Belen did go back to the Bridge, only long enough to pick up her most essential belongings, pack them in a bag, then find Tony in his office. Staci showed her in with a smile and Tony rose to his feet as Belen entered. “You’ve been gone a while. Crisis at the office?” he asked.
“You didn’t call to find out?” Belen asked.
Tony rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s been a rough couple of days.”
Her heart hardened. It gave her the courage to say what she had been trying to rehearse all the way back to the Bridge. “I’m leaving, Tony.”
He grew very still, his black eyes widening. He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, either. “Why?” he asked. His voice was hoarse.
“You lied to me about Rex. You said he offered the money to you.”
To his credit, Tony didn’t try to deny it. He sank back into his chair. “Rex told you. Of course he did. I bet he couldn’t spit it out fast enough.”
“Actually, he lied to cover you. He let me go on thinking he was the asshole, all along. You should thank him, Tony.”
“Why? For stealing you? That’s where you’re going, isn’t it? To be with him?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m going to rent an apartment in the Aventine, right next to the office. In fact, I’ve already rented it.”
For the first time, Tony showed any surprise. “You’re not? But…” He glanced away, then pulled his gaze back to hers. “If you’ve already rented it, then your mind is made up. I know how useless it is trying to change it.”
She flinched. He made her sound unforgiving and hard.
Tony leaned forward, his expression earnest. “We’ve been together more than twenty years. You’re going to throw that away because I fucked up this one time? You will walk away because of a mistake?”
“It wasn’t a mistake, Tony. You made the choice deliberately. You tried to make yourself look good at Rex’s expense. You might have made the decision in the heat of the moment and you might even have regretted it—”
“I did,” he said quickly.
“That you could make such a decision at all is what appalls me.” She shook her head. “I know I should be more understanding and for a while, I was. I defended you, when I found out. Now I’ve thought it through and it comes down to the fact that you lied to cover up something you knew I would not like, then continued to lie after that, even if you did regret it.”
He swallowed and her heart thudded unhappily as she realized his eyes were glittering with building tears. “Belen…” He choked and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.” She moved to the door. “I’m sorry, too.”
She left, before her building pity and sorrow anchored her there. She felt like a murderer.
When she reached the little apartment twenty minutes later, there was a vase of roses on the table. She recognized the yellow blooms. They were from Rex’s garden and that made her feel even more wretched.
She spent the night on the naked mattress, too exhausted to print bedclothes or even a pillow. Despite her exhaustion, she didn’t sleep. She got up early and went to the office and started working. Her work had always been her escape and she used it now, embracing the myriad challenges with relief.
The next day, she called Jessica and told her she and Tony were no longer together.
Jessica’s image on the screen nodded. “Dad told me last night. He looked horrible.”
Belen’s stomach tightened. “You don’t seem upset, though,” she said carefully.
Jessica gave a little shrug. “Truth, Mama? I have been expecting this for years. The only thing you and Dad had in common was me and I’m not there, now. I’m surprised it took you this long to realize that.” She smiled at her. “I love you both, but that just means I know you both too well.”
Belen sighed. “So why do I miss him, then?”
“Habit?” Jessica suggested blandly, then turned the conversation, setting up a lunch date with her, before switching off.
Belen threw herself back into her work after that. There was not enough of it to keep her thoughts distracted all day, which was what she wanted, although Rex and Emma gave her more than enough tasks to fill the gaps.
And at night, there was Rex.
Not every night. Not even every second night. He would sneak into the Aventine whenever he could and steal back out before morning, yet he was just as busy as Belen so he was not able to visit nearly as often as Belen would have preferred. Besides, the ship still hated him.
The rhetoric and plain insults on the Forum seemed to increase and now Belen felt the impact of them in a very personal way. She tried to stop visiting the Forum, to avoid having her feelings ruffled, yet was helpless to stay away. She reasoned that it was better to know everything that was said, even if it hurt.
It was harder still not to show how much the derision hurt, especially when people made comments right in front of her, as they seemed to do regularly.
Rex would soothe her at night and his arms were a solace, only he could not always come and he would not let her visit his big house.
“Besides, it’s not really a home, anymore,” he assured her. He had described the conversation he’d had with Benny and Julian and Michaela, the day after Belen had last spoken to Tony.
He’d sat them all down in the lounge pit and even though he was too uneasy to sit, had made himself perch on the edge of the lounge, too, his hands held together tightly between his knees.
Then he outlined what was going to happen to them all.
Michaela turned white. “Destroy the house?” she repeated, her voice weak with shock. “Not even sell it?”
“It’s too big for all of us. We just rattle inside it,” Rex replied. “It’s too big for anyone on this ship. So I’m going to tear it down and recycle the materials.”
“Where will we live?” Michaela cried.
“Benny and Julian are old enough to find and make a home of their own. I’ll help you, of course,” he added, speaking to both of them as they stared at him with wide eyes. “You’re both adults now and need to build your own life instead of borrowing mine.”
