Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

“That’s what pulls them together. That thing where they’re oppressed by Earth is just about the one thing they have in common. So they cultivate it. Hating people like us is what makes them them.”

Murtry nodded. “You know there are people that would call you prejudiced for saying that.”

“It’s only prejudice when you haven’t been there,” Havelock said. “I was on Ceres Station just before it broke for the OPA. For me, it’s all lived experience.”

“Well, I think you’re right,” Murtry said. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Off the record. Most of the people we’ve got on the ship are Earthers or at least Martian. But there are a few Belt types. Like that mechanical tech. What’s his name?”

“Bischen?”

“Him. Just keep an eye on those ones.”

“Is there something going on?”

“Just that the squatters are mostly Belt and outer planets, and the RCE is an Earth company. I don’t want anyone getting their loyalties confused.”

“Yes, sir,” Havelock said. And then, more tentatively, “Is something happening, sir?”

“Not right away. But… well, you might as well know. I’ve had word from the home office. My request for latitude was respectfully declined. Apparently there’s some politicking about how this gets handled. The OPA and the UN are talking about what they want to have happen. Want to make sure the squatters are treated well.”

Murtry’s anger was understated but profound, and Havelock found himself resonating with it.

“But we have the charter. We have a right to be here.”

“We do.”

“And we aren’t the ones who started killing people.”

“We’re not.”

“So what are we supposed to do? Sit on our hands while the Belters kill us and take our things?”

“The sale of the lithium from their illegal mining operations has been frozen,” Murtry said. “And we are instructed not to do anything to incite further conflict.”

“That’s bullshit. How are we supposed to do our work if we’re being all careful not to offend the bastards who are shooting at us?”

Murtry’s shrug was an agreement. When he spoke, his calm, laconic tone barely covered his contempt.

“Apparently they’re sending us a mediator.”

Interlude: The Investigator

— it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out —

One hundred and thirteen times a second, nothing answers and it reaches out. It is not conscious, though parts of it are. There are structures within it that were once separate organisms; aboriginal, evolved, and complex. It is designed to improvise, to use what is there and then move on. Good enough is good enough, and so the artifacts are ignored or adapted. The conscious parts try to make sense of the reaching out. Try to interpret it.

One imagines an insect’s leg twitching twitching twitching. One hears a spark closing a gap, the ticking so fast it becomes a drone. Another, oblivious, reexperiences her flesh falling from her bones, the nausea and fear, and begs for death as she has for years now. Her name is Maria. It does not let her die. It does not comfort her. It is unaware of her because it is unaware.

But unaware is not inactive. It finds power where it can, nestled in a bath of low radiation. Tiny structures, smaller than atoms, harvest the energy of the fast-moving particles that pass through it. Subatomic windmills. It eats the void and it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out.

In the artifacts that are conscious, memories of vanished lives still flicker. Tissues that were changed without dying hold the moment that a boy heard his sister was leaving home. They hold multiplication tables. They hold images of sexuality and violence and beauty. They hold the memories of flesh that no longer exists. They hold metaphors: mitochondria, starfish, Hitler’s-brain-in-a-jar, hell realm. They dream. Structures that were neurons twitch and loop and burn and dream. Images and words and pain and fear, endless. An overwhelming sense of illness. An old man’s remembered voice whispering dry words that it is unaware of. Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made.

If there had been a reply, it could end. If there had been anyone to answer, it would have come to rest like a marble at the bottom of a hill, but nothing answers. The scars know that no answer will ever come, but the reflex triggers the reflex triggers the reflex and it reaches out.

It has solved a billion small puzzles already in cascades of reflex. It has no memory of having done so, except in its scars. There is only reaching out, delivering the message that its task is complete. Nothing answers, and so it cannot end. It reaches out. It is a complex mechanism for solving puzzles using what there is to be used.

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

And so it has the investigator.

Of all the scars, there is one that came last. That is most intact. It is useful and so it is used. It builds the investigator from that template, unaware that it is doing so, and tries another way of reaching out. And something answers. Something wrong and foreign and aboriginal, but there is an answer, so over the course of years it builds the investigator again and reaches out. The investigator becomes more complex.

It will not stop until it makes that final connection, and it will never make that final connection. It stretches, tries new combinations, different ways to reach out, unaware that it is doing so. Unaware that it exists. Empty, except in the insignificant parts.

The insectile leg will twitch forever. The scar that wails for death will wail forever. The investigator will search forever. The low voice will mutter forever.

Nothing of him doth fade but suffers a sea change

Into something rich and strange.

It reaches out.

Chapter Four: Holden

MCRN Sally Ride, this is independent vessel Rocinante, requesting permission to pass through the Ring with one ship. OPA heavy freighter Callisto’s Dream.”

“Transmit authorization code now, Rocinante.”

“Transmitting.” Holden tapped the screen to send the codes and stretched out his arms and legs, letting the motion pull him out of his chair in the microgravity. Several abused joints at various places on his skeleton responded with popping sounds.

“You’re getting old,” Miller said. The detective stood in a rumpled gray suit and porkpie hat a few meters away, his feet on the deck as though there were gravity. The smarter the Miller simulation had gotten – and over the last two years it had become damned near coherent – the less it seemed to care about matching the reality around it.