Leviathan Falls

Chapter Forty-Nine: Naomi and Jim

Somewhere, Holden was burning. Fever within his body. Heat without. Somewhere, he was in misery, but it wasn’t here. Here, he was aware—seeing without sight—of the Rocinante shifting away from the Falcon, away from the station. Turning away and burning. If he’d made the effort, he could have gone closer. Known more. He let it go.

“Probably the smart move,” Miller said. “Don’t want to tire yourself out.”

“Little late for that,” Holden said.

The detective chuckled, and Holden’s back spasmed. For an instant, he was in the bright room. The blue fireflies whirled around him, and there were words in their flickers that he could almost understand. He’d decode them, given time. Waves of nausea washed over him, and vertigo made the room spin like a top, but that was just his inner ears changing. He closed his eyes and willed himself elsewhere.

Deep in the station, Teresa was flying too fast. She’d missed the turn that led back to the surface, to the Falcon. He shifted the passageways in front of her, guiding her back the right way. He could see her jaw clenched tight, determination on her face that bordered on anger. He wished there was something more he could do.

The nature of space shifted, and the subtle lines fought to shift it back. Holden pushed, righting them. Space stayed just space. For the moment.

“You remember the first time we did this?” Miller said.

“We have never done this before.”

“You know what I mean. Eros. We were sitting there waiting for the radiation to slough all our skin off. You were talking about some kids’ show.”

“Misko and Marisko.”

“That’s the one.” Miller hummed the theme song, waving his hand like a conductor in front of an orchestra.

Holden smiled. “Haven’t thought about that in years. I committed great sins in a past life to keep getting stuck with you when I’m dying.”

“Nope. You are coming apart, but this isn’t dying. Goes on a lot longer than dying.”

“Unless something interrupts the process.”

“Yeah,” Miller agreed. “Unless that.”

Teresa was coming close to the entrance. A few hundred more meters, and she’d be out. He hoped she remembered to put her helmet back on. Normally, he wouldn’t have worried, but she was upset.

“That was the first time I told Naomi that I loved her,” Holden said. “She handed me my ass on a plate.”

“You had it coming. And hey, it ended better than it started.”

Teresa reached the edge of the station, and then went beyond it. He could feel her hesitate, lose her way, and then find the Falcon and launch herself toward it. At the gates, ships transited out, first one and then a handful. The empty space became a little emptier. Teresa shifted closer to the Falcon. The things on the other side stirred like predators scenting something—smoke or blood. Unsure whether to attack.

Teresa reached the airlock and passed inside. Holden felt himself relax. He waited for the ship to move. For its drive to bloom. The minutes passed slowly. Painfully.

“Come on,” he said. “Come on. Get out of here. Please don’t stay. Please go.”

The inner door of the airlock opened, and Teresa spilled inside. Her eyes were wild and tearstained. Her mouth was a square gape of rage.

“Where’s my ship?!”

The Falcon was crawling with activity. The crew making last-minute repairs and preparations for the burn, Amos reassembling the dog’s custom crash couch, Naomi coordinating the evacuation with the last stragglers. She almost hadn’t come down to meet Teresa. Naomi could see the moment the girl recognized her. The combination of relief and the focus of finding a target was complex.

“Where did the Roci go?” Teresa shouted.

“Alex had to take it,” Naomi said. “We’ll be on the Falcon for now.”

“No one said that was going to happen!”

“Hey, Tiny,” Amos said, floating in from Naomi’s right. “Thought you might—”

Teresa shrieked and launched herself at the mechanic. She slammed into his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his arm. Adrenaline hit Naomi’s bloodstream like a hammer, and then she heard the girl sobbing. Amos steadied himself with his other hand as Teresa gripped him with her whole body. His flat, black eyes shifted to Naomi and he gestured. What do I do with this?

Naomi raised her shoulders. I don’t know. Awkwardly, Amos reached over and patted Teresa’s head. “It’s okay, Tiny. You’re safe now. We got you.”

He looked utterly out of his depth, and as unmistakably human as she had seen him since his change. A moment later, Cara and Xan appeared, sliding through the air to Amos’ side, touching Teresa’s shoulder to let her know they were there, and then wordlessly embracing her. The one shattered girl enfolded and comforted by the three gray-skinned, black-eyed people. It looked like a painting. Alien and beautiful. Teresa’s sobbing slowed, but her grip stayed tight.

“We may need a minute or two, Boss.”

“When you can,” Naomi said, and hauled herself out and back to the workstation Elvi had given her.

The evacuation was progressing well. Every ship that was able to move was moving. Every ship that couldn’t had been docked with and their crews transferred off. Most were heading for the nearest exit. The Falcon and the Roci, at the center of the ring space, had the farthest to travel in order to reach a gate. Some few of the others were going across the ring space, heading for Bara Gaon or Sol or Auberon at the hardest burn they could manage.

“We’re ready,” Elvi said.

“That’s an exaggeration,” Fayez said. “We’ve reached an arbitrary level of fuck-it-good-enough. We’re calling that ready.”

