Cibola Burn (The Expanse) (17 page)

“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.”

“I know,” Holden said. “And I wish to hell that made it easier.”

“Uh, Captain?” the huge baby-man said.

“Amos?”

“There’s another mess of legal crap just came through from the UN for you.”

Holden sighed. “Am I supposed to read it?”

“Don’t see how they can make you,” Amos said. “Just thought you’d want to ignore it intentionally.”

“Thank you. Sort of,” Holden said, then turned back to them. “I’m afraid I have to deal with bureaucracy for a while. But thank you both very much for coming. Please always feel free to come talk to me.”

Fayez stood, and Elvi followed half a second later. He shook each of their hands in turn, then retreated to a room in the back. Fayez walked out to the street with her. Hassan Smith and his rifle acknowledged them again as they passed by.

The sun glowed in the oxygen-blued sky. She knew it was a little too small, the spectrum of light from it a little slanted toward the orange, but it was familiar to her now. As right as thirty-hour days and her close, familiar hut. Fayez fell into step beside her.

“Heading back to your place?” he asked.

“I should,” she said. “I haven’t been out since I came to see Reeve. I’m sure all my datasets are finished. I probably have a bunch of angry messages from home.”

“Yeah, probably,” he said. “So are you all right?”

“You’re the third person to ask me that today,” Elvi said. “Am I acting like there’s something wrong with me?”

“A little,” Fayez said. “You’ve got a right to being a little freaked out.”

“I’m fine,” Elvi said. Her hand still tingled a little where Holden had held it. She massaged her skin. At the end of the street, a Belter girl was walking fast with her head down and her hands shoved deep in her pockets. Murtry and Chandra Wei stood behind her, watching her suspiciously, their rifles in their hands. The wind coming off the plain lifted swirls of dust in the corners of the alleys. She wanted to go back to her hut, and she didn’t. She wanted to go back up the well, onto the
Edward Israel
and home again, and she wouldn’t have left New Terra for all the money in the world. She remembered being very, very young and terribly upset about something. Crying into her mother’s shoulder that she wanted to go home, except that she was home when she said it. That was what she wanted now.

“Don’t do it,” Fayez said.

“Don’t do what?”

“Fall in love with Holden.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped.

“In that case,
really
don’t do it,” Fayez said with a cynical laugh, and turned away.

“T
his is the first colonial arbitration meeting,” Holden said, looking into the camera at the end of the table. “My name is James Holden. Representing the colony of New Terra —”

Ilus,” Carol said.

“— is Carol Chiwewe, colony administrator. Representing Royal Charter Energy is chief of security, Adolphus Murtry.”

“How exactly did that happen?” Carol said. She stared at Murtry when she said it, her expression unreadable. Holden had a feeling Carol might be a very good poker player.

Murtry smiled back at her. His face was equally unreadable. “What’s that?”

“You know exactly what I mean,” Carol snapped back. “What are you doing here? You’re hired security. You have no authority to —”

“You put me in this room,” Murtry said, “when you killed the colonial governor. You do remember that? Big explosion? Crashing ship? It would have been hard to miss.”

Holden sighed and leaned back in his uncomfortable chair. He would let the two of them bicker a bit, release some of the venom they’d been storing up, then put his foot down and drag the discussions back on topic.

RCE had offered to host the talks on their shuttle or the
Edward Israel
, which would have been a lot more comfortable. But the colony had demanded that the meeting be held in First Landing. Which meant that instead of contour-fitted gel filled chairs, they were sitting on whatever metal and plastic monstrosities the colony had lying around. The table was a sheet of epoxied carbon weave sitting on four metal legs, and the room they were using was barely large enough for the table and three chairs. A small shelf on one wall held a coffee pot that was hissing to itself and throwing a bitter scorched smell into the air. Amos leaned against the room’s one door, arms crossed, and with an expression so far beyond bored that he might actually have been asleep.

“— endless accusations without evidence to bolster your own
criminal
claims of property rights —” Carol was saying.

“Enough,” Holden cut in. “No more outbursts from either of you. I’m here at the request of the UN and OPA to broker some sort of agreement that can let RCE do the scientific work they’re authorized to do, and to keep the people already living on New Terra —”

“Ilus.”

“— Ilus from being harmed in the process.”

“What about RCE employees?” Murtry asked softly. “Are they allowed to be harmed?”

“No,” Holden said. “No, they are not. And so the mandate of these meetings has changed somewhat in light of recent events.”

“I’ve only seen one person murdered since Holden arrived, and that one is on you,” Carol said to Murtry.

“Madam coordinator,” Holden continued, “there can be no further attacks on the RCE personnel. That’s non-negotiable. We can’t work out any sort of deal here unless everyone knows they’re safe.”

“But he —”

“And you,” Holden continued, pointing at Murtry, “are a murderer, and one I intend to see prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law —”

“You have no —”

“— once we return to a region of space that actually
has
laws,” Holden said. “Which brings us to our first real discussion point. There are two competing claims regarding who has the right to administrate this expedition. We have to establish who makes the laws here.”

Murtry said nothing, but pulled a flexible display out of his coat and unrolled it on the table. It began slowly scrolling through the text of the UN charter giving RCE the scientific mission on New Terra. Carol snorted and pushed it back across the table at him.

“Yes,” Holden said. “RCE has a legal mandate from the UN placing them in control of this planet for the duration of their scientific mission. But we can’t ignore the fact that people had been living on New Terra, or Ilus, for months before that charter was drafted.”

“No, we can’t,” Carol said.

“So we work out a compromise,” Holden said, “that allows RCE to do the work they came here to do. Work which will, we hope, benefit everyone, including the colonists. This is a new world. There may be any number of dangers here we are unaware of. But this compromise must also allow for the possibility that the final decision of the home governments will be to grant Ilus self-governing status.”

Amos snorted and his head jerked up, eyes wide open for a moment and then slowly narrowing back toward closed.

“Yeah, so,” Holden said, “that’s the long boring explanation. The short version is, I want RCE to move forward with doing the science, and I want the colonists to continue living their lives, and I don’t want anyone getting killed. How do we make that happen?”

Murtry tilted his chair back on two legs and stretched out with his hands behind his head. “Well,” he said, “you make a big point of telling me you plan to arrest me once we get back in civilized space.”

“Yes.”

“But by my count the
colonists
” – he sneered the word – “have racked up about two dozen kills.”

“And when we figure out who the perpetrators are,” Holden said, “they too will go back to Sol system to face trials.”

“You’re a detective now?” Murtry snorted. Holden felt a weird chill run down his spine and looked around as if Miller might somehow have appeared.

“I think that the RCE security force, working in conjunction with Mister Burton and myself, should continue its investigation of those crimes.”

“Wait,” Carol said, leaning forward suddenly in her chair, “I won’t let him —”

“Investigation only. No trials can be held here, so no penalties can be meted out beyond protective detention, and that only with my express consent.”

“Your express consent?” Murtry said, speaking slowly, like he was tasting the words. He smiled. “If they’ll let my team keep looking into the killings while we continue the negotiations here, permit us the right to protect ourselves, and guarantee that anyone with strong evidence against them will be held against future trial, I’m fine with that.”