Cibola Burn

Chapter Twenty-Four: Elvi

Elvi slept, and she dreamed.

In her dream she was back on Earth, which was also the corridors of the Edward Israel. A sense of urgency pressed at her, shifting quickly toward dread. Something was on fire somewhere because she hadn’t turned in the right forms. She had to file the forms before everything burned. She was in the bursar’s office at the university and Governor Trying was there too, only he was waiting for his death certificate and it was taking too long. She couldn’t submit her forms. She looked at the onionskin papers, trying to find the submission deadline, but the words kept changing. First, the line at the bottom read, Elvi Okoye, lead researcher and Argonaut, and the next time she read it, Fines to be paid directly at the temple: rabbits and hogs. The urgency pushed at her, and when she shouted the onionskin started coming apart in her fingers. She tried to press the forms back together, but they wouldn’t go.

Someone touched her shoulder, and it was James Holden, only he looked like someone else. Younger, darker, but she knew it was him. She realized she’d been naked this whole time. She was embarrassed, but also a little pleased. His hand touched her breast, and—

“Elvi! Wake up!”

Her eyes opened, the lids heavy and slow. Her eyes struggled to focus. She didn’t know where she was, only that some dumb bastard was interrupting something she didn’t want interrupted. The dark lines before her slowly became familiar. The roof of her hut. She shifted, reaching out for someone but already uncertain who. She was alone in her bed. Her hand terminal glowed dimly. Her analysis equipment flickered as data from her work flew up and out, through the vast darkness to the Ring and Medina Station, to Earth, and answering information flew back out to her. Which was all fine and as it should be, so why the hell was she awake?

A soft knock came at the door, and Fayez’s voice. “Elvi! Wake up. You’ve got to see this.”

Elvi yawned so deeply her jaw ached with it. She pulled herself up to sitting. The dream was already fading quickly. There had been something about a fire and someone touching her whom she had badly wanted to be touched by. The details lost all coherence as she sat up and reached for her robe.

“Elvi? Are you there?”

When she spoke her words were slow, heavy, a little slurred. “If this isn’t important, I will rip your throat open and piss down your lungs.”

Fayez laughed. There were other voices behind his. Sudyam saying something too low to make out the words. Yma Chappel, the geochemistry lead too. Elvi paused, threw off the robe, and pulled on her real clothes and work boots to go with them. When she stepped out of her hut, a dozen of the people in the research teams were standing in pairs or small groups all across the night-dark plain. They were all looking up. And in the high darkness, something larger than a star glowed a sullen red. Fayez, squatting on the ground, glanced over at her.

“What is that?” Elvi asked, her voice instinctively low, as if she might startle it.

“One of the moons.”

She stepped forward, her neck back, scowling up at the night. “What’s it doing?”

“Melting.”

“Why?”

“Right?” Fayez said, standing up.

Sudyam, to their left, raised her voice. “Makes you wish we’d sent probes there, doesn’t it?”

“We’re one ship, and this is a whole damn planet,” Fayez said. “Plus which, we’ve been focusing a lot of effort on killing each other.”

“Point being?” Sudyam asked.

Fayez spread his hands wide. “We’ve been busy.”

The moon shifted colors for a moment, turning from dull red to a bright orange to yellow-white, and then back down the spectrum again, waning as suddenly as it had waxed.

“Is anyone recording this?” Elvi asked.

“Caskey and Farengier aborted the high-altitude refraction study and started sucking down data from it is as soon as they saw it was happening. Mostly, it’s visible light, heat, and about thirty percent more gamma particles than background. The sensor array on the Israel’s showing about the same thing.”

“Is it dangerous?” Elvi asked, knowing the answer even as she spoke the words. Maybe. Maybe it was dangerous, maybe it wasn’t. Until they knew what it was, all they could do was guess. In the starlight, Fayez’s expression was difficult to make out. The apprehension at the corners of his mouth and in the curve of his eyes might only have been her imagination. Another kind of dream. “Do the others know?”

“I guess so,” Fayez said. “Assuming they’re not too busy taking each other prisoner and setting people on fire.”

“You told Murtry?”

“I didn’t. Someone probably did.”

“And Holden? What about him? Does he know?”

“Even if he does, what’s he going to do about it? Speak to it reassuringly?”

Elvi turned toward First Landing. The few lit houses were like a handful of stars fallen to the ground. She took out her hand terminal, setting its screen to white and using it as a torch.

“Where are you going?” Fayez called from behind her.

“I’m going to talk to Captain Holden,” she said.

“Of course you are,” Fayez said with an impatient grunt. “Because what would be useful for him is a biologist’s perspective on it.”

The words stung a little, but Elvi didn’t let herself be drawn into the conversation. Fayez was a good scientist and a friend, but his habit of making fun of everything and derailing anything serious for the sake of humor also made him less useful than he should have been. One of the others should have made sure everyone knew that something was happening overhead. It shouldn’t have had to be her. And still, she quietly did hope that she would be the one to bring the news.

