Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

“Fine?” she said, her inflection making it a question.

“You just looked a little weird there for a second. You sure you’re feeling all right?”

“I was supposed to meet with Captain Holden?” she said, trying to pull herself back together. “My name’s Elvi Okoye, and I’m with the RCE. I’m an exobiologist with RCE.”

“Elvi!” Fayez called, waving her over.

She nodded to the pale man and walked over to the table where Fayez and Holden were sitting. James Holden’s eyes were on her.

“This is Elvi,” Fayez said. “We’ve known each other since upper university.”

“How do you do?” Elvi said, her voice sounding false and tinny in her ears. She cleared her throat.

“Pleased to meet you,” Holden said, rising to his feet and extending a hand. Elvi shook it just as if she were meeting anyone else. She was proud of herself for that.

“Sit,” Fayez said, pushing out a chair for her. “I was just talking to the captain here about the resources problem.”

“It’s not an issue yet,” Elvi said. “But it will be.”

Holden sighed, clasping his fingers together. “I’m still hopeful that we can negotiate something that’s equitable for everyone involved.”

Elvi frowned and tilted her head. “How would you do that?”

Holden lifted his eyebrows. Fayez leaned in toward her.

“We were talking about resources like lithium and money,” he said, then turned toward Holden again. “She was talking about water and nutrients. Different contexts.”

“Is there not enough water?” Holden asked.

“There is,” Elvi said, hoping that her blush didn’t show. Of course they were talking about lithium mines. She should have known that. “I mean, there’s enough water. And nutrients. But that’s sort of the problem. We’re here in the middle of a totally foreign biosphere. Everything about the place is different from what we’re used to dealing with. I mean, it looks like life here is genuinely bi-chiral.”

“Really?” Holden said.

“No one knows what that means, Elvi,” Fayez said.

Holden politely pretended not to have heard him. “But the animals and insects here all look… well, they don’t look familiar, but they’ve got eyes and things.”

“They’re under the same selection pressures,” Elvi said. “Some things are just a good idea. Back on Earth, eyes evolved four or five different times. Powered flight at least three times. Most animals put the mouth near the sense organs. The degree of large-scale morphological similarities given the underlying biochemical differences is part of what makes this such an amazing research opportunity. The data I’ve been able to send back since we got here would be enough to fuel research for a generation, and I’ve barely scratched the surface.”

“And the resources problem?” Holden said. “What are the resources you need?”

“It’s not the ones we need,” Elvi said, waving her hands. “It’s the ones we are. From the perspective of the local environment, we’re bubbles of water, ions, and high-energy molecules. We’re not exactly the flavor that’s around here, but it’s only a matter of time before something figures out a way to exploit those.”

“Like a virus?” Holden asked.

“Viruses are a lot more like us than what we’re seeing here,” Elvi said. “Viruses have nucleic acids. RNA. They evolved with us. When something here figures out how to access us as resources, it’s probably going to be more like mining.”

Holden’s expression was dismayed. “Mining,” he echoed.

“We have an advantage for the time being because we’re an older biosphere. From what we can tell, things weren’t really evolving here until sometime between one and a half and two billion years ago. We’ve got pretty strong evidence that we have a good billion-year head start on these guys, at least. And some of our strategies may work against them. If we can build antibodies against the proteins that the locals use, we might be able to fight them off like any other infection.”

“Or we might not,” Fayez said.

“Part of the reason I came out here, part of the reason I agreed to this, was that we were going to do it right,” Elvi said, hearing the stress coming into her voice. “We were going to get a sealed environment. A dome. We were going to survey the planet and learn from it and be responsible about how we treated it. The RCE sent scientists. They sent researchers. Do you know how many of us have sustainability and conservation certifications? Five-sixths. Five-sixths.”

Her voice was louder now than she’d meant it to be. Her gestures were wider, and there was a tremble of outrage in her words. Holden’s unreal blue eyes were on her, and she could feel him listening like his attention could radiate. Intellectually, she knew what was happening. She was scared and she was hurt and she was guilty for having been the one to lead Reeve and the others into danger. She’d been able to ignore it all, but it was bubbling up. She was talking about the biology and the science, but what she meant was Help me. It’s all going wrong, and no one can help me. No one but you.

“Only when you got here, there was already a colony,” Holden said. His voice was like warm flannel. “And a colony made up of a bunch of people who have a lot of very good reasons to distrust corporations. And governments.”

“It looks calm here,” Elvi said. “It looks beautiful. And it is. And it’s going to teach us things we never dreamed before. But we’re doing it wrong.”

Fayez sighed. “She’s right,” he said. “I mean, I like talking about lithium and moral rights and legalities as much as the next guy. But Elvi’s not wrong about how weird this place is when we start looking close enough. And it’s got a lot of very dangerous edges that we’re not paying any attention to. Because we’re, you know, killing each other.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Holden said. “I’m going to need to look at it. The part where people are killing each other has to be my first focus. But I promise you both that I will put creating a closed, safe planetary dome on the list as soon as we’ve got the crisis under control. No matter who winds up being in control.”

“Thank you,” Elvi said.

“Most of the people here are good,” Fayez said. “The Belters? We’ve been here for months, and I swear most of these people aren’t monsters. They’re just poor bastards who thought starting over was a good idea. And Royal Charter is a very, very responsible corporation. Look at their history, and you won’t find any more graft and corruption than an average PTA. They’re really trying to do all this right.”