Caliban's War: Book Two of the Expanse series (49 page)

“We talking about the ex-wife or the kid?”

“I don’t care about Nicola. If I’d been there for Mei. If I’d gone to her as soon as we got the warning. If I hadn’t waited there in the dome. And for what? Plants? They’re dead now anyway. I had one, but I lost it, too. I couldn’t even save one. But I could have gotten there. Found her. If I’d—”

“You know she was gone before the shit hit the fan, right?”

Prax shook his head. He wasn’t about to let reality forgive him.

“And this. I had a chance. I got out. I got some money. And I was stupid. It was her last chance, and I was stupid about it.”

“Yeah, well. You’re new at this, Doc.”

“She should have had a better dad. She deserved a better dad. Was such a good … she was such a good girl.”

For the first time, Amos touched him. The wide hand took his shoulder, gripping him from collarbone to scapula and bending Prax’s spine until it was straight. Amos’ eyes were more than bloodshot, white sclera marbled with red. His breath was hot and astringent, the platonic ideal of a sailor on a shore leave bender. But his voice was sober and steady.

“She’s got a fine daddy, Doc. You give a shit, and that’s more than a lot of people ever do.”

Prax swallowed. He was tired. He was tired of being strong, of being hopeful and determined and preparing for the worst. He didn’t want to be himself anymore. He didn’t want to be anyone at all. Amos’ hand felt like a ship clamp, keeping Prax from spinning away into darkness. All he wanted was to be let go.

“She’s gone,” Prax said. It felt like a good excuse. An explanation. “They took her away from me, and I don’t know who they are, and I can’t get her back, and I don’t understand.”

“It ain’t over yet.”

Prax nodded, not because he was actually comforted, but
because this was the moment when he knew he should act like he was.

“I’m never going to find her.”

“You’re wrong.”

The door chimed and slid open. Holden stepped in. Prax couldn’t see at first what was different about him, but that something had happened … had changed … was unmistakable. The face was the same; the clothes hadn’t changed. Prax had the uncanny memory of sitting through a lecture on metamorphosis.

“Hey,” Holden said. “Everything all right?”

“Little bumpy,” Amos said. Prax saw his own confusion mirrored in Amos’ face. They were both aware of the transformation, and neither of them knew what it was. “You get laid or something, Cap?”

“No,” Holden said.

“I mean, good on you if you did,” Amos said. “It just wasn’t how I pictured—”

“I didn’t get laid,” Holden said hesitantly. The smile that came after was almost radiant. “I got fired.”

“Just you got fired, or all of us?”

“All of us.”

“Huh,” Amos said. He went still for a moment, then shrugged. “All right.”

“I need to talk to Naomi, but she’s not accepting connections from me. Do you think you could track her down?”

Discomfort pursed Amos’ lips like he’d sucked on an old lemon.

“I’m not going to pick a fight,” Holden said. “We just didn’t leave it in the right place. And it’s my fault, so I need to fix it.”

“I know she was hanging out down in that one bar Sam told us about last time. The Blauwe Blome. But you make a dick of yourself and I’m not the one that told you.”

“Not a problem,” Holden said. “Thanks.”

The captain turned to leave and then stopped in the doorway. He looked like someone still half in a dream.

“What’s bumpy?” he asked. “You said it was bumpy.”

“The doc was looking to hire on some Luna private security squad to track the kid down. Didn’t work out and he kind of took it bad.”

Holden frowned. Prax felt the heat of a blush pushing up his neck.

“I thought
we
were finding the kid,” Holden said. He sounded genuinely confused.

“Doc wasn’t clear on that.”

“Oh,” Holden said. He turned to Prax. “We’re finding your kid. You don’t need to get someone else.”

“I can’t pay you,” Prax said. “All my accounts were on the Ganymede system, and even if they’re still there, I can’t access them. I just have what people are giving me. I can probably get something like a thousand dollars UN. Is that enough?”

“No,” Holden said. “That won’t buy a week’s air, much less water. We’ll have to take care of that.”

Holden tilted his head like he was listening to something only he could hear.

“I’ve already talked to my ex-wife,” Prax said. “And my parents. I can’t think of anyone else.”

“How about everyone?” Holden said.

“I’m James Holden,” the captain said from the huge screen of the
Rocinante’s
pilot capsule, “and I’m here to ask for your help. Four months ago, hours before the first attack on Ganymede, a little girl with a life-threatening genetic illness was abducted from her day care. In the chaos that—”

Alex stopped the playback. Prax tried to sit up, but the gimbaled copilot’s chair only shifted under him, and he lay back.

“I don’t know,” Alex said from the pilot’s couch. “The green background kinda makes him look pasty, don’t you think?”

Prax narrowed his eyes a degree, considered, then nodded.

“It’s not really his color,” Prax said. “Maybe if it was darker.”

“I’ll try that,” the pilot said, tapping at his screen. “Normally it’s Naomi who does this stuff. Communications packages ain’t exactly my first love. But we’ll get it done. How about this?”

“Better,” Prax said.

