. Every fucker is gonna run you down. Because you shovel shit for a living, because you’re not in the ring, because you weren’t born here, because you’re here now. Because of what you are, because of what you’re not. Every fucker’s gonna look at you and think they’re better than you and try and make you feel worse.”

  Tom laughs mirthlessly. “This is supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Yes. Of course it is. The problem is not with you. The problem’s with weak people. People so fucking weak that when they feel bad about themselves, about their lives, instead of trying to change their luck go looking for someone they can feel superior to. And they’ll always damn find someone, because they make their own parameters.”

  “They what?” I ask.

  “They decide what scale to measure you up against, so they can find a way to be better than you. I mean, I’m better than you at big words, you’re better than me at music, and Tom’s better than both of us with people. Right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So who’s the best person?”

  “What?”

  “Who’s the best among us?”

  “Depends what you’re looking at. It’s not a good question, really.”

  “It’s a brilliant question, but it always comes up with the same answer: that there’s something wrong with the lives of the people asking it. It may not be their fault, but something in their lives is out of kilter. Why else would they be playing such a ridiculous game in their own heads? Happy, content people don’t waste their time on this kind of crap. They spend it enjoying their happiness. Hell, some of them even spread it.”

  Tom’s voice is perfectly calm, but I can tell he’s furious, too. “Ok. So you know how it all works. Yet everything you do, the way you live, ignores that. Why?”

  “Because it’s bullshit. Objectively, you have one of the best jobs here. You work hard, but you’re not risking your life or your health. Unless you have a freak accident, you could do this to the end of your working life. Many of the artists will have to reinvent themselves several times as they get older. At some point they will be too old or too broken or too ugly to be of any use, and will get tossed onto the scrap heap. Even in the short-term you’re better off than a lot of people. You get paid all the time. On ship, on planet, whether we’ve got shows or don’t. And your job is solid. Jameson can’t fuck around with your duties without risking the animals, so he won’t. So, if you like it here and you like the job, it’s
actually a pretty sweet deal you’ve got. But most people are too busy shitting on you to work that out. So nobody’s going to try and take this from you.”

  “Because they don’t want it.”

  “Right. They’ll try and shaft just about everyone else, but not you. So, if you’re happy here, you’ve got a place. A fairly safe place. It’s stable. Ha. Things may change, something awful may happen, but that’s true of any situation. But this is… It’s a sanctuary, in a way. Somewhere you can stay and just deal with your shit and not have to fight for your spot. Not have to fight at all, most of the time.”

  “It’s that why you and Nicky are here?”

  Her face goes rigid for a moment. I could punch Tom right now. I could punch him again when, instead of apologizing or backing off, he smirks.

  “Was that the wrong question?”

  “No. It’s a good question. Hard, but good. Yes, I guess. It’s part of it, anyway. Kolya likes animals better than he likes most people. I like circus life. Neither of us has got anywhere else to go to. We both need the credit. We aren’t overwhelmed with choices. But yeah, for us it’s working out.”

  “Staying at the bottom worked out so well for you that you didn’t. You’re the fucking personal assistant of the fucking director now. Any power you have, the fact that you can do stuff like standing up to Ava, comes from that, not from your dexterity with a shovel. You’re asking us to be happy because what we have is so shitty that nobody will fight us for it. You’re asking us to stay at the bottom, because we can’t fall down from there, because there’s nowhere to fall to. Forgive me for not signing up to this. And forgive me for not letting you talk my best friend into this, either. To you he might just be some kid you picked up on a whim, but I actually give a fuck about him.”

  Alya closes her eyes. “Ok. I can’t carry on this conversation right now. I would end up screaming, and that wouldn’t help. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to say my piece.” She walks off.

  “Tom, that was shitty,” I murmur.

  “Maybe. But was it untrue?”

  “I don’t know right now. Too much going on in my head.”

  “Ok. That’s good. You think about this. More than that, you think about what you want to do, what you want to be. We’ve got two years here, all being well. I like it well enough that I may want a lifetime here. If not, if this is temporary, we still need it to give us an edge. We need to get out of here better off than we came in, or we’ll be back to square one. We’ll get out of here and find ourselves with the exact same options.

  “I’ve thought about it. I know what I want, and I know that I want to work towards it. You don’t. That makes you worse than useless to me: it makes you dangerous. You need to decide what you want and what you’re willing to do to get it. And while you’re thinking, I will be doing my thing. You’re my brother, but I will not fuck up my life for the sake of helping you fuck up yours. You got this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Alright then. Let’s go shovel shit.”

  The following couple of days are hard. Things are so tense on this fucking ship that I’m starting to consider spacing myself as an easy way out. Alya is so distant she might as well be on a different ship. Kolya still treats me like some kind of hero, which bugs the shit out of me because I know that I don’t deserve it. That’s not really the problem, though. The real problem is that it pisses Tom off. The longer he stays pissed off, the longer it’s going to take for things to get squared off between us.

