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“You didn’t fall in love with me for my ethical consistency, did you?” “Despite it,” she chuckled. Then a moment later, “You had a cute butt.”
“It’s me,” Bobbie repeated. “I’m the mission commander. But if you really don’t—” “Oh,” Holden said. “No. No, that’s different.” Alex said, “Yeah,” and Naomi uncrossed her arms. Bobbie relaxed. “Should have said so in the first place, Chrissy,” Amos said. “Go fuck yourself, Burton. I was getting to it.” “So, Bobbie,”
He stood among them now, the strongest of the lot, shaken by the love and the joy and the terrible understanding that both the boy he’d been and the men and women they were then were gone and would never come back. They were all crying too. Father Dimitri, Mother Tamara, Father Joseph. And his new family too.
filled. I flagged them as priority evacuees. I get to do that kind of shit. I’m the boss.”
Everyone was smiling, including him, and none of them meant it.
Holden leaned against her as much as the weak gravity would allow. He felt the warmth of her body against his. Felt the rise and fall of her breath.
“We’re not people,” he said. “We’re the stories that people tell each other about us. Belters are crazy terrorists. Earthers are lazy gluttons. Martians are cogs in a great big machine.”
Oh, Prax thought. This isn’t anger. It’s grief. Prax understood grief.
“Your father, he’s a great man. Great men, they’re not like you or me. They have other needs. Other rhythms. It’s what sets them apart. But sometimes they go so far into the void we lose sight of them. They lose sight of us. That’s where little people like me come through, yeah? Keep the engines running. Keep the filters clean. Do the needful things until the great man comes back to us.”
Fires on shipboard were dangerous. There were any number of ship processes that could rise up past the point of spontaneous oxidation. The trick was knowing when letting a breeze through would start combustion and when it wouldn’t. Sometimes talking to Bobbie was like putting her hand on a ceramic panel to see how hot it was. Trying to guess whether a little air would cool the big woman down or start up flames.
Fred’s smile was gentle and warm. “Don’t be an asshole.”
The same beautiful bullshit that everyone told themselves. That they were special. That they mattered. That some vast intelligence behind the curtains of reality cared what happened to them. And in all the history of the species, they’d all died anyway.
If you’re looking for mutual respect, you can start by asking before you invite people to my secret meetings. It seemed like a rude thing to say out loud. “If you’re looking for mutual respect, you can start by asking before you invite people to my secret meetings.”
“God damn,” he said. “How does she do this all day, every day? That was maybe twenty minutes start to finish, and I already feel like I should dip my brain in bleach.”
“Johnson’s plan,” Bobbie said. Then a moment later, “So, just between us. Did Fred Johnson really have a plan?” “I’m pretty sure he did,” Holden said, sagging into himself. “Don’t know what it was.” “So this one we’re selling?” “I’m kind of making it up.”
We are how the universe consciously remakes itself.
And now here he was with the end and the beginning, one seen through the other like two sheets of plastic laid one on the other. Like time pressed flat. Still a victory and still his, but maybe there was a little aftertaste now, trailing just after like milk on the edge of sour.
History itself was a massive n=1 study, irreproducible. It was what made it so difficult to learn from.
Avasarala put out her hands, palms facing each other about a meter apart. “I’ve got a report on you this thick. I know every pimple you’ve popped since your voice broke. Everything. Praiseworthy, shameful, indifferent. Everything. I have violated
It was the widest concerted attack ever. Hundreds of ships on at least four sides. Dozens of stations, millions of lives. Among the stars, it didn’t stand out.
“It didn’t change anything,” Holden said. “Here we are, still doing all the same things we did before. We’ve got a bigger battleground. Some of the sides have shifted around. But it’s all the crap we’ve been doing since that first guy sharpened a rock.”
He tried to think of something else. Something more. A sweeping speech about how they were all one species after all, and that they could shrug off the weight of history if they chose to. They could all come together and make something new, and all it would really take was doing it. But all the words he could think of sounded false and unconvincing in his mind, so he cut the feed instead and waited to see what happened.
“Sounds good,” he said. “We’ll be right over.” He killed the broadcast. “Seriously?” Alex called from above. “‘Sounds good, we’ll be right over’?” “I may kind of suck at this job,” Holden called back.
“We’ve been screwed since the minute I blew up that reactor. Doesn’t take away from the essential dignity of the situation. And this is a fine hill.” “A what?” Bobbie looked over, surprised he hadn’t followed the idiom. “Fine hill to die on.”
“But you were okay,” Filip said. Marta shook her head, just a little. “My mom died,” she said with a fake lightness. “Shelter she was in cracked.” Filip felt the words in his sternum. “Sorry.”
He was Filip Inaros, and he’d killed billions. He’d killed Marta’s mother. “It’s okay,” Filip said as he stood. “Misunderstanding. No harm, sa sa?”
PRÉNOM: FILIP NOM DE FAMILIE: “You okay, kid?” The hard eyes on him. He nodded. NOM DE FAMILIE: NAGATA
“Against all evidence, I keep thinking the assholes are outliers.”
It had been six months now since the remarkable death of Marco Inaros and the great remnant of the Free Navy.
If wars began with rage, they ended with exhaustion.
It was as if the disappearance of the Pella and its battle force had been a bad call in a football match, and they were trying to find a referee to shout down.
God damn, this is an ugly piece of architecture, isn’t it?” Avasarala said. “I saw you looking at the pillars.”
She didn’t know she was going to speak until she said it. “I’m sorry.” What she meant was I’m sorry I didn’t stop the attack that killed your husband and I’m sorry I didn’t see Inaros for what he was sooner and I would do it all differently if I could live my life backward and try again.
“Holden can’t find his cock with both hands unless there’s someone there to point him at it.”
They were giddy because Jim was giddy. And Jim was giddy because, for once, he’d just avoided being responsible for the future of the whole human race.
Because eventually they had to. Nothing lasted forever. Not peace. Not war. Nothing.
Some things were secret even after you told them.
She’d killed her old lover, her old friends. She wished with a longing as powerful as thirst that there had been a way to save her son. Jim wasn’t asking if she was all right so much as how bad was it.
The evil and the redeeming could sit together in her heart, live together, and neither one take the edge off the other.
The decisions they made in building their township would be the seed crystal for the city that might one day rise up from it. A few hundred years, and the work Anna did now to make this group a kind, thoughtful, centered one might be able to shape a whole world.
“Two different people came up with calculus right at the same time. So maybe everything’s like that. Maybe it doesn’t matter who leads a war because the things that made the war happen weren’t leaders. They were how much money people had or how good their land was for making food or something.
“It’s dumb to break it up like that,” she said around her food. “Like it’s one thing or it’s something else. That’s not how it ever is. It’s always that there’s somebody who does whatever it is.
But it was also a mistake to lose sight of all the individual lives and choices and flashes of pure dumb luck that brought humanity as far as they’d come.
They needed to be gentle. And understanding. And careful. It had been true in the depths of history, and at the height of Earth’s power, and it would still be true now that they were scattering to the more than a thousand new suns. Maybe, if they could find a way to be gentle, the stars would be better off with them.