Julian’s cheeks were slashed with hectic blooms of color. “I don’t have a job,” he said, his voice hoarse. “All I could afford would be assigned housing. A hovel in the Capitol.”
“A hovel it will be then,” Rex told him, keeping his voice even. “Although as soon as you do get a job, then you’ll be able to afford something more comfortable.”
“You’ve got hundreds of houses,” Julian said heatedly. “Can’t you give me one of them?”
“I’m selling all of them,” Rex said. “Then I’m going to give that money to the Bridge, to upgrade the Wall district.”
“Give it?” Michaela whispered. “All of it?”
“Most of it,” Rex said. “I’ll keep enough to live on.” He looked at Benny. “Any ideas where you’ll live?” he asked.
Benny was sitting back, looking thoughtful. “There’s an apartment house in the Esquiline. A friend at the Institute was talking about it yesterday. I might be able to get that.” He blushed and his gaze shifted away from Rex’s. “Marie says she’s sick of her slice apartment, anyway.”
Rex hid his grin. Marie was the woman he had found in Benny’s arms the morning after a party, nearly a year ago.
Michaela was trembling. “I don’t have a job, either,” she said. “There isn’t one I could do that would pay for all my…essentials.”
Rex nodded. “I’ve bought the white house, on the other side of the parkland belt. You can live there until you get on your feet again, if you want.”
Michaela drew back, horror painting itself on her face. “The white house? That’s even more of a hovel than the Wall district. It’s tiny! You’re…you’re really going to live there?”
“I am,” Rex said evenly. “However, if you would prefer, I will give you one of the solo occupant houses in the Esquiline. Perhaps, close to Benny?”
Michaela got to her feet. “This is complete madness. It’s insane! Throwing away everything you’ve earned, selling it all off and tearing it down! They should examine you, Rex.”
“You’ll give Mom a house, but not me?” Julian cried, also getting to his feet. “She gets to suck off you, but you will kick me out?”
“Michaela raised you and deserves our respect,” Rex told him. “Speak nicely, or I’ll make you.” He didn’t raise his voice.
Julian blanched. “I’m your son.”
“And you’ll learn how to make your way because you are.”
That had been the start of hours of hysterical entreaty from both Julian and Michaela. Rex had come to Belen afterward, although they hadn’t made love. He laid in her arms, instead, trying to recover from the acrimony and anger they had poured upon him, until they had finally understood he wasn’t going to change his mind, that this really was going to happen.
“Change scares most people,” Belen whispered. “For your family, whom you have supported in such comfort and security, it is even more terrifying.”
Rex sighed. “I can withstand the barbs of the entire ship. Coming from them, though, and to see the fear in their eyes.…” He shuddered. “There is still nothing that says what we are doing will work. No proof, no evidence, not a shred that indicates we’re right.”
“You know we are right, even so,” Belen said, her heart fluttering hard. She’d had these same moments of doubt herself.
He pulled her up against him, curling himself around her. “Betting on a tankball game is nothing. It’s not even a gamble, for me. Buying houses, managing careers…everything I have ever done to generate revenue, it was all perfectly right and reasonable. I could see exactly what I was doing and knew it would work, even before I started. With this though—trying to change the whole ship and how everyone lives and even thinks—it’s such a huge scale. What we’re risking, if we get this wrong….”
Belen pressed her fingertips to his lips. “No. We can’t afford to think we might be wrong. If we do nothing, then the consequences will be even worse. The ship will die. We have to do this. We have to try.”
It was such a slim line of reasoning to depend upon, yet it was all they had. It let them go forward with their plans.
Belen’s part of the project was far easier than Rex’s. She started by recycling almost everything she possessed, as she retrieved it from the Bridge. She made forays into the Captain’s apartment when she knew Tony was engaged in formal functions and couldn’t possibly arrive back at the apartment unannounced. There, she would spend frantic minutes recycling her possessions and packing the few things she had to have. Those, she took back to the apartment on the Aventine.
She decorated the apartment, but not with items she printed. Instead, she went to the many markets in the Aventine on rest days and strolled the avenues. It had been years since she had done any sort of shopping. On the Bridge, everything was provided for them and she had printed personal items when she needed them.
This time, she didn’t want to print a picture that had once hung on the walls of ancient palaces on Terra, where even the brushstrokes in the oil were identical to the original. Instead, she hunted for unique items made by people in their spare time—statues, urns, even paintings. There were far fewer people selling their creations than she remembered, these days, yet there were still a few.
Belen had thought it would be an irritating waste of her time to comb through the markets in search of something suitable. She found, though, that she enjoyed the exercise and the conversations that started when she talked to the artisans about their work and stall owners about the goods they displayed.
It astonished her to realize that everyone knew who she was, beyond being the Captain’s former partner. Her work for the Institute was widely acknowledged, even if it wasn’t fully understood. Some of the conversations she had in the public spaces in the Aventine were about the Medical Institute policies and practices and she found them to be invaluable sources of feedback, that helped her think in fresh ways about how the Institute could serve the ship.
