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Cora reported this to ops when they got home. It seemed that as of yet, nothing had been done.

One of Cora’s knuckles popped; she hadn’t realized she was clenching her fist. “If you both will excuse me,” she said, “I need to see how my sister is getting on.” She clinked her glass against Smokey’s again. “I will find you later.”

“Did I do something?” she heard Adam ask as she walked away.

“I mean, you are being a dick,” Smokey replied.

Cora smirked. Good for Smokes.

She doused her anger with a mouthful of sweetened whiskey as she wove her way across the floor, making sure to return smiles and calls of Heyyy! from other colleagues as she went. Nobody wanted to see a birthday girl in a bad mood.

She took a breath and approached the table under the moon maps. Please, she thought. Please, let this be going well.

The second she stepped into earshot, Cora could tell that actually, no—no, this was falling apart fast.

Twig had three modes of operation: half-ass, whole-ass, and no-ass. Half-ass was often favored, but she was currently in whole-ass territory—gesturing, tapping the table, frowning passionately. She was also, to Cora’s eyes, about three sips of vodka and cherry soda away from being one hundred percent sloshed. “—’s all utterly and completely fucked,” Twig said as Cora pulled over a stool mid-rant. “This culture is stagnant. All—all anybody tries to do is act like people do in the Primer, and we don’t give ourselves room to grow into our real selves at all.”

Oh god, Cora thought. Would it have killed Twig to pick any other subject, ever?

Signy’s face was unreadable, but she was listening, watching Twig while picking at a bowl of snack mix. She acknowledged Cora’s arrival with a little flick of her eyes that communicated nothing. “I don’t disagree,” she said, her voice as neutral as her expression.

Twig began ticking things off on her fingers. “We copy their clothes. We copy their movies. We copy their slang. We talk like them. We think like them.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hands; Cora managed to save the empty glass she was about to knock over. “I have a savings account from my parents, who died. And that was left to them by their parents, who died, and their parents, and—and nobody stops to think about whether that’s what we want to keep doing.”

“Clearly you’ve been thinking about it,” Signy pointed out. “Does that not count?”

“No, I mean . . . I mean everyone.”

Cora puffed out her cheeks and took a sip of her drink, quickly running the numbers on how to save this conversation if it needed saving, because oh god, it sure seemed like it did.

Signy considered Twig’s reply, eating a sesame stick. “Again, I don’t disagree that our society could benefit from more . . . let’s say, self-reflection. But do you think that’s particularly different than any other point in human history? Aren’t we always building off of the cultures we inherited from our ancestors, whether we like it or not?”

Cora raised her eyebrows and looked to Twig.

Twig didn’t seem to know how to respond. “Well—I mean, what do we even know about human history?” she asked. “What did they leave out of the Primer? A lot, probably! What are they not telling us?”

“You know, I—” Cora began.

“Again,” Signy challenged, her voice staying level even though Twig’s hadn’t. “Do you think that’s ever been different?” She sipped her lager, which appeared to be the same glass she’d acquired at the beginning of the night. “Do you think there’s ever been a time when recorded history was both comprehensive and objective?”

“So, what, we should just roll over and go along with whatever we’re told, then?” Twig demanded.

“That’s not what I said at all,” Signy replied, with a remarkable amount of chill for somebody who lived her life decidedly not doing that. “I don’t like the hand we’ve been dealt, either, and no, I don’t think the Primer is a definitive source on anything. But I also don’t think it’s wise to imagine some grand, enlightened age of human antiquity we’ve been deliberately separated from. I think the truth is probably a lot more complicated and a lot more boring than that.” She dug around in the snack mix and found another sesame stick. “I also think it might be wise for you to question what you’re currently being sold by people who claim to have it all figured out when, as you correctly note, you shouldn’t trust anybody who tells you that.”

“So,” Cora said loudly, firmly, unavoidably, stepping in before Twig could say whatever she was about to shoot back. “Ha! Uh—you know, I haven’t had any of my own damn cake yet. Would you two like to—”

“I have to pee,” Twig said. She got up in a huff and stormed off toward the bathroom.

Signy sighed, closing her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said to Cora. “I’m not good at—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset her.”

“No, it’s okay. She’s . . . a lot, I know. She means well, she’s just . . .” Cora sighed, too. “A lot. She gets really stuck on this.” She pulled a bit of ice from her glass into her mouth, crunching it between her molars. She looked up at the map of the moons that all ice came from, as if somewhere in their familiar topography there might be an answer as to how to get the two human beings she cared about most to like each other back.

Signy reached across the table and took Cora’s hand. “You don’t look like you’re having any fun.”

Cora didn’t know what to say to that. It would be a bad look to complain about her own party. But it was the same party every pilot always had, year after year, and she was starting to think that maybe a party should have more going for it than just getting blitzed. “I actually do want some cake,” she said.

Signy lifted Cora’s hand, turned it over, and kissed her palm. “Then let’s get you some cake.”

Chapter 789 Signy, Lodestone