Cibola Burn

“No. Look, just no, all right? Things are tense already. If you want me to, I’ll put a monitor on the locker and let people know they need to cool it, but let’s not make this into a Belters against the inner planets thing.”

“I’m not making it into anything.”

“With all respect, I think you are,” Havelock said. “And the more you try to make this into a big deal, the more it’s going to come back and bite you on the ass.”

Thorrsen’s rage was palpable. Havelock shifted slightly, pushing himself higher in the direction that they’d temporarily chosen as up. It was an old trick he’d learned back when he’d worked with Star Helix. Humanity might have gone up out of the gravity wells, but the sense of being taller, of establishing dominance, was buried too deeply in the human animal for a little thing like null g to erase it. Thorrsen took a deep, shuddering breath, and for a moment Havelock wondered if he was going to take a swing at him. He didn’t want to lock the analyst in a cell for the night. But if it came to it, he wouldn’t mind.

“I’ll put a monitor on your locker, and I’ll send out a general announcement that people need to put a sock in it. No one’ll piss on your stuff again, and you can get back to work. That’s what you want, right?”

“When you write your announcement, is it going to say that they should stop pulling pranks, or that they should stop harassing Belters?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

Thorrsen’s shoulders hunched, defeated. Havelock nodded. It struck him, not for the first time, that confrontations were like a dance. Certain moves required certain responses, and most of it happened in the lower parts of the brain that language might not even be aware of. Thorrsen’s hunch was an offer of submission, and his nod accepted it, and Thorrsen probably didn’t even know it had happened.

Certainly didn’t, in fact, because his rational mind kept on dieseling even though everything that needed talking about was already decided.

“If you were the only Earther and it was Belters doing this, you’d feel different about it.”

“Thank you for letting me know about the problem,” Havelock said. “I’ll see it’s addressed.”

Thorrsen pushed off from the desk and sailed gracefully through the air, vanishing into the corridor. Havelock sighed, opened his desk display again, and paged through the ship reports. The truth was that incidents were on the rise. Most of it was little things. Complaints of petty infractions of corporate policies. Accusations of hoarding or sexual misconduct. One of the organic chemists had been making euphorics. The ship psychiatric counselor was issuing increasingly strident warnings about something he called internal stratification, which just sounded like social politics as usual to Havelock. He signed off on all the reports.

If you were the only Earther.

The funny thing was that Havelock had been the only Earther in a Belter society, and more than once. When he’d been on a twenty-berth hauler from Luna to Ganymede for Stone & Sibbets, he’d been one of two Earthers, outnumbered and always subtly excluded. He’d worked for Star Helix on Ceres Station for the better part of a year, always getting the worst cases, the worst partner, the less-than-subtle reminders that he didn’t belong. He’d been dealt more than his fair share of shit by Belters for not having the right-shaped body or knowing the polyglot mess that passed for a kind of outer planets cant. They hadn’t pissed in his locker, mostly because it hadn’t occurred to them.

Havelock set a monitor specifically on Thorrsen’s locker, then pulled up a fresh security template. He looked at the empty field, asking him by its blankness what he wanted to say.

We’re eight billion klicks from home and a bunch of half-feral terrorists want to keep on killing us, so let’s stay calm.

Or maybe:

Damn near every Belter I’ve dealt with treated me like I was dipped in shit because of where I came from, but now that we’re in the majority, let’s all respect their tender little feelings.

He cracked his knuckles and started typing.

It has come to the attention of security that an increasing number of pranks have been played among the crew. While we all understand the need to keep things light in these stressful times, some of these have gone beyond the realm of good taste. As acting head of security

He paused.