“Mr. Oke!” his father said as they rounded one of the seating areas. The research advisor smiled politely, walking toward them.

  “Mr. Draper,” Mr. Oke said. “It’s good of you to come.”

  “Just want to make sure everything’s smooth,” Dad said, caressing the air as he said it. “Development’s a good placement, but it’s a hard one. David doesn’t need any distractions.”

  “Of course not,” Mr. Oke agreed.

  Over the old man’s shoulder, David caught sight of Hutch. He was standing with a couple of the second-years, smiling and listening to a girl whose hands were fluttering and tapping at the air as she explained something. Leelee wasn’t with him. David felt his heart rate spike. It was an epinephrine dump. His mind jumped back a section to his physiology labs. Epinephrine was binding to alpha-adrenergic sites, dropping insulin production, upping glycogenolysis and lipolysis. Standard fight-or-flight. Hutch glanced over, nodded politely. David pointed toward the men’s room with his chin. Hutch’s expression slipped a notch darker and he shook his head, not more than a few millimeters and unmistakable. David scowled and nodded toward the men’s room again.

  “Are you all right?” his dad asked.

  “I have to pee,” David said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He left his father and Mr. Oke bantering. The white tile and video mirrors of the men’s room were like a retreat to his world. And escape. He stood at the urinal, pretending to piss until the one other student washed his hands and left. Hutch walked in.

  “What’s the word, friend?” Hutch said, but David could hear annoyance in the syllables. “Saw you got family with you today. Good to see a father so concerned with his son’s business.”

  David zipped his fly and trundled over to Hutch. He kept his voice low.

  “He’s just being an asshole. It’s nothing. We’ve got to meet,” David said. “We have to talk. Not now, but we’ve got to.”

  “Slow, slow, slow,” Hutch said. “Now’s not a good time.”

  “Tomorrow night,” David said. “The usual place.”

  “Can’t do that. Other plans.”

  “Tonight, then,” David hissed.

  David’s hand terminal chimed, and a moment later, Hutch’s did too. The local newsfeed pushing a breaking story. David didn’t look away. Hutch’s expression shifted from annoyance into anger and then a wary kind of amusement. He shrugged.

  “See you tonight then, little man,” Hutch said. His lopsided smile looked dangerous. David nodded and trotted back out to the commons. He wouldn’t tell Hutch about the message or about Leelee being in trouble. He’d just say he wanted to find her. He’d say it was about his placement because that made it seem like there was something else. Distracting. He got back to Mr. Oke and his father, gathering himself back together, willing himself to act normal, before he noticed that the commons was silent. Everyone was hunched over their hand terminals, their faces gray or flushed. Even his father and Mr. Oke. The newsfeed push had a picture of a public corridor, the air hazed by smoke. A policeman hunched over something, one hand on his hip. The header read EXPLOSION IN SALTON.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Protestors,” his father said, and the anger in his voice was startling. “Anti-Earth protestors.”

  David’s hand terminal chimed again. The header shifted.

  EXPLOSION IN SALTON; THREE CONFIRMED DEAD

  Aunt Bobbie was tight-lipped when they got home, sitting in the common room with a massive black weight in her hand that she held without lifting, like a child clutching a favorite toy. The monitor was set to a newsfeed with the sound turned low. Live feeds of the damage in Salton played out in the four corners of the monitor, but she didn’t seem to be looking at them. David’s mother sat at the table scrolling through her hand terminal. When David and his father walked in, there was a moment of eye contact between his parents that had the weight of significance. He didn’t know what it meant. His father tapped David’s shoulder in a kind of farewell, then stepped over to the railing.

  “Hey, sis.”

  “Hey,” Aunt Bobbie said.

  “Did security talk to you?”

  “Not yet,” Aunt Bobbie said. “They know how to find me if they want to.”

