Ramirez blinked as if clearing a contact and touched his ear clip. “Trev. Come on in.”
“Watching a movie?” Make an effort, he told himself. Try to remember how to make small talk, to connect with other men. It was better than it had been; the surgery had changed a lot. Not enough, but a lot.
“My wife sent up some holo chips. I miss my favorite shows. You look bugged.”
“I am bugged. Wainwright is on me to improve my social skills.” Koske focused on the coffee tap, crossed the room to it, and pulled a cup out of the dispenser without looking up. He dialed a mocha and waited while the soy milk steamed and the cup filled. It tasted like soy milk, and he made a face. “She says they suck.”
“Trev,” Ramirez said. “Your social skills do suck.”
He stuffed his hip into his pocket and swung his feet off the pearl-blue ottoman, leaning forward between his knees. Koske caught it out of peripheral vision, but studied a bland pastel print matted and sealed in hard poly flush with the wall instead. “I'm good at my job.”
“You wouldn't be here if you weren't. Flying's your life, isn't it.”
Not a question, but Koske nodded anyway. He fussed with his recyclable cup. “It's not enough to just be good, is it?”
“Eh.” Ramirez reached over the low overstuffed back of the sofa and retrieved a drink Koske hadn't noticed from an elongated table behind it. He cupped it between both hands, resting in his lap, and looked up at a ceiling that boasted the same blue-silver patterned weave. It didn't matter which way was up in zero G. “You ever think about how much better you have to be at something now than you did two hundred years ago?”
“What do you mean?” Koske turned around and leaned his butt against the wall. The mocha was okay as long as he let himself drink it on automatic, without trying to taste it.
“Say in nineteen hundred, or whatever, before there was television and radio.”
“There was radio in nineteen hundred,” Koske corrected, but he wasn't sure after he said it.
“Whatever. The point is, you're a singer in the year whatever, and you're a pretty good singer, and you make a pretty good living at local bars or singing on street corners or at fairs or whatever. And suddenly somebody invents the radio, and you don't have to be the best singer in the town anymore. Now you have to be the best singer in the country. And then you have television, and you have to be the best singer in the world. And you have to be pretty, too, and look good on camera.”
Koske realized he'd finished his mocha and folded the cup into the recycler. “Okay.”
“So a lot of people are frustrated, and go to work making widgets or whatever, because everybody in the world has access to the, like, ten best singers anywhere.”
“Huh. Doesn't that kind of compare to nations, too? They keep getting bigger…”
“I was going there, actually.” Ramirez licked his hand and smoothed it across his hair to tame a platinum cowlick. “Sure. You go from tribes and principalities to city-states with empires, from empires to nation-states with bigger empires, then to supranations like PanMalaysia, the Commonwealth, PanChina, the EU, the United States. I'd say both things are a function of people just being able to talk to each other better.”
“The radio.”
“And the Nets, going back to the mid-twentieth century. If there's one thing people are good at, other than killing each other, it's talking. Hell, we even talk to dogs and dolphins. Or try.”
Koske suddenly choked, harsh amusement tightening his throat. “You're telling me Wainwright is right, and if I don't talk to people I'm subhuman.”
The blond man shrugged, tossed back his beverage, and stood, crumpling the disposable cup in one rawboned fist. “I'm not telling you anything. Except you have to be the best at your job in the world, or you're not going to get what you want. But I keep thinking there's got to be a way for people to — well, there's some sense in the New Chinese system.”
Koske flinched away as Ramirez brushed past him to drop the cup into the recycler. “PanChina is pretty repressive.”
Ramirez chuckled. “Have you looked at the privileges granted our government under the Military Powers Act? The prime minister can essentially force anybody she wants into military service. Jail anybody — for no reason at all. Based on their ethnicity. And we're so in the pocket of the PanMalaysian corporations it's not funny. Canada might as well just admit that it's Southeast Asia's army and get on with life in a mercenary fashion. And let's not even get into some of the things that went on in the U.K. — back when it could still claim to have a government. And the Christian Fascists in the United States—”
“You don't think a democratic government is superior to a totalitarian one? I fought in that war, Chris. Maybe you're too young to remember, but we had good reasons for going over there. For South Africa, too.”
“Sure. That's not the point. What I'm saying is in the old system, people who had a gift were nurtured. Even if they weren't the best in the world. And PanChina has protocols that take the place of that sort of nurturing—”
“—creche environments for kids, parental visits on weekends.”
“There's an old political philosophy… do you know any history, Trev?”
Trevor snorted and kicked his heel against the wall. “Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”
“Have you ever heard the expression from each according to his ability, to each according to his need?”
“Can't say I have. Why?”
Ramirez shrugged and moved to the dispenser to refresh his drink. “It's the boiled-down version of a discredited political philosophy. One that was the root of the PanChinese system, several revolutions ago. They also believe in individual service to the state, and state service to the individual. It doesn't seem like a bad ideology to me. I think more people can excel, given the kind of support you see on a village level rather than worldwide competition. And I think people should be given a chance to just be good at something, and live their lives. Instead we've got a world full of unhappy people in dead-end jobs medicating themselves to stay sane.”
Wouldn't it be nice not to have to be the best to be recognized?
Hell no, Koske thought. I want to be the best. On my own merit. And if that means outflying and outthinking Genevieve Casey, well. She's got to lose one of these days.
“You're depressing me, Chris.”
“Sorry about that.” Ramirez finished his coffee in a gulp. “Come on. Let's run some laps.”
1000 Hours
Tuesday 5 December, 2062
Allen-Shipman Research Facility
St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario
When I do get to work Gabe's lying in wait, looking sexy in a white shirt, open at the collar, and tan loafers. Damn his eyes. Leaning against the wall beside my office door, engrossed in something on his hip.
“I'm sorry.” I key the door open and press my thumb to the lock plate. “It won't happen again.”
He doesn't look up. “Accepted.” And from the level tone of his voice I know he's going to hold me to it. “What the hell happened last night? I couldn't decide if I was more worried or if Elspeth was.”
“I— Gabe, I need a cup of coffee. Want to go for a walk?” I'm still trying to decide what to tell Valens. Whether I should tell Valens anything.
Gabe taps his hip off, stuffs it into a pocket, raises his gaze to mine. “Anytime.”
I fall into step beside him, turning back the way I came, comforted by his presence. We pass through the external doors into the parking lot, and a big dark-haired kid — maybe twenty-one, a little old for the program — steps around us, coming in. I do get a good look at his ragged jeans and laser decal high-tops, luminescent tattoo on his cheekbone, and think he's probably a messenger. Except he badges past security like he belongs there.