The dry air smelled like dust and the tiny, night-blooming flower analogs. Where there had been a few tough, ropy plants, months of foot traffic had made paths, and Elvi followed them as easily in the near-darkness as she would have in the day. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that the scattering of huts, the ruins, and even First Landing itself had become as familiar to her as anyplace else she’d lived. She knew the land, the feel of the breezes, the smells that rose and fell at different times of day. Over the past month, she had been the ears and eyes of the whole scientific community back in the solar system. Even when the terrorists had killed Reeve, and Murtry had come down, at least a part of her day had been running samples and transmitting data back home. She had spent more time not just in but with this environment than anyone else.

Above her, the tiny red moon reminded her that she still didn’t know much. Normally, that would have been a delight and a challenge. In the darkness of the New Terran night, it felt like a threat. Her steps took on a rhythm, her boots tapping against the wind-paved stones.

In the town, people were in the streets much like they had been out by the RCE huts. They stood in the streets and on their little cobbled-together porches, looking up at the glowing dot as it drifted toward the horizon. Elvi couldn’t say if they were curious or apprehensive or just wanting something to think about that wasn’t the conflict between RCE and the squatters. Between us and them.

Or maybe they were seeing it as an omen. The burning eye looking down on them all, judging them and preparing for war. She’d heard a folktale like that once, but she didn’t remember where.

Wei and one of the other RCE security men were walking down the main street, rifles at the ready. Elvi nodded to them, and they nodded back, but no one spoke. Probably someone had told Holden. But she’d come all this way. She should at least be sure.

In the street outside the commissary where Holden was living, Jacek Merton was pacing. The boy’s body leaned into the motion, his hands at his sides clenched in fists. His gaze was fixed about three feet in front of him like someone looking at a screen, and his shoulders were hunched in like he was protecting something. She was about to say hello, when a small warning bell chimed in her head.

Between one heartbeat and the next, she wasn’t Elvi Okoye going in the middle of the night to see Captain Holden on pretenses that even she could see were pretty damned flimsy. That wasn’t the son of Lucia and Basia Merton, brother of Felcia, in front of her. This wasn’t even a town. She was a biologist in the field seeing a primate. And in that frame of reference, some things were perfectly clear. The boy was working himself up to violence.

She hesitated and started to turn back. Wei was only a few dozen meters and a corner or two away. If Elvi shouted, the security people would probably come at a run. Her pulse was quick. She could feel it in her throat. The long hours after Reeve’s death came back to her like a recurring nightmare. She should scream. She should call for help.

Except the boy wasn’t just a primate. Wasn’t just an animal. He was Felcia’s brother. And if she called for help, they might kill him. She swallowed, caught between fear and courage. Uncertain. What would Fayez do? she wondered. Offer the kid a beer?

He stopped and looked up at her. His eyes were empty. He wore a light jacket that pulled down a little on one side, like he had something heavy in his pocket.

“Hi,” she said, smiling.

A moment later, Jacek said, “Hi.”

“Weird, isn’t it?” She pointed up at the red dot. It seemed more portentous than ever. Jacek glanced up at the sky, but didn’t seem to react to it.

“Weird,” he agreed.

They stood in front of each other, the silence rich and tense. The light spilling from the commissary windows left the boy half in light, half in shadow. Elvi struggled, trying to find something to say. Some way to defuse everything and make it all okay. Fayez would have made a joke, something that the boy could laugh at and that would put them both on the same side of the laughter, and Elvi didn’t know what it was.

“I’m scared,” she said instead, her voice breaking a little. It surprised the boy as much as it did her. “I’m just so scared.”

“It’s okay,” Jacek said. “It’s just some kind of reaction up there. It’s not like it’s doing anything but melting up in orbit.”

“Still scared, though.”

Jacek scowled at his feet, torn between the errand he’d been steeling himself for and the impulse to say something kind and reassuring to this obviously unstable, vulnerable, strange woman.

“It’ll be okay?” he tried.

“You’re right,” she said, nodding. “It’s just. You know. I mean, you do know, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

“I was coming to see Captain Holden,” she said, and Jacek’s eyes flickered like she’d said something insulting. “Were you too?”

She could see in his face as he tried to bring back the blankness he’d had before, the tightness and anger and emptiness. He wasn’t someone for whom violence came naturally. He’d had to put effort into it. It was that effort she’d seen in him.

“He took my father away,” Jacek said. “Mom worries we’ll never see him again.”

“Is that why you came? To ask?”

Jacek looked confused.

“Ask… what?”

“To talk to your father.”

The boy blinked, and he took an unconscious step toward her. “He won’t let me talk to him. He took him prisoner.”

“People talk to prisoners all the time. Did someone tell you that you couldn’t talk to your dad?”

Jacek was silent. He put his hand into his jacket pocket—the heavy one—and then took it out again. “No.”

“Come on, then,” Elvi said, moving toward him. “Let’s go ask him.”

