Babylon's Ashes (Expanse, #6)

by James S.A. Corey

History, Michio believed, was a long series of surprises that seemed inevitable in retrospect.

By the terms of their ketubah, the marriage group was seven people: her and Josep, Nadia, Bertold, Laura, Evans, and Oksana.

The idea of separating family from crew was an inner-planets thing, one example of the unconscious prejudice that made Earthers and Martians treat life aboard ships as somehow different from real life.

I should let go of it.” “Shouldn’t let go of being educated,” he said. “Universe spent a lot of time telling you something.

I have killed, but I am not a killer because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren’t afraid.

Inaros is a great man. For our purposes, he’s the great man. It isn’t a role that’s fit for a wholly sane person.”

Situations change and clinging too tightly to what came before kills you.

All through human history, being a moral person and not being pulled into the dramatics and misbehavior of others had caused intelligent people grief.

There will always be poetry.

This was always part of the plan.”

“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.” “Men are fighters,” Naomi said, and then, her voice growing bleak. “Women are nurturing and sweet and they stay home with the kids. It’s always been like that. We always react to the stories about people, not who they really are.” “And look where it got us,” Holden said.

It was what came of being a primate with a body built for the Pleistocene savanna. Fear and relief and lust and joy were all packed into the same little network of nerves somewhere deep in his amygdalae, and sometimes they touched.

“I thought if you told people facts, they’d draw their conclusions, and because the facts were true, the conclusions mostly would be too. But we don’t run on facts. We run on stories about things.

So free we have only one option.

A decent idea now is way better than a brilliant plan when it’s too late.”

History itself was a massive n=1 study, irreproducible. It was what made it so difficult to learn from.

A wave of grief washed over her, the way they often did now. The way they would on and off for the rest of her life.

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. And wasn’t that worth a little extra effort?