Severance (56 page)

She smiled. “Yeah. He said I was right.”

“Well, okay then. Still, you’ve got some serious lady–balls,
Stein.”

“Thanks.” She tilted her head in the direction of her
terminal. “So?”

“Ahh, yeah.” He looked to the other side of the room, his
brow furrowed. “I would have made that
Boom 1,
I think,” he said,
pointing at the base of the reactor.

“Are you sure?”

He looked past the reactor, to the door to the life–support
section. “I am totally sure. The others are definitely linked to
Boom 2
.”

“What others?” Helot asked. “Other whats?”

“Because if you’re not sure,” Stein said, “…and if this is
our last conversation ever, I’m going to be very upset with you.”

“This is a pretty bad last conversation ever,” Bruce agreed.
“Maybe some more puns?”

“Boom 2?” she asked again.

“It would
blow
if I was wrong, wouldn’t it?”

“Fuck you.”

“Helot, do you know how hot antimatter annihilation is?”
Bruce asked, turning his head to the captain. “Because if it’s going to get
balmy
in here, I’m going to take my shirt off first.”

“I’m serious. Fuck you,” Stein said. Her finger hovered over
Boom 2
.

“Laura! Urk. Don’t!” Sergei urked.

“Relax, kid,” Bruce said, stripping the upper half of his
coveralls off. “She’s not an
abomination
,” he added, his mouth hanging
open in delight.

“This has to stop,” she said.

She pressed
Boom 2.

The broken thermostat popped out with a simple twist. Stein
tucked it in her webbing and popped the new one into place. She checked it was
sending signals to the heating coil upstream, then slid the access panel back
into place. “That should do it,” she said, climbing down off the ladder.

The office manager offered a thin–lipped remark about how
long it had taken, which Stein simply took as the ‘thank you’ it was probably
meant to be. He did seem less put–out then he had been when she arrived, and she
left the office with the slightly satisfied feeling of having fixed another
problem.

She walked down the halls back to the maintenance office, carefully
maneuvering her ladder through the afternoon crowds. Almost quitting time for
her, well past quitting time for everyone else it seemed. Though it was a
Friday, she supposed. She reached the maintenance office and stowed her ladder
before stepping into the locker room to change, running into two of her team
members finishing their shifts, as well. Tools stowed and pleasantries exchanged,
she soon left the maintenance office, finding Bruce waiting for her outside. He
wordlessly fell into step beside her as they rounded the corner and boarded the
escalator up.

“Should have left early,” he said behind her. “It’s going to
be busy.”

She turned around to face him, one step higher, temporarily
taller. “No one was stopping you, big guy,” she replied. “Or did you need me to
hold your hand?”

“Brave talk,” Bruce said, shaking his head. “And you know
how much I hate boasting.”

Upstairs, they had to pick their way through a group of
government workers enjoying a post–work game of freeze tag. “Morons,” Bruce
said, sidestepping a statue frozen in a vaguely obscene position.

Stein didn’t say anything, only allowing herself a faint
smile. She hadn’t told Bruce that part of the story, for fear he might take it
the wrong way. Not that she thought any less of him; he was still one of the
smartest people she knew. But she didn’t want to imagine what he would do if he
was told he had a genetic predisposition to idiocy. A lot of moping around in a
cap and gown, probably. Calculus–themed tattoos. Months of spite–fueled study
and self–improvement. He would be happier not knowing.

They stopped outside her apartment, Bruce waiting while Stein
checked Mr. Beefy quickly, before grabbing her umbrella from the hook beside
the door. “I’ll let you borrow it later if you ask nice,” she said once back outside,
ignoring his rolled eyes.

They continued down the street, passing crowded stalls of
vendors hawking recreational beverages to the crowds, warming them up for the
weekend. Before long, they were forced to slow, the crowd thickening as it
pushed through the bottleneck formed by the bulkhead doors just ahead. She let Bruce
move ahead of her, trailing behind in the lee of his shoulders as they approached
the first set of doors. Brightness ahead as they approached the second set, passing
through those to the outside.

