Belen loved her career. She loved the work she did to help others. There was nothing more rewarding than seeing the difference she could make in people’s lives. As the head of the Medical Institute, her affect was indirect, yet it was still possible to trace the impact her policies and decisions made upon the Endurance.
When she had first moved in with Tony and Jessica had entered their lives, Belen had found her work to also be an escape. She could throw herself into the demands of a busy medical career and forget about everything that awaited her at home, all the guilt and any thoughts of Rex and how much she missed him, even Tony’s growing impact on her thoughts and feelings. Especially that.
In the days after she had returned from the white house and from speaking to (kissing, is what you really mean) Rex, Belen immersed herself in work with determination, keeping herself busy throughout long hours. She returned to the Bridge for sleep and to shower and change, before returning back to her office in the Institute complex in the Aventine.
She barely saw Tony, which was a relief. He was under pressure of his own. Both his official and personal calendars showed endless meetings, most of them related to finance. He was working all the hours a man could, too.
Belen wasn’t sure if she could look him in the eye right now, anyway. Her guilt was a hot, fetid lump in her middle, gumming up her thoughts. It waited to pounce whenever she stopped thinking about work issues and problems, descending upon her like a thick cloud of noxious gas.
Better to keep working. Later, when time had passed, she might have the courage to look at what she had done with a clear-eyed gaze and name it for what it was. For now, she would pretend it had never happened.
On the third day after she had kissed Rex, Belen made her way home, walking through the darkened and almost deserted Aventine market squares to the Collina Gate and the Bridge. There was no game tonight, so the arena was shrouded in shadows and almost eerily silent. It was late, too. Even if there had been a game, it would have been over by now and the arena would still sit brooding in the dark in this way.
The night guards on the Bridge gate nodded as she passed through. Belen walked softly through the corridor to the Captain’s suite. There were other residences on this corridor and her clicking heels might disturb them.
She waved the door open and stepped into the little sitting room.
It was blazing with light. Even the harsh overhead light was still on. Tony was sitting on the sofa, his heels on the low table in front of him, a glass in his hand. There was a bottle of something in front of him. The label was turned away from Belen, so she couldn’t see what it was. From the color of the liquid in the glass, she knew it wasn’t wine.
Belen halted just inside the door, taking in Tony’s bleary gaze as he looked at her, blinking. He wasn’t swaying where he sat. His hand wasn’t shaking. Yet she knew he was very drunk indeed. He had spent his life socializing for political gain and knew how to hold his liquor. The bloodshot eyes, though, gave him away.
“Has something happened?” she asked, stepping farther into the room to let the door close behind her. “Is it Jessica?” She had spoken to her only that afternoon and everything had been fine, then, with Jessica talking in staccato excitement about her new promotion and the work it entailed.
Tony started to shake his head, then stopped the movement and held still.
Belen nudged her estimation of the degree of his inebriation up even higher. Her heart thudding in building fear, she moved over to the sofa and perched on the edge of the low table. “Tony?”
His gaze slid to her. His black eyes were steady. With an only slightly slowed movement, he brought the glass to his lips and sipped.
Belen picked up the bottle. It was whiskey, one hundred proof. The bottle was empty.
She put it back on the table and waited.
Tony examined the glass, measuring the level of the liquid in it. “Rex won’t loan the Bridge the money we need.” His words were perfectly formed. Perhaps too perfect.
Belen frowned, even as her heart fluttered with…something light and joy-filled, that she shoved roughly aside. “He changed his mind about giving you the money?”
Tony’s gaze flickered toward her, then back to the glass. “Yep,” he said heavily. He took another sip. A bigger one, this time.
“Why?”
He shrugged.
Did Rex’s change of heart have something to do with her? The shiny thought intruded again, nudging her. She quashed it and focused on Tony. “Without the money, what will happen?”
“Cost cutting. Layoffs, most likely. Essential services down to the barest minimum.” He gave a laugh that sounded as dry as the bottle on the table next to her hip. “None of it will help for long.”
Belen stared at him, all thoughts of Rex and his motives evaporating. “It’s really that bad?”
“We’re going to run out of money inside three years,” he said with the same flat voice. “Every model, every projection, tells us that. Anything we do now will just put that moment off for a while. It can’t be stopped.”
“Except Rex’s money would have stopped it?”
“I listened long enough to the experts that I started to believe it would halt the death spiral. It would give us time to fix things.”
She bit her lip, considering it. “There’s no other way, Tony?”
