“Which one of those is Bobbie?” Alex asked.
“Hmm?”
With the second skewer, he pointed up at the night sky peeping through from behind the vines. “One of those stars isn’t a star, right? I mean, we can see her from here, can’t we?”
Naomi looked up at the little slice of stars. The galactic disk looked the same as it had in Sol system, but the constellations not quite like her own. Parallax, she knew, was how they’d started mapping which systems were on the other sides of the gates. She’d seen a map once—the splash of systems that the gates connected. Thirteen hundred stars in a galaxy with three hundred billion of them. They’d been clumped together, the gate-network stars. The two farthest systems were hardly more than a thousand light-years apart. A little more than one percent of the galaxy, and still unthinkably vast.
“Look just above the ridge there,” she said, pointing. “You see where the rock looks like a bent finger? The round knuckle?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Track just up from that, and to the right. There are three stars almost in a row. The middle one is Bobbie.”
“Hmm,” Alex said, then went quiet. He wasn’t singing anymore, but sometimes Naomi thought she heard a few hummed notes under his breath. It was maybe five minutes before he spoke again. “I wonder which one’s Mars.”
“Sol system?” she said. “I don’t know.”
“I think about Kit,” Alex said and took another drink of his beer. “And Giselle, I guess, but more about Kit. I have a son out there. He’s just starting his own life. His adulthood. I won’t be there for it. I don’t even know that I’d be any use if I were. I mean, when I was his age, I was getting into the navy, and Earth and Mars were the biggest things in the universe. Now … I don’t know. Everything’s different. He has to find his own way.”
“That’s always how it is,” Naomi said.
“I know. Every kid has to find who they are without Mom and Dad, but—”
“History too. Mars before Solomon Epstein. Earth before the seas came up. Before there were airplanes and then after. When we figured out how to grow our own food. Everything’s always changed.”
“But up to now it wasn’t my problem,” Alex said, with an affected disconsolate buzz in his voice. They both laughed together. A half dozen of the vine bladders lit up and faded. She didn’t know what made them do that, but it was pretty. She felt a pleasant warmth growing in her belly. The beer, probably. Or the meat, since she’d eaten almost all of it despite her expectations. Or the sense of being in midnight under stars in the middle of an ocean of air that wouldn’t run out or leak away. It really was reassuring in a way that even the best station atmosphere could never quite equal.
“I think about Jim the same way,” she said. “Not that he’s beginning his adulthood, but he always wanted to take me back to Earth. To show me what living on a planet was like. Now I’m here, and I’m finding out, and he’s not.”
“He’ll be all right,” Alex said. “He always is.”
“I know,” she said aloud, but they both knew she meant Maybe.
Something crashed through the underbrush, made a high keening sound, and crashed away. They’d heard it before often enough that they both ignored it. Alex finished off the last of his beer and tucked the empty bottle back in his satchel. He levered himself up to standing and stretched his arms above him, looking like some ancient priest in the firelight.
“I should get these things hooked up,” he said, hefting the dead batteries. “I said I’d have them back tomorrow. I’ll probably take a sleep shift in town after that, if you’re all right solo?”
“That’s fine,” she said. “Bobbie sent me a new dataset. I’ll be working on that. I wouldn’t be much company anyway.”
“Should I douse the fire?”
Naomi shook her head. “I’ll do it when I go in. I think I overate. I need to just sit for a little while.”
“Right,” Alex said, and trudged over to the airlock. He lifted himself in, and she heard him starting to sing again until the door closed behind him. She lay back.
Everything changed, and it went right on changing. A terrible thought when things were good, a comforting one now. Whatever happened, she could be certain that things wouldn’t stay the way they were now. And if she stayed smart and clever and lucky, she’d be able to affect how the next change came. Or take advantage of it. She’d find Jim again, if she could just be patient enough.
One of the vines broke loose from the mountain wall and drifted along with some high breeze that she didn’t feel. She watched it blunder away to the southwest, catching on another vine for a moment, then losing its grip and floating on. Where it had been, there was a new spray of stars now, glittering from decades and centuries ago, their light only happening to fall on her here and now.
She wondered if one of them was Laconia.
Epilogue: Duarte
Winston Duarte watched his daughter playing at the fountain’s edge. Teresa was ten now, and almost as tall as her mother had been. She was working with a clay boat, discovering the relationship between buoyancy and displacement for herself. Forming and re-forming the little craft of her own design. Finding not only what was the most efficient but also what was the most aesthetically pleasing. What would float and also steer and also be beautiful in its own right. Her tutor, Colonel Ilich, sat on the edge of the fountain as well, talking with her. Guiding her thoughts through the process, and helping her to connect the work of her hands to the lessons in mathematics and history and art.
He didn’t know whether she was aware how lonesome a childhood she’d had. The State Building had facilities for the children of the government to live and work and attend lessons while their parents saw to the mechanisms of the empire, but most of the classrooms—like the offices—were empty. Prepared for a generation that was still just beginning. The timing was wrong for Teresa. Someday children would run and play together in the streets and parks of Laconia, but by then Teresa would be grown.
