Maya shot out of her chair. “There is no they anymore. There are four or five metanationals fighting over Mars, just like they’re fighting over Earth. If we stand up in the middle of it we’ll just get cut down in the crossfire. We need to pick our moment, and that has to be when they’ve hurt each other, and we have a real chance to succeed. Otherwise we get the moment imposed on us, and it’s just like sixty-one, it’s just flailing about and chaos and people getting killed!”

“Sixty-one,” Jackie cried, “it’s always sixty-one with you— the perfect excuse for doing nothing! Sabishii and Sheffield are shut down and Burroughs is close, and Hiranyag and Odessa will be next, and the elevator is bringing down police every day and they’ve got hundreds of people killed or imprisoned, like my grandmother who is the real leader of us all, and all you talk about is sixty-one! Sixty-one has made you a coward!”

Maya lunged out and slapped her hard on the side of the head, and Jackie leaped on her and Maya fell back into a table’s edge and the breath whooshed out of her. She was being punched but managed to catch one of Jackie’s wrists, and she bit into the straining forearm as hard as she could, really trying to sever things. Then they were jerked apart and held onto, the room bedlam, everyone shouting including Jackie, who shouted “Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Murderer!” and Maya heard words grating out of her own throat as well, “Stupid little slut, stupid little slut,” between gasps for air. Her ribs and teeth hurt. People were holding hands over her mouth and Jackie’s too, people were hissing “Sssh, sssh, quiet, they’ll hear us, they’ll report us, the police will come!”

Finally Michel took his hand from Maya’s mouth and she hissed “Stupid little slut” one last time, then sat back in a chair and looked at them all with a glare that caught and stilled at least half of them. Jackie was released and she started to curse in a low voice and Maya snapped, “Shut up!” so viciously that Michel stepped between them again. “Towing all your boys around by the cock and thinking you’re a leader,” Maya snarled in a whisper, “and all without a single thought in your empty head—”