Naomi turned. Fayez was fastened to the decking with mag boots; Elvi floated beside him. It made an illusion that he was in gravity and she, ethereal, was floating away like a balloon. Her thinness and atrophy helped sell it.

“We don’t have enough of the submersion couches for everyone,” Elvi said. “It’s going to limit how fast we can accelerate safely.”

Naomi looked at her tactical map one last time. There was nothing more she could do. She closed the display with the sense that it was her last moment as the head of the underground. She expected the relief she felt at the idea. The sorrow was more surprising.

“We can use submersion for the most vulnerable,” she said.

Fayez looked to his wife. “She means you, honey.”

“He’s right,” Naomi said. “I do.”

“If we had time, I’d push back on that,” Elvi said. “Five minutes to get everyone in place?”

“I’ll get to my couch now,” Naomi replied.

It was a standard enough design: a gel base on a gimbaled platform. It wasn’t the same kind that the Roci had used. The Laconian gimbals were silent, and the gel had an odd warmth that Naomi understood was supposed to help maintain circulation under high gs but made the couch feel uncomfortably fleshy. There was a temperature control, though, so as soon as she strapped in, she turned it down to a cooler level.

She used her hand terminal to check in with Amos. The lag was suspicious until she realized it was still trying to route through the Roci’s system. She shifted it to the Falcon, and the connection request was instantaneous.

“Hey, Boss,” the thing that had been Amos—that maybe sort-of still was—said.

“All of ours in place?”

“Yep. Muskrat’s a little anxious about the whole thing. Between the new digs and Tiny freaking the fuck out. The medical guy gave Tiny a little something to take the edge off. She’s sleeping now. He said she’s traumatized?”

“Seems plausible.”

“I don’t know how I got this old without someone telling me they had pills for that,” Amos said, and she could hear the disapproval in his tone. It reminded her of who he’d been before.

“There’s a big toolbox,” she said. “Everyone has to find their own way through.”

“I guess. Anyway, I’m strapped in. Tiny’s good. Dog’s good. And that’s us.”

Fuck, Naomi thought. That’s us.

“All right.”

“How’re you holding together?” Amos asked.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” she said, and let the connection drop.

A moment later, Elvi came over the ship-wide system telling everyone to strap in and prepare for hard burn. Naomi pulled up the exterior telescope and set it to track the station. To track Jim. She knew that for the most part, he’d be lost in the drive plume, but she did it anyway.

The countdown came. The crash couch needles bit into her, the juice flowed into her blood, and the Falcon slammed up into her from below.

Holden felt the ships leaving the space, one and then another. The ones still in the bubble of false space shifted toward the escapes, going mind-numbingly fast and still too slow. Holden willed them to go faster. To get out. To be safe.

The brightness of the gates, the light they passed between them, was unfolding for him as he grew more fully into the mechanism. It reminded him of the way babies learn without seeming to try—soaking up information and discovering pattern as part of growing into the being they were going to become. Part of him wished that he could stay longer, see more, die knowing something.

“Hard to let go of a bad idea,” Miller said as if he were agreeing. “I mean, I’m not the guy who can start throwing stones at someone for not wanting to give up the case, right?”

“But you’re pretty good at dying if that’s what it takes to make things right.”

“Turns out that is a talent of mine,” Miller said with a lopsided grin. “There’s always new mysteries out there. We get those for free.”

The dark things shifted again, deforming the space, reaching into it. Trying to change its nature, and this time, touching the ring gates. Pushing through them to the systems beyond. Their attention felt slick and muscular. Wet, somehow. Holden reached out to pull them back, and the effort was terrible.

“Harder to do on your own,” Miller said.

“You could help.”

And the feeling changed, as if there really were two of them and not just an illusion made from memories in a dying body. The thick, slimy reach of the things beyond the gates squirmed and resisted, pushing past Holden’s will, trying to find one more way to end the intrusion.

“Just give me a little fucking time,” Holden said, but if the enemy could hear him, it ignored him. Holden redoubled his efforts, and slowly, reluctantly, the invisible tentacle retracted into its own universe and left him spent and exhausted.

If an attack came again, he wouldn’t be able to stop it.

“You left it all on the field,” Miller said. “Whatever that means.”

“Football.”

“What?”

“It’s a football thing.”

“Oh,” Miller said, and scratched his neck. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

The Rocinante cleared the Nieuwestad gate. Two other ships passed through to Sol. The only things left alive in the ring space were Holden and the Falcon. He could feel Naomi on the ship. And Amos. His actual body shuddered and wept, and he did everything he could to ignore it.

“Kind of funny,” Miller said. “You being here to do this.”

“Yeah, it’s hilarious.”

“It actually is, smartass. Mister make-sure-everyone-has-a-voice. Fight against everyone who is making decisions for other people. Your whole fucking life has been that. Now here you are. Those colony systems aren’t baked yet. A lot of them rely on trade. We do this, and some of them aren’t going to make it.”

“I know.”

