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In the last few weeks, he's been keeping hours that start before dawn and end deep into the darkest hours of the night. He looks it, too, enough so that a few media reporters have inquired.

When they do, Gabriel just smiles and tells them that some things are worth giving up a little sleep for.

Still, he knows he can't keep this pace up forever. He doesn't care-- it doesn't matter, as long as he can keep going long enough. Which means, of course, that he's got to find at least a little more time to rest, and soon.

With that in mind, Gabriel brings a sheaf of documents with him to Milliways, and settles at a side booth to review them. If he can get a few hours' work done here instead, then he can spend those extra hours sleeping back in New Mayfair.

Or so he hopes.

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This, evidently, is news -- or at least some part of it is. Gabriel's eyes widen in clear surprise.

(There's a flash of what might be hope in them, too.)

"I-- well." He takes a careful breath, then lets it out again. "Some are, yes."

He's thinking quickly, trying to remember if there's any pattern to the news of changing opinions that's been occasionally drifting in from the Rim.

She catches it, and maybe smiles, a little, but doesn't comment.

(It's not only a Core thing. You learn to ride over what ought not to be commented on. That's all.)

And Kaylee nods, instead. "Good." That's quiet. "Seein' as it's them this thing is gonna hit the most."

"Well, yes."

He sounds a little surprised.

"That's the point."

Kaylee gives him a questioning look.

"To--"

Gabriel stops, then continues,

"To provide opportunity, where it's been denied. To reduce the level of current disparity between Core and Rim."

A beat.

"I know it's going to change things. The important thing is that the IIGA should give people a chance, where one wasn't available before. Because it should have been."

Kaylee's nodding, and she doesn't say anything.

Because -- it's kind of complicated.

-- scratch kind of.

But something's kind of unsettling her about it, and --

Maybe start with a question. "A chance to what?"

"To develop."

There's something momentarily sardonic about his tone.

"Difficulties notwithstanding."

His tone is enough to get her to sit up a little bit straighter -- but out of something like nervousness. Not out of challenge.

"Develop means change, though, don't it?"

Her reaction, the shift in her posture-- it's enough to snap him out of his own inwardly-drifting thoughts.

Very quickly, at that.

Gabriel nods.

"It does. Or rather, it can."

Kaylee opens her mouth.

Closes it.

Says, extremely tentatively, "I know I don't know nothin' about this, but -- seems to me like you want everybody out where we are to go along with it, they're gonna need to know exactly what's gonna change, and what won't. And I'm thinkin' the last part might be more important."

There's silence for a moment, and then,

"I can't answer that, Kaylee."

Gabriel's voice is unutterably weary.

"Not entirely. I have answers to give, but that's not something I can define, dong ma?"

"Might could help if you told 'em that, too." A little less tentative, only because she's smiling, small and a little crooked. "I mean -- I don't get it, no, but you're talkin' straight to me, and that counts for a lot."

"Then let me try to explain," Gabriel tells her.

It's easier, sometimes, when he thinks of her as someone else's young colleague, an up-and-coming, instead of as his son's wife -- not that he minds the latter.

"The IIGA is intended to improve infrastructure; to provide business opportunities for sustainable development; and to offer security-- the latter in the hands of the people who will be protecting their own homes, their own ... everything."

He's rarely been so tired.

"It's not for me to dictate what they should do with those opportunities, do you see the difference? Only to make sure that they exist in the first place."

Kaylee is nodding. "Okay, yeah -- that part I get." A few seconds' silence, and some tea -- there's something about it that still doesn't --

Mentally she goes over his words again. Infrastructure. (And there's something still a little off there, but.) Providing --

"About the business part." Questioningly. "So it's -- who's headin' that up? Is it gonna be controlled from the Core?"

Gabriel shakes his head.

"A lot of the existing companies are Core-based, yes, but-- think of it as an investment partnership, if that helps."

"...I'm not all that certain it does." Kaylee's got her hands folded in front of her on the table. "I mean -- I understand it, yeah, it helps like that, but -- if the money's all comin' from the Core, what's to stop people from expectin' us to do everything the Core's way? It's like -- when the captain takes a job, every now and again he's got to refrain from sayin' somethin' when somebody says somethin' mean, because they're the ones holdin' the money. And I can't help but think..."

Kaylee slows down a little. Thinks. "When you do stuff to not just one person, but a bunch of people, you're changin' the way they act. And you look at 'em different. You put the money in the hands of the Core, that's gonna wind up makin' us out on the Rim tied into all of this without much say-so, because if we make the Core mad -- what's to stop 'em from just doin' business with somebody else if we don't go along with what they want?"

Silence, for a moment.

"Kaylee."

It's gently said.

"It's like that now. That's the point of all this."

"It's not like that now everywhere."

She is very, very sure.

And she does not say who is the one who travels out on the Rim and actually sees all of this, anyway?

"I mean -- where I was, last week? They don't even got a public cortex hub. Not even one. If they see Core business, it's news to me. And when you bring all that stuff to a place like that...how's that going to do anything but make the money thing spread out over even more people?"

It is like that now everywhere, he could say, but doesn't. For if there's one thing Gabriel Tam has learned in the past weeks, it's that there's a great deal more resistance than he'd expected, from some areas that might euphemistically be called 'disadvantaged.'

It had made sense, when he'd thought about it. It's part of the reason there'd been a Unification War to begin with; it's part of how humanity operates. Not everyone wants the same things, he's always been well aware of that, and not everyone sees an offer of help as an improvement. Sometimes it's viewed as insulting. It's something he'd learned in some of the more remote negotiations he'd done as a new associate with Birnam Corp., and it's only been hammered home to him again now.

And in the end, there's only one thing to say -- one thing that's right to say, and the same thing that he's been repeating in different settings for some time, now.

"The IIGA will offer opportunity, a chance, and a choice; it's not a requirement, for those who'd rather not take advantage of it."

But if the opportunity that's getting offered puts you even more in harness to the Core than you were -- what kind of an advantage is that?

He's tired. Anybody can see that. And that just went a hell of a lot more formal, so...

"Sorry," Kaylee says, with a rueful smile. "I'm not the one you got to sell this to, I know."

She is, actually -- but not in the way she may be thinking, Gabriel's quite sure.

He shrugs, and offers an easy, cordial smile.

"Nothing to apologize for."

"Except that I'm thinkin' you might like at least an hour or two out of your day where you're not thinkin' about this."

This time his smile's ruefully amused.

"When it's over."

"Reckon so." She echoes his smile, and pulls her cup and her book closer. "And in that case...reckon I ought to leave you to it."

(The book is a hardcover. A nice one. There's no title on the outside, and no dust jacket.

It's the Odyssey.

A gift, from Andronicus Crowley.)

"I'd like to deny that, but as you can see--"

Gabriel gestures to the papers.

"--I'm afraid I do still have a great deal of work to do this evening."

A pause, and then,

"Another time soon, though, perhaps?"

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gonna_live - 2007-05-02 04:44 (UTC) - Expand

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