“Because you really area slink for Brazis?”
“I haven’t slinked for anybody. Ever. Forget it. I haven’t reported Algol for what he is except as we’re being overheard now—as I know we’re being overheard because of the damned alarm you touched off and the names you named.”
She hit his arm. “Stop it!”
“I can’t stop it. Be angry as you like. I don’t want any association with him or with Capricorn, and just watch—he’ll try to get to you next, because he won’t be able to get to me. I hope you’re too clever for that. He’s bad. He’s extremely bad, and he deserves to go down. Believe me.”
Flurry of blue flickers on his sister’s face. Take it for a blush. Take it that his warning was late, and she was entirely defensive. It wasAlgol that had gotten to her. And maybe Capricorn, too.
“You don’t trust him because he’s a Freethinker?” Indignantly. “You used to be.”
“Because he’sthe specific reason I got out of Michaelangelo’s and got out of the group, because he’s dangerous and he’s gotten control of the Freethinkers, who don’t half understand him. And yes, my bosses know about my time there, and they know about him. I’m not interested in Algol’s politics and I’m not in his orbit, and never was, no matter what he thinks. He’s anti-governor. He’s anti-Brazis. He’s interested in stirring up trouble at any opportunity, and he’s a damned social leech who’s got just enough glow about him to convince the young and desperately fashionless he’s more in the current than he is. I say it, quite seriously, you’re too bright a light to fall for him.”
“He’s much more interesting than some.”
“He’s poison,Ardath. Take it from someone who roomed with him. He keeps his digs like a stinking miner’s dive, he deals with dealers who don’t scruple to sting the gullible, he’s a slime, in short, a glowing green slime with no redeeming uses, and I’m relatively sure he’s got fingers in the black market and worse. He doesn’t attracthis close satellites. He buys them. He pays them in far more money and favors than he ought to have. I’m sure, and I can’t prove, that he’s killed one of them. Do I need to paint you any broader picture? I got as far as I could away from him long before I went to work for Brazis. Now he’s snuggling up to my sister—now, of all times, with this ship doing what it’s doing—and do you think his helpfulness to you is coincidence? You’re not where you are and who you are by being stupid, or gullible. If you don’t want to tar yourself with illicits and smugglers and attract the notice of the very déclassé police, get as far from him and Capricorn as you can get, and for God’s sake, don’t share a drink with them or their friends.”
Ardath turned away, a rustle of cloth, a shifting of expensive stars, all gained gratis. She was leaving, and he had a last moment’s uneasiness. He took her arm, delaying her, and she slipped free with a flip of a starry scarf over her shoulder. “Ah.” A smile, slow and sweet and superior. “Now there’s the brother I love to tease. So completely fast to flare. I take it by all this you really don’t like him.”
“Algol isn’t a joke. Listen to me.”
“Oh, do you think I’d ever socialize with him? You think so little of me. I can take a hint. I’m leaving. I’m going out where I get respect.”
“Ardath, use your brain. You’re in danger, coming here in the first place. Wake up and live in the…”
“…real world?”
He winced. The family motto. Now he was saying what their father had said at the last disastrous family get-together. “I’m not quoting him. I’m asking my sensible sister…”
“To be all gray and sober like some we can name? To go to Earther church and work on the line in the plastic works until I get too old to be worth paying and station gives me a pension apartment? Or maybe I can just take a job with the government and lie to my friends. No! Where you are isn’t the shaping works, but it’s close, brother, it’s all gray, and if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have any reputation at all on the street.”
She was getting under his skin. Way under his skin. She suspected enough to speculate in mutually dangerous directions, and he couldn’t afford to defend himself. He was angry, and when she tried to make her grand exit on her terms, things he’d thought for years welled up into his mouth, things that needed saying, because he’d seen that look on Arden when she took out on a self-willed mission, to do exactly what she wasn’t supposed to. “You wait. You listen to me until you get what I’m saying.”
“You told me to go.”
“Don’t be a baby. You remember what you told the parentals when you left? Try to get me to care.Well, I cared about things then, and I still care, but I’m getting tired of caring all by myself. I patch things up while you make gestures, the way I did on their anniversary this year and last. I mop up, I handle the parents, I keep things in the family civilized, and even if they won’t, I’llbe there if you ever make a mistake with your mods and do yourself lasting harm. But damn,you’re increasingly selfish!”
“ I’mselfish, opinionated brother!”
“Selfish, self-centered, how do I say it? I’ve told you all this and all you can think about is your reputation and your ways of dealing with threats. Well, there’s more to the universe than that. There’s a world outside the Trend that keeps your world safe, and there’s a world underneath it, and that second world’s damned dangerous, sister. Don’t tell me you have any real idea what Algol is, because I’m sure you don’tknow, and you won’tknow, not unless you get where I was, and I never, ever want you to go there. So shut up, go think about it, don’t act, and don’t do anything stupid.”
“Areyou a slink?”
“For the twentieth time, I’m not a slink.”
“Not a slink. Maybe a courier. But very well paid. And you can’t own up to what you do. What do I believe about you?”
“That the real universe is wider than the Trend. Wider, and far more dangerous.”
“The realuniverse?” Bitterly. “We don’t live in the real universe. We do live in the Trend. It’s what matters. You’re going to be notorious on the street before you’re done, and I think I’m going to die of shame.”
“Listen to me! Listen, for once in your life. The whole universe isn’t out to embarrass you. Other people have lives. Other people have crises.”
“They’d have fewer if they didn’t tangle themselves up in silly secret jobs.”
“Well, guess who pays the real bills at the restaurants that give you free food and drink, sister.”
“Because you’re stupid. If you just quit that silly job and came on the street I could tutor you. You could besomeone.”
“I have news for you. I’ll say it a second time, in plain words. I’m not stupid and I love the job I do.”
“It’s a job.”
“It earns money that supports you. Where do you think it all comes from?”
“From the gray people. The little people. What would they be, if they didn’t have us to look at? What would there be to look at, at all, without the Trend? Would you want to live here, if there weren’t the Trend?”
He knew where he’d want to live, if the microbes that lived in his body from birth wouldn’t destroy that world and the peace that depended on its complete isolation. He lived outside and above one of those life-globes the Earthers favored. He protected, he observed, he did all he could to ensure life went on inside his precious sealed globe, but he never could touch it or reach inside.
That he didn’t care that much about life in the larger globe he actually lived in—well, in that sense, maybe Ardath had a real point. That he didn’t have a personal life because he’d never felt inspired to form a relationship inside the Project wasn’t ultimately her fault. It wasn’t her fault he worked where he did, so that every person potentially available to him had politics attached and every really attractive human being he met socially was off-limits.