Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

Elvi stepped into the commissary, hoping to find Holden at his traditional table. The room was dim, and it took her eyes a moment to adjust. The other one, Amos Burton, was there instead, eating a bowl of brown noodles that smelled of fake peanuts and curry. In the back, Lucia Merton sat in a booth with someone. Elvi looked away before the doctor met her gaze.

Amos looked up at her as she came close.

“I was wondering if Captain Holden… I wanted to talk with him. About the artifacts? In the desert?”

“Something happen with it?”

“I had some theories about it that I thought might be… useful.”

Oh good God, she thought. I’m stuttering like a schoolgirl. Thankfully, Amos didn’t notice, or if he did he pretended not to.

“Captain’s off getting ready to transfer the prisoner,” Amos said. “Should be back around sundown.”

“All right,” Elvi said. “That’s fine. If you’d tell him I was looking for him? I’ll likely be in my hut by the time he’s back. He can find me there.”

“I’ll let ’im know.”

“Thank you.”

She turned away, fists pushed into her pockets. She felt humiliated without being entirely certain why she should. She was just going to offer some perspective on the artifacts and the local ecosystem. There was nothing about it that was at all inappropriate or —

“Elvi!”

She felt her belly drop. She turned toward the back, toward the booth where Lucia Merton sat. Fayez had swiveled around in the chair and was waving at her. She looked at the door to the street, wishing there was some graceful way to get through it.

“Elvi! Come sit. Have a drink with us.”

“Of course,” she said, and walked toward the back of the commissary, regretting every step as she took it.

Doctor Merton looked pale except for the bags under her eyes. Elvi wondered if the woman was ill, or if it was just distress and grief.

“Lucia,” Elvi said.

“Elvi.”

“Sit, sit, sit,” Fayez said. “You’re standing there, I feel short. I hate feeling short.”

Elvi smoothed the fabric of her pants and slid in next to Fayez. His smile was beery and amused. Lucia’s glance at her was almost an apology. You could have sat next to me, she seemed to say.

“We were just talking about Felcia,” Fayez said, then turned to Lucia. “Elvi is the smartest person on the team. Seriously, do you know that she’s the one who wrote the first real paper on cytoplasmic computation? That’s her. Right there.”

“Felcia’s told me about you,” Lucia said. “Thank you for being a friend to my daughter.”

Your family tried to kill me, Elvi thought. You shared your bed every night with a man who wanted me dead.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “She’s a very talented girl.”

“She is,” Lucia said. “And God knows I tried to talk her out of being a doctor.”

“You were hoping she’d stay?” Elvi asked, and her voice was more brittle than she’d intended.

“Not that, no,” Lucia said, laughing. “That she’s leaving this planet is the only good thing that’s happened since we came. It’s only that I’m afraid she’s doing it because it’s what I do. Better that she find her own way.”

“It’s a long way to Luna,” Fayez said. “I mean, I had five major courses of study before I fell in love with geohydraulics. I was going to be a brewer. Can you imagine that?”

Elvi and Lucia said Yes at precisely the same time. Elvi smiled despite herself. Lucia stood.

“I should go get Jacek,” she said.

“Is he all right?” Elvi asked. It was a reflex. A habit of etiquette. She wished she could take the question back even as the words left her mouth. The doctor’s smile was wistful.

“As well as can be expected,” she said. “His father is leaving today.”

Taken prisoner on the Rocinante, Elvi thought, but said nothing.

“Your money’s no good here,” Fayez said. “It’s on me.”

“Thank you, Doctor Sarkis.”

“Fayez. Call me Fayez. Everyone else does.”

Lucia nodded and walked away. Fayez shook his head and stretched, his arm reaching behind Elvi’s shoulders. She shifted to the opposite side of the table.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

“What am I doing? You think that’s the question?”

“You know that her husband —”

“I don’t know a damned thing, Elvi. Neither do you. I’m rich in interpretation and poor in datasets, just the same as you.”

“You think… you think it’s not…”

“I think that building was filled with terrorists, and that Murtry killed them and saved us. That’s what I think, though. I also think that the more the locals know and love me, the less likely it is that I’ll be scalped in the next uprising. And… and what is civilization if it isn’t people talking to each other over a goddamned beer?” Fayez said, then lolled his head back over his shoulder. “Am I right?”

“Fuckin’ A,” Amos called back. “That sure is whatever you were talking about.”

“That’s right,” Fayez said.

“You’re drunk.”

“I’ve been doing this for a while,” Fayez said. “I’ve probably had drinks with a third of the people in this shithole. What I want to know is where the rest of you are while I’m making peace.”

For a moment, she could see his fear too. It was in the angle of his jaw and the way his half-closed eyes cut to the left, avoiding hers. Fayez who could laugh at anything, however tragic, was scared out of his wits. And why wouldn’t he be? They were billions of klicks from home, on a planet they didn’t understand, and in the middle of a war that had now killed people on both sides. And how odd and obvious that it would be a victory for their side – the nameless, faceless killers identified and killed or imprisoned – that would call up the panic.

Fayez was waiting. Waiting for the next escalation. The other shoe to drop. He was reaching out for whatever control he could find or hope for or pretend into being. Elvi understood, because she felt just the same, only she hadn’t known it until she saw it in someone else.

He scowled down at the table, then, slowly, his gaze floated up to meet hers. “What are you doing here?”