He tipped the glass, draining it. “Not that I can see. Not that anyone I’ve consulted can see.”
“Taking his money, paying interest for it, that would put us into another sort of death spiral.”
Tony’s gaze slid to meet hers. “The death of the ship from economic ruin would be slow enough that we might reach Destination before it set in. Without it, we won’t have money for essential services. That means dragooning people at the point of a gun into running the ship for nothing, not even standard rations. How long do you think it will take people to rebel? How long before the shoddy work they’re shanghaied into doing results in a critical ship failure? How long do you think it will be before we’re all exposed to space itself because the ship falls apart around us?”
Belen stared at him. Her throat was tight, her heart racing. She felt ill. “There has to be another way,” she said helplessly.
“One that doesn’t offend your high-minded principals?” Tony said. “You would rather see us breathe vacuum, wouldn’t you? I must work that into the next conversation I have with Jessica. She’ll be thrilled to know you would sell out her future for your morals.”
Belen surged to her feet, the hurt and horror mixing in a way that made her want to gag. She looked down at Tony. “You are drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying. Good night, Tony.”
She hurried to the bedroom and locked the door behind her. Then she turned on the noise shield. Tony could pound on the door and scream and she would not hear it. Then, because there was nothing else to do, she went to bed.
But not to sleep.
* * * * *
Tony was not there when she emerged the next morning, even though it was still early. Belen had dozed, although proper sleep had eluded her. Her mind had refused to switch off, circling around the problems with hawk-like relentlessness. Now she felt drained. Even her face ached, the bones throbbing under her skin. Tony’s absence was a relief. She wasn’t in a state to deal with him and the aftermath of last night.
At the same time, she regretted he wasn’t here. She wanted to wade back into the argument and resolve it now, so she could feel better. She had learned, though, that it sometimes took other people longer to be ready to grapple with hurt feelings than she did. She had to give Tony time.
That didn’t mean she had to twitch and wait, either. In the middle of the night she had come to a decision. Now she acted on it, finding relief that way.
She went back to her office in the Institute and used the terminal there, rather than one on the Bridge. She had to ask the computer to find the comm code. She had never had a reason to call the big house in the Palatine before.
A stranger answered. He listened to her courteously, his thin face grave, then nodded. “I will have to check and call you back.”
She tried to do some work while she waited for the call back and failed. The man, though, didn’t leave her waiting for long. His thin face broadened into a small smile. “Please come as soon as you are able. Mr. Julyan will be waiting for you.”
* * * * *
The house was bigger than Belen had believed, bigger than the gossips and party-goers had properly explained. She had carefully avoided looking at any of the images that had appeared in public, so even the appearance of it was something of a surprise.
Despite the size of the house, it didn’t seem cold or unlived-in. The landscape around the building was orderly and neat, yet there was a toy tankball sitting on the cropped grass, where someone had left it out.
Someone was playing music inside the house, at a volume that was loud enough for Belen to hear it as she stepped off the taxi-boat. It sounded like a low-key jazz track.
The front door was open, too, which further surprised her. It was a big door. The sunlights were hitting the floor just beyond the open door, making the floor shine warmly.
As Belen stood observing the house, she could hear voices inside.
Of course, Rex didn’t live alone here. His whole family lived with him, still, despite both boys emerging at least a year ago. Even Michaela still lived here. Yet it wasn’t Julian or Benny who had answered her call, earlier. So there was at least one other person in the house, as well.
Belen walked toward the house over the mown grass. Before she reached the open door, the man who had taken her call earlier came and stood in the doorway and waited for her.
“I will take you through to Mr. Julyan,” he said, turning away.
“Do you have a name?” she asked.
“Pasi,” he said. “This way.”
The interior of the house was astonishing. Belen wished she had time to stop and consider every aspect of it. Just to begin, it looked as though the sunlights themselves were in the house. The light poured in through a big central hole in the roof, to dance and glitter on the surface of a bathing pool, big enough for dozens of people. There was grass and plants around it, right there in the middle of the house.
Then she realized there were walls pulled to one side that would enclose the pool and seal up the house from the outside elements when they were needed. That was all she could see before being forced to hurry to catch up with Pasi, who was already half-way along a corridor that led deeper into the house.
She marveled over the pool. She had never seen a real swimming pool before, only images from old Terra. The concept was astonishing, a true first here on the Endurance. Only someone like Rex could have considered the possibility and then actually built it.