The sky was very, very big. Too big, really. Regardless of
the weather, umbrellas were always a popular accessory for people outside the
colony. Stein opened hers now, pulling it low over her head so that she could
only see the ground. Bruce made amused noises beside her, only his lower body
visible as they walked the well–worn path to the Prairie.
Such a tough guy.
Although if she could see his head, she was sure she would see his eyes carefully
focused on the ground in front of him.

Helot had almost been right. The contingencies had contingencied,
leaving the Argos — all of it — just barely enough reaction mass to slide into
orbit around Tau Prius III. A success, but not a complete one. There was
essentially no fuel to transfer to the surface for the colonization efforts.
The first year was marked by a few very necessary, very unironic bonfires; a
few people had indeed frozen to death. Helot had been polite enough not to crow
about this.

But only a few died. And when one of the landing crafts
found a vein of uranium a few months later, and the ship’s fabricators cobbled
together an enrichment apparatus and simple nuclear reactor, things got a lot
better. With a source of power, some of the fabrication equipment was moved to
the surface, allowing construction of the colony to begin in earnest.

Not unexpectedly, the colony that developed ended up looking
a lot like the Argos. Mostly underground, almost entirely enclosed. This wasn’t
just to protect against the cold, although it certainly did that. Argosians, it
seemed, just liked being indoors.

Stein tripped over a rock, stumbling forward a few steps before
catching herself. She still had to concentrate on picking up her feet with each
step, especially on uneven ground, even after being down here longer than
almost everyone. Of all the people who had wanted to — and a lot had — she had
one of the most legitimate claims to stay on the Argos, in that she had
something actually useful to do up there. But she hadn’t hesitated when
volunteers were sought out, and was on one of the first crafts down to the
surface.

There were still a few thousand on the Argos. Naval personnel
mainly, along with a sizable amount of the ship’s security corps, who had felt
more than a little unpopular after ‘all that business,’ as the incidents just
prior to D–Day were now called. The full story never came out; few knew there
was a story in the first place.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bruce had a knack for demolitions — nearly
every component of the aft’s life support was ruined. A partial evacuation of
the core had actually been necessary; security, naval officers, and their
families hustled back down to street level for their own safety. It hadn’t
taken long to explain to Helot what they had done and what it meant. He didn’t
put up much of an argument; Stein thought he seemed almost relieved that
someone had forced his hand. One last bit of blackmail followed, when Stein
explained that only she could stop Kinsella from unleashing his suicide
bombers. It had barely counted as blackmail, really; all the fight had gone out
of Helot by that point. Unlikely as it might have seemed at the start of the day,
Stein and Bruce ended up walking out of the core under their own power.

A year later, the Argos finally arrived at its destination. Although
still quite isolated, they were at least out of deep space and now moving at a
much more sedate speed. In a small way, it felt like they had rejoined the rest
of the universe.

How the rest of the universe felt about that was still
unknown.

Stein flicked the edge of her umbrella up a bit, catching a
glimpse of the summer sky and the metallic roofs of the Prairie just over the
next rise. The New Prairie really, although no one called it that. One of the
few outlying buildings in the colony, the proprietors had felt it thematically
necessary to build the thing outdoors, however much it might hurt business.

Bruce tipped the edge of her umbrella up and looked down at
her. “Wanna go see a play tonight?” he asked.

Stein’s eyes widened. “Why? Am I in trouble?”

“You need to spend more time around people that aren’t at
work. Or in a bar.”

“I like bar folk. I think you need to spend less time around
people that aren’t in a bar.”

When her feet hit the tiled terrace of the bar, Stein folded
her umbrella and ducked inside, away from the dreaded sky. She settled in to a
table at the back, Bruce plopping down beside her. “Four beers, please,” Bruce
said when the waiter approached. They sat in silence for a while, looking at
anything but each other, watching the bar get progressively noisier as the
after work crowd streamed in. Stein could see the grassy area outside filling
up with braver sorts, daredevils who could look at the sky without throwing up,
along with a handful who just enjoyed recreational vomiting.