She leaned forward, lowered her latest design into the water. Ilich asked her something, and she replied. Duarte couldn’t hear what they were saying from this distance, but he saw the change in the way she held the little boat. And more than that, he saw her mind change.
That had started more recently, and he wasn’t certain what to make of it yet. A pattern of something around her head when she was thinking strongly. As she worked the clay, it infused her hands as well. Ilich had it too, though not as intensely. Of all the ways his changes affected his senses, this new one was the most interesting. He had the suspicion that he was, in some sense, seeing thought.
Teresa glanced over, and the whatever-it-was shifted just before she raised her hand. He waved back, returning her smile, then stepped away into the State Building to let her continue her studies undistracted. He loved his daughter profoundly, and the joy of watching her learn was better than anything else he had scheduled, but his presence wouldn’t help her or the empire. Duty called.
He found Kelly waiting for him in his private office. The look on the man’s face was enough to tell him that they had arrived. His heart sank. He had been dreading this moment since he’d heard that Natalia Singh had requested the personal meeting. It was her right, though. And his obligation.
“They’re in the east drawing room, sir.”
“They?”
“She brought her daughter.”
Another little punch to the gut. But …“All right. Thank you, Kelly.”
Natalia and Elsa Singh were dressed in matching clothes. Dark blue with white accents. Not the full black of mourning, but somber. He sat across from them as Kelly served tea and cakes. Duarte felt the temptation to focus on the whatever-it-was, to see if grief and anger looked different from Teresa’s lesson with the clay boats, but it seemed impolite, so he didn’t.
Kelly closed the door behind him as he left. Duarte sipped his tea. Natalia Singh didn’t touch hers, but the little girl ate some cake. The sweetness of suga
r overcame everything for children. Even loss. There was something profound in that. Beautiful and sad both.
“Doctor Singh,” Duarte said. “I am so sorry for your loss.”
Her chin lifted a few degrees, proud and defiant. He hoped she wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Grief was a terrible thing.
“Thank you, sir,” she said through a tight throat. The little one looked over, confused less by the words than by her mother’s tone of voice. Elsa was a smart child, he could see that. Empathetic, which was more important really than other kinds of intelligence. She shifted on the couch, scooted toward her mother.
Duarte leaned forward, putting down his teacup. He laced his fingers together, and when he spoke, he tried to put as much warmth and care into his voice as the little girl had expressed in her movement.
“You asked to speak with me. How can I help you?”
“I would like to request a copy of the formal inquiry into my husband’s death,” she said, then swallowed.
Duarte slipped. His focus shifted, and the whatever-it-was—thought, consciousness, attention—became clear to him for a moment. It was tight in around Natalia Singh’s head and chest, wrapping her like a shroud. The little one—Elsa—hers was diffused around her, thicker toward her mother, like something physical in her was reaching out. Longing to comfort and be comforted in a field effect that was something more, apparently, than just metaphor. He pulled his attention back to his more usual senses with a little echo of shame, as if he’d eavesdropped on something.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll see that it’s delivered to you.”
Natalia Singh nodded once and wiped a tear away like it was an insect that had landed on her cheek.
“He was a good man,” Duarte said. “I know that. You know that. In another time and another place, he would have been celebrated.”
“He wasn’t a killer,” she said, and her voice had pressed down to a whisper.
“He was put into an extreme position, and he overreacted,” Duarte said. “Our place in humanity is special. The rules that apply to us are harsh. You and me and him. But there’s a reason for that, and I want you to know how much I honor his sacrifice. And yours. Both of yours.”
Elsa looked at him now as if she knew he was talking about her. He smiled at the girl, and after a moment, she smiled back. He could see an echo of her mother’s face in her small, soft features. Her father’s too. He took Natalia’s hand, and she didn’t pull away.
“You will have the full support of the government,” he said, “if you want it. Your daughter has a guaranteed place in the academy. Your work is important to us. To me. I know this is hard, and you have my word that you will not face this alone. We’re all with you, whatever you need.”
She nodded more slowly this time. She didn’t wipe the tears away. Her daughter climbed into her lap, and Natalia put her free arm around her, rocked her slowly back and forth. It was heartbreaking, but he’d made the decision. He wouldn’t look away from the consequences of it. This was his duty too.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
She shook her head. Speech was beyond her. While she wept, he poured her more tea, and sat, witnessing her sorrow and being present with her and her child. After a few minutes, she looked up at him, her eyes clearer, calmer. He took a deep breath, squeezed her hand gently, and released it.
“Thank you,” Natalia said.
He made a little bow to her, a last gesture of respect, and withdrew. Anytime a Laconian died in the service of the empire, their family had the right to a private audience with the high consul. It was a tradition he’d begun when they first passed through the gate. It would have to be reconsidered as the empire expanded, but for now, it was still in his power to honor it, so he did.
Kelly was waiting for him in his office, a look of sympathy in his eyes. He didn’t mention the widow or her daughter in the drawing room. Kelly was a man of perfect tact.
“A report from Doctor Cortazár, sir,” he said.
