Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

The interesting thing – one of the interesting things – about the organism was that it didn’t have chlorophyll or apparently anything like it. The green color came from a prismatic effect analogous to butterfly wings. The actual tissue growing in her eyes would have been a light brown that was almost clear if its structure had been even a little bit different. The scattering effect wouldn’t happen. It also meant that her blindness was a flooding of color and a loss of detail, but it wasn’t particularly dark. She could still close her eyes and see the world go black, and open them to the bright, vibrant green.

Anything else was beyond her now. Gone. She navigated her hand terminal by voice commands, touch, and memory. The reports she would have skimmed through, she listened to now: voices from the labs at Luna and Earth and Ganymede. They didn’t offer her much hope.

“While your immune subject does have a couple rare alleles in the genes regulating his sodium pumps, I’m not seeing anything in the final protein structure that’s changed. The ion concentrations are stable and within the standard error bars. I’ll keep looking, but I’ve got the feeling that we’re barking up the wrong tree here. Sorry to say it.”

Elvi nodded as if there were anyone there who could see her. The headache was still with her. It varied during the day, but she didn’t know if that was part of the infection or just her experience.

“Hey,” Fayez said. And then, “Elvi? Are you here?”

“I am,” she said.

“Well, keep talking a little. I’ve got food on both hands.”

Elvi hummed a pop melody from when she’d been a child and listened for Fayez’s shuffling feet, reaching out to touch his calf when he was near. He folded himself down beside with a soft grunt. Her hand found his, and he gave her the rations packet.

“My next assignment,” he said, “I’m working somewhere with maybe half Earth gravity. Weight. Who needs it?”

Elvi chuckled. He wanted her to, and she even meant it a little. The foil was slick under her fingertips. She felt like she was a little girl sneaking snacks under the covers when she was supposed to be asleep, doing everything by touch. The wrapping of Fayez’s bar crinkled brightly.

“How much more food do we have?” she asked.

“Not much. I think they’re trying for one more drop, though. There are a couple people who can still make out some shapes.”

“And Holden.”

“The one-eyed king,” Fayez said. “We should poke out one of his eyes just to make that fit better, don’t you think? Him having two eyes is a real missed opportunity.”

“Hush,” she said, and the foil gave way under her fingers. The emergency bar was crumbly and smelled like rat food from her days at the labs. It tasted unpleasant and nutritious. She tried to savor it. It wouldn’t be long before she missed this.

“Any luck?” he asked. She shook her head by reflex. She knew he couldn’t see it.

“The best theory we had was that it was related to the plural parentage. He’s got something like eight mothers and fathers, and the techniques to manage that can leave some systemic traces. But nothing so far.”

“Well, that’s a shame. Maybe all the exposure to the protomolecule changed him into a space mutant.”

She took another bite and talked around it. “You can laugh, but Luna’s looking at that too. And they’re trying to grow a fresh sample of the organism based on the sample data we sent. The early trials are showing some real self-organization.”

“Kicking off another five hundred years of graduate theses,” Fayez said. “I don’t think you have to worry about your legacy.”

Fingertips brushed against her knee, the physical act of reaching out undercutting the cynicism of his words. She took his hand in hers, squeezing the pad at the base of his thumb. He shifted closer to her. She could smell his body. None of them had been able to bathe since the storm came, and they probably all reeked, but her nose had become accustomed to the worst of it. She only experienced his scent as an almost pleasant funk, like a wet dog.

“Not the one I’d have chosen,” she said.

“And yet our names will live forever. You as the first discoverer of a new planet full of species. Me as the simple geologist who waited on you hand and foot.”

“Why are you flirting?”

“Flirting’s the last thing to go,” Fayez said. She wished she could see his face. “You do science. I hit on the smartest and prettiest woman in the room. Everyone has their ways of coping with the brutal specter of mortality. And rain. Coping with rain. My next assignment, I want someplace without so much rain.”

In the next room, a child started crying. An exhausted, frightened sound. A woman – Lucia, maybe – sang to it in a language Elvi didn’t know. She popped the last of the bar into her mouth. She needed to get some water. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since the chemistry deck had pumped out a clean bag. If it wasn’t time to switch out yet, it would be soon. Holden had said he’d come by and do it, but she wasn’t sure that was true. He was dead on his feet already, and he didn’t rest. Even when he needed to. Well, she could probably figure out how to switch out a water bag she couldn't see.

“We shouldn’t have come,” Fayez said. “All those crazy bastards talking about how the worlds beyond Medina Station were going to be tainted and evil? They were right.”

“No one said that, did they?”

“Someone probably did. If they didn’t, they should have.”

“You could really have stayed away?” she asked as she rose to her knees and started reaching for the chemistry deck. She could hear the soft ticking of the clean water coming through the outtake filter, a different timbre than the constant rain. “If they came to you with the chance to go to the first really new world, you’d have been able to say no?”

“I’d have waited for the second wave,” Fayez said.

She found the bag. The soft, cold curve wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected. The deck wasn’t putting out water as quickly as it had been, but if there was an error in the system, it hadn’t made a noise. Something else for Holden to check.

“I’d still have come,” she said.

“All this? And you’d still have come?”

“I wouldn’t have known about this. This wouldn’t have happened yet. I’d know I was taking a risk. I did know. Of course I’d get on that ship.”