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“Well—” he said.
“If that happens without us at least giving this a try once, I will be very unhappy about it.”
“Naomi, I—”
“It’s simple, Jim,” she said, reaching out for his hand and pulling him back toward her. She leaned across the table between them until their faces were almost touching. “It’s a yes or no question.”
“Yes.”
Chapter Forty-Four: Miller
Miller sat by himself, staring out the wide observation windows without seeing the view. The fungal-culture whiskey on the low black table beside him remained at the same level in the glass as when he’d bought it. It wasn’t really a drink. It was permission to sit. There had always been a handful of drifters, even on Ceres. Men and women whose luck had run out. No place to go, no one to ask favors of. No connection to the vast net of humanity. He’d always felt a kind of sympathy for them, his spiritual kindred.
Now he was part of that disconnected tribe in earnest.
Something bright happened on the skin of the great generation ship—a welding array firing off some intricate network of subtle connection, maybe. Past the Nauvoo, nestled in the constant hive-like activity of Tycho Station, was a half-degree arc of the Rocinante, like a home he’d once had. He knew the story of Moses seeing a promised land he would never enter. Miller wondered how the old prophet would have felt if he’d been ushered in for a moment—a day, a week, a year—and then dropped back out in the desert. Kinder never to leave the wastelands. Safer.
Beside him, Juliette Mao watched him from the corner of his mind carved out for her.
I was supposed to save you, he thought. I was supposed to find you. Find the truth.
And didn’t you?
He smiled at her, and she smiled back, as world-weary and tired as he was. Because of course he had. He’d found her, he’d found who killed her, and Holden was right. He’d taken revenge. All that he’d promised himself, he’d done. Only it hadn’t saved him.
“Can I get you anything?”
For half a second, Miller thought Julie had said it. The serving girl had opened her mouth to ask him again before he shook his head. She couldn’t. And even if she had been able to, he couldn’t afford it.
You knew it couldn’t last, Julie said. Holden. His crew. You knew you didn’t really belong there. You belong with me.
A sudden shot of adrenaline revved his tired heart. He looked around for her, but Julie was gone. His own privately generated fight-or-flight reaction didn’t have room for daydream hallucinations. And still. You belong with me.
He wondered how many people he’d known who had taken that path. Cops had a tradition of eating their guns that went back to long before humanity had lifted itself up the gravity well. Here he was, without a home, without a friend, with more blood on his hands from the past month than from his whole career before it. The in-house shrink on Ceres called it suicidal ideation in his yearly presentation to the security teams. Something to watch out for, like genital lice or high cholesterol. Not a big deal if you were careful.
So he’d be careful. For a while. See where it went.
He stood, hesitated for three heartbeats, then scooped up his bourbon and drank it in a gulp. Liquid courage, they called it, and it seemed to do the trick. He pulled up his terminal, put in a connect request, and tried to compose himself. He wasn’t there yet. And if he was going to live, he needed a job.
“Sabez nichts, Pampaw,” Diogo said. The kid was wearing a meshwork shirt and pants cut in a fashion as youthful as it was ugly, and in his previous life, Miller would probably have written him off as too young to know anything useful. Now Miller waited. If anything could wring a prospect out of Diogo, it would be the promise of Miller getting a hole of his own. The silence dragged. Miller forced himself not to speak for fear of begging.
“Well… ” Diogo said warily. “Well. There’s one hombre might could. Just arm and eye.”
“Security guard work’s fine with me,” Miller said. “Anything that pays the bills.”
“Il conversa á do. Hear what’s said.”
“I appreciate anything you can do,” Miller replied, then gestured at the bed. “You mind if I…?”
“Mi cama es su cama,” Diogo said. Miller lay down.
Diogo stepped into the small shower, and the sound of water against flesh drowned out the air cycler. Even on board ship, Miller hadn’t lived in physical circumstances this intimate with anyone since his marriage. Still, he wouldn’t have gone as far as to call Diogo a friend.
Opportunity was thinner on Tycho than he’d hoped, and he didn’t have much by way of references. The few people who knew him weren’t likely to speak on his behalf. But surely there’d be something. All he needed was a way to remake himself, to start over and be someone different from who he’d been.
Assuming, of course, that Earth or Mars—whichever one came out on top of the war—didn’t then wipe the OPA and all the stations loyal to it out of the sky. And that the protomolecule didn’t escape Eros and slaughter a planet. Or a station. Or him. He had a moment’s chill, recalling that there was still a sample of the thing on board the Roci. If something happened with it, Holden and Naomi, Alex and Amos might all join Julie long before Miller did.
He told himself that wasn’t his problem anymore. Still, he hoped they’d be all right. He wanted them to be well, even if he wasn’t.
“Oi, Pampaw,” Diogo said as the door to the public hall slid open. “You hear that Eros started talking?”
Miller lifted himself to one elbow.
“Sí,” Diogo said. “Whatever that shit is, it started broadcasting. There’s even words and shit. I’ve got a feed. You want a listen?”
No, Miller thought. No, I have seen those corridors. What’s happened to those people almost happened to me. I don’t want anything to do with that abomination.
“Sure,” he said.
Diogo scooped up his own hand terminal and keyed in something. Miller’s terminal chimed that it had received the new feed route.
“Chicá perdída in ops been mixing a bunch of it to bhangra,” Diogo said, making a shifting dance move with his hips. “Hard-core, eh?”
Diogo and the other OPA irregulars had breached a high-value research station, faced down one of the most powerful and evil corporations in a history of power and evil. And now they were making music from the screams of the dying. Of the dead. They were dancing to it in the low-rent clubs. What it must be like, Miller thought, to be young and soulless.