When the waiter returned with their drinks, Bruce seized one
and drained half of it. Stein took a slightly more ladylike approach with hers.
“So, what’s up with this play?” she asked. “You hate that kind of thing.”

Bruce evaded her look for a moment, then seemed to think
better of it. Returning her gaze, he shrugged. “I do. Just heard a guy talking
about it today. Thought you might like it. Thought you might like him.” A long,
loathing gaze from Stein. “Just trying to get you out there,” he said
defensively.

This had traditionally been Ellen’s job, and Stein felt a
momentary wave of sadness wash over her. “I’m out there,” she finally said,
speaking more into her beer than to her friend.

“Who was the last person you talked to outside of work?”

Stein spun the glass around in her hands, not looking up. “So,
I’m out there at work. That’s legitimate. I’ve got work friends is all.”

Bruce snorted. “No, you don’t. You’re their boss, Stein. Don’t
try to be that friendly boss who’s always up in everyone’s business. People
hate that. Imagine Kinsella hanging out with you all the time, just being
friendly all over you,” he said. “That’s what you look like to work people.”

Nominally, Kinsella was now Stein’s direct boss, but he
mostly left her alone. He was pretty busy now, governing the colony and being
generally appalling. Of all the lessons to be learned during ‘all that business,’
the only one the mayor took away was the observation that no one seemed to mind
or even notice that democracy had been suspended during Helot’s coup. And when
the colony had been established enough for people to stop dying, he had
inserted himself into the position of Colony Administrator, a position with
some curiously unspecific term limits. Admittedly, he wasn’t doing that bad a
job of it yet, aside from the half–dozen violent tantrums he threw each day.

“I’m sure he’s not that bad. I bet he’d be a pretty cool
friend,” Stein said.

“Oh, sure. You and Kinsella just hanging out. Braiding each
other’s wigs. Bathing with each other.”

“What do you think friends do, exactly?”

In a single motion, Bruce drained the rest of his beer,
flagged the waiter, and ordered another one. Some more silence, Stein ignoring
Bruce’s gaze. “Look, I get it. You like being distant. And it totally works for
you. You’re kind of prickly up close.”

“Thanks.”

“Especially your mustache.”

Sergei had stayed on the Argos, their post–face–shooting
reunion being predictably awkward and relationship ending. He had missed the
important parts of her conversation with Helot, the parts that exonerated her, at
least to the elements of her crime that didn’t involve shooting him in the
face. Those elements had proven too big a hurdle to get over.

The waiter arrived with Bruce’s second beer, which hadn’t
hit the table before half of it disappeared as well. “But,” Bruce continued,
slapping his palm on the table, “Jagged, spiky mustache or no, you can’t keep
this up forever.” He swept his arm, gesturing outside the window. “Remember, we
have to populate this planet.”

“Oh gross, Bruce.”

“Not ‘we’ as in ‘you and I.’ That would be gross. You’re
like a little brother to me. Besides, I’ve already got a very full waiting
list.”

“That’s great,” she said, rolling her eyes. She knew he was
just trying to help. But being prickly and distant had worked out well for her
so far in life. Gotten her to where she was. She had done fairly well for
herself. Certainly not much to complain about.

On the other hand, you did shoot your last boyfriend in
the face. Justifiable as that may have been, it is possible you might be able
to dial the prickliness back a whisker.

“Maybe,” she said.

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Maybe what?”

“I am maybe agreeing with you.” She stared him down. “I will
maybe go to a play.
Maybe.
” She took another sip of her drink. “But can
we not talk about it right now?”

“Okay, boss.” Bruce finished his second drink with another
healthy pull. Stein took her time with hers, nursing it while Bruce distracted
himself leering at a young woman two tables over.

The bar was almost full now, and Stein could see more than a
few people eyeballing the two extra chairs at their table. Stein drained her
glass, setting it down firmly to attract Bruce’s attention. She looked at the
two remaining beers on the table, in front of the two empty chairs. “So.”