Cibola Burn (Expanse)

by James S. A. Corey

  Basia felt like someone had punched him in the solar plexus. The pain in his stomach kept him from breathing.

  “I’m going, Papa.”

  “No,” he said. “You’re not.”

  Chapter Thirteen: Elvi

  E

  lvi’s grandfather had remarried late in life. His new husband had been a German man with a merry laugh, a snow-white beard, and a cheerful cynicism about humanity. What she remembered best about Grandpa Raynard was how quick he was with an epigram or a quip. He had one for every occasion. She’d thought they made him sound worldly and wise, in part because she was so often unsure what exactly he meant by them.

  One thing he’d said was Once is never. Twice is always.

  When the shuttle went down, she’d known – they’d all known – that someone had put the explosives there, but her experience of the Belter colonists beginning that same night had been so different that the knowledge and the emotional impact of it had become detached. Someone among the Belters had done a terrible thing, but that person was faceless, anonymous, unreal. Doctor Merton doing everything she could to save the wounded and soothe the injured was real. Her daughter, Felcia, who was at the farthest point humanity had ever been from Earth and whose ambitions were drawing her back toward Luna, was real. Anson Kottler and his sister Kani who’d helped Elvi set up her hut. Samish Oe with his goofy half smile was real. Carol Chiwewe. Eirinn Sanchez. They had all been so kind that Elvi had shelved the death of the governor as an outlier, something so rare it would never happen again.

  But the disappearance of Reeve and the security crew was twice, and the way Elvi saw the colony and the RCE scientists and her own little hut out on the edge of the plain was different now. Because the threat of violence wasn’t never anymore. It was always.

  “Did you see anything else?” Murtry asked.

  “No,” Elvi said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Doctor Okoye, I know this has been unpleasant for you,” the chief of security said, “but I need to you try to remember if there was anything else you saw while you were out there. The person you saw coming back. Can you say if it was a man? A woman?”

  That wasn’t how memory worked, of course. Just willing herself to remember something, pushing herself, was much more likely to generate a false recollection and add bad data to the set than it was to haul up some telling detail she’d failed to mention. It seemed rude to explain that to Murtry, so Elvi only shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right,” he said in a tone of voice that hinted strongly at his disappointment. “If anything else occurs to you, please do bring it to me.”

  “I will.”

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I guess so. Why?”

  “The UN mediator’s asked to talk with you too,” Murtry said. “You don’t have to if you don’t want, though. Just say the word, and I’ll tell him to go piss up a rope.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” she said, but she was thinking, James Holden wants to talk to me? “Should I… I mean, is there anything I should particularly tell him? About the work, I mean?”

  The truth was, she just wanted to get out of the security offices. The extended thirty-hour day of New Terra made it hard to feel exactly how long she’d been there, but she’d come to Reeve in darkness, she’d slept in one of the cells that night. She’d stayed there while Murtry and the security team came down and made the town safe, and now it was morning again. So two days, New Terra. Maybe three back on Earth. What exactly day meant wasn’t intuitive anymore.

  “Captain Holden needs to understand exactly how bad our situation here is,” Murtry said. “He came out here thinking there’s two sides to this, so he’s wanting to split some kind of difference. Anything you can do to help him understand why that’s not the solution here, I would very much appreciate.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes, of course.”

  “Thank you,” Murtry said.

  “One thing?”

  Murtry raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward her. He didn’t quite say, Yes, ma’am? but it was physically implied.

  “My research is still in my hut,” she said. “I have some studies that were in progress when I came to talk to… when I came in. Is my hut off-limits, or will I be able to get back to them?”

  “You’ll go back,” Murtry said. “The one thing that is not going to happen here, Doctor? We’re not giving back a goddamn centimeter of our ground. Whoever did this doesn’t get to win.”

  “Thank you,” Elvi said.

  Murtry’s expression hardened for a moment. His eyes became flat in a way that Elvi associated with lab animals being sacrificed. He looked dead.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  Walking down the street of the town, Elvi felt a pang of unease, but less so than she’d expected. The little siege she’d suffered in the security office waiting for the relief team to come had been a bleak and frightening time. But now familiar faces had joined the townsmen. Two women in RCE security riot armor walked down the street across from her, their assault rifles resting easily in their hands. Just seeing them there left Elvi feeling safer. And then Holden had also arrived. Certainly, things weren’t where they needed to be, but they were getting closer. They were getting better. That would have to be enough for now.

  Another guard stood at the entrance to the general store, a rifle resting in his hands.

  “Doctor Okoye,” he said nodding her inside.

  “Mister Smith,” she said.