The voices she had heard when she had been standing outside were louder now. They issued from the other side of the pool she had left behind.
Pasi tapped on a closed door and waited for a barest fraction of a moment, then pushed it open and waved for Belen to step past him.
Belen moved into the room and heard Pasi close the door behind him once more, She was too busy examining the room and Rex, on the far side of it, to look back at the door.
The scale of the room was generous. It wasn’t the floor space that was grand in scale. It was actually a smaller room than it appeared to be. It was the high ceiling that made it seem airy.
Windows high up by the roofline let in light. There were comfortable chairs and bookshelves with reproduction books on them. The fashion for replica books had emerged in the last few years and Belen suspected she was looking at the reason for the resurgence. Rex would never copy anyone else.
There wasn’t a screen in sight, although Belen suspected that this was where Rex did most of his work. He must use screen emitters exclusively.
He stood with his hands in his pockets once more. His face was bereft of any expression. He simply watched her. In the bright light of the room, his eyes seemed very green.
Belen cleared her throat. “I left Tony drunk on the sofa last night. He said you won’t lend him the money the Bridge needs.”
“Are you here to plead on his behalf?”
“No!” Belen said, startled.
“Then…?”
Belen pressed her lips together. “I don’t know why I’m here, exactly,” she said honestly. “Tony painted such an appalling picture of the future of the ship, last night. It scared me. So I think I am here because I want to know why you changed your mind about lending the money.”
Rex frowned. “What did Tony tell you that scared you so much?”
Belen sighed and told him in a few short sentences.
Rex’s frown didn’t shift. He gazed at his feet. Slowly, he moved toward one of the armchairs and settled himself on the arm of it, his legs thrust out in front of him. “That sounds about right.”
“You know what will happen?” she said, surprised. “And you still refuse to lend the money?”
“I thought you would be pleased about that,” Rex said. “Usury is one of the worst sins as far as you’re concerned.”
Her breath halted. “It wasn’t because…. You didn’t change your mind because of me?”
His gaze met hers. The moment stretched out while her heart pumped hard. She couldn’t help but remember the feel of his mouth on hers and the memory added tension of its own.
If he had changed his mind because of what she would think about him, then the ruin of the ship would be her fault. At the same time, she was thrilled she might have influenced him, that he had done the right thing for her.
Rex shook his head.
Acute disappointment touched her.
“Tony didn’t offer a high enough interest rate to persuade me,” Rex said.
This time, she really was breathless. Cold shock squeezed her lungs and held them.
Finally, she gasped in air that seemed to sear on the way down. “You refused the save the ship because you wouldn’t make enough out of the deal?”
Rex gave a small shrug.
Belen swallowed. Her throat had grown tight. “How silly of me…” she murmured.
Rex watched her and she wanted to believe that the wariness in his gaze was real. She knew, though, it was her overwrought imagination putting it there. He was unfeeling.
“I suppose I should thank you for putting me straight,” Belen told him. “It was foolish of me to hope you refused to lend the money because of me. Even more stupid of me to think you did it for principals of your own. I should have remembered that about you. Profits, always and forever, right?”
Rex didn’t speak. There was a tick in the corner of his jaw. Anger? Impatience?
Belen turned her back on him. “I must go.”
“Belen.”
She closed her eyes. She just wanted to get out of there. She wanted to be alone, where she could deal with this. Yet by simply speaking her name, he halted her as effectively as a mini gravity field.
Only, she didn’t have to look at him again. She kept her gaze on her toes.
“There are other ways to solve Tony’s issues. He just hasn’t found them yet.”
“He says there are not.”
“He’s not looking in the right places.”
“I’ll pass that along.” She hurried out of the room and back through the house. She didn’t even glance at the pool. The decadence of it revolted her.
* * * * *
When Belen got back to her office, Vilma was sitting at the big administrator’s desk in the outer office, shooting suspicious glances at the other person in the room.
Staci Houtem was standing by the window, watching people move about the market square, three floors below. She looked up as Belen entered and gave her a small nod.
“Tony is here?” Belen asked.
Both women nodded. Vilma tilted her head toward Belen’s door.
Was it possible for the day to hand out any more shocks than it had already delivered? Tony here in her office was just the latest, yet the most surprising.
Belen braced herself. She had fought for and found a superficial peace on the way back from the Palatine. She was going to need every scrap of calm she could muster for what would happen next.
Tony was sitting on her high chair. Of course. There was nowhere else to sit. Belen’s visitors always stood, just as she did when others were in the room. Yet Tony had taken her chair.
