Abaddon's Gate (Expanse, #3)

by James S.A. Corey

“Not space Nazis!” the old coyo yelled. “The Nazis aren’t from space. They are right here among us. They are the beasts of our worst nature. By profiting from these discoveries, we legitimize the path by which we came to them.”

There are no souls, Melba thought with a touch of pity. We are bags of meat with a little electricity running through them. No ghosts, no spirits, no souls. The only thing that survives is the story people tell about you. The only thing that matters is your name.

The immediate danger wasn’t the Ring. At least not right now. It was humans taking their anxiety out on the nearest enemy they could actually see: each other.

New evidence could be dismissed as crackpots and conspiracy theorists. But it required that Holden and his crew be dead. It was something she’d always heard her father say. If the other man’s dead, the judge only has one story to follow.

Too many people with too many agendas, and everyone was worried that the other guy would shoot them in the back. Of all the ways to go and meet the God-like alien whatever-they-were that built the protomolecule, this was the stupidest, the most dangerous, and—for Bull’s money—the most human.

It was a lesson he’d never forgotten. That humans only have so much emotional energy. No matter how intense the situation, or how powerful the feelings, it was impossible to maintain a heightened emotional state forever. Eventually you’d just get tired and want it to end.

She was on the edge of crying now. Blood was darkening her face. Some of her team were surely dead. People she’d known for years. Maybe her whole life. People she’d worked with every day. With a clarity that felt almost spiritual, he saw the depth of her grief and felt it resonate within him. Everyone was going to be there now. Everyone who’d lived on every ship would have seen people they cared about broken or dead. And when people were grieving, they did things they wouldn’t do sober. “Look where we are, Sam,” Bull said gently. “Look what we’re doing here. Some things don’t go back to normal.”

The vastness and strangeness and unreasonable danger of the universe had traumatized everyone it hadn’t killed. There was a hunger to go home, to huddle together, back in the village. The instinct was the opposite of war, and as long as he could see it cultivated, as long as the response to the tragedies of the lockdown were to get one another’s backs and see that everyone who needed care got it, the grief and fear might not turn to more violence.

But in both cases, they’d been driven to find out what was on the other side of the long trip. Driven by a need to see shores no one else had ever seen before. Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she’ll be haunted by what might be behind it.

Certainly anything this powerful could kill us as easily as it declawed us. But it didn’t. Instead of trying to figure out what it means, we’re hurting so we call it evil. I feel like we’re children who’ve been punished and we think it’s because our parents are mean.”

Humans do bad things when they’re afraid, and we’re all very afraid right now.”

Maybe it was the depth of his own belief. Maybe it was just a talent some people were born with. Bull felt a growing respect for Jim Holden, the same way he’d respect a rattlesnake. The man was dangerous just by being what he was.

A history professor at university had once told her, Violence is what people do when they run out of good ideas. It’s attractive because it’s simple, it’s direct, it’s almost always available as an option. When you can’t think of a good rebuttal for your opponent’s argument, you can always punch them in the face. They’d run out of ideas. And now they were reaching for the simple, direct, always available option of shooting everyone they disagreed with. She hated it.

“Yes, we’ve picked sides now, because some of the actions they are about to take will have serious consequences for us, and we’re going to try to stop them. But what you’re doing is demonizing them, making them the enemy. The problem with that is that once we’ve stopped them and they can’t hurt us anymore, they’re still demons. Still the enemy.”

“We owe it to them to look for other answers. We’ve failed this time. We’ve run out of ideas, and now we’re reaching for the gun. But maybe next time, if we’ve thought about what led us here, maybe next time we find a different answer. Certainty doesn’t have a place in violence.”

A few premature deaths along the way should be neither here nor there. When what came next didn’t matter, anybody could do anything. Nothing had consequences.

He’d miss all the good stuff to follow, but he’d help make it happen. And a very good person loved him. It was more than most people got in a lifetime.

Thank you for taking her home. Sometimes I wish I’d just gone with you. Most of the time, actually. But then I think about all the things I did inside the Ring, and I wonder if any of it would have turned out as well if I hadn’t helped. It seems arrogant to think that way, but I also believe that God nudges people toward the places they need to be. Maybe I was needed. I still plan on being very contrite when I get back. You, the bishop, Nami, my family, I have a lot of apologizing to do.”