“I hear what you’re saying,” Alex said.
The printer ticked to itself for a few seconds.
“I know you have reservations,” Bobbie said. “I respect them. Seriously.”
“No, it’s not that,” Alex began. “I just—”
“I don’t want you in on this if you aren’t certain. No, listen to me. It’s a long shot. The Tempest is the deadliest machine humans have ever built. We both know what it stood up to in the war. Even if we do manage to deliver the package, I don’t know for certain that the antimatter will be enough to kill it. You have a kid. And before long, he’s probably going to have a kid. Holden’s gone. Amos is gone. Naomi’s doing her hermit thing. The Roci’s mothballed. And … if this doesn’t work, the Storm’s gone too. If you want out, that’s not a wrong thing.”
“If I want out?”
“If you want to retire. We can get you a fresh name, or do more background for the one you’ve got. Set you up with a job on Ceres or Ganymede or here. Whatever. You could actually get to know Kit and his wife. No one will think less of you for wanting that.”
“I might,” Alex said.
“I need you a hundred percent or nothing.”
Alex scratched his chin. The printer chimed that its run was finished, but Alex didn’t open it to take out the new brace.
“You’re speaking as the captain of this ship,” he said. “You actually pronounce things a little differently when you’re being in charge. You know that? It’s subtle, but it’s there. Anyway, as the captain, I know what you’re saying. And I know why you’re saying it. But as my friend, I need a favor from you.”
No favors, no compromises, either you’re in or you’re out popped to her lips.
“What do you need?” she asked.
“Run it by Naomi. If she says it’s the wrong thing, listen to her. Hear her out.”
Bobbie felt herself pushing back against the idea. The old fight was like a knot in her gut, hard as stone. But …
“If she agrees?”
Alex squared his shoulders, lowered his center of gravity, and smiled amiably. No one else on the ship would have recognized the imitation of Amos, but she did.
“Then we go fuck some motherfuckers permanently up,” he said.
Interlude: The Dancing Bear
Holden woke up with the light of dawn streaming through the high window and casting shadows across the ceiling. The last trails of a dream—something about crocodiles getting into a water recycler and him and Naomi trying to lure them out with a salt shaker—slipped away. He stretched, yawned, and pulled himself up out of the wide bed with its soft pillows and plush blanket. He took a moment at the foot of the bed to take everything in. The flowers in the vase by the window. The subtle pattern woven into the sheets. He worked his toes against the soft, warm rug. And he recited silently what he always did, every morning since the beginning.
This is your cell. You are in prison. Don’t forget.
He smiled contentedly because someone was watching.
His shower was tiled with river stones, smooth and beautiful. The water was always warm, and the soap was scented with sandalwood and lilac. The towels were soft and thick and white as fresh-fallen snow. He shaved in a mirror that was heated to keep condensation from forming on it. His Laconian uniform—real cloth, not recycled paper—was pressed and clean in his footlocker. He dressed himself, humming a light melody he remembered from his childhood because someone was listening.
He had come to Laconia in a much less pleasant cell. He had been questioned in a box. He’d been beaten. And in the early days, threatened with worse things than that. In the later days, tempted with the promise of freedom. Even power. It could have been much, much worse. He had, after all, been part of an attack that had crippled Medina Station and ended with the agents of the underground scattering to systems all around the empire. Someone had even managed to steal one of Laconia’s early destroyers out from under them. Holden had known a lot about how the underground on Medina functioned, who was involved with it, and where they could be found. He was alive and had all his fingers with the nails still attached because he’d also known about the dead space that had appeared on the Tempest when it used its magnetic field generator in normal space. And the dead spaces like it in all the systems besides Sol. He was the one person in the whole of humanity who had—escorted by the enslaved remnants of Detective Miller—been inside the alien station and seen the fate of the protomolecule’s builders firsthand. And from the first moment they’d allowed it, he’d been shoveling everything he knew about that at them. Calling him cooperative on the subject would have been a vast understatement, and with every passing week, his knowledge of the underground was more out of date. Less useful. They didn’t even bother asking him about that stuff anymore.
Duarte was a thoughtful, educated, civilized man and a murderer. He was charming and funny and a little melancholy and, as far as Holden could tell, completely unaware of his own monstrous ambition. Like a religious fanatic, the man really believed that everything he’d done was justified by his goal in doing it. Even when it was the push for his own personal immortality—and then his daughter’s—before slamming the door behind them, Duarte managed to cast it as a necessary burden for the good of the species. He was above all else a charming little ratfuck. As Holden grew to respect the man, even to like him, he was careful never to lose sight of the fact that Duarte was a monster.
There was a lock on his door, but he didn’t control it. He put the handheld he’d been issued in a pocket, walked out into the courtyard, and closed the door behind him. Anyone who wanted in could go in. If they wanted for some reason to lock him out—or in—they could. He put his hands in his pockets and strolled down a colonnaded walkway. The ferns in the planter came from Earth. Maybe the soil did too. Some minor functionary of the state came out of a doorway before him, turned and breezed by him as if he hadn’t been there. He was like a fern that way. Decorative.
The commissary was larger than a whole deck of the Rocinante. Pale, vaulted ceilings and an open kitchen with three cooks on duty any time of the day or night. A few tables by the windows, a dozen scattered in another courtyard at the back. Fresh fruit. Fresh eggs. Fresh meats and cheeses and rice. Not too much of any one thing. The elegance came from the labor and deference of the people, not from conspicuous waste. Loyalty valued over wealth. It was amazing what you could learn about someone by sitting quietly for a few months with what they’d built.
He got a carved wooden tray and a plate of rice and fish, the way he usually did. A smaller plate of melon and berries. A light-roast coffee in a white ceramic cup the size of a small soup bowl. Cortázar was sitting alone in an alcove at the back, looking at something on a hand terminal. Out of discipline, Holden grinned and went to sit across from the sociopathic professional vivisectionist.
“Good morning, Doc,” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Universe treating you gently?”
Cortázar closed whatever file he’d been reading over, but not before Holden caught the phrase indefinite homeostasis. He didn’t know what it meant exactly, and he couldn’t look it up without someone knowing he had.