Fifty
FIFTY
Accept the outcast life and make it a virtuous one, for the worthy soul does not ask how it will enter heaven.
—common Purgatorist saying
[Not sure how I’m going to finish this part.]
—from the deleted draft coda of Isthmus Isako
Freeday, 13-week, 500 AF
Isako’s exiting a tram stop when she sees the unmistakable mane of copper-red hair coming out of a sleek black combustion vehicle. She starts forward. “Thea?” She calls out the name again.
She’s been trying for weeks to locate her, but River Thea’s ID has gone silent.
The Companynet is chock-full of news coverage of the assassination of Sandbar Uchi and its political fallout, but there’s been no mention of the director’s bodyguard.
Isako’s usual investigative resources—the Agency and its directory, other atiers, research subcons like Crater—are all closed to her.
The second-stage woman pauses and turns around. Two accompanying bodyguards step forward alongside her. She looks Isako up and down. Her eyes pause on the triggersheath. “Sorry, do I know you?”
That breathy voice—exactly the same, yet somehow different.
Haughty and self-possessed, sliding into suspicious disdain as the owner realizes she’s conversing with a ronin.
The youthful, curvy synthbody clad in a formfitting woolen emerald-green dress and white summer coat, shapely legs accentuated by knee-high boots with three-inch heels.
She tilts a head of long, wavy red hair—not a short bob—and rests a hand on one cocked hip.
“Never mind,” Isako says. “I thought you were someone else.”
“The contractor that my asshole ex-husband put into my body, perhaps? Were the two of you friends?” Fern Madison smiles, enjoying the stranger’s discomfort.
“No.” Quietly, she amends, “But we did try to kill each other.”
Uchi’s former wife raises an eyebrow. “It’s a shame you didn’t succeed earlier, then, because it would’ve saved me a small fortune in legal fees.
I still can’t believe it took a lawsuit to determine that a synthbody always belongs to the person it’s designed for.
My ex had a weak legal case from the start, but he still recorporalized that woman as a vindictive joke at my expense.
I’m not one to speak ill of the dead, but he always did think he could get away with anything.
” She smirks prettily. “Well, karma is a righteous bitch.”
Yes, Isako thinks, looking at Fern Madison steadily. That she is.
“The trac tried to run, you know. Took nearly two weeks for me to get my property back. She made it all the way to Mount Hanji before surrendering, if you can believe that.”
Isako believes it. She backs away. “Sorry to have bothered you, ma’am.”
When she’s gone half a block, she glances over her shoulder.
Uchi’s ex-wife is vanishing into a clothing boutique.
Madison’s right; she didn’t really know Martim’s protector and one remaining friend.
Still, there’s an emptiness that arrives after finally getting an answer to a question you didn’t want to ask.
She knew better than to expect to find River Thea alive and well, but for half a second, as a beautiful woman stepped out of her car, it seemed possible.
When Isako reaches the circular park in front of the wide stone boulevard of Easthatch, she sits down on a bench, zanshin, and looks down the path toward the airshield gates.
The rows of silver birch trees are bursting with green.
People are out in lightweight clothes, enjoying every bit of the ten short weeks of summer.
Two Sefan pilgrims are quietly sweeping the pavers around the statue of the Mother in Chains.
There are no resignations happening here today.
After the weeks of shock and political upheaval following Uchi’s assassination, the city of Tenacity has fallen into a strange lull. It’s as if the entire Company is holding its breath, waiting to see what’ll happen next.
From the outpouring of grief and laudatory tributes at Uchi’s funeral, one would think the man was a beloved, pioneering hero, a martyr of the terraforming movement, instead of one of the most controversial figures in the past fifty years.
Those who are celebrating Uchi’s death are doing so quietly and privately, for fear of being labeled terrorist sympathizers.
The fatal shooting of a Board nominee only months into his second stage has the entire gold-badge level of the Company outraged and horrified.
From the Sweetsea, the Executive has issued broad approval to the Board of Directors and all divisional leaders to take immediate sweeping action to combat violent extremism and crack down on the badgeless population.
The Old Warehouse is gone. Razed to the ground, as it was scheduled to be years ago. Some of the people living inside were relocated by charitable groups and individuals. Others, no doubt, were not so lucky.
Only in conversations on the offnet is anyone pointing out that the printed firearms confiscated from United Freelancers are incapable of putting a neat hole into a synthetic skull at a distance of two hundred meters, and that only a skilled marksman with a rifle and a vantage point could’ve accomplished that.
Ambient oxygen: 12.613% +0.33… Global average surface temperature: -37.
6°C +0.24… New leads in the hunt for United Freelancers leader “Waterboy”…
SatOps Sentinels advance to divisional playoffs for the first time in 20 years…
brEAKING NEWS: Tide Sullivan to assume control of Global Gas Production, vows renewed commitment to terraforming goals amid speculation of Sweetsea succession…
With his death, Martim accomplished his client’s final objective.
The merger of NorCon and SoCon, Tide Sullivan’s consolidation of power, and the increasing likelihood that he’ll be the next Executive means the Great Silence will continue uninterrupted, and the relentless pursuit of the Founders’ Vision will remain alive and well.