Every time Belen found and bought a new creation to take home, she wrote about her pleasure over the purchase on the Forum and added pictures of her find. She also spoke about the artist and where they could be found.
No one reacted to her posts, although three weeks after she boasted on the Forum about the first painting she had bought, the artist ran up to her in the markets and gripped her forearm, his eyes shining. “I’ve sold five more paintings and they all say they heard about me from you! Thank you! Thank you!”
The news that Rex had sold all his rental homes and was giving the money to the Bridge for Wall renovations passed around the ship faster than light. Belen first saw it on the Forum, where someone was reacting with suspicious bewilderment.
It wasn’t long before people were openly discussing the pros and cons of what Rex was doing, including Vilma and Pelagius, whom Belen caught bent over Vilma’s desk with their heads together.
“He’s got to be getting something out of it!” Pelagius said firmly. “No one just gives away money. Certainly not Rex Julyan!” His shoulders fell. “I just can’t figure out what, though.”
“Maybe, do you think, he’s getting back more than he gives them?”
“You mean, they pay it all back some time later and more on top?” Pelagius sounded half intrigued and half shocked at the idea.
“That would be called paying back a debt with interest,” Belen said, coming up behind them, “which is the definition of usury.”
Vilma’s mouth opened and Pelagius swallowed. “We weren’t saying the captain would do such a thing,” he said swiftly.
Belen considered him. “I know you have the sort of character that could never accuse the Bridge of usury. The very idea is an insult.”
“It is,” Pelagius agreed hastily, then hurried away to tend to his duties.
Next, Belen reacted publicly and on the Forum with the same shock and disgust that anyone could consider any other person capable of usury. After that, it was simply a matter of making sure she drew back with horror any time anyone even implied that loans and interest might be Rex’s motivation.
As the weeks went by, she noticed that more and more people were reacting with the same outrage.
“It’s like planting seeds,” she told Emma and Rex. “At first there’s nothing to see, until finally you spot a single seedling emerging. Suddenly, they’re sprouting everywhere you look.”
When the work began on the restoration of the Wall buildings, Belen went to see it for herself. She stood in the little Capital market square and watched the cranes and the workmen gathering around the foot of the Second Wall, where the work was to begin. There were small mountains of supplies and equipment mounded in the avenue between the Walls.
It stirred her in a way that such a simple building project should not have. She stood for nearly an hour, glowing with fierce pride.
Then she went home and wrote an essay for the Forum, urging everyone to go see the work for themselves and value it for the relief and improvement it would bring to hundreds of lives.
Rex continued to confound the ship by giving away vast tracts of money. His choices were carefully made, the money being channeled to places where it would do the most good. General education and medical improvements topped the list, while services for essential workers came next.
“You’re making philanthropy the new fashion,” Emma told him. “Everyone has always imitated you.”
“Will they follow him down this trail, though?” Belen asked. “Most everyone still thinks he’s crazy. They’re going to hold onto their money, no matter what he says or does.”
However, when the Mechanical Engineers Institute awarded Rex with an honorary membership, as a thank you for his donations, and held a massive public event that was reported live across the ship and attended by nearly everyone who could swing an invitation to the suddenly imperative evening, a lot of the chatter about Rex being crazy evaporated.
A month later, Rex held another of his infamous parties. Belen waited for the invitations to go out, three days after the announcement on the Forum, then sampled the reaction, reading across profiles and discussion rooms.
Those who had received invitations were the artists, the creators and the artisans. There were public servants on the list, including Staci Houtem, Tony’s chief of staff, although Tony was not invited. Neither was Belen, for she had argued strongly that she should not be there. Not yet. Other institute heads did get invitations. There was a strong contingent of mechanical engineers, as well as a very old, retired man, Keton Hobson.
The party was held in the garden and the field surrounding the white house, because there was simply not enough room in the house to hold everyone. The mechanical engineers had kindly held off the rain for that night, too.
The outrage from the influential and the rich, when they realized they had not been included, made Belen laugh. They questioned Rex’s behavior and—as always—his sanity. They accused him of pandering and currying favor, although what favors mechanical engineers might have been able to grant Rex, they failed to point out.
Rex replied on the Forum, too. His response was simple.
I find the company of people with character and personal values and a genuine need to create, to serve others, far more interesting than those for whom the acquisition of money is a priority.
“Making money is what he used to do!” Vilma had cried, when she saw the response.
Belen hid her smile.
Pelagius frowned. “Perhaps he’s changed,” he said.
Belen hurried back to her office to hide her elation.
That was a turning point. That was when even Belen could pinpoint differences in commonly-held attitudes. “Have we turned a corner?” she asked Emma.
“We might have. We must keep up the impetus, until inertia sets in and the change is self-sustaining. Not even I know when that will happen.”
That night, both Belen and Rex got very drunk on a bottle of hand-blended whisky one of their new friends had made. They tried to make love, only to end up holding each other, one or both of them breaking into laughter when one of them swayed or stumbled in their speech.
They were drunk on whisky. They were also drunk on hope. For the first time, they could see proof that it was working.