  David scowled toward his mother. He couldn’t think of a reason that security would want to talk with Aunt Bobbie. He tried to make it into a threat against him, that they’d be looking to her for information about the batches he’d cooked for Hutch, but that felt too wrong. It had to be about the bombing, but he couldn’t make sense of that either. His mother only lifted her eyebrows and asked how the meeting with Mr. Oke had gone. His father answered for him, and the uncomfortable tension around Aunt Bobbie shifted into the background.

  There was going to be a party for the whole family tomorrow night, his mother told him. Pop-Pop and the cousins were coming from Aterpol, and Uncle Istvan and his new wife were making the trip from Dhanbad Nova. They’d rented a room at the best restaurant in Breach Candy. David gave a quiet, generalized thanks to the universe that he’d arranged to see Hutch tonight instead. Slipping away from his own celebration would have been impossible.

  After dinner, David said some vague things about friends from school and celebrating, promised not to go to Salton, and ducked out the door before anyone could get too inquisitive. Once he was out walking to the tube station, he felt a moment of relaxation. Almost peace. The whole ride out to Martineztown, David felt almost like he was floating. His datasets were done or else not his anymore, and even with all the rest of it—Leelee and Hutch, the protestors and the bombings, the family party and the prospect of leaving home—just not having the lab work hanging over him was like taking a vise off his ribs. Once he was in Salton, working development would be a thousand times worse than anything in the lower university. But that was later. For now, he could set his hand terminal to play bebapapu tunes and relax. Even if it was only for the length of the tube ride to Martineztown, it was still the most peace he’d had for himself in as long as he could remember.

  Hutch was waiting for him when he got there. The construction lamp threw off harsh white light, the battery hissing almost silently. The shadows seemed to have eaten Hutch’s eyes.

  “Little man,” he said as David stepped into the room. “Wasn’t thinking to hear from you. Was risky, talking to me with family and authority right there beside us. You were looking jumpy. People notice that kind of thing.”

  “Sorry,” David said. He sat down on a crate, rough plastic clinging to the fabric of his pants and pulling his cuffs up around his ankles. “I just needed to talk to you.”

  “I’m always here for you, my friend,” Hutch said. “You know that. You’re my number one guy. Any problem you’ve got, I’ve got.”

  David nodded, picking absently at his fingernail beds. Now that he was here, he found the subject of Leelee was harder to bring up than he’d expected.

  “I got into development.”

  “Knew it. Development’s always the place for the smart ones. Play your cards, and you’ll be riding this planet like a private cart,” Hutch said. “That’s not why we’re here, though. Is it?”

  “No, I was… I wanted to get in touch with Leelee. See if maybe she wanted to come celebrate it with me. Only my hand terminal went corrupt and I didn’t have her information on backup and I was thinking that since you…” David swallowed, trying to work the knot out of his throat. “Since you know her better than anyone.”

  He chanced a look at Hutch’s face. The man was expressionless as stone, turned in and silent. It was more threatening than bared teeth.

  “She came to you.” David had promised himself that he wouldn’t tell Hutch about the message, and technically he didn’t, but the silence implicated him. Hutch drew a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. “Don’t worry about Leelee. I’m taking care of Leelee.”

  “She seemed like she was in trouble.”

  “Okay, little man. You don’t follow what’s happening here, so I’m going to help. I own Leelee. She’s mine. Property, see? And she screwed up, started being with the wrong crowd. She got political. People like us don’t do that. Earth. Mars. OPA. That shit is for citizens. It just draws attention for people like us.”

  “She looked scared,” David said. He could hear the whine in his voice, and he hated that he couldn’t keep it out. He sounded like a kid. “She said she needed money.”

  Hutch laughed. “Don’t ever give that bitch money.”

  “Property,” David said. “She wanted… she wanted to buy herself. Didn’t she?”

  Hutch’s expression softened to something like sympathy. Pity, maybe. He leaned forward and put a hand on David’s knee.