  I’m trying to patch things up, but it’s going slowly. Everything is still godsdamn strained, but we’ve reached enough of a truce that we’re back to doing stuff together outside of work. The weight training was easiest to get into. It takes so much out of us that there’s not much room for any other bullshit. The rest of our life is harder to negotiate. We’re stuck together so much of the time that we’re forced to maintain a semblance of normality. We have to work, eat, and sleep together. We have to share most things, or one of us has to go without. Being in the same room doing stuff isn’t the same as doing stuff together, though.

  It’s the weirdest thing to be watching a threedee in the same room as Tom, sitting near him, but not be watching together. I can’t explain what the difference is, but there is one, and it sucks. Sometimes we whoop or flinch at the same time, but that just makes me feel lonely.

  We’re watching something that would normally have me hooting with laughter and instead is just grating on my mood when the com light starts flashing.

  “Tom? What do we do?”

  “Push the button. Like, now.”

  Jameson’s face comes into view, way too large and way too puce.

  “What the fuck are you doing there? Where is that fucking woman?”

  “I think she’s having her lunch,” I stammer. “I’ll go get her.” I bolt out of the deck before Tom can beat me to it. Alya’s in her ATR. It doesn’t take us long to run back to the deck, but the wait is too long for Jameson’s taste. What he’s got to say is so urgent that he spends five minutes screaming at Alya for not being at her post. That makes sense.

  After a while I tune him out, so by the time I realize that he’s finally got down to business I’m not too sure what I’ve missed.

  “…you speak to that fucking bitch! We have a fucking contract!”

  “I will do so immediately.”

  “She thinks she can dick me around? I’m not afraid of fucking tigers. I’m not afraid of her!”

  “Obviously. I will speak to her right now.”

  He carries on for a few minutes about how he doesn’t give a fuck about that woman and about how urgent this issue is. When Alya finally manages to get him off the com she sighs, puts her face in her hands, and stays like that for a while.

  “Alya? Are you ok?”

  “No. Can you get Kolya? I need to make a cup of tea. We’ve got problems.”

  She dials in a com code from memory and goes towards the kitchen. “Ignore that if it bleeps. I’ll connect when I get back.”

  When her drink is ready, she sits herself at her chair with a sigh. “Gentlemen, you might as well get comfy. This is not going to be good news.” She presses the com button, which had been flashing for a while, and a woman appears on the screen. She’s sitting on a chair holding a cup of something, too. And she’s smiling. She’s smiling all the way through, as if her smile started somewhere deep inside her and shone out, through her, through our screen, and into our ship. Then she sees Alya’s face and the smile disappears, but the shining carries on.

  “Honey, what happened?”

  “It’s a long story, Dee.”

  “A story for whiskey, maybe? Not tea?”

  “Yes.”

  “I love you, baby girl. I wish things were easier.”

  “Me too.”

  I can’t help staring at the lady. I’ve never seen anyone like her in my whole life. She’s so radiant and I don’t understand how or why. Her eyes are darker than Tom’s, but they’re dazzling.

  She turns to me and smiles. I can feel a blush start somewhere between my legs and rise all the way up. That would be embarrassing enough if it were the only thing that’s rising, but it isn’t. That should be mortally embarrassing, because she’s looking at me and I know she knows. Somehow it’s all cool.

  “Hey, you.” Her voice makes all the music in my head turn into a single, glorious chord. I know I’ll be looking for it for the rest of my days and probably never find it. “One of these days we will meet properly. That will be a very good day for both of us. But today is not that day, unfortunately.” She turns back to Alya. “I’m sure you’ve heard.”

  “I’ve heard something. Mostly swearing.” She takes a sip of her tea. “I’m sorry about him.”

  “You didn’t make him, and you help to make him bearable. There is a problem with one of your sites.”

  “Shit. What is it?”

  “How much do you know about mud?”

  Alya’s eyes widen. “Mud? I’
ve read about it. I’m a tuber, Dee. Born and bred on a torus.”

  “So’s your boss, judging by the way he’s talking. But he runs a multi-billion credit business while I am a paper-pusher, so I better not dare tell him how to do his job, etcetera.”

  They roll their eyes in perfect synchrony.

  “So we’re likely to get mud? How bad?”

  “Depends. You know how terraforming is.”

  “You told me it was like cooking to a recipe without having any control over the ingredients.”

  “Yes. We’re having rains on Hestia. Heavy rains. It’s awesome, in the literal sense of the word. The skies open and water comes crashing down.”

  “Wow. Ok. And our site?”

  “Your site is in a dip. Four bubbles all around it, which is why Jameson wants it. But if it rains…”

  “Water will run into the dip?”

  “All the water that slides off the bubbles.”

  “Gods. And the ground?”

  “Hard when dry or cold. Sticky when wet. You could get bogged down.”

  “This is like something straight out of a book.”

  “If it goes badly, it will be. I can’t even tell you what your chances are. Our weather patterns still baffle us. I offered Jameson an alternative site that is almost guaranteed to stay dry. He’d have to ferry people over, though, so he said no. Well, he said all sorts of stuff, but I’ll spare you.”