The dark things shifted, pressed. They weren’t tired at all. Holden felt their hunger and didn’t know if it was real, or just something he projected onto them. The Falcon drew nearer to the Sol gate. Each second, it moved faster than the second before. Falling toward safety and away from him faster than just falling would have done. Go, he thought. Please be safe. The rings sang their songs in light. The blue sludge in his veins plucked at him, changed him, offered ways that he could live and spread and know.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong. My analysis of the situation is a lot like yours. But you got to see there’s an irony in it. All the shit you gave me about giving people all the information and trusting them to do the right thing? Most of these fuckers aren’t gonna know what happened. This decision you’re making for the whole human race.”

“Is there a reason you’re needling me like this?”

Miller’s expression went stern and sorrowful. “I’m trying to keep you awake, old fella. You’re drifting.”

Holden realized that was true. He made an effort to pull his mind back together. The Falcon was approaching the Sol gate. Not minutes now. Less.

“I absolutely believe that people are more good on balance than bad,” he said. “All the wars and all of the cruelty and all of the violence. I’m not looking away from any of that, and I still think there’s something beautiful about being what we are. History is soaked in blood. The future probably will be too. But for every atrocity, there’s a thousand small kindnesses that no one noticed. A hundred people who spent their lives loving and caring for each other. A few moments of real grace. Maybe it’s only a little more good than bad in us, but…”

The Falcon passed through the Sol gate. Nothing was left in the ring space but him.

“And yet,” Miller said, “we’re about to consign millions of people to slow deaths. That’s just the truth. Are you sure this thing you’re about to do is the right one?”

“I don’t have a fucking clue,” Holden said, and then did it anyway.

For an instant, there was a release of energy second only to the beginning of the universe. There was no one there to see it.

The ring gate faded. Its recent brightness went first, and then the distortion at its center… faded. Where there had been a mystery and a miracle, a gateway to the galaxy, now there were just distant stars framed by a dull loop of metal a thousand kilometers across.

And then it fell.

The Falcon was on a fairly gentle one-third g burn that would put it near Ganymede in a few weeks, and the whole staff—the brightest minds of a shattered empire—were watching the ring gate die, measuring it, collecting data from the corpse. Naomi, sitting alone in the galley with a bulb of tea, just watched it. For decades, it had been fixed in place, one of the farthest objects in the solar system. It didn’t orbit. It didn’t move. Now, it tumbled a little, pulled in toward the sun the way anything would be. The miracle, ended.

Her message queue was like a fire hose. Contacts from the underground, reporters from a hundred different outlets, politicians and Transport Union officials and the local traffic control authorities. Everyone wanted to talk to her, and however they phrased it, they all wanted the same questions answered. What does this mean? What happens now?

She didn’t answer any of them.

The crew of the ship came and went. Some were injured, like her. Some were injured less visibly. She recognized some. It was almost the whole shift before Amos came in. His wide, rolling gait as familiar as her own voice. She wanted to believe it was really him, that her old friend had actually survived Laconia and not just become the raw material of an alien machine. She smiled and raised her bulb.

“Hey, Boss,” Amos said. “How’re you holding together?”

“A little weird,” she said. “How’s Teresa?”

Amos went to the dispenser, frowning at the unfamiliar control menu as he spoke. “She’s seen better days. Whatever happened on that station, it fucked her up pretty good. I think she was really hoping she’d get her dad back.” He found the menu he wanted and grunted with satisfaction. “Seems like her and Sparkles are hitting it off, though. I think Little Man’s kind of jealous. I think he wants to be Tiny’s bestie. There’s some brother-sister dynamics. It’ll work out.”

The galley chimed and put out a little silver tube. Amos cracked the top, rolled over, and sat across from her. His gentle smile could have meant anything. He looked at Naomi’s hand terminal. The tumbling ring.

“Fayez says it’s going to fall into the sun,” Amos said. “Says even all the way out here, it hasn’t got enough sideways to it for an orbit. Just boom, right into the fireball.”

“You think that’s true?”

Amos shrugged. “I think a bunch of independent contractors are gonna strip-mine that shit before it gets to the Belt. They’ll be lucky if there’s a handful of dust left to hit the corona.”

To her surprise, Naomi laughed. Amos’ smile got maybe a degree more genuine.

“I think you’re right,” she said. “And if not, someone’ll hire a tug to give it a little lateral impulse. Nothing humans can touch goes unmodified.”

“A-fucking-men. What about you, Boss? What do you think about all this shit?”

He meant, Are you all right? You’ve lost Jim. You’ve lost Alex. You’ve lost your ship. Are you able to live with that? And the answer was that she could. But she wasn’t ready to say it out loud, so she answered the other question instead.

“I think we got lucky. I think we were one little system in a vast, unreachable universe that was always on the edge of destroying itself, and now we have thirteen hundred chances to figure out how to live with each other. How to be gentle with each other. How to get it right. It’s better odds than we had.”

“Even if someone does, though. We’ll never know. The alien roads are gone. Now it’s just us.”

The ring tumbled on her screen, and she looked past it to the stars. The billions upon billions upon billions of stars, and the tiny fraction that had other people looking back toward her.

“The stars are still there,” she said. “We’ll find our own way back to them.”