Cibola Burn

“All right,” Lucia said. And then a moment later, “I hate that it breaks down that way. Your side and mine. One of my teachers back in school always used to say that contagion was the one absolute proof of community. People could pretend there weren’t drug users and prostitutes and unvaccinated children all they wanted, but when the plague came through, all that mattered was who was actually breathing your air.”

“I’m not sure if that’s reassuring or awful.”

“There’s room for both,” Lucia said. “This scares me as much as anything that’s happened. This little… thing. What if we can’t fix it?”

“We probably can,” Elvi said. “And then we’ll fix the next one. And the one after that. It’s tricky and it’s hard, but everything’s going to be all right.”

Lucia lifted an eyebrow. “You really believe that?”

“Sure. Why not?

“You aren’t scared at all?”

Elvi paused, thinking about the question. “If I am, I don’t feel it,” she said. “It’s not something I think about.”

“Take what blessings you can, I suppose. What about the third side?”

Elvi didn’t know what Lucia was talking about, and then she heard Fayez’s mocking voice in her memory and her heart leaped. She hated it a little that her heart leaped, but that didn’t stop her.

“I’ll tell him,” she said. “I’ll tell Holden.”

In the commissary, Holden sat hunched over his hand terminal. He’d shaved and his hair was combed. His shirt was pressed. Cleans up pretty, a voice in the back of her mind said, and she pushed it away.

A woman’s voice came from the terminal, crackling and sharp. “— squeeze all the balls I can get my hands around until someone starts crying, but it will take time. And I know you’re thinking of taking this public, because you’re fucking stupid, and that is what you always think of. You and publicity are like a sixteen-year-old boy and boobs. Nothing else in your head. So before you even begin —”

Amos lumbered up from the side. His smile was as open and friendly as ever, but Elvi thought there might be a little edge to it. His broad, bald head always made her think of babies, and she had to restrain herself from patting it.

“Hey,” Amos said. “Sorry, but the captain’s a little busy.”

“Who’s he listening to?”

“United Nations,” Amos said. “He’s been trying to get your boss to let our XO out.”

“Not my boss,” Elvi said. “Murtry’s security. It’s a whole different organizational structure.”

“That corporate stuff’s not my strong suit,” he said.

“I just needed to…” she began, and Holden drew himself up, looking into the hand terminal camera. His lips formed a hard little smile, and she lost her train of thought.

“Let me make it clear,” Holden said, his voice low and solid as stone, “that this was done on my orders. If Royal Charter wants to put me on trial when I get back because I ordered my crew to disable their illegally weaponized shuttle I would be happy to —”

“Doc?” Amos said.

“What? Sorry. No, it’s just that there are some things going on that I thought he needed to know about.”

Amos shook his head in something that almost passed for sorrow. “No. Nothing’s happening until the XO’s clear.”

“No, it is, though,” Elvi said. “Not just one thing either. I found more artifacts waking up today. Some of them are passing for local animals, I think. If we’d been here long enough to build a catalog, we could tell which were which, but as it is, everything looks new. So we don’t know.”

“So some of the lizards are protomolecule stuff?” Amos asked.

“Yes. Maybe. We don’t know yet. And there’s more, because the local biome is starting to find ways to invade us. Exploit our resources. And the perimeter dome never got set up, and so all of our microfauna are just wandering around mixing with the local ecosphere and there’s no way to get it back so we’re contaminating everything and everything’s contaminating us.”

She was talking too fast. She hated this. When – if – she ever got back to Earth she was going to take some communications classes. Something that would keep her from rattling on like a can rolling down stairs.

“It’s all accelerating,” she said. “And maybe it is a reaction to us or to something we’re doing. Or maybe it’s not. And I know we’re having trouble figuring out the politics and getting along with each other, and I’m really sorry about that.” There were tears in her eyes now. Jesus. What was she? Twelve? “But we have to look at what’s happening, because it’s really, really dangerous and it’s happening right now. And it’s all going to hit a crisis point, and then something really, really bad will happen.”

And then Holden was there, his eyes on her, his voice soothing. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand and wondered whether any of Jason’s invading blindness-fungus had been on her hands when she did it.

“Hey,” Holden said. “Are you all right?”

“I am,” she said. “I’m fine. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Holden said. “You said something about a crisis?”

She nodded.

“All right,” he said. “What would that look like?”