Page 22 of Red Scale Daddy
“That is the only answer that matters.”
“No, it is the only answer you can survive saying.”
Her hand comes out of her coat empty, fingers curled as if she has decided not to reach for the compad because striking me with it would be inefficient. “You know nothing about survival.”
I smile, but it does not feel good on my face. “I know too much about it. That is the problem.”
“Then perhaps you should stop mistaking endurance for insight.”
“Maybe you should stop mistaking obsession for loyalty.”
The room goes quiet in earnest.
Loklo says, very softly, “Oh, hell.”
Roma steps toward me. It is a small movement by distance and a large one by consequence. Her head tips back so she can keep looking into my face, and the scent of her reaches me under grease and bar smoke: metal, clean soap nearly buried by engineoil, and something warm beneath all the controlled layers that her disguise cannot smother.
“You do not get to name what I feel,” she says.
“No,” I say. “But I can recognize a fellow idiot when one walks into my bar with blueprints and a funeral march.”
Her laugh is short and cold. “You think we are alike?”
“I think we are both pointing ourselves at death and calling it something prettier.”
“I am trying to bring someone home.”
“I am trying to find something worth the trip.”
She stares at me.
I did not mean to say that.
There are truths a man keeps behind his teeth because once they are out, they become furniture in the room. Everyone has to walk around them. Loklo turns his head toward me, all the humor gone from his face. He knows enough pieces of me to recognize the shape. Not all of it. Nobody gets all of it. But enough.
Roma’s voice lowers. “You don’t care whether you survive.”
“No.”
The answer comes easy. Too easy. Like tossing a spent cartridge onto the floor.
Her anger shifts. Not disappearing. Recalibrating. She is an engineer even with people, especially when she does not want to be. “Then you are useless to me.”
“Wrong.”
“No. I need someone invested in survival.”
“You need someone useful after survival stops being guaranteed.”
“I need someone who follows orders.”
“You need someone who can ignore them when they turn stupid.”
“My orders do not turn stupid.”
“Everything turns stupid eventually.”
She exhales through her nose. “This is why you are not coming.”