Duarte pulled up the new file, opening it with a gesture. Cumulative update on the debriefing of Prisoner 17. Duarte spooled down the file, seeing Cortazár’s questions, the prisoner’s responses. They were only words. Designs of light drawn on air. After glimpsing the living thoughts of Dr. Singh and her daughter, mere language seemed sterile. He looked at Kelly, closed the file.
“I think,” Duarte said, “it may be time I met this Captain Holden.”
The man sat on the floor, his back to the wall of the cell. His splayed legs and bright eyes made him seem younger than his graying hair. As Duarte came in, Holden’s gaze shifted between him and his guard—back and forth—until it settled on him. Duarte sat on the bunk, hands on his thighs, and looked down at the man who had caused so much trouble over so many years. He didn’t look like anything more than an old ice bucker with a little too much curiosity and too little impulse control.
Duarte had known people like him from his time in the service. Hotheads and gadflies. The ones who were always sure they knew better than anyone else. The truth was, they had their place. Like anyone else, they could be apt tools if they were well suited to the task at hand.
Here he had no qualms about using his new senses. Holden was an enemy and an asset. He had no right to any privacy. And the pattern mind was … fascinating.
When he’d been a boy, Duarte had seen an optical illusion that changed one face into another as the viewer came near it. Holden was like that. There was something about the way the pattern of his thoughts moved that reminded him of dry riverbeds. The traces of something that had been there and was now gone, but not without leaving the trail of its passage behind it. Patterns inside patterns.
“You’re Winston Duarte,” Holden said, snapping Duarte’s attention back to his more usual ways of seeing.
“Yes,” Duarte said. “I am.”
Holden pulled his knees up, rested his arms on them. His eyes were wide, and even a little bit frightened. “What the fuck happened to you?”
It took Duarte a moment to understand, then he chuckled. “Yes. I forget. I’ve been through some changes. Not everyone notices, but there have been some … I don’t know. Shifts?”
“You’re using that shit on yourself?”
“I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot, Captain. Let me try this again. I’m High Consul Duarte. You and I have a shared interest, I understand, in the origins and function of the protomolecule. Did I get that right?”
“You have to listen to me. I saw what happened to them. To the things that made the protomolecule. There was a record on the ring station from before they got shut down.”
“I read the report on that,” Duarte said. “Even before I came here. It was part of what inspired me to take the steps I’ve taken. Not just”—he gestured at his own body—“but all of it. An empire is a tool, just like everything else.”
That brought Holden to a stop. The pattern around his head was shifting and vibrating like a hive of angry wasps. Again, he had the sense of seeing the remnants of something in Holden’s mind. Traces of another pattern. There was a term for this, but …
“Palimpsest,” Duarte said aloud, then shook his head when Holden frowned. “I was trying to remember a word. I just got it. Palimpsest.”
“You came here because of the thing that killed the protomolecule?”
Duarte leaned back, considered James Holden and, now that he’d met him, how best to build rapport. Radical honesty for radical honesty, maybe? Worth trying.
“I was connected to the MCRN intelligence services when the gate opened. The first one. Sol gate. And when the other gates opened, I saw the probe data sets as they came in. The early surveys of all the systems as fast as we could get them. And I saw an opportunity here. The most clearly intact ruins. A set of orbiting structures with what appeared to be a ship or something like it halfway through being constructed. And I recognized that the protomolecule had the potential to act as a handle of sorts. A way to inter
act with the artifacts that had been left behind. So I got the sample that we still had, and the best minds I could find on the subject. And through discipline and commitment, we developed new technologies faster and better than all the other worlds put together. Laconia is Mars. The Martian ideal taken to the next level.”
“That’s all great,” Holden said. “Except for the part where something came and killed the shit out of all the things that made the artifacts. I saw whole systems going dark. They shut down the gates just to try to stop whatever was killing them, and it didn’t work.”
“I know.”
“That thing that popped up on your ship? That’s the same thing that killed the protomolecule. That wiped out the civilization that built all of this.”
“I know that too,” Duarte said. “Or I guessed, anyway. It seems the most promising hypothesis. And it’s related, I believe, to the missing ships. Something deep, something profound, doesn’t like anyone using these technologies and powers. Didn’t like when the last ones did it, don’t like it now that we’ve turned them back on. It’s an interesting problem.”
Holden stood up. The guard stepped forward, but Duarte gestured for him to stay back.
“Interesting problem? Something fired a shot at you. At your ship. It turned off people’s minds all throughout the system, and that’s an interesting problem? That was an attack.”
“And it didn’t work,” Duarte said. “We aren’t the same thing that got wiped out before. What killed them affected us, but it didn’t destroy us.”
“You seem pretty sure it’s not going to find some slightly different approach that’s going to wipe us all out. You’re not picking a fight with the things that made the protomolecule. You’re picking a fight with whatever killed them. Orders of magnitude above the things that were orders of magnitude above us. You’ve got to know this is going to escalate if we keep using these technologies.”
“We were always going to keep using these technologies. That was inevitable the moment we opened the gates,” Duarte said. “If you’ve studied any history at all, you know that. Never in human history have we discovered something useful and then chosen not to use it.”