Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

“Wait. There’s protomolecule stuff in the Roci?” Holden said, fighting down the surge of panic. If Miller wanted to hurt him and had the means to do so, it would already have happened.

“Yeah,” Miller said with a shrug, like it wasn’t a big deal. “You had a visitor, remember?”

“You mean I had a half-human monster,” Holden said, “that almost killed Amos and me. And that we vaporized in our drive trail.”

“Yeah, that’d be him. To be fair, he wasn’t exactly running a coherent program, that one. But he had enough of the old instructions left that he placed some material on the ship. Not much, and not what you’d call live culture. Just enough to keep a connection between the Ring Station’s processing power and your ship.”

“You infected the Roci?” Holden said, fear and rage briefly warring in his gut.

“Don’t know I’d use that verb, but all right. If you want. It’s what lets me follow you around,” Miller said, then frowned. “What was the other thing?”

“I don’t know if I’m done with this thing,” Holden said.

“You’re safe. We need you.”

“And when you don’t?”

“Then no one’s safe,” Miller said, his eerie blue eyes flashing. “So stop obsessing. Second thing?”

Holden sat down on the deck. He hadn’t wanted to ask how Miller was in his head, because he was terrified the answer would be that he was infected. The fact that he wasn’t, but his ship was, was both a relief and a new source of fear.

“What will we find down on Ilus? What are you looking for?”

“Same thing as always. Who done it,” Miller said. “After all, something killed off the civilization that built all this.”

“And how will we know when we’ve found it?”

“Oh,” Miller said, his grin vanishing. He leaned toward Holden, the smell of acetate and copper filling the air or else only his senses. “We’ll know.”

Chapter Eight: Elvi

The sandstorms tended to start in the late afternoon and last until a little after sundown. They began as a softening of the western horizon. Then the little plant analogs in the plain behind her hut would fold their photosynthetic surfaces into tight puckers like tiny green mouths that had tasted lemon, and twenty minutes later the town and the ruins and the sky would all disappear in a wave of dry sand.

Elvi sat at her desk, Felcia at the foot of the bed, and Fayez with his back against the headboard.

Felcia had become a regular visitor, more often than not to talk with Elvi or Fayez or Sudyam. Elvi liked having her around. It made the division between the township and the RCE teams seem… not less real, but less terrible. Permeable.

Today, though, felt different. Felcia seemed more tightly wound than usual. Maybe it was the fact that the UN mediator’s ship was getting close. Maybe it was the weather.

“So, our solar system only has one tree of life,” Elvi said, moving her hands in the air as if to conjure it up. “It started once, and everything we’ve ever found shares that ancestry. But we don’t know why.”

“Why we all share?” Felcia asked.

“Why it didn’t happen twice,” Elvi said. “Only one kind of Schrödinger crystal. One codon map. Why? If all the materials were there for amino acids to form and connect and interact, why wasn’t there one schema that started in one tide pool, and then another someplace else, and another and another? Why did life arise just the one time?”

“So what’s the answer?” Felcia asked.

Elvi’s let her hands wilt a little. A particularly strong gust drove a wave of hard grit against the side of the hut. “Which answer?”

“Why it only happened once?”

“Oh. I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”

“Same reason there’s only one tool-using hominid left. The ones that still exist killed all the competition,” Fayez said.

“That’s speculation,” Elvi said. “Nothing in the fossil record indicates that there was more than the one beginning of life on Earth. We don’t get to just make things up because they sound good.”

“Elvi is very comfortable with mysteries,” Fayez said to Felcia with a wink. “It’s why she has a hard time relating with those of us who feel anxious with our ignorance.”

“Well, you can’t know everything,” Elvi said, making it a joke to hide a tinge of discomfort.

“God knows I can’t. Especially not on this planet,” Fayez said. “There was no point sending a geologist here.”

“I’m sure you’re doing fine,” Elvi said.

“Me? Yes, I’m wonderful. It’s the planet’s fault. It’s got no geology. It’s all manufactured.”

“How do you mean?” Felcia asked.

Fayez spread his hands as if he were presenting her with the whole world. “Geology is about studying natural patterns. Nothing here’s natural. The whole planet was machined. The lithium ore you people are mining? No natural processes exist that would make it as pure as what you’re pulling out of the ground. It can’t happen. So apparently, whatever built the gates also had something around here somewhere that concentrated lithium in this one spot.”

“That’s amazing, though,” Elvi said.

“If you’re into industrial remediation. Which I’m not. And the southern plains? You know how much they vary? They don’t. The underlying plate is literally as flat as a pane of glass. Somewhere about fifty klicks south of here, there’s some kind of tectonic Zamboni machine about which I am qualified to say absolutely nothing. Those tunnel complexes? Yeah, they’re some kind of old planetary transport system. And yet here I am —”

“I need a letter of recommendation,” Felcia blurted, then looked down at her hands, blushing. Elvi and Fayez exchanged a glance. The wind howled and muttered.

“For what?” Elvi asked gently.

“I’m going to apply for university,” the girl said. She spoke quickly, like the words were all under pressure, and then more slowly until at last she trailed away. “Mother thinks I’ll probably get in. I’ve been talking with the Hadrian Institute on Luna, and Mother arranged that I can get back to Pallas when the Barbapiccola takes the ore, and then take passage on my own from there, only the application needs a letter of recommendation, and I can’t ask anyone in the town because we haven’t told Daddy, and…”