Staring down at the nasty gash that ran along the meat of Caolán Furyk’s arm, Jacob Ricard’s brows knit. The wound wasn’t quite as jagged as he would have expected from the ethologist’s initial description of the incident that had caused it, but after so many years on the station, he’d grown used to mishaps not always seeming to match up to the story attached to them. “How did this happen, again? One of the big cats?”
“One of the medium cats,” Caolán corrected. “I was in the enclosure when I probably shouldn’t have been, but sometimes timing is everything and I hate to break their routines.”
Jacob shook his head, starting to clean the wound. Caolán hissed but to his credit, didn’t jerk away. Of course, this had happened once or twice before, and Jacob had never known the other man to shy away from what needed doing. “What startled them?”
“I suppose I did,” Caolán admitted. They were alone in the treatment room, one of several in the station’s expansive medical center. While there weren’t necessarily too many individuals on the station at a given time—usually just the scientists, support staff, and security teams—there were enough mishaps on the station that it demanded a full medical suite. While his tenure as chief of medical operations on the station had been relatively quiet, Jacob knew from his predecessor’s stories that there were reasons for the expansiveness of the medical center’s equipment—in no small part dating back to the days when it was the only consistently staffed medical center in the surrounding sector. “Tacita came in and we were talking about the war back on Earth. I don’t know. I started getting agitated and that probably upset the cats.”
He had the feeling there was more to the story than Caolán was telling, but he wasn’t inclined to press. If Caolán wanted to keep more of the details to himself, that was fine. He had a sneaking suspicion that if it was relevant or important, the scientists would have shared it with him. “Is it all that bad still?”
“The war? Define bad.”
Jacob shrugged with one shoulder. “I suppose it’s relative, isn’t it? Depends on which side you’re on, if you’re on any. I don’t know. I guess I don’t think about it that much.” He tried not to, at least. It was easier that way, to leave Earth in the past, to not think about the war that had been going on for as long as he’d been at Skypoint—and seemed as if it would go on longer still, barring any sort of miracle or intervention. “It just seems too awful to contemplate and it’s been going on for so long. It’s almost like a disease—you wonder if it’s simply become endemic, that we’ve somehow become inured to its existence, numb to the suffering and the death.”
“That is—ow—remarkably philosophical.” Caolán rubbed at his temple, as if trying to ward off a distant headache. “I suppose we have that luxury, being out here.”
“Such as it is. Two of those warring governments are still keeping the lights on.”
“I try not to think about how much UAS and the Russian Consortium might be contributing to our continued existence there,” Caolán admitted. “Gods know that Cambria and Arcanis are likely footing most of the bill and enjoying the tax offsets and benefits of government partnerships.”
“Probably,” Jacob agreed. “Then UAS gets to use the place as a dumping ground for problem children.”
“Most of them don’t seem that problematic,” Caolán said. “At least not since Yamazaki showed up.”
“Well, I didn’t say they were actual problems.” Jacob grinned and shook his head. “Just that the UAS viewed them as problem children.”
“There’s a story there.”
“One for another time. What is going on back home?”
“‘Home’ is a relative term,” Caolán said. “Back on Earth, though, it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Tacita was telling me about some kind of attack on one of the remembrance ceremonies in London. A couple hundred people died. They’re alleging terrorists but if you ask me, I doubt it was. For all that Britain’s trying to stay neutral in all of this mess, there’s still a target on everyone’s back there. If it was actually terrorists, they were being backed by someone.”
“One of the warring sides,” Jacob said. “Which one?”
“Definitely one of the warring sides, but the second question I don’t have a clear answer for.” Caolán sighed, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. “It all just seems so damn pointless sometimes. They’re just making things worse back there when they should be making it better.”
“It’s long past the point of no return,” Jacob whispered, shaking his head as he shucked his first set of gloves and yanked on new. “I don’t know why they bother.”
“Geopolitics are a bitch,” Caolán said. “And these governments are just clinging to continued relevancy for as long as they can. How long do you think it’ll be before colony worlds and stations start being the seats of power—or for those states, worse yet, start to declare independence?”
“Right now, most of them can’t survive without support from Earth.”
“Think about what you just said, Jacob. Right now, they can’t. But someday? Probably sooner than any of them think. I mean, in part, isn’t that what this war is about? One government overstepping on a colony world and that colony world and its sponsor government flipping its shit? Wasn’t that the ultimate inciting incident, before the assassinations, before the retaliatory bombings? One mission of mercy gets blown out of the sky above a colony world in alleged crisis and all of a sudden everyone’s at each other’s throats. And what was the source of the crisis?”
“Disease,” Jacob whispered, glad that Caolán wasn’t looking at him. His hands were trembling beyond his control. If Caolán had been looking, he would have noticed, would have asked. That wasn’t like Jacob, not at all. “Disease fueled by a famine that didn’t have to happen.”
