“Jim—”
He waved to have a few seconds more to say what needed to be said. “I know I made choices that cost you. I’ve got this habit of rushing into things because I think they needed doing. I lost time with you, but it was always my choice. Heading to the Agatha King. Sounding the alarms on Medina. Trying to get to the bullet on Ilus. Going back to see what was really happening on Eros Station. They were all risks I took, and I told myself it was okay because I was only risking me. But I was risking someone important to you too, and I am so grateful that I’ve been someone important to you. I didn’t mean to take that lightly.”
She turned off her screen, then squeezed his hand. “You are remarkable. You have always been remarkable. Not always wise, not always thoughtful. But always, always remarkable. Yes, I have paid a price for letting someone as headstrong and impulsive as you matter so very much to me. But I’d do it again.”
He didn’t know which of them started to pull the other close, only that they folded together. Her arm found its way under his, and she ducked her head, pressing her cheek against his chest. He put his chin on top of her head, a rare thing when she was so much taller than him. Her first little sobs shook them both, and then his did. They drifted gently in the cabin that had been theirs. Jim had the sense of other minds drawn to the moment like insects following pheromones, but he couldn’t pay attention to them. Not with her there in his arms.
After some stretch of time that might have been minutes or hours, the weeping reached its natural end and they were only quiet together. Naomi uncurled a little, raised her head. Their mouths met, gently, and with only the barest hint of the hunger of their youth.
“Whatever you think you have to do? Whatever it is,” she whispered, “wait until I’m asleep.”
Jim nodded, and she pressed herself against him in the dark. He counted his own breaths up to a hundred and back down again before her breath grew deep, then up to a hundred again to give her time to fall past where his leaving would wake her. She shuddered once, then gently snored. Carefully, he unfolded himself, reached out to tap the wall and push to the cabin door. He opened it as quietly as he could and closed it behind him with a click.
Somewhere down on a lower deck, Muskrat barked happily, and he could hear Amos’ rough voice, if not the exact words. The ship creaked softly as it warmed and shed its heat. Somewhere, Alex was sleeping or watching his neo-noirs or feeling guilty about Kit and Giselle. Somewhere Teresa was eating herself with disappointment and adolescent confusion. Bobbie Draper wasn’t there, and never would be again. Clarissa Mao was gone too, though both of them had left their marks on the ship and the people who lived in it. For a moment, he imagined Chrisjen Avasarala beside him, her arms crossed and her lips in a smile that managed to be sharp and consoling at the same time. For fuck’s sake, this isn’t the last day of summer camp. How many fucking tearful embraces are you planning on?
In the med bay, he pulled an emergency kit with a red ceramic shell and tucked it under his arm. He patted the autodoc like it was someone he knew and liked and might not see again for a while.
The airlock wasn’t restricted, and he was able to cross the bridge and enter the Falcon without anyone taking particular notice of him. The Laconian crew had gotten very used to pretending he wasn’t there, and his place, first as Elvi’s guest and then as the resistance leader’s boyfriend, gave him a kind of undefined status in their own rigid pecking order. As long as he seemed to know where he was going, they assumed that he did. It was like being invisible.
The catalyst’s room was empty except for the isolation chamber. He closed the door to the corridor behind him. There wasn’t a lock on it or a way to jam it closed. Well, nothing was ever perfect. He cracked open the emergency kit and went through it item by item. Bandage. Antiseptic. Hypox injector. Hypodermic needle.
His head felt weirdly clear. Even with the distant awareness of the others, the moment was his own. He felt as alone as he ever had, and also a kind of satisfaction. A falling away of doubt. The anxiety that had haunted him since Laconia had cooked off like dew on a warm day. He was only himself now.
The isolation chamber opened easily, and he pulled the catalyst out. Her blind, empty eyes swept past him. Her mouth worked as if she were saying things that only she could hear. She didn’t react at all when he slid the needle into her arm and drew out the plunger.
The hypodermic filled with a swirl of iridescent blue and black. Five ccs. Ten. An alert was sounding somewhere nearby, and he assumed it was because of him. He’d intended to roll up his sleeve and inject the sample into the veins at the bend of his elbow, but he was suddenly worried that the Falcon’s crew would come too soon, would stop him. Grimacing, he pressed the needle through the leg of his flight suit and into his thigh. He pushed the plunger down until it stopped. The catalyst smacked her lips and writhed like she was trying to remember how to swim.
Jim closed his eyes.
At first, it felt cold: a thread of ice that went from the site of the needle stick up into the gut. Then a wave of nausea that came and went and left a burning sensation behind it that spread through his abdomen and up into his chest. His heart started pounding, each beat slow, hard, and violent as a hammer strike. He tasted metal.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, blue fireflies flickered in and out of being. He had a feeling like blood flowing back into a limb that had been pressed too hard for too long. It felt like desert rain filling dry arroyos. It felt like remembering.
He took a long, slow breath. He was trembling. He opened his eyes, looked around the room, and found what he thought he’d find. What he’d hoped for. The slouch. The half-apologetic, half-astonished sad-dog face. The porkpie hat.
“Well,” the familiar voice said where only Jim could hear it. “This can’t be good.”
“Hey, Miller. We need to talk.”
Chapter Forty: Naomi
You can see him?” Naomi asked. “Right now, you can see him?”
Jim nodded. They were floating in the emptied lab where Amos had only recently been strapped down for his failed dive into the station. The Falcon’s security officers had taken Jim there directly from the catalyst’s chamber, and Elvi had called Naomi over. Now he was steadying himself on a handhold. His face had the sweaty, tight look it got when he was coming down with an illness or he’d drunk too much, but there was a calm with it. And something else. Amusement, maybe.
“For me, he seems to be right between you and Elvi,” Jim said. “A little bit closer to Elvi.”
“This can’t be the same Miller,” Elvi said. “This has to be something else.”
Jim chuckled.
“What?” Elvi snapped.
“Sorry. He said something funny. Look, in any traditional sense, the Miller I met died when Eros crashed into Venus. The protomolecule preserved and co-opted the patterns in his brain, and when it needed a tool to find missing things, there those patterns were, right in the toolbox. That version of Miller needed something that could take a ship places, and I was the guy who decided where the ship went, so it started using me. Physically manipulating my brain into seeing and interacting with the patterns it made from Miller. Those manipulations left channels. All I did was put the protomolecule and those channels back together.”
He looked at Naomi and tilted his head, a little smile on his lips. “I was just remembering something Alex said about tools that get used long enough developing souls. It’s off the subject. Forget about it.”