  “Leelee is a slice of poison with a pretty mouth, little man. That’s the truth. She did a bad, stupid thing, and now she’s working that mistake off. That’s all. I know how much money you have because I’m the guy that gave it to you. You don’t have enough to clear her debts.”

  “Maybe I could—”

  “You don’t have half. You’ve got maybe a quarter. There’s nothing you can do for that girl. She gave you a hard-on, and that was nice for you. Don’t make it more than that. You understand what I’m saying to you?”

  The deep, sickening tug of humiliation pulled at David’s heart. He looked down, willing himself not to cry. He hated the reaction. He was angry with it and with himself and with Hutch and his parents and the world. He burned with embarrassment and rage and impotence. Hutch stood up, his shadow spilling across floor and wall like spent engine oil.

  “Best we don’t talk for a while,” Hutch said. “You got a lot in the air. Don’t worry about the cooking. We’ll get that all smoothed out when you’re in Salton. Then we can go into production for real, eh? See some money worth having.”

  “Okay,” David said.

  Hutch sighed and pulled up his hand terminal. As he tapped at its keyboard, he kept talking.

  “I’m going to slip a little something in that account of yours, right? Call it a bonus. Take and get yourself something nice, right.”

  “Right.”

  And then Hutch was gone, walking out toward Martineztown and the tube station and the world. David sat alone where he’d sat with Leelee not all that long before. The sense of peace and calm was gone. His hands balled in fists, and he had nothing he could hit. He felt cored out. Hollowed. He waited ten minutes the way he was supposed to and then took himself home.

  The next night was the party. His party. Pop-Pop was there, smiling a little lopsided since the stroke and thinner than David had ever seen him, but still strong voiced and chipper. Aunt Bobbie sat on one side of him, David’s father on the other, like they were propping him up. Muted sounds of silverware against plates and voices raised in conversation competed with a three-piece band set up on a dais by the front doors that filtered into the private back room. Green and gold tablecloths stretched over three tables to make it all seem like it connected. The meal itself had been chicken in black sauce with rice and fresh vegetables, and David had eaten two helpings without really tasting them. His father had taken on the expense of an open bar and Uncle Istvan’s new wife was already well on her way to drunk and sort of hitting on one of the older cousins. David’s mother paced the back of the room touching shoulders, dropping in and out of conversations like she was running for office. David wanted badly to be anywhere else.

  “You know, back in the ancient days,” Pop-Pop said, gesturing with a glass of whiskey, “they built cathedrals. Massive churches lifted up to the glory of God. Far, far beyond what you’d expect people to manage with just quarry stone and trees and a few steel knives, you know. Just a few simple tools.”

  “We’ve heard about the cathedrals,” Aunt Bobbie said. She had a drink too, but David couldn’t tell what it was. Legally, David wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol for another year, but he had a bulb of beer in his hand. He didn’t actually like the taste of it, but he drank it anyway.

  “The thing that’s important, though, is the time, you see?” Pop-Pop said. “The time. Raising up one of those cathedrals would take whole generations. The men who drew the plans, who envisioned the final form of the thing? They would be dead long before it was finished. It might be their grandsons or their great-grandsons or their great-great-grandsons who saw the work complete.”

  Across the room, one of the younger cousins was crying, and David’s mother sloped over and knelt, taking the squalling kid’s hand in her own and leading him to his mother. David choked down another mouthful of beer. Next year, he’d be in Salton, so busy that he wouldn’t have to come to these things anymore.

  “There’s a beauty in that,” Pop-Pop said earnestly to everyone and no one. “Such a massive plan, such ambition. A man might be setting the final stone and think back to his own father who’d set the stones below him and his grandfather who’d set the stones below that. To have a place in the great scheme, that was the beauty of it. To be part of something you didn’t begin and you would not see completed. It was beautiful.”

  “I love you, Dad,” Aunt Bobbie said, “but that’s bullshit.”

