Nikki can tell they’re relieved to be dismissed. They won’t be talking to anybody. In fact, they’ll be pleased that she gave them permission to collectively erase tonight from their memories.
They file out, hurrying after the gurneys bearing their two injured friends. In a few moments there’s nobody here but staff, who begin mopping up the blood.
“So that’s how it’s done here, right?” Alice asks. “You wave your wand and make it all go away?”
With the place rapidly emptying, little G2S seems less worried about keeping the disgust from her voice. The girl is just teeming with self-righteousness. Nikki doesn’t like to contemplate how pissed she’d be if she had any idea what really happened to her tonight.
“It’s like a competition to see who can be least ethical. How can a surgeon be playing a willing part in this carnage, tacitly condoning it, enabling it?”
“Would you rather there wasn’t a surgeon here during a fight night? Because believe me, honey, this shit would still happen.”
“Look at yourself. A club owner bribes you and suddenly there is no crime? This is your idea of policing?”
“I haven’t been a policewoman in fifteen years. This is my idea of keeping the peace. In practice the law is a little fuzzier up here than you maybe wrote about in some Ivy League college paper.”
“From what I’ve seen, the law is whatever you decide suits you at any given time. I’ve never encountered anyone even a fraction as twisted and corrupt.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, because I’d really have to hustle to make as much dirty money as the scam-artists at the FNG. From the ground-level flat-heads on the take at your department of Franchise, License and Trade right up to the likes of Hoffman. You want to take down corruption? You better stick to the likes of me and the Seguridad, because you’d be farting into thunder going up against the real graft in this place.”
“You know, I studied law and criminology on three continents before coming up here to space, and I’ve yet to see a murderer or a thief beat the rap on the grounds that there’s a guy down the street who does worse things than her. You think you’re telling it like it is but to me it just sounds like pitiful excuses.”
Alice folds her arms across her bloodied chest.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she goes on, “and there is corruption at the highest levels on CdC. So what chance would I have in changing anything when the law enforcement officers are the prime facilitators? You say you’re keeping the peace, like it’s the only way to deal with the world you’ve found yourself in. I would say it’s more like you’re a parasite that has evolved to thrive amid this filth.”
There is genuine anger in her voice, not merely the usual FNG posturing. She feels bad the girl is getting a crash-course in CdC reality but Alice is talking like the whole thing is Nikki’s fault, and it sticks in her craw to listen to moral commentary from the cheap seats.
“You’re just shooting the messenger, honey. If it’s me you’re pissed at, then you’re swatting mosquitoes because you can’t drain the swamp.”
Nikki has looked Alice up, now that she knows who she’s dealing with. She was raised in a rich and influential family, both parents high-ranking diplomats, real FNG aristocracy. From their photographs, it’s apparent that Alice was adopted, or maybe some surrogacy deal. They’re both white; like, really white. They’re old too, and by Nikki’s arithmetic would have both been around fifty when Alice was born. That ought to have made it difficult to get approval for adoption, but maybe you get to cut in line when you’re that connected.
“You created the swamp,” Alice retorts. “You and the likes of Yoram, of Julio Martinez, of Liza, all the bootleggers, all the pimps, everyone complicit in this squalid trade in flesh and blood.”
One of the staff notices Alice’s voice rising, casting a glance from where he is cleaning up outside the fight chamber.
“You think we created this?” Nikki replies, speaking softly, emphasising her calm in the face of Alice’s indignation. She might be a PhD, but the girl needs schooling. “The Quadriga created this. Do you really think the consortium couldn’t produce enough decent alcohol up here to supply every bar on Seedee at a fraction of what the bootleggers charge? Or import the high-end luxury stuff at a reasonable price? But they choose not to. Why do you think that is, Dr. Criminologist?”
“The Quadriga’s priorities are about designing and building an interstellar spacecraft that will take us to new worlds. And in the shorter term about fashioning a city, a society that will ultimately build and crew that vessel. That’s why they’re not wasting their precious facilities, resources and freight logistics on getting people drunk.”
Nikki stares at her, analysing her answer thoughtfully. She’ll get along just great with Helen Petitjean, she reckons. Two bitches from a privileged background, pontificating about the future of humanity and making grand plans for how everybody else should live.
“The Quadriga flies and manufactures plenty of non-essential stuff up here,” she replies. “Their position on booze is a moral decision, not an economic one, pandering to the likes of your acquaintance Helen Petitjean. See, if good liquor wasn’t a rarity, affordable only by the very rich, it wouldn’t be profitable for Yoram to find ways to mess with the cargo chain and smuggle it in here.”
“You’re saying moral zealots are to blame for immorality?” Alice asks, exasperated by the audacity of this.
“No. I’m saying certain elements inside the Quadriga have always been happy for Helen’s type to prevail.”
“You’re making less sense by the second. Why would they be happy about that?”
“In a word, control. Don’t you think the Quadriga could afford to ensure the blue-collar positions on Seedee pay enough that nobody needs to moonlight as a hooker, or fight bare-knuckle in a basement? Poverty and fear are the two most effective ways of controlling people: large populations or small individuals. The poor have few choices and the better-off are too scared to exercise theirs: they look at the hookers and the people working three jobs and they think “I don’t want to end up in that position. Better not rock the boat.”
“The Quadriga is happy to let this whole underground economy keep ticking over so that the little people got something to distract themselves with: games to play, battles to fight, tiny empires to build. Nothing that affects the bigger games, bigger battles and bigger empires above, of course. It’s a strategy that has kept order in civilisations for centuries. And those bigger games aren’t about securing patents and contracts. This is empire-building. The players within the Quadriga are positioning themselves to carve up the territory on planets we haven’t discovered yet. We don’t know where our brave new world will be, but we do know that when we get there, we’ll be drinking Coke.”
“You actually sound sanguine about it,” Alice states. “I mean, don’t you care? Isn’t some part of you ashamed that we all came here to drive our civilisation towards something noble, while instead you’re playing your part in dragging it into a cesspit? This place is supposed to be the mother that is going to give birth to humanity’s child. Yet from where I’m standing, it looks like the mother is a drunken whore.”
Alice’s voice is starting to waver with emotion as she says this. Testify, sister. Nikki’s calculated response to Alice opening her heart is a shrug.
“Nah. Seedee’s not the mother, it’s just the vagina. You forget: humanity is born from somewhere messy and bloody and stinky. And there’s usually a lot of drinking and fucking involved in conceiving the child. Maybe not in your case, I’m guessing. Which is why you don’t feel part of this society.”
The rage that the girl has been struggling to contain finally boils over.
“You aren’t part of this society,” Alice retorts. “You’re just a parasite and a predator that’s evolved to survive in it.”
Nikki gives her a cold smile, but she’s masking the fact that this hurt, and it hurt because she’s starting to suspect it’s true.
“I’m Nikki Fixx,” she replies. “I’m everybody’s friend here.”
“You’re for hire. You’re nobody’s friend.”
“Well at least I ain’t their enemy.”
“No, you’re not their enemy. You’re not even their problem. You’re everybody’s least-worst solution.”