Nemesis Games

Thing about civilization, it’s what keeps people civil. You get rid of one, you can’t count on the other.

In order to be heard by the oppressing class, one must speak as a member of it. Not only the language, but the diction. The accusation of tyranny, however well-founded in fact, is dismissed unless it is delivered in the manner that power recognizes as powerful.

Thing is, we’re humans. We’re tribal. More settled things are, the bigger your tribe is. All the people in your gang, or all the people in your country. All the ones on your planet. Then the churn comes, and the tribe gets small again.

Amazing how much we’ve managed to do, considering how we’re doing it all with jumped-up social primates and evolutionary behaviors from the Pleistocene.

“I never thought I’d feel wind again. I never thought I’d be outside. It’s so beautiful.”

Amos glanced around the ruins and shrugged. “That’s got a lot to do with context, I guess.”

But under it there was a faint, not-unpleasant odor of rotting seaweed and salt. The ocean, just outside, seeped into everything. An olfactory reminder to everyone passing through the Ellis Island of the space age that Earth was absolutely unique to the human race. The birthplace of everything. The salt water flowing in everyone’s veins first pulled from the same oceans right outside the building. The seas had been around longer than humans, had helped create them, and then when they were all dead, it’d take their water back without a thought.

That, at least, wasn’t a lie.

“It’s good being young,” he said, “but some people wear it better than others.”

Computers, it seemed, could be programmed to do almost anything but sense when someone was up to no good.

Sometimes when we make these distinctions, we’re really creating them more than describing anything that’s already there.

She could remember the girl she used to be with fondness, but it wasn’t a youth she cared to recapture.

“My own kind,” she said. “Let me tell you about my own kind. There are two sides in this, but they aren’t inner planets and outer ones. Belters and everyone else. It’s not like that. It’s the people who want more violence and the ones who want less. And no matter what other variable you sample out of, you’ll find some of both.”

“See, that’s what civilization is,” he said. “Bunch of stories. That’s all.”

“So what if it is?” Peaches said. “We’re really good at telling stories.”

“You look old, Fred.”

“I feel old. But it’s better than the alternative.”

It was beautiful at this distance. The cities nothing but firefly twinkles on the dark side. Where the sun struck the Earth, almost nothing man had made was visible from the lunar orbit. The planet looked clean, unspoiled.

It was a pretty lie.

Seemed like a fact of the universe that the closer you got to anything, the worse it looked. Take the most beautiful person in the solar system, zoom in on them at the right magnification and they were an apocalyptic cratered landscape crawling with horrors. That’s what the Earth was. A shining jewel from space, up close a blasted landscape covered with mites living by devouring the dying.

Something in the back of her head shifted. The serpent of learned helplessness long asleep starting to wake. She pretended it wasn’t there, in hopes that if she denied it enough, it wouldn’t exist.

The aliens that sent the protomolecule hadn’t needed to destroy humanity. They’d given humans the opportunity to destroy themselves, and as a species, they’d leaped on it.

“Sometimes you don’t get redeemed,” she said, and here voice made it clear she’d thought about the question. Tired and strong at the same time. “Not every stain comes out. Sometimes you do something bad enough that you carry the consequences for the rest of your life and take the regrets to the grave. That’s your happy ending.”

History’s made of surprises that seem obvious in retrospect.

She knew intellectually that he was beautiful, the way the iridescent wings of a carrion fly would be.

“I try to do the right thing, Holden. But there are times when it’s not obvious what that is.”

“I agree with you,” Holden said. “Right up to the part where you tell me this is one of those times.”

She felt like her soul was a handful of dice that were still rolling, and what came up would decide the shape that the rest of her life took.

“So you’re trying to get me prepared for one of my crew dying?”

“Historically speaking, humans are pretty much at a hundred percent on that.”

Humanity was so flawed. Not just her, but everyone. Half the population was below average intelligence. Half below average dedication. Average adherence to duty. The cruel law of statistics. It was astounding that as a race they’d managed as much as they had.

He told himself that, but he was getting less and less persuasive. Not knowing was the worst thing. The second-worst thing as being chased by a bunch of top-of-the-line warships that really wanted to kill you.

Alex’s experience of real family—of blood relations—was more like having a lot of people who had all wound up on the same mailing list without knowing quite why they signed up for it.

Things changed, and they didn’t change back. But sometimes they got better.

You think you know what I am, she thought, but all you’ve got is stories.

The only right you have with anyone in life is the right to walk away.

He wasn’t a man who reined in his curiosity well.

You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.

Just once I’d like to be rewarded for my optimistic view of humanity.

Some things stayed secrets even when you told them.