Cibola Burn (Expanse)

by James S. A. Corey

  “Like plants? Fungi?”

  “Like them,” Elvi said. “It’s not where we’ve been burning most of our cycles. But it looks like a pretty crowded niche. A lot of species fighting for resources. I’m guessing this little fella was in a raindrop that dropped into Jason’s eye and found a way to live there.”

  “He’s had several eye infections, but they all came from familiar organisms. This thing. Is it contagious, do you think?”

  “I wouldn’t guess so,” Elvi said. “We’re just as new to it as it is to us. It evolved to spread in open air through a water cycle. It’s salt tolerant if it’s living in us, and that’s interesting. If his eyes were already compromised, he may have been vulnerable to it, but unless he starts throwing his tears at people, wouldn’t think it would go too far.”

  “What about his eyesight?”

  Elvi straightened up. Lucia looked at her seriously, almost angrily. Elvi knew it wasn’t directed at her, but at the terrible ignorance they were both struggling under. “I don’t know. We knew something like this was bound to happen sooner or later, but I don’t know what we can do about it. Except tell people not to go out when it’s raining.”

  “That isn’t going to help him,” Lucia said. “Can you ask the labs back home for help?”

  A hundred objections filled Elvi’s mind. I don’t control the RCE research teams and All the data analysis is planned out and running months ahead of where we are now and I just got another sample of a third biome this morning. She tapped at her hand terminal, saving a copy of the array’s data, then translating it into RCE’s favored formats and sending it winging through the air back to the Israel, and then the Ring, and then Earth.

  “I’ll try,” she said. “In the meantime, though, we need to let people know it’s a problem. Has Carol Chiwewe heard about this?”

  “She knows I’m suspicious and that I wanted to bring you in on it,” Lucia said.

  Elvi nodded, already trying to think what the best way would be to bring the issue to Murtry’s attention. “Well, you let your side know, and I’ll tell mine.”

  “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?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I won’t know. Not until it’s happened.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Basia

  B

  asia floated above the world.

  Seventeen hundred kilometers below, Ilus spun past at a dizzying pace. Alex had told him that the Rocinante had an orbital period just under two hours, but Basia couldn’t feel it. Floating outside the ship in microgravity, his inner ear told him that he was drifting, motionless. So instead the universe appeared to spin far too quickly, like some giant child’s toy. Every hour, moving from dark to light, and then an hour later back to darkness, the sun rising from behind Ilus, spinning around be
hind him, and setting again briefly. Basia had been outside long enough to see the change three times, the center of his own cosmos.

  The planet’s one vast ocean was in night. The string of islands that crossed it tiny black spots in a larger darkness. One of the islands, the largest of them, was outlined in a faint green light. Luminescence in the waves crashing against its beaches and cliffs.

  The day-side was dominated by Ilus’ single massive continent. The southwestern quarter was the enormous desert. First Landing would be just to the north of it. In daylight, it was far too small to see with the naked eye. Even the huge alien towers where he’d met with Coop and Kate and all the others in some previous lifetime were too small to find.

  “You okay out there, partner?” Alex’s voice said over the radio. “Been driftin’ a while now. That hatch ain’t gonna fix itself.”

  As he spoke, the Edward Israel passed into the daylight side of the planet and flashed like a tiny white spark. It was almost too far away to be seen, but, in orbital terms, very very close. Alex was holding the Rocinante locked in a matching orbit so he could keep his gun pointed at them.

  “It’s beautiful,” Basia said, looking back down at the planet spinning by. “When we came in on the Barb I never took time to just look at it. But Ilus is beautiful.”

  “So,” Alex said, his drawl adding an extra syllable to the word, “remember when we talked about the euphoria you can get on a spacewalk?”

  “I’m not new at this,” Basia replied. “I know what the happys are like, and I’m good. The hatch is almost done. Just taking a break.”

  They’d eaten all their meals together. Alex had shared his collection of twenty-second-century Noir Revival films with him. Just the night before they’d watched Naked Comes the Gun. Basia found noir too bleak, too hopeless to enjoy. It had led to a lengthy conversation over drinks about why Alex thought he was wrong to feel that way.

  And, true to Naomi’s promise, Alex had dug up a list of open repair projects for Basia to work on. One of which was a sticky actuator arm on one of the Rocinante’s two torpedo loading hatches.

  The hatch lay open next to him, a door in the flank of the warship a meter wide and eight meters long. A massive white tube sat just below the opening. One of the ship’s torpedoes. It looked too big to be just a missile. Almost a small spaceship in its own right. It didn’t look dangerous, just well crafted and functional. Basia knew that in its heart lay a warhead that could reduce another spaceship to molten metal and plasma. It was hard to reconcile that with the gentle white curves and sense of calmness and solidity.

  The faulty actuator had already been cut out, and floated next to the ship at the end of a magnetic tether, waiting to be taken inside. With an effort, Basia turned away from the stunning view of Ilus and pulled the new actuator off the web harness on his back.

  “Going back to work now,” he said to Alex.

