SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
“I understand that a certain party has asked you to publish this material.” What? Oh, right,
Masha. “That party has changed her mind.”
I was trying to keep my poker face on, but I suck at poker faces. He saw something change
in my expression.
“You think that we beat her up or something? Forced her to change her mind?” He laughed
(a full-throated laugh, like someone hearing a funny joke) and his friend in the front seat
laughed, too, (a mean little bark of a laugh, like someone enjoying the sight of a stranger
tripping and falling painfully). “Marcus, buddy. That little girl was plain worn out from all
her rough travel. She was tired of living on tortillas and beans, tired of hiding out in the
badlands. She wanted what she'd had before, three hots and a cot, a big-screen TV and
a mini-fridge full of Twinkies, all the luxury stuff. Living large. She didn't want to spend
the rest of her life as a refugee, sleeping under a newspaper and eating out of the trash.
And hey, we need people like her. Our group, we know her, some of us have worked with
her before. We like what she does. She's good at it. We didn't beat her up, we didn't pull
out her fingernails or drip candle wax on her skin. We just offered her a job and she took
it.”
This was so obvious a lie I nearly laughed myself. Whatever else Masha was, there was
no way she'd sell out to these sick assholes.
But, well, how well did I know Masha, really? I'd only met her three times, after all. Only
knew her by reputation, mostly, and it wasn't like her reputation was particularly spotless.
Zeb, though. No way Zeb would have gone for it. And I'd seen Masha and Zeb together.
They were a unit. Or they seemed like it, at least.
“That little old man of hers,” said Timmy, reading my mind -- or my crappy poker face -again.
“He doesn't really have much we need. We told her we'd keep him around though,
if she wanted him. It's not like he takes up a lot of room or eats a lot of chow. Everyone's
entitled to a pet. But she was through with him, not that I was privy to the, you know,
intimate details. But they had words, is what I'm saying, and he went his way.
“I bet you think we're the bad guys. We're not, though. We're no monsters. We're good
guys, Marcus.”
Yeah, because good guys do a lot of kidnapping. Good guys blow up art cars in the middle
of the desert and put a whole load of people in the hospital. You're a pack of angels.
Thinking it, but not saying it.
“What if we take you to see her? We could do that, you know. It's a bit of traveling, though.
Could take a while.”
“You got all your shots?” said the guy in the front seat with a voice full of morbid cheer.
“You don't wanna go there without all your shots, Marcus.”
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