Condor Anand, who’s never drawn a longknife in service, will soon be the most influential atier in the Company.
One day, long after Isako is gone, he’ll be a Partner of the Agency.
Isako closes her eyes for a minute and enjoys the sunlight on her face.
She opens them again when she feels Kob’s shadow fall across her. “Look what I have,” he says, sounding pleased with himself as he sits down beside her and hands her a cloth-wrapped package. When she takes it from him and unwraps it, the smell and steam of fresh cinnamon bread rises into the air.
Isako tears off a generous piece and hands it to Kob before taking one for herself. She groans with pleasure at the first soft, sugary bite. “Leon sure knows what my favorites are,” she says, mouth full.
Crab Leon is a baker who gives Kob whatever he wants twice a week, in exchange for help with bookkeeping.
Kob used to be able to take care of Leon’s accounting needs by himself in thirty minutes every second Freeday, but lately he’s noticed that he’s slower, not able to do calculations in his head anymore.
So he’s introduced Leon and Isako to each other, and soon, Isako expects she’ll be the one going to the bakery to do Leon’s books and picking up bread for the both of them. She tries not to think that far ahead.
She doesn’t yet know how to live like a ronin the way Kob does. How to get by on offscrip and odd jobs, how to navigate the world of the dispossessed, how to get cinnamon bread and fresh eggs.
But she is not too old to learn.
Kob uncaps a thermos of warm oat milk coffa. “How’s Maya doing?”
“She’s enjoying the new job. Her boyfriend got accepted into the A&M Guild, so that’s good news.
The two of them are getting pretty serious.
I think they’re still too young to be making such a major commitment, but she says they don’t want to waste time.
” She takes the thermos Kob offers to her and blows before sipping. “I guess I can understand that.”
She tries to see her daughter once a week now, but that depends on Maya’s work schedule.
After all these years of being the unavailable one in the relationship, their positions are now reversed.
Isako knows she comes after Silas, after Sondra and Amie, somewhere down the priority list where she belongs.
When they do spend time together, a new and different tension has replaced the distance once created by her profession.
Maya knows her mother is a ronin with a two-year grace period that’s ticking down by the day.
She knows, but knowing and accepting are different things.
Isako thought the hardest part would be sharing the news, but she was wrong.
The hardest part is seeing it affect someone she loves.
When Isako finishes the last bit of cinnamon bread, Kob caps the thermos, wipes his beard, and stands.
Together, they walk down the wide boulevard toward the gate, following the path that thousands have taken before them.
Isako raises her head to look up at the watchtower, many stories tall.
She can’t see the very top, where she stood months ago and witnessed the procession of her colleagues.
From up there, it was a solemn, poignant sight, but remote. Here at ground level, it’s close.
As they near the airshield posts, the hum of the field generators grows, an unsettling vibration that she feels in the roots of her molars.
The visual distortion makes the sprawl of the Vastness outside seem like a holographic projection in a slightly glitchy sim.
Isako stops at the feet of the Mother in Chains.
Kob touches the foot of the statue and makes the blessing sign.
She clears her throat before speaking. “Hey, Loren, wherever you are, I hope you’re at peace.
I wanted to tell you that Tessa had her baby.
A healthy boy, seven pounds and five ounces.
They named him after you. I saw the announcement and the photos they posted and I thought you’d want to know.
” She gazes out in the direction where she knows his bones rest on the tundra, then looks over at Kob.
“I don’t know what else to say. How do you talk to so many of them? Does it get any easier?”
“It does, actually,” Kob says, adjusting his sunglasses. “Say whatever you want, or nothing. The way I figure it, it’s not the words that matter. It’s the fact that you made the effort.”
He unwinds the angora wool scarf that’s made its way from the neck of a powerful director, to a young atier, and finally to a dying ronin.
Fingering the delicate signature embroidery, he raises his shielded eyes past the benevolent face of the Mother to the wide summer sky.
“I know you believed in a different god, Martim, but maybe you can still hear me. I wish we could’ve done more for you, kid. ”
The super-rare Moray Xi 459 is worth a small fortune. More than a standard resignation bonus, more than enough for two people to get by for a few years and then some.
On the other side of the boulevard, under the shade of a silver birch, is a dark, slender man wearing black gloves and a long coat. Isako glances in his direction but doesn’t give him the satisfaction of eye contact. “He’s back,” she says to Kob. “Standing over there under the trees, watching us.”
“Let him watch,” Kob says. “If he doesn’t have anything better to do than keep tabs on a couple of old ronin enjoying fresh bread and a sunny afternoon, then maybe things aren’t so bad under the airshield.”
Kob grins blithely at her. A day may come, too soon, when he welcomes a meeting with Marsh Elias. Until then, if the Ronin Killer comes for either of them, he will have to come for them both.
No one has beaten Quickblade and Strikebreaker together. Not yet.
“Since we’ve got the rest of the day,” Kob says, “I know a place to get hothouse coffee and fried eggs.”
“Fuck Earth, what’re we waiting for?”
He offers his arm to her, and they walk back into Tenacity.