  David blinked. He looked from Pop-Pop to his own father and back. The men looked embarrassed. It was like she’d farted. Aunt Bobbie took another sip of her drink.

  “Bobbie,” David’s father said, “maybe you should ease up on that stuff.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just that I’ve been hearing about the cathedrals since I was a kid, and it’s bullshit. Seriously, who were they to decide what everyone was going to be doing for the next four generations? It’s not like they asked their however many great-grandkids if they wanted to be stonecutters. Maybe some of them wanted to… be musicians. Hell, be architects and do something of their own. Deciding what everyone’s going to do… what we’re going to be. It’s hubris, isn’t it?”

  “We’re not talking about cathedrals anymore, are we, sis?”

  “Yeah, because it was a really obscure metaphor,” Aunt Bobbie replied. “I’m just saying that the plan may be great as long as you’re inside it. You step outside, though, and then what?”

  There was a pain in her voice that David couldn’t fathom, but he saw it reflected in his grandfather’s eyes. The old man put his hand on Aunt Bobbie’s, and she held it like she was a little girl about to be led off to her bath time. David’s father, on the other side, looked peevish.

  “Don’t take her seriously, Pop-Pop. She was talking to security all day, and she’s still cranky.”

  “Is there a reason I shouldn’t be? It’s like every time anything strange happens, let’s go talk to Draper again.”

  “You had to expect that, Roberta,” his father said. He only called her Roberta when he was angry. “It’s the consequence of your decision.”

  “And what decision is that?” she snapped. Her voice was getting louder. Some of the cousins were looking over at them now, their own conversations fading.

  David’s father laughed. “You aren’t working. What are they calling it? Indefinite administrative leave?”

  “Psychological furlough,” Aunt Bobbie said. “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that of course they’re going to want to talk to you when things get weird. You can’t blame them for being suspicious. We were almost killed by Earthers. Everyone in this room and those rooms out there and the corridors. And you were working for them.”

  “I was not!” It wasn’t a shout because it didn’t have the gravel and roughness of shouting. It was loud, though, and it carried power along with it like a punch. “I worked with the faction that was trying to avert the war. The one that did avert the war. Everyone in these rooms is alive because of the people I helped. But with them, not for them.”

  The room was quiet, but David’s father was too deep into the fight to notice. He rolled his eyes.

  “Really? Who was paying your wages? Earth was. The people that hate us.”

  “They don’t hate us,” Bobbie said, her voice tired. “They’re afraid of us.”

  “Then why do they act like they hate us?” David’s father said with something like triumph.

  “Because that’s what fear looks like when it needs someplace to go.”

  David’s mother seemed to appear behind the three of them like some sort of magic trick. She wasn’t there, and then she was, her restraining hand on her husband’s shoulder. Her smile was humorless and undeniable.

  “We’re here for David tonight,” she said.

  “Yes,” Pop-Pop said, rubbing his palm against the back of Aunt Bobbie’s hand, soothing her. “For David.”

  His father’s face set into an annoyed mask, but Aunt Bobbie nodded.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry, David. Dad, I’m sorry. I’ve just had a really rough day and probably too much to drink.”

  “It’s all right, angel,” Pop-Pop said. Tears brightened his eyes.

  “I just thought that by now I’d have some idea of… of who I was. Of what I was going to do next, and…”

  “I know, angel. We all know what you’re going through.”

  She laughed at that, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “All of us but me, then.”

  The rest of the evening went just the way those things were supposed to go. People laughed and argued and drank. His father tried to call for silence and make a little speech about how proud he was, but one of the kid cousins was whispering and tapping on his hand terminal all the way through it. A few people gave David small, discreet presents of money to help him set up his dorm in Salton. Uncle Istvan’s new wife gave him an unpleasant, boozy kiss before gathering herself up and walking out with Istvan on her arm. They took a rental cart back home, his parents and Aunt Bobbie and him. He couldn’t shake the image of her weeping at the table. You step outside, though, and then what?