Which sounded very reasonable, and the logic of it pissed me off even more than the presence of the Tahni here.
“How do you know these things?” I shook my head, impressed despite my frustration. “I mean, we live in the same house. I always thought I kept up on things, but every question I ask, you already know the answer.”
“When you can’t sleep,” she said, picking up the bottle and pouring a shot, “you drink.” She downed the tequila with barely a wince. “When I can’t sleep, I read.”
I blinked, understanding the implication of the words.
“How often?”
“Not as often as you,” she allowed. She set the glass down gently, as thoughtful and careful about the motion as she was about everything else. “But then, I didn’t see as much as you. I didn’t lose as much as you.” Her fingers brushed my arm. “I don’t know how you’ve kept it together as well as you have as long as you have.”
“I started early.” As if somehow, that made it better. She didn’t argue the point though.
“I’m from the Underground, too,” she said, and since I knew that and she knew I knew it, I didn’t respond, assuming she was trying to make a point. “I didn’t have it as bad as you. I had a mother and my two brothers and they tried to take care of me when they could. They were in a gang, and they had pull, and used it to keep me out. They all supported me when I decided to join the Marines. They knew there was no other way out of the Underground for any of us. I miss them, but I can send them messages and get theirs, and I know they’re okay.”
I nodded. I’d seen the messages her mother recorded, though they’d come fewer and farther between since the end of the war. Mostly, I’d been impressed that her mother hadn’t been begging for a share of her separation bonus. That was an old story, and one that Clines complained about constantly. Of course, his family was on one of the colonies, with just enough upward mobility to realize what the money could do for them. Maybe people stuck in the Underground knew that a few tens of thousands in government scrip still wouldn’t be enough to get them to the Surface.
“And as much as I miss them, I have never regretted what I did. I know I’m a better person for it, in a better situation. And I never would have met you if I hadn’t left.” She grabbed my hand in hers and squeezed it.
“You know I feel the same way,” I insisted. “If I hadn’t gone into the Corps, I would have wound up dead in a year. Or in the Freezer, which is pretty much the same thing.”
I know theoretically, long-term punitive hibernation wasn’t supposed to be a death sentence, but everyone knew better. After a hundred years in the Freezer, anything could happen. Governments could change, laws could change, records could be misplaced on purpose. No one I ever talked to who was facing a long-term sentence in the Freezer ever expected to come out of it.
“I think the difference between us is, I always had an eye on after the war, on getting out and coming someplace like this, on using the Marines as a steppingstone to a better life. For you, the Marines was your better life. The only reason you ever thought about after the war, after the military was because of me.”
“That’s not true.” The denial was reflexive and I didn’t know if I meant it or not. I hadn’t thought about it. “I mean, the lawyer program that made me the offer even talked about getting out with a separation bonus and a spot on a colony of my choice.”
“But the Corps made you a better person. Don’t try to deny it. You were important. People respected you, and you respected yourself. You went from a private to a 1st Lieutenant, a company commander, and you would have been a captain by now if you’d stayed in.” Her gaze flickered downward, unwilling to meet mine. “You’d be happier if you hadn’t left.”
“I’m happier with you,” I told her, taking her by her upper arms and pulling her close to me, looking her in the eye. “Even if I would have been a captain, even if I was heading for general, it wouldn’t mean anything without you. I swear to God, I can be happy doing anything as long as you’re with me.” I shrugged. “And as far as the…other stuff…well, I’ll deal with it. I’ll see if I can order some medication from Veterans’ Assistance, something to help me sleep.”
“Until it gets here,” she told me, “you have to promise me you’re going to cut back on the booze.”
“All right,” I said. Then I chuckled softly. “But maybe I’d better start after tomorrow night. Remember, we invited Dave over for dinner?”
“Oh, God,” she moaned, resting her forehead against my chest. “Dave’s not a bad guy,” she admitted, “but that man can drink. And you know what he talks about when he drinks.”
I did. It never failed. It was always….
“…the fucking Predecessors!”
Dave Clines tossed the empty bottle with incredible accuracy for the sheer number of beers he’d downed, landing it in the recycling bin at the edge of the porch, where it clinked and clanked amidst the others. Glass—real glass—was almost unheard of on Earth, where everything was plastic. But the plants to manufacture those plastics and the equipment to drill for the oil to make them were expensive and not considered worth shipping out to small colonies like this. But all it took was a small shop and some sand to make all the glass you needed.
“Wait now,” I said, holding up one hand, the other holding onto a glass of vodka that I was nursing very carefully because of my promise to Vicky. “You’re saying that the Predecessors made the Tahni? Like, on purpose?”
“I’m saying that they did all of this, dude!” he said, waving around us, above us with a wayward hand as he reached down into the cooler he’d brought with him and grabbed yet another beer. “All our colonies, all the Tahni worlds, this world. It’s pretty fucking obvious. I mean, those rock dragon steaks we had for dinner—which, by the way, great job grilling those things, my dude. But those steaks! There’s no way we should be able to eat those damned things! Even if that panspermia shit was real, it’s just not possible. There’s shit on Earth we can’t eat and it evolved on the same planet as us!”
Vicky had her chair leaned back against the wall, one heel propped on the porch railing, and she tilted her head toward me.
“He’s kind of got you there, Cam,” she admitted.
I didn’t want to admit it. I stared out at the western sky burned red by the setting primary star and tried to find an argument out there in the fiery clouds. I picked one out, though it was less from the clouds than from my ass.
“But how would we know that?” I pointed out. “After all, we don’t have an example of a planet where the life isn’t based on DNA to compare it to. Maybe this is just how things are and we were wrong with our theories before. I mean, that’s how science works, right? We have to look at the actual evidence and change our theories, right?”
“Yeah,” Clines said, “except that we know how life evolved on Earth, because we’ve been digging up fossils there for like, hundreds of years. We haven’t been able to do that yet on the Tahni homeworld, so we ain’t got no idea if the whole ecosystem was dumped there as-is. But everything we’ve found on Earth says that all this shit is impossible. Life evolved the way it did on Earth because of a whole shitload of unpredictable things. I mean, we’ve had what? Five mass extinctions?”