“I need to understand this fully,” Avasarala said. “You, as a former member of Inaros’ group, are willing to exchange complete and accurate information about his activities both before and after the bombardment of Earth in exchange for blanket immunity for the crew of the Rocinante on any matter not related to the present attacks?” That there had been no profanity in the statement gave it a solidity that unnerved Alex.
“Yes,” Naomi said. “That’s right.”
The relief on Avasarala’s face was hard as flint. “Glad to hear you say that, dear. I was worried I’d misjudged you.” She rose to her feet, then grabbed at the table, cursing under her breath. “I miss weighing something. Half the time, I feel like I’m on a fucking trampoline. I’m going to go lie down and take a sleeping pill before I have a psychotic break, but the debriefing? It starts in the morning.”
“We’ll be wherever you want us to be,” Holden said. “We’re not going to hide anything.” He was still holding Naomi’s hand, and her fingers had curled around his. So maybe that was hopeful after all. As to not hiding anything… Well, Amos still didn’t say anything.
The meeting broke up, except that it also didn’t. Avasarala left, but the rest of them, including Bobbie, went to the security lobby, through the checkpoint, and out to the public lobby together. The sober silence gave way slowly to more mundane conversation: whether there was anyplace with food better than the mess on the Roci. Or if not better, at least different. Whether Naomi was up to drinking alcohol, because there was a little pub on one of the lower levels that was supposed to have some pretty good beers on offer. No one asked whether Bobbie was joining them. It was just assumed. As they shuffled and bounced in the thin gravity, Naomi and Holden kept hold of each other’s hands. Amos and Bobbie traded dirty jokes. It was the powerfully ordinary talk that gave Alex hope. For everything that had happened, that was happening, that was still looming in the unseen and uncertain future, there were still moments like these. And so maybe it would be all right despite it all.
At the wide slope of Chandrayaan Plaza, where the traffic of carts and mechs and half-skipping people turned down a wide ramp deeper into the body of the moon, Amos cleared his throat.
“So that immunity for the crew thing?”
“It wasn’t just for you,” Naomi said, making it a joke, and also not one.
“Yeah, figured,” Amos said. “But here’s the thing. I was thinking about maybe taking on an apprentice. You know, help flesh out the crew. Get some skill redundancy.”
“That’s a good idea,” Holden said. “Did you have someone in mind?”
Chapter Fifty-one: Naomi
“Hell no,” Jim said when they were alone in the suite. “Absolutely no. No fucking way, no. There have got to be a billion different ways to say no, and I’d still have to cycle through them a couple times to really express the depth of no on this one. Clarissa Mao? On the Roci? How is that anything but a massive load of let’s-not-do-that?”
“And yet,” she said, letting herself drift down to the bed, “you told Amos you’d think about it.”
Jim tried pacing, but the slight lunar gravity made it difficult for him. He gave up and sat at the foot of the bed.
“We just got the crew back together. And Bobbie was there. I didn’t want to spoil the moment.”
“Ah. The moment.”
She closed her eyes. Everything hurt. Her skin hu
rt. Her eyes felt gritty and swollen. The joints in her hands and feet ached. Her knees hurt. Her fingertips felt raw and oversensitive. She had the kind of headache that expressed as a sense of profound fragility until she moved too fast, and then it throbbed. It was better now than it had been, though. And it would get better. Slowly, over the course of at least days and maybe weeks, she’d come back to herself. Or some version of herself. But even if some of the damage was permanent, she’d feel better than she did now. Not yet, but soon.
Alex, Amos, and Bobbie were gone. Out to get beer and food. Their food. Pizza or falafel or sashimi. Earth food. There wasn’t any good red kibble on Luna, or if there was, it wouldn’t be served at the kinds of places they’d go. Part of her wished she’d had the energy to go with them. Part of her wished Jim had decided to join them instead of her. Part of her was euphoric and on the edge of tears that she was here, that she’d escaped, that it was over. She felt like her soul was a handful of dice that were still rolling, and what came up would decide the shape that the rest of her life took.
“I mean… Clarissa Mao?” Jim said. “How does anyone think that’s a good idea?”
“Amos isn’t afraid of monsters,” she said. The words tasted bitter, but not completely so. Or no, not bitter. Complex, though.
“She is responsible for a lot of dead people,” Jim said. “She blew up the Seung Un. Took out a quarter of the crew. And that one body they found? The one she was carrying around in a toolbox? Do you remember that?”
“I do.”
“That guy was a friend of hers. She wasn’t just killing faceless enemies. She was right down, look-them-in-the-eyes killing people that she knew. That she liked. How do you go from that to ‘I know, let’s ship out with her’?”
She knew she should stop him. He wasn’t talking about her or the Augustín Gamarra or any of the other ships that had been sabotaged since using the code she wrote. He wasn’t talking about Cyn, or the way he’d tried to intervene in her half-staged suicide. If he had been, there would have been more. How could she abandon her son? How could she let Filip think that she’d killed herself? How could she have kept something that important hidden from the people she said she cared about? All the sins she carried that even Clarissa Mao didn’t.
She knew she should stop him, but she didn’t. His voice was like tearing back scabs. It hurt to hear, and it left her exposed and raw and painful to the touch, and the pain felt good. Worse, it felt right.
“I’m not saying she should be killed. That whole thing about how if she’s ever going back to prison, Amos is going to shoot her? I understand that he’s joking —”
“He’s not.”
“Okay, I’m pretending that he’s joking, but I’m not advocating killing her. I don’t want her to die. I don’t even want her locked up in inhumane, shitty prisons. But that’s not what we’re talking about. Shipping with someone means literally trusting them with your life all the time. And, okay, I was on the Canterbury, and we had some people there who were deeply, deeply sketchy. But even Byers only killed her husband. Clarissa Mao set out to destroy me in particular. Me. I just… I don’t… How does anyone think this is a good idea? Someone who does the things she did doesn’t just change.”
She took a deep breath, pulling air into her bruised lungs. They still gurgled a little, but she was on enough reflex inhibitors that she wasn’t coughing herself light-headed anymore. She didn’t want to open her eyes, didn’t want to talk. She opened her eyes, sat up, her back against the headboard, her arms wrapped around her knees. Holden went quiet, feeling the weight of what was about to come. Naomi plucked at her hair, pulling it over her eyes like a veil, then almost angrily, she smoothed it back so her eyes were clear.