“Exactly. You said it—it didn’t have to happen.”
Jacob took a slow, deep breath and stood up. “I forgot the local. Give me a second.”
He’d started to walk away by the time Caolán finally looked at him, been able to hide how badly his hands were getting. Getting the local anesthetic was a good excuse to step away, to try to master himself again.
It didn’t need to happen.
The whole war hadn’t needed to happen. Without one choice made on a colony world. No. Not on the colony world.
One choice made on Earth by a government who sponsored that world and withheld resources to force compliance when local governments said no to something. It didn’t matter what. The tactic was far older than space exploration, dating back thousands of years into Earth’s history.
When locals did something the central government didn’t like, the central government would take steps to squash any attempt to resist. It was a story as old as history, as old as government.
It made him sick to his stomach.
“You okay?” Caolán asked.
For a split second, Jacob thought that maybe, just maybe, his friend had seen his hands shaking, or that there had been some other outward sign of how much the discussion was getting to him for reasons that he wasn’t about to discuss. He suppressed a sigh and shook his head. “Just something about the whole mess is upsetting, that’s all. You know how it is.”
“Mm. Yeah, I guess we’ve had that discussion before, haven’t we?” Caolán sighed. “It just makes me so damn mad, Jacob. But I know you’re the same way.”
“Well, we both agree that none of this bullshit needed to happen,” he admitted. The shaking in his hands had eased enough that he felt safe with the vial and syringe, turning to head back to where Caolán sat, waiting. “I think most of us in our circle here on the station do.”
“Would that it was more than just our circle,” Caolán said, watching the doctor as Jacob settled back into his spot again to start administering the local that would precede stitches. “It’s just so much sometimes. I envy you the ability to not think about it.”
“I just focus on other things,” Jacob said. “I guess it’s easier for me because it is just me. I don’t have anyone left back there.”
“But you are from there.”
“So are most of us,” he said. “It’s just that some of us never want to go back.”
“That I can’t blame you for.” Caolán sighed and shook his head. “It’s been years since I was there. I miss Ireland, though. I think I always will even if it’s not home anymore.”
“Your family had an estate there, didn’t they?”
“We still do—I still do. I get a modest sum from the government for allowing them to use it for tourism purposes. Seems some things don’t change even while the world’s tearing itself apart, hm?” Caolán smiled faintly. “I use some of it to fund my research.”
Jacob didn’t ask where the rest went—something about his friend’s tone told him that Caolán wasn’t interested in providing an answer. The Irishman had his secrets and Jacob was more than willing to respect his desire to keep them.
He had secrets of his own, after all, and didn’t have any desire for anyone to try to plumb them.
“I suppose that’s something, then,” Jacob said. “Considering how I’ve heard some of the others complaining about grant money and the like.”
“Well, that’s a big fat mess, isn’t it?” Caolán offered up a rueful smile. “Gods know most of that’s going into tech that’ll do one of two things—clearly kill people or clearly save them. I think you’re in the right line of work for that latter one. A lot of the folks here seem to be. Then there’s the ones like me who fight that eternal battle to demonstrate, yes, my research is relevant to the continued existence of the homosphere.”
Jacob snorted. “That was a pretty good impression of Dr. Blow-Hard.”
“At some point, Partridge is going to get his balls in such a twist that no one on the medical staff will be able to retrieve them,” Caolán said. “Until he gets his ultimate comeuppance, I’ll just have to settle for mocking him. He’s a pain my ass and is constantly trying to get my research budget and access cut.”
“He’s still doing that?”
“Yeah,” Caolán said, then sighed. “He’s just one of those, I guess.”
“When did that feud actually start?”
“Graduate school.”
Jacob winced. “That long?”
“Let’s just say that we met at an academic conference that went much better for me than it did for him. He’s never forgiven or forgotten that one.” He shook his head. “Research is cutthroat.”
“True story,” Jacob murmured, finishing with the local and starting on the sutures. “I think I made the right choice when I opted for medicine rather than something like genetics or biochemistry.”
“You probably did,” Caolán said. “But you were never going to go into one of those fields, were you? This seems like your calling. Doing what you do.”
Jacob smiled, nodding. “You’re right. It was all I ever really wanted, I think, way back when I was a kid. I wanted to help people and this…medicine seemed like the best way to do it. Even if it was a small thing, it’d let me help people. Sometimes the small things are important.”
“Usually, the small things are a lot more important than we realize.” Caolán watched him work, holding still with the occasional wince as Jacob closed up the wound. “You’ve got a kind heart, Jacob. Kinder than I think the world might deserve.”
He smiled wryly. “Some folks would say that’ll get me into trouble. Maybe even killed.”
“Good thing you’re here, then,” Caolán said. “Out of the way enough that nothing usually happens anymore and it’s easy to be overlooked and forgotten when the trouble really does start.”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. “It’s a good thing.”
