Page 24 of How to Steal a Galaxy

She hesitates but ultimately finds nothing too offensive about the question. “Indiana.”

“Oh, not bad.” Indiana was far enough away and east of the supervolcano when it erupted. Close enough to give her a healthy desire to actually give a shit about fixing up Earth’s problems.

“Not great,” she says. She was probably raised in a free colony—an area that didn’t have the intergalactic-tourism draw to be developed, but enough farmland and stable ground to independently subsist as a community.

It’s amazing how people just keep going. Supervolcanoes, climate collapse, global pandemics, dissolution of society...and there are still farms in Indiana raising wholesome young women who grow up to work as double agents and look hot in red gowns.

Humanity’s something else.

“The mission is clear,” Phoebe says, her eyes cutting to me. “You obtain the asset. You pass it off tome.And then we take it from there.”

Phoebe is on one side of the portal, glaring at me. I could go around the massive metal ring to get closer to her, but I opt instead to heft myself up the side. There’s a metaphor in there, but I was never one for higher lit.

“What are you doing?” Phoebe demands. My eyes keep drifting to the bright strands of light weaving through her braided buns. I wonder if she wears her hair like that on purpose, to distract people from her eyes, from seeing what she sees. And she sees a lot.

“Relax, it’s an interactive exhibit. I’ve been in here before when entire classrooms of children hung off this thing like it was a playground.” All the rough edges of the portal have either been filed down, removed, or covered in protective foam so said schoolchildren don’t get cut on the museum’s dime. I have to hitch my sea-silk dress up a little, exposing almost my entire left thigh, before I get all the way up and settled onto the ring. With my legs stretched out in front of me, I lean my back against the inner curving metal of the ring, and I think about how a few hundred years ago, there were solar fuel cells built right below me, more energy than a hundred nuclear bombs, just simmering.

It’s hollow and powerless now.

I loll my head toward Phoebe. At least my hair’s so glued down, it’s sturdier than the portal ring. “I know how the operation is supposed to work.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “How it’ssupposedto work is exactly how itwillwork. You were hired for a job.”

“I know,” I say.

“And you’re going to do that job.”

I roll my eyes.Believers.She definitely feels she has a higher purpose, that her nobility counts for something.

“You’re a lot like Fetor,” I mumble. Everyone’s trying to save the planet but only on their own terms.

Phoebe sputters at me, but before her affronted thoughts can gain any traction, I add, “That’s why you can trust me.I don’t care about your little operation.I care about getting paid.”

“And the only way togetpaid is to pass the asset off to me.”

Oh, she’s wrong about that. There arelotsof ways to make a profit. Believers are never creative enough.

“The pass-off happens at the end of the night,” I say as if that’s a decade from now. As if it’s that straightforward.

“We can’t risk any delays.”

I tap my fingers on the metal. There’s a subtle, almost-indistinct hint of an echo, reminding me of how the portal’s empty metal now. Reminding me that if this thing were in space still, even if it had no fuel cell core, it would make no sound at all.

“You do your job; I’ll do mine,” I say, locking eyes with her again. “I know what the stakes are.”

“Do you?” There’s an edge to her voice now, raw desperation. And I don’t know if it’s the hint of fear that flashes in her eyes or the way she really does look smoking in that dress, but I sit up a little straighter. Something breaks behind her pretty face when she sees that I’m actually paying attention.

“This isit,” she says, her voice low but not because she thinks anyone can hear us. She knows this room is secure. Her voice is soft because she has so much hope pinned to her words that they’re drowning her like pebbles stuffed in the pockets of a tragic Victorian about to walk into the sea. She takes a shaky breath in. “This is everything,everythingthat we’ve been planning foryears.If you—”

“Get the asset,” I fill in for her, “which I will.”

“If you do, if this works...we might get Earth again. Real Earth. Not one dependent on tourism and charity. Climate sickness would be a thing of the past. Think of the people dependent on drugs just to keep living on our world.”

Think of all the people not dependent on drugs, because living on our world already killed them.I silently state each word in my mind, and then I swallow them down, pushing the sentence deep into my gut, without letting a single syllable even float across my face.

She laughs, absolutely no amusement in her voice at all. “We might actually get the farm back.”

“So to speak,” I say.

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