  She’d been in the commissary building many times in the weeks since she’d landed on New Terra. Apart from little intimate get-togethers in the research huts and the formal town meetings in the community hall, it was the only place to go unless she found religion. She could see – feel – at once how the presence of James Holden had changed the nature of the space. It had been a community place before, public in the same way a municipal park might be, without any commanding human presence. Now a man sat at a table toward the back of the room, just as if he were a townsman getting a bowl of rice and a beer. Sitting there, leaning on his elbows and talking to Fayez, he commanded the space. He owned it. What had belonged to everyone was now the unquestioned domain of James Holden. Elvi’s belly went a little tighter and anxiety sped her breath.

  She had seen Holden on the newsfeeds and reports. At the beginning of the war between Mars and the Belt, he had been the most important man in the solar system, and the celebrity, while it had waxed and waned over the years, had never gone away. James Holden was an icon. For some, he was the symbol of the triumph of the single ship over governments and corporations. For others, he was an agent of chaos who started wars and threatened stability in the name of ideological purity. But whatever people thought he meant, there was no question that he was important. He was the man who’d saved Earth from the protomolecule. He was the man who’d brought down Mao-Kwikowski. Who’d made the first contact with the alien artifact and opened the gates that led to a thousand different worlds.

  In person, he looked different than his image on the screen. His face was still broad, but not as much so. His skin had a warmth that even years in the sunless box of a ship couldn’t erase. The dark brown hair had a dusting of gray at the temples, but his eyes were the same sapphire blue. As she watched, Holden rubbed a hand across his chin, nodding at something that Fayez was saying. It was an unconsciously masculine movement that left Elvi thinking of large animals – lions, gorillas, bears. There was no sense of threat in it, only of power, and she was profoundly aware that the man she had seen only as an image on a data feed was exhaling the same molecules that she was breathing in.

  “You okay?”

  Elvi started. The man who’d asked was huge, pale, and muscular. His shaved head and thick belly made him look like a gigantic baby. He put a hand on her shoulder as if to steady her.

  “Fine?” she said, her inflection making it a question.

  “You just looked a little
weird there for a second. You sure you’re feeling all right?”

  “I was supposed to meet with Captain Holden?” she said, trying to pull herself back together. “My name’s Elvi Okoye, and I’m with the RCE. I’m an exobiologist with RCE.”

  “Elvi!” Fayez called, waving her over.

  She nodded to the pale man and walked over to the table where Fayez and Holden were sitting. James Holden’s eyes were on her.

  “This is Elvi,” Fayez said. “We’ve known each other since upper university.”

  “How do you do?” Elvi said, her voice sounding false and tinny in her ears. She cleared her throat.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Holden said, rising to his feet and extending a hand. Elvi shook it just as if she were meeting anyone else. She was proud of herself for that.

  “Sit,” Fayez said, pushing out a chair for her. “I was just talking to the captain here about the resources problem.”

  “It’s not an issue yet,” Elvi said. “But it will be.”

  Holden sighed, clasping his fingers together. “I’m still hopeful that we can negotiate something that’s equitable for everyone involved.”

  Elvi frowned and tilted her head. “How would you do that?”

  Holden lifted his eyebrows. Fayez leaned in toward her.

  “We were talking about resources like lithium and money,” he said, then turned toward Holden again. “She was talking about water and nutrients. Different contexts.”

  “Is there not enough water?” Holden asked.

  “There is,” Elvi said, hoping that her blush didn’t show. Of course they were talking about lithium mines. She should have known that. “I mean, there’s enough water. And nutrients. But that’s sort of the problem. We’re here in the middle of a totally foreign biosphere. Everything about the place is different from what we’re used to dealing with. I mean, it looks like life here is genuinely bi-chiral.”

  “Really?” Holden said.

  “No one knows what that means, Elvi,” Fayez said.

  Holden politely pretended not to have heard him. “But the animals and insects here all look… well, they don’t look familiar, but they’ve got eyes and things.”

  “They’re under the same selection pressures,” Elvi said. “Some things are just a good idea. Back on Earth, eyes evolved four or five different times. Powered flight at least three times. Most animals put the mouth near the sense organs. The degree of large-scale morphological similarities given the underlying biochemical differences is part of what makes this such an amazing research opportunity. The data I’ve been able to send back since we got here would be enough to fuel research for a generation, and I’ve barely scratched the surface.”

  “And the resources problem?” Holden said. “What are the resources you need?”

  “It’s not the ones we need,” Elvi said, waving her hands. “It’s the ones we are. From the perspective of the local environment, we’re bubbles of water, ions, and high-energy molecules. We’re not exactly the flavor that’s around here, but it’s only a matter of time before something figures out a way to exploit those.”

  “Like a virus?” Holden asked.

  “Viruses are a lot more like us than what we’re seeing here,” Elvi said. “Viruses have nucleic acids. RNA. They evolved with us. When something here figures out how to access us as resources, it’s probably going to be more like mining.”

