I handed the tube back to her, proceeding to drum my lips with fingers. “Two? Three years?”
Liberty scooted up beside me and laid her head on my shoulder. “Exactly.”
I put an arm around her and drew her in, propping my metaphorically splayed heart on top of hers. If she was willing to take a risk, so would I. I couldn’t say no to her. “So, what you gonna do with him?”
“Father?” She sniffed. “He committed treason.”
“And we committed mutiny.”
“Not true. He was proven to be at fault before we moved against him.”
“You think the Brethren leadership will see it that way? This is something President Atmore will oversee personally. If we do somehow survive this, there’s a damn good chance we’ll all go down.”
“Which is why I don’t plan on turning over control after it’s over.”
“Excuse me?” I peered incredulously down at her.
She slid to the center of the bed and crossed her legs. “Atmore was part of Father’s plan, and so was the rest of our leadership. If we want to end this for good, they have to listen to us, not the other way around.”
“How do you intend on doing that?”
“Holding them hostage. We’re well supplied with weapons. All we have to do is survive the attack, and we can hold our government to an account.”
“On a bluff? I know you won’t bomb them. This is madness.”
“The best kind, and they don’t know that. Look at what Father was willing to do. Don’t you see, David, we have a chance to change things. No more slaving away for a mindless corporation who’s made itself into a sovereign state. Our families took a chance in coming out here, they had kids and raised them hoping for a better life. That better life only came for a few, but for the rest, like you, they were put out here and forgotten. If the lowest is healthy and happy, the highest will thrive as well. We stand together, or we die together, just like on this ship. There is no other option.
“Look, I might have grown up in the lap of luxury, but certain, terrible things have always stuck with me. I wasn’t completely blind like the Sovereign from my parable. I’ve seen suffering and sadness. I’ve seen unwashed, sick children in the middle levels fighting over protein cakes while on my way back to the Estates to eat roasted duck shipped in from Southeast Asia. I’ve taken antibiotics while others were thrown in the crematorium for simple infections. I even went one year not wearing the same outfit a single day in a row, whereas your father has had the same jumpsuit since when he first set foot there. What about César’s family? You think that’s fair? One out of five girls from Valles Rojo become prostitutes. I tried to influence Father to help, even Mother, but they would say merely that we earned our life and they hadn’t. But how did we earn it? Did you really earn the jackpot if you bet on a winning skimmer? Or is it just luck? Is that all success ever is, being lucky enough to be born into a situation that benefits you? I can’t turn a blind eye.”
I sipped on the bottle for a moment, thinking it over. “Your dad worked hard, right? He was a high-carbon mining foremen before the military. That’s a big job.”
“Not hard enough to earn a thousand times what your father did working for the state maintaining PV arrays and generators all day. How many hours a week did your father slave away?”
“I’m not really sure, eighty? Pretty normal for us low folk. Then again, we made work time into play time sometimes. Hell, if work was slow he’d turn in his time and just find a hole to drink in. Not a bar, a literal hole. You can run a tube inside your environmental suit and fill it full of liquor, then go sit on a hillside and watch the day pass from outside. It’s not too bad, kind of fun actually. Especially when you have some killer tunes.”
Liberty’s eyebrows furrowed. “You know how much my father worked? Really worked? Not just, I’m playing like I’m working by being at the office all day?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe forty hours, if that. And we took vacations, too. Sometimes weeks at a go. See what I mean? Things need to change. What incentive does anyone have to make the colonies a better place if working harder earns them nothing? There are plans to use our high-carbon mines to terraform Mars and make us an atmosphere, but why make that dream a reality if it’s just the same old shit?”
“Are you saying you want to redistribute the wealth again? I mean, there sure are lazy folks who’d love to see that happen. Just like those who aspire to be on disability. I swear they hurt themselves on purpose. Actually, I did know a guy who put his hand in an aluminum press for that very reason.”
“Redistribute? No, not exactly.” She reached up and untied her hair, letting the bun disintegrate into a twisted, beautiful mess of raven strands. “But it’s time to share things. Why not profit share? So that if the colonies do well, we all do well. And if everyone is doing well, I bet you a million credits people will stop being pissed off at an enemy I’m beginning to believe was invented by our government just to unify us against someone other than them. There is more than enough space for two independent factions in the market. We have billions of customers back on Earth.”
I drew up my knees and peered over them. “The Axis is a fake?”
“No, they’re real, but the fact that we need to hate them doesn’t have to be.”
“You don’t think they attacked first, at Ceres. You think we started this war?”
“Just a hunch. Maybe a misunderstanding.”
“Well, I think you might be right.” I took hold of her hands. “Things need to change. Just know I’m with you all the way. Let’s make a better future, whatever it takes.”
“Thanks, David.” She leaned in and took my face in her hands, kissing me on the lips. “I—David. I just, I’ve always.”
“I know.”
She held up her right hand and removed the black gasket, placing it on her left ring finger instead. Her eyes widened as the silent question hung between us, words she desperately wished to say but couldn’t. I gently pushed her back onto the bed, taking her hands and holding them above her head, our attention never wavering. We kissed like two hungry souls hell bent on devouring one another, our spectral teeth removing great chunks to be swallowed, metabolizing all our experiences into an unbreakable energy. We could never again be separated, never be sifted into separate entities or be seen as two elements apart from their compound. We were one symbiotic organism, mutated and reconfigured for a higher purpose.
We would change the world.
[19]
It felt kind of good to be stumbling around the ship without a care, not having to worry who saw what or if I was acting a fool. It was like being a kid again, like I’d never signed up for the military in the first place. I knew it was an illusion, this break, but I was holding on to it for all it was worth. It was my illusion, no one else’s. Mine.
Two months remained before we reached our target, and like the rest of the crew, I took full advantage. For a solid week I ate steak, hot, juicy steak, and drank, drank till my stomach lining began to erode. I knew God was against us living in excess, but I had a lot of making up to do. Years of it, in fact. I figured it was fine. Besides, me and the big guy had been talking about it every day. Being drunk had helped strengthen my relationship with God. Seriously.
Liberty had been generous with the crew, opening up the stores for whatever they wished, though she still held back some luxuries. If we survived this ordeal we’d need supplies to siege our government, and there was no telling how long that would take. A week? A month? A couple of years? We had the fuel and air to last, but we might not have enough to eat if we gorged ourselves.