Holden wanted to object. He could feel the denials welling up in his chest, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say them out loud. Bobbie was right.
“I have an idea how we gather intelligence on the Laconians,” Bobbie said. “It’s the first step that we need. But we have to move quickly. Saba and his people? They think this is like going back to before there were gates. No matter what they say, they think this is going to sustain and become a way of life for them the way it used to be. Did you notice how they’ve started calling the Laconians ‘inners’?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“But you were right in there. We’re looking at a really small window. So if we’re going to do what I think we really need to do? It has to be your idea.”
“Okay, little lost here. Which idea of mine are we talking about?”
“I’m talking about you taking the operation I have in mind, waltzing back in there, and presenting it like you just came up with it yourself.”
Holden didn’t know whether to laugh or scowl, so he did a little bit of both.
“No, I’m not going to do that,” Holden said. “You say what you need to say, and I’ll back you. But I’m not going to start taking credit for your proposals.”
“If it’s my idea, it’ll be like when we showed up,” Bobbie said. “I’ll have to fight to prove it. If you do it, they’ll just listen. Coming from you will give it weight that just being the right damn thing won’t.”
A clank came from behind them, a hatch being opened or a tool being dropped. He didn’t turn to look. The unease he’d felt before shifted, changed its nature, but it didn’t go away.
“I don’t like that,” Holden said. “I hate the idea that you’re being treated as anything less than me. It’s bullshit. I’ll tell Saba that—”
“You remember the last time we went out to karaoke with Giselle? Right before Alex and she called it quits?”
Holden blinked at the non sequitur. “Yeah, of course. That was a terrible night.”
“You remember the song she sang? ‘Rapid Heartbeats’?”
“Sure,” Holden said.
“Who was the singer? On the original, I mean. Who sings that one?”
“Um,” Holden said. “The band is Kurtadam. The singer’s Peter something? The guy with the one steel eye.”
“Pítr Vukcevich,” Bobbie said, nodding. “Now, who plays bass?”
Holden laughed, and then a moment later, sobered.
“Right?” Bobbie said.
“Yeah, okay. I got it. I don’t like it, though. I’m not more significant than anyone else. Acting like everything important has to go through me or else it’s not legitimate … I don’t know. It feels like I’m being an asshole.”
Bobbie put a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were calm, and her smile was a straight line. “If it helps at all, I’m thinking about all of this as me using you as a tool to achieve my own ends. It makes me less angry that way.”
They talked for another twenty minutes, Bobbie laying out her plan in enough detail that he could introduce it. He asked a few questions, but he didn’t need many. The sense of working together with her had a weird nostalgia. As if the gap between arriving at Medina and now had been years instead of days.
Large, sudden events did that. They changed the way time passed. Not technically, maybe, but as a measure of who he and Bobbie were to each other. And to themselves. A month before, Laconia had been one background issue among tho
usands. Now it was the environment. A truth as profound as the EMC or the union. More, maybe.
Back in the meeting room, the food had arrived. Recycled wheatpaper bowls filled with rice noodles and chopped mushroom bacon and fish sauce. It smelled better than it should have. Bobbie went to sit by Alex and Clarissa, folding herself gracefully down beside them. Holden felt the impulse to go sit there too, to be part of the family again. And he could have, except he also sort of couldn’t. Would he be doing it to help or to hinder? Because he couldn’t do both. For the first time, he felt what stepping back from the Roci had cost him.
And still, he couldn’t regret it.
“All well?” Naomi asked, snaking her arm around his waist. “You look thoughtful. Are there thoughts?”
“There were a few, yeah,” he said. “Mostly that I’m a tool, but in a useful way.”
Naomi sat with that for a moment. Saba caught sight of them and waved them over. Two bowls with forks and bottles of beer were waiting on the low table for them.