  Holden’s expression was dismayed. “Mining,” he echoed.

  “We have an advantage for the time being because we’re an older biosphere. From what we can tell, things weren’t really evolving here until sometime between one and a half and two billion years ago. We’ve got pretty strong evidence that we have a good billion-year head start on these guys, at least. And some of our strategies may work against them. If we can build antibodies against the proteins that the locals use, we might be able to fight them off like any other infection.”

  “Or we might not,” Fayez said.

  “Part of the reason I came out here, part of the reason I agreed to this, was that we were going to do it right,” Elvi said, hearing the stress coming into her voice. “We were going to get a sealed environment. A dome. We were going to survey the planet and learn from it and be responsible about how we treated it. The RCE sent scientists. They sent researchers. Do you know how many of us have sustainability and conservation certifications? Five-sixths. Five-sixths.”

  Her voice was louder now than she’d meant it to be. Her gestures were wider, and there was a tremble of outrage in her words. Holden’s unreal blue eyes were on her, and she could feel him listening like his attention could radiate. Intellectually, she knew what was happening. She was scared and she was hurt and she was guilty for having been the one to lead Reeve and the others into danger. She’d been able to ignore it all, but it was bubbling up. She was talking about the biology and the science, but what she meant was Help me. It’s all going wrong, and no one can help me. No one but you.

  “Only when you got here, there was already a colony,” Holden said. His voice was like warm flannel. “And a colony made up of a bunch of people who have a lot of very good reasons to distrust corporations. And governments.”

  “It looks calm here,” Elvi said. “It looks beautiful. And it is. And it’s going to teach us things we never dreamed before. But we’re doing it wrong.”

  Fayez sighed. “She’s right,” he said. “I mean, I like talking about lithium and moral rights and legalities as much as the next guy. But Elvi’s not wrong about how weird this place is when we start looking close enough. And it’s got a lot of very dangerous edges that we’re not paying any attention to. Because we’re, you know, killing each other.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” Holden said. “I’m going to need to look at it. The part where people are killing each other has to be my first focus. But I promise you both that I will put creating a closed, safe planetary dome on the list as soon as we’ve got the crisis under control. No matter who winds up being in control.”

  “Thank you,” Elvi said.

  “Most of the people here are good,” Fayez said. “The Belters? We’ve been here for months, and I swear most of these people aren’t monsters. They’re just poor bastards who thought starting over was a good idea. And Royal Charter is a very, very responsible corporation. Look at their history, and you won’t find any more graft and corruption than an average PTA. They’re really trying to do all this right.”

  “I know,” Holden said. “And I wish to hell that made it easier.”

  “Uh, Captain?” the huge baby-man said.

  “Amos?”

  “There’s another mess of legal crap just came through from the UN for you.”

  Holden sighed. “Am I supposed to read it?”

  “Don’t see how they can make you,” Amos said. “Just thought you’d want to ignore it intentionally.”

  “Thank you. Sort of,” Holden said, then turned back to them. “I’m afraid I have to deal with bureaucracy for a while. But thank you both very much for coming. Please always feel free to come talk to me.”

  Fayez stood, and Elvi followed half a second later. He shook each of their hands in turn, then retreated to a room in the back. Fayez walked out to the street with her. Hassan Smith and his rifle acknowledged them again as they passed by.

  The sun glowed in the oxygen-blued sky. She knew it was a little too small, the spectrum of light from it a little slanted toward the orange, but it was familiar to her now. As right as thirty-hour days and her close, familiar hut. Fayez fell into step beside her.

  “Heading back to your place?” he asked.

  “I should,” she said. “I haven’t been out since I came to see Reeve. I’m sure all my datasets are finished. I probably have a bunch of angry messages from home.”

  “Yeah, probably,” he said. “So are you all right?”

  “You’re the third person to ask me that today,” Elvi said. “Am I acting like there’s something wrong with me?”

&n
bsp; “A little,” Fayez said. “You’ve got a right to being a little freaked out.”

  “I’m fine,” Elvi said. Her hand still tingled a little where Holden had held it. She massaged her skin. At the end of the street, a Belter girl was walking fast with her head down and her hands shoved deep in her pockets. Murtry and Chandra Wei stood behind her, watching her suspiciously, their rifles in their hands. The wind coming off the plain lifted swirls of dust in the corners of the alleys. She wanted to go back to her hut, and she didn’t. She wanted to go back up the well, onto the Edward Israel and home again, and she wouldn’t have left New Terra for all the money in the world. She remembered being very, very young and terribly upset about something. Crying into her mother’s shoulder that she wanted to go home, except that she was home when she said it. That was what she wanted now.