He didn’t ask what had happened. He didn’t dig for information. He should have left it at that. From a tactical point of view, anything more was a mistake.
“Hey,” he said. “I may not be the guy you want to hear this from, but whatever it is? It’s going to be okay.”
The girl’s eyes went wide, and then they went hard. It didn’t take a second.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, then turned and stalked away, slapping her palm against her leg to call the dog. The dog looked from her to Holden, regret in the dark-brown eyes. The hope of more sausage weighed against the distress of her person.
“Go,” Holden said, nodding at Teresa’s retreating back. The dog barked once, a friendly sound, and galloped away again.
Holden tried to go back to his book, but his attention kept wandering. He waited for almost an hour, then put the handheld away and walked. A cool breeze was starting up. He thought about going back to his cell and getting a jacket, but decided not to. Something about being a little uncomfortable was right for the day. Instead, he made his way to the mausoleums.
Garlands of flowers rested in the corner where the stone met the ground. Red and white and a lavish purple. Some were native Laconian plants, some were out of a hydroponics tank. They’d be replaced until the order came to stop replacing them. If the people in authority forgot, there might be fresh flowers at Avasarala’s grave forever.
The woman herself looked down at him from where she was etched in stone. It was probably just his imagination, but she seemed amused. Like now that she was dead and not actually responsible for fixing any of the vast and secret shit show that was human history, she finally got the joke. He looked up at her, remembering her voice, the way she’d moved. Her eyes, bright and intelligent and pitiless as a crow’s.
“What is going on here?” he asked, softly. “What am I looking at?”
It didn’t matter if they heard that. Without the context of his thoughts, it wouldn’t mean anything.
He was seeing Teresa, devastated. The State Building vibrating with banked anxiety. Cortázar—entitled, narcissistic, protomolecule-obsessed Cortázar—quietly gleeful. Another bout of strange consciousness and lost time, this one at least in Laconia system, and maybe beyond. Elvi Okoye’s return being used as a cover story for Cortázar’s presence at the State Building. Because he needed to be there, was happy to be there, and someone wanted to hide the real reasons why.
Put like that, something had happened to Duarte.
If it was true, Cortázar’s hands were freer. Which meant his plans to vivisect and kill Duarte’s daughter would probably kick into high gear. And also Elvi was back from her missions in the other system, so Holden’s plans could move forward too. It was a race now, and he had a strong suspicion that he was behind. That was too bad. He had hoped to have more time.
Don’t be a whiny little cunt, Avasarala said in his imagination. Hope in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first. Get to work.
First he chuckled, and then he sighed. “Fair point,” he said to the dead woman. This time she didn’t answer. He turned and walked back toward the buildings as the first genuinely cold rush of air came and stirred the ground cover that wasn’t quite grass. There would be a storm by nightfall, he was sure of it. Maybe snow. Snow was the same everywhere.
He had to find his next step. Maybe Elvi. Maybe her husband, Fayez. He’d always liked Fayez. Maybe Teresa. Maybe it was time to go to Duarte, if it wasn’t already too late. If only there had been more time…
This was the problem with thousand-year Reichs. They came and they went like fireflies.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Naomi
Naomi had lived long enough to see history change more than once now. In the reality where she’d been born, Earth and Mars had maintained an alliance built to keep their boot permanently on the neck of Belters like her. The idea of alien life had been something for scientific speculations and thrillers on entertainment feeds. Some changes had been so slow it was almost possible to miss that they were happening. The change of Belter identity from underclass to the de facto governing party at the height of the Transport Union’s power had spanned decades. The rebuilding of Ganymede after its collapse also. The others had been sudden, or had seemed that way. When Eros moved. When the gates opened. When the rocks fell on Earth. When Laconia came back.
The sudden changes, as different as they were, all followed the same pattern. After it happened—whatever it was—humanity went into a kind of shock. Not just her and the people around her, but the whole vast and varied tribe of people. For a moment, it was as if they were all still primates on the fields of Africa going silent at a lion’s roar. All the rules they’d lived by were suddenly open to question. The inner planets have always been my enemy, but are they still? The far reaches of the solar system are as distant as humanity will ever be, but can we go farther? Earth will endure, won’t it?
Naomi didn’t like the feeling, but she recognized it. And more than that, she saw the power in it. Moments like these were opportunities. They could bring new alliances, new empathy, a new and broader sense of being together in a single human tribe. Or they could be the poison that ran through human minds for decades to come and welcomed ancient wars onto new and bloody battlefields.
Auberon held its breath and waited to see if the predators were coming for it. She saw it on the in-system newsfeeds that were the only newsfeeds now. It was in the wideness of the Laconian governor’s eyes. And, Naomi had to admit, it was in her own heart too.
The Typhoon was the absolute symbol of Laconian dominance. After the Tempest’s inexorable conquest of Sol system, Laconian rule was a given. It wasn’t just that Laconia had found a way to defend the ring space against simultaneous attacks from any or all gates, though that was part of it. It was also the clear knowledge that by being in the slow zone, the Typhoon was already halfway to anyone’s home. That once it started coming, nothing could stop it but the whim of the empire.
And now it was gone.
Medina Station had been a feature of the ring space from the start. It had been one of the first ships through the Sol ring, and taken up its place even before the other gates had opened. Medina had been the farthest trading post of the new land rush and then the traffic cop at the center of the colony worlds. Its history as a religious generation ship and then as a battleship for the OPA had made it as rich and complicated as the people who lived on it. It was a permanent fact of how humanity moved through the rings, as constant and permanent as the rings themselves.
It was gone too.
If it had been just one or the other, maybe it would have been simpler. But having the hammer that had threatened every head in the empire and the longest-standing human presence at the gates both wiped away at once pulled Naomi’s heart in two directions. She was rejoicing and mourning at the same time. And also feeling the deep unease that came from the reminder that that being familiar wasn’t the same as being understood.
“How do you take your eggs?” Chava asked.
Naomi, sitting at the breakfast bar, rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Usually reconstituted and from a nozzle.”
“So… scrambled?”