  “Roger that,” the pilot replied. “Be glad to have that working.”

  “Planning to need it?” Basia asked.

  “Nope, but I’d like to have the option if it comes up.” Alex laughed. He laughed, but he was also serious.

  Basia began attaching the new arm to the hull mounts and the missile hatch. He knew almost nothing about electronics, and had worried that wiring up the new device would be beyond his skills, but it turned out that it had a single plug that went into a port inside the actuator housing. Which made sense when he thought about it. They would design warships around the idea that damage was inevitable. That repairs would sometimes take place in hostile environments. Making everything as modular and easy to swap out as possible wasn’t just sensible, it was a survival trait. He wondered if the Martians had had a Belter on the design team.

  “The Barbapiccola is on our side of Ilus,” Alex said, still in that same lazy, sleepy voice.

  “Can you show me?” Basia looked around, but could see nothing but the glowing planet below and the white spark of the Edward Israel.

  “Hold on.” A moment later, a tiny green dot appeared on Basia’s heads-up display, drifting slowly.

  “It’s the dot?”

  “Well,” Alex said, “it’s where the dot is. But it’s too far away to see right now. Just a sec.”

  A green square appeared on Basia’s HUD, then zoomed in like a telescope until the distant freighter was the size of his thumbnail.

  “That’s at 50X,” Alex said.

  “Space is too big,” Basia replied.

  “It’s been said. And this is just the space in low orbit around one planet. Breaks the head a bit to think about.”

  “I try not to.”

  “Wise man.”

  The Barbapiccola looked like a big metal shipping container with the squat bell housing of a drive at one end, and the blocky superstructure of command and control on top. She was ugly and utterly functional. A thing of the vacuum that would never know the heat of atmospheric drag.

  The large cargo bays that took up most of her interior would be full of the raw lithium ore they’d already pulled off of Ilus. Waiting to fly to the refineries on Pallas Station. Waiting to be traded for food and medicine and soil enrichments. All the things the fledgling colony needed to survive.

  Waiting to take his daughter away.

  “Can we talk to them?” he asked.

  “Huh? The Barb? Sure. Why?”

  “My daughter is over there.”

  “Alrighty,” came the reply, followed by a burst of static. A few moments after that, a voice with a thick Belter accent replied.

  “Que?”

  “Sa bueno. Basia Merton, mé. Suche nach Felcia Merton. Donde?”

  “Sa sa,” the voice said, the tone a fight between curiosity and irritation. The connection stayed open but silent.

  While he waited, Basia finished mounting the actuator arm and plugged it in. He called down on the ship channel to have Alex test it, and it opened and closed several times without binding or twisting the hatch. The motor made a smooth vibration in the hull beneath his magnetic boots that set his helmet to humming.

  “Papa?” came a hesitant voice.

  “Baby, Felcia, it’s me, honey,” he replied, trying to keep from babbling like an idiot and mostly failing.

  “Papa,” she said, delight coloring her voice. Deeper now, richer, but still the voice of the little girl that had squealed Papa when he came home from work. It still melted all the hard, angry, adult places in his heart.

  “I’m up here with you, honey.”

  “On the Barbapiccola?” she said in confusion.

  “No, I mean, in orbit. Over Ilus. I can see your ship, honey. Flying by.”

  “Let me find a screen! Where are you? I can look for you.”

  “No, don’t worry about that. I’m pretty far away. Had to magnify a lot to see you. Just keep talking to me for a minute before you go around the planet again.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Are they nice to you over there?”

  Basia laughed. “Your brother wanted to know the same thing. They’re fine. The best jailers ever. And you?”

  “Everyone is nice, but worried. Maybe the RCE ship won’t let us leave.”

  “Everything will be fine, honey,” Basia said, patting at the empty space as if she could see him and take comfort from it. “Holden’s working it out.”

  “He made you a prisoner, Papa.”

  “He did me a favor, Felcia. He saved me,” Basia said, and realized it was true as he said it. Murtry would have killed him. And his son and wife were still down on the planet. “I just wanted to say hello. Not talk about that stuff.”

  “So hello, Papa,” she replied with her grown-up little girl’s voice.

  “Hello, podling,” he replied, calling her by a nickname he hadn’t used in years.

  She made a strange noise, and it took Basia a moment to realize she was crying. “Never going to see you again, Papa,” she said, her voice thick.

  He started to reply with objections, with reassurances. But his co
nversation with Alex came back to him, and instead he said, “Maybe, podling. That’s nobody’s fault but mine. Remember that, okay? I tried to do what I thought was right, but I messed up and it’s on no one but me if I have to pay for it.”

  “I don’t like that,” Felcia said, still crying.

  Me either, honey, he thought, but said, “Is what is, sa sa? Is what is. Doesn’t change that I love you, and your mama, and Jacek.” And Katoa, who I left to die.

  “They say I have to go,” Felcia said. The tiny green dot that hid the massive spaceship his daughter lived on was moving away, toward the horizon, into radio blackout. He could see it happening. Watch the unimaginable distance between them getting wider until a planet came between them.