“I’m James Holden, and I’m here to ask for your help. Four months ago …”

Holden’s part of the little presentation was less than a minute, speaking into the camera from Amos’ hand terminal. After that, Amos and Prax had spent an hour trying to create the rest. Alex had been the one to suggest using the better equipment on the
Rocinante
. Once they’d done that, putting together the information had been easy. He’d taken the start he’d made for Nicola and his parents as the template. Alex helped him record the rest—an explanation of Mei’s condition; the security footage of Strickland and the mysterious woman taking her from the day care; the data from the secret lab, complete with images of the protomolecule filament; pictures of Mei playing in the parks; and a short video from her second birthday party, when she smeared cake frosting on her forehead.

Prax felt odd watching himself speak. He had seen plenty of recordings of himself, but the man on the screen was thinner than he’d expected. Older. His voice was higher than the one he heard in his own ears, and less hesitant. The Praxidike Meng who was about to be broadcast out to the whole of humanity was a different man than he was, but it was close enough. And if it helped to find Mei, it would do. If it brought her back, he’d be anyone.

Alex slid his fingers across his controls, rearranging the presentation, connecting the images of Mei to the timeline to Holden. They had set up an account with a Belt-based credit union that had a suite of options for short-term unincorporated nonprofit concerns so that any contributions could be accepted automatically. Prax watched, wanting badly to offer comment or take control. But there was nothing more to do.

“All right,” Alex said. “That’s about as pretty as I can make it.”

“Okay, then,” Prax said. “What do we do with it now?”

Alex looked over. He seemed tired, but there was also an excitement.

“Hit send.”

“But the review process …”

“There is no review process, Doc. This isn’t a government thing. Hell, it’s not even a business. It’s just us monkeys flying fast and tryin’ to keep our butts out of the engine plume.”

“Oh,” Prax said. “Really?”

“You hang around the captain long enough, you get used to it. You might want to take a day, though. Think it through.”

Prax lifted himself on one elbow.

“Think what through?”

“Sending this out. If it works the way we’re thinking, you’re about to get a lot of attention. Maybe it’ll be what we’re hoping for; maybe it’ll be something else. All I’m saying is you can’t unscramble that egg.”

Prax considered for a few seconds. The screens glowed.

“It’s Mei,” Prax said.

“All right, then,” Alex said, and shifted communication control to the copilot’s station. “You want to do the honors?”

“Where is it going? I mean, where are we sending it?”

“Simple broadcast,” Alex said. “Probably get picked up by some local feeds in the Belt. But it’s the captain, so folks will watch it, pass it around on the net. And …”

“And?”

“We didn’t put our hitchhiker in, but the filament out of that glass case?We’re kind of announcing that the protomolecule’s still out there. That’s gonna boost the signal.”

“And we think that’s going to help?”

“First time we did something like this, it started a war,” Alex said. “ ‘Help’ might be a strong word for it. Stir things up, though.”

Prax shrugged and hit send.

“Torpedoes away,” Alex said, chuckling.

Prax slept on the station, serenaded by the hum of the air recyclers. Amos was gone again, leaving only a note that Prax shouldn’t wait up. It was probably his imagination that made the spin gravity seem to feel different. With a diameter as wide as Tycho’s, the Coriolis effect shouldn’t have been uncomfortably noticeable, and certainly not when he lay there, motionless, in the darkness of his room. And still, he couldn’t get comfortable. He couldn’t forget that he was being turned, inertia pressing him against the thin mattress as his body tried to fly out into the void. Most of the time he’d been on the
Rocinante
, he’d been able to trick his mind into thinking that he had the reassuring mass of a moon under him. It wasn’t, he decided, an artifact of how the acceleration was generated so much as what it meant.

As his mind slowly spiraled down, bits of his self breaking apart like a meteor hitting atmosphere, he felt a massive welling-up of gratitude. Part of it was to Holden and part to Amos. The whole crew of the
Rocinante
. Half-dreaming, he was on Ganymede again. He was starving, walking down ice corridors with the certainty that somewhere nearby, one of his soybeans had been infected with the protomolecule and was tracking him, bent on revenge. With the broken logic of dreams, he was also on Tycho, looking for work, but all the people he gave his CV to shook their heads and told him he was missing some sort of degree or credential he didn’t recognize or understand. The only thing that made it bearable was a deeper knowledge—certain as bone—that none of it was true. That he was sleeping, and that when he woke, he would be somewhere safe.

What did wake him at last was the rich smell of beef. His eyes were crusted like he’d been crying in his sleep, the tears leaving salt residues where they’d evaporated. The shower was hissing and splashing. Prax pulled on his jumpsuit, wondering again why it had
TACHI
printed across the back.

Breakfast waited on the table: steak and eggs, flour tortillas, and black coffee. Real food that had cost someone a small fortune. There were two plates, so Prax chose one and started eating. It
had probably cost a tenth of the money he had from Nicola, but it tasted wonderful. Amos ducked out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his hips. A massive white scar puckered the right side of his abdomen, pulling his navel off center, and a nearly photographic tattoo of a young woman with wavy hair and almond-shaped eyes covered his heart. Prax thought there was a word under the tattooed face, but he didn’t want to stare.