They’d gotten the lawsuit dropped—the report had convinced the EC board, a closer call than the kid knew about. But he’d signed the accident report—he was out of hospital and if he just for God’s sake got a job and settled, he was fine. Visconti said rehab might not be productive right now. There was a lot of hostility.
So let him run through the Human Services money. Let him settle and think about surviving. There wasn’t any negligence, there wasn’t any charge to file, and Dekker didn’t go to trial, however much Alyce Salazar wanted his head. Salazar was threatening civil suit now, to tie up the bank account and the insurance, but Crayton’s office said don’t worry about it: the daughter was over 18, the partnership was signed and legal, with a survivor’s clause, and the account was jointly acquired, anyway. Dekker was safe: there was no legal way Salazar was going to get at him.
Thatcard could go in the pending settlement stack.
Strolling along the frontage spinward of The Hole, Sal had things of her own to say. And for openers, since Meg wasn’t getting started: “I’ll tell you this, Kady, we got to get him out of there, God, of all places for him to come!”
“Natural enough.”
“Natural! He said it, they friggin’ took every lovin’ thing he owned—what’s he going to do, forget it?”
Meg walked a few steps further. Kicked at a spot on the decking. “Dunno. Difficult to say. But what are we going to do, throw him out? That’s brut sure he won’t forgive.”
“Forgive, hell!”
Another silence. “You know, brut frank, Sal—there’s a difference in Ben and Bird.”
“We’re talking about Dekker. Or why are we out here?”
“We’re talking about that. Calmati, calma, hey?”
“So say! Doesn’t make sense so far!”
“I tell you, I never had any use for the mother-well. You less.”
“Damn right.”
“Watch it go, right? Screw it all, all that shiz.—But—I get out here, Sal, I dunno, thinking it over—I knowwhy Bird paid for this guy a room.”
“So? Why did he?”
“You know you don’t say ‘morning’.”
“Of course I say morning. And what’s that to Flaherty, anyhow?”
“You say it because I say it. You didn’t come saying it. Or ‘evening’. Brut different, Sal.”
“So?”
“Different the way Bird’s different from us. Never saw how the motherwell matters til I figured that.”
“That’s shit.” Sal hated soppiness. This was getting soppy, it wasn’t like Meg, and it was making her increasingly uncomfortable.
“May be shit,” Meg said. “But I know why Bird paid.”
“Because the motherwell makes you crazy.”
“Dekker’s from the motherwell. At least from Sol Station—which is close enough for ‘mornings’.”
“Accent tells you that.”
“Yeah. But we thinkin accents. That’s what I’m talking about. Yours and mine. I can turn my back on the motherwell, I can take what I want and leave the rest. Bird’s not rab, Bird’s just norm, but I know how his mind works—I dealt with there, remember.”
“Are they all fools?”
“Fools, peut et’. But not the only. You mind me saying, Sal—you’re going to be a skosh bizzed at me over this—”
Puzzles and puzzles. A body could be irritated at motherwell Attitudes, too. “All right. So we got this deep secret difference. It’s worth five. Go.”
“Head-on, then—MamBitch is scamming her kids.”
“Is that new?”
“It is when you don’t see it. You know, even the vids that get out here, they’re pure shit, Aboujib, they’re company vids. They’re slash-vids, cop-chasers, fool-funnies, salute-the-logo shit, intensely company, intensely censored—you understand me? MamBitch has been robbing you all along, little bits and pieces. Robbing me too. Those sods brut likewhat’s rab. Rab’s no trouble to them, hell, rab’s where they’re going—forget Earth. Forget what’s old garbage.—Only out here the company’sgoing to pick what’s rab. Capish’?”
“Neg.” She looked at Meg with the slight suspicion Meg was talking down a long motherwell nose at her, a long thirtyish nose at that. But Meg hadn’t made sense enough yet to make her mad. “This going somewhere significant eventually?”
“It’s the Institute, all over again. Understand? You didn’t take the shit there. But you don’t say ‘morning’—”
“F’ God’s sake, Kady, good morning, then!”
“But Belters don’t say it. Bird remarked it to me once: Belters don’t and Sol Station will. Belters don’t give you a second cup of coffee without you pay for it. On Sol Station you expect it. Belters don’t give you re-chances. You screw up once, you’re gone, done, writ off—”
“E-vo-lution. Don’t let fools breed.”
“Corp-fad, Aboujib. It’s wasn’t always that way.”
Down a damned long motherwell nose.
“You take a look at corp-rat executives the last couple of years, Aboujib? Seen the clothes? Rab gone to suits.”
“So? Poor sods still got it wrong.”
“No. No. They got it right. Idon’t say on purpose—I’m not sincerely sure they have that many neurons compatible—but they likethe rab. In their little corp-rat brains, shit, yeah, dump the past, let the company say what’s fad, what’s rab, and what’s gone—they don’t ever like some blue-sky lawyer citing charter-law at ‘em, so that’s gone. Don’t teach anybody about the issues: all us tekkie-types and pi-luts need is slash-vids and funnies, right? Tekkies don’t need to know shit-else but their job. Hell, the rab never said dump all the smarts, we said Stop thinking Earth’s it, wake up and see what’s really going on out there; but the stupid plastics said, Dump the past. We said Access for the People, and the plastics say Grab it while you can. Corp-fad. Plastic is, Aboujib, plastic sells, plastic doesn’t ask questions, plastic’s always dumber than the management, and hell, no, management didn’t plot with its brain how to take us over, they just wobble along looking for the easy way, and damned if we didn’t give it to them.”
Corp-fad made an ugly kind of sense. The Institute was without question MomCorp’s way of making little corp-rat pilots—she’d seen that happening: she wouldn’t salute the logo and they’d found a way to can her, right fast.
“I’m 35,” Meg said after a moment or two of walking. “I’m an old rab. Eight, nine years ago they shot us down at the doors and the politi-crats in the company’s bed said that good old EC was within their rights, it was self-defense, the rab was breaking the law and endangering a strategic facility, d’ you believe that? Corp-rat HQ is a strategic facility? —Time the miners andthe Shepherds had the guts to tell the whole damn company go to hell, turn the whole operation independent. But where are they, Sal? Where are they? Freerunners are mostly gone. Brut few coming out here now: the company’s training the new generation, paying their bills and giving them the good sectors til they get it all in their pocket. The Shepherds let the company handle their outfitting and now they’re fighting to hang on to the perks they have. The rab got themselves shot to hell in the ‘15 and here we got these damn synthetics swaggering around with the company label all over. The plastics don’t know what we were. They turn us into clothes. Into corp-fad. Damn young synths make the music without the words. The Movement’s probably dead back at Sol. Old. Antique. And where do I go?”
“Brut cold,” she said, and put her hands in her pockets, walking step for step with Meg, Meg seeming to have finished her say. Crazy as it sounded, she wondered if the Institute hadcensored the things it didn’t want them to know, on purpose, and when she thought about it, rights damned sure had changed—
Things like abolishing crew share-systems, the way they’d used to be on Shepherd ships. Like the bank refusing to honor cash-chits, the way Shepherds had paid out bonuses, and kept money outside the bank card system.