Inside the commissary, Holden was pacing from the front of the room to the back to the front again. The big man—Amos—sat at a table with a pack of cards, playing solitaire with an unnerving focus. Holden’s face was paler than usual, and the sense of barely restrained emotion gave his body a tension that she didn’t picture him with. Amos looked up as she walked in, her hand on Jacek’s shoulder. His eyes were flat and empty as marbles, and his voice was just as cheerful as ever.

“Hey there, doc. What’s up?”

“Couple things,” Elvi said.

Holden stopped. It seemed to take him a second to focus. Something was bothering him. His gaze locked on her and he tried to smile. An unexpected tightness came to her throat. She coughed.

“Jacek was wondering if there was any way he could talk with his father,” Elvi said. There didn’t seem to be much air in the room, she was having a hard time catching her breath. Maybe she was developing allergies.

“Sure,” Holden said, then looked over his shoulder at Amos. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

“Radios still work,” Amos said. “Might want to give Alex the heads-up to expect it. His hands are kind of full right now.”

“Good point,” Holden said, nodding to himself as much as any of them. “I’ll set that up. Do you have a hand terminal?”

It took Jacek a moment to realize the question was directed at him. “It doesn’t work. We don’t have a hub. It’s all just line-of-sight.”

“Bring it over when you can, and I’ll see if I can’t put it on our network. That’ll be easier than setting up times for you to use mine. Will that work?”

“I… Yeah. Sure.” She could feel the boy’s shoulder trembling. Jacek turned and walked out without meeting anybody’s gaze, but especially avoiding hers. The door closed behind him.

“Kid was packing, boss,” Amos said.

“I know,” Holden replied. “What did you want me to do about it?”

“Know. That’s all.”

“Okay, I know. But I really don’t have time to get shot right now.” He turned his attention to her. A lock of hair was dropping down over his forehead, and he looked tired. Like he was carrying the whole planet on his back. Still, he managed a little smile. “Is there anything else? Because we’re a little…”

“Is this a bad time? Because I can—”

“Our XO got arrested by Murtry,” Amos said, and the flatness of his eyes had gotten into his voice now. “May be a while before there’s a really good time.”

“Oh,” Elvi said, her heart suddenly picking up its pace. The XO is Holden’s lover and Holden has a lover and Holden may not have a lover anymore and Jesus, what am I doing here all collided somewhere in her neocortex. Elvi found she was very unsure what to do with her hands. She tried putting them in her pockets, but that felt wrong so she took them out again.

“I’d been thinking?” she said, her voice rising at the end of the word even though it wasn’t a question. “About the thing. In the desert. And now with the moon?”

“Which moon?”

“The one that’s melting down, Cap,” Amos said.

“Right, that one. I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot of things going on right now. If it’s not something I can actually do something about, it’s not sinking in the way it probably ought to,” Holden said. And then, “I’m not supposed to do anything about the moon thing, am I?”

“We can let the scientists tell us if we’re supposed to freak out,” Amos said. “It’s all right.”

“I’ve been thinking about hibernation failure rates, and that maybe what we were seeing was analogous.”

Holden lifted his hands. “I couldn’t tell you.”

“It’s just that hibernation is a really very risky strategy? We only see it when conditions are so bad that the usual kinds of survival strategy would fail. Bears, for instance? They’re top predators. The food web in wintertime couldn’t sustain them. Or spadefoot toads in the deserts? In the dry periods, their eggs would just desiccate, so the adults go dormant until there’s rain, and then they come back awake and go out to the puddles and mate furiously, just this mad kind of puddle orgy and… um, anyway, and then they, they lay their eggs in the water before they can dry out again.”

“Ok-ay,” Holden said.

“My point is,” Elvi said, “not all of them wake up. They don’t have to. As long as enough of the organisms reactivate when the time comes, enough that the population survives, even if individuals don’t. It’s never a hundred percent. And shutting down and coming back up is a complicated, dangerous process.”

Holden took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. He had thick, dark hair. It looked like he hadn’t washed it in a while. Amos lost his game, scooped up the cards, and started shuffling them with slow, deliberate movements.

“So,” Holden said, “you think that these… things we’re seeing are artifacts or organisms or something trying to wake up?”

“And failing. At least sometimes,” she said. “I mean, the moon melted. And that thing in the desert was clearly broken. Or anyway, that’s what it was looking like to me.”

“Me too,” Holden said. “But just because it was moving, we kind of knew things were waking up.”

“No, that’s not the point,” Elvi said. “There are always a small percentage of organisms that don’t wake up, or wake up wrong. These things? If that’s the model, they’re the ones waking up wrong.”

“Following you so far,” Holden said.

“Failure rates are usually low. So why aren’t we seeing a bunch of things waking up right?”

Holden went over to the table and sat on its edge. He looked frightened. Vulnerable. It was strange seeing a man who’d done so much, who’d made himself known across all civilization by his words and deeds, look so fragile.

“So you think there are more of these things—maybe a lot more—that are activating, and we’re just not seeing it?”

“It would fit the model,” she murmured.

“All right,” he said. And a moment later, “This isn’t making my day better.”