Belen closed the door and invoked the sound barrier, her heart hurrying along in a way that hurt.
Tony got to his feet.
“What miracle has occurred that forced you to come here?” Belen asked lightly. She needed a moment to compose herself. Putting him off with a joke gave her breathing space.
Tony didn’t react. His face was grave as he came right up to her, leaving mere centimeters between them. It forced her to tilt her head to look him in the eye.
“I’m sorry, Belen,” he said, his voice low. “I am abjectly, miserably, pathetically sorry. I was scared, last night. I took it out on you.”
Surprise scattered her thoughts. She stared up at him, struggling to pull herself together again. “I….”
Tony nodded. “I was a complete bastard, Belen. It’s unforgiveable, only that is what I am asking from you now. Accept my apology. Please.”
Belen whirled away, putting distance between them and giving herself another moment to think.
Tony didn’t follow her. Instead, politician that he was, he argued. “Morale on the ship is almost non-existent now. The first election for Captain I won with a seventy-five percent majority. Last election, I scraped in by the skin of my nose. I don’t know what will happen if I don’t win the next election, which is likely. What keeps me up at night, what terrifies me, is wondering who will get the job next and how badly they might fuck it up because of sheer ignorance.”
Belen looked at him. “That is what made you treat me that way? Fear you’ll lose the next election?”
“No. For the sake of the stars themselves, Belen, no!” He pushed his hand through his black hair, ruffling it. She always liked it when he was slightly less than immaculate. “You don’t understand. On the surface, everything looks rosy. People eat more than they ever have. There’s more food. More drink. More clothing, more parties, more everything. Except for those in the Capitol, who can barely find their next meal. If it wasn’t for standard rations, they’d starve, yet no one sees that. No one notices the unemployment. The rot. I’ve only learned about it from…well, lots of places. The next man with my job will probably not give a damn about an issue that won’t even be a problem for years, yet.”
“Is Rex’s money truly the only way out of it?” Belen asked.
“As I said last night. Experts have studied this.” Tony sighed and dropped his hands to his sides. “You haven’t said you’ll forgive me, yet.” He watched her, waiting for her answer.
“Of course I forgive you,” Belen said, then held up her hand as he tried to come toward her, a smile forming. “I need to know something, Tony.”
He halted, his smile fading. “Anything,” he said quickly.
“Are you sure you’ve looked at everything? Consulted every expert? Considered absolutely every angle?”
“Ah. You’re still hoping I can save the day without resorting to usury, then.”
“Yes,” she said flatly. “Especially at the rate Rex Julyan apparently wants. What about other well-endowed business people?”
“No one has the money he does,” Tony said, with a sigh. “Not even a consortium of them could spare the cash we need. Believe me, we’ve considered this thoroughly.”
Belen sank into her chair. “There are no simple answers, then.”
“There are no answers that work in the long term,” Tony replied. “There are fixes and patches…all they do is extend how long it takes for the end to come.”
He’s not looking in the right places.
Did Rex know more than Tony did? Was that why he had refused his money?
Belen looked up at Tony. “You have to keep looking. There’s a solution out there. Perhaps more than one. I know it is there, somewhere. You just have to look in places you haven’t looked so far.”
Tony grimaced. “I hire the best. You really think they haven’t looked in every cranny of the ship?”
“Then they’re thinking too conservatively,” Belen shot back. “They don’t feel the same desperation you do, so it’s not forcing them to think creatively. Light a fire under them, Tony. You used to know how to inspire people perfectly.”
Tony’s shoulders squared themselves and he straightened up. “You’re right,” he said slowly. The doubt had gone from his voice. “Yes, you are absolutely right.” He bent over her and kissed her cheek. “What would I do without you?” Then he picked up her hand. “Dinner tonight. Just the two of us. Please say yes. Let me apologize properly.”
Belen nodded her head, moving stiffly.
Tony’s smile was bright, making his dark eyes glitter with warmth. “You are beyond compare, my love. Thank you.”
He didn’t look back when he left. Tony never did look back.
Belen hunched in the chair, still cold.
What would Tony do without her? He was the Captain of the ship, the only one who could pull them out of this dead-end they were in and he needed her.
She had worked for years to help others. It was her guiding light, the sum of all her ambitions, yet until this moment, she hadn’t realized she could help people in ways other than healing.
Tony was trying to make people’s lives better, too.
She had to help him do that. Especially now.