“I can still hear voices in my head,” Alex said. “I mean, real people’s real voices. Is that happening for you too?”
“Yes,” Teresa said.
Around them, the Rocinante’s galley seemed like an impostor of itself. Real and present, but also somehow less authentic than it should have been. Like Jim was there, and also wasn’t.
Teresa looked hollow-eyed with disappointment and grief. He tried to imagine what it would have been like for her to come so close to seeing her father again, to have him back on some level, and then failing at the last obstacle.
“When’s Amos coming back?” Alex asked, and Jim shrugged.
“When they’re done with him,” he said.
“What are we gonna do?”
That was the question. Jim scooped the last of his rice and beans into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. The Rocinante was a good ship. It was a good home. There were millions of people in hundreds of systems who would never have a place like this for as long as he’d had the Roci and its crew. He wasn’t sure why that idea felt so melancholy. He popped his bowl and spoon into the recycler, appreciating how the lid clicked under his hand, how it sealed when he took the pressure away. It was such a small, little elegance. So easy to overlook.
“I’m going to—” he said, and pointed toward the passage to his cabin with his thumb. Alex nodded.
Jim moved slowly through the ship, his mind full. He kept thinking of Eros. Of the way that the protomolecule, let loose, had taken people apart and put them back together according to its own needs, its own program. Here he was, decades on, and it was still the same. Amos, Cara, Xan. They’d died and been rebuilt because an alien drone following who knew what decision tree had come to the conclusion that they should overcome death. Duarte and the ring station were taking all of humanity apart like a caterpillar liquifying in its cocoon to be reassembled into a butterfly.
The war would go on. The builders of the ring gates moving from form to form—primitive bioluminescent sea slugs, to angels of light, then to a hive of mostly hairless primates with billions of bodies and only one mind. The dark things inside the gates and outside the universe scratching and ripping and unmaking the sickness that had intruded on its reality. Maybe someday that battle would be won. Maybe it would go on forever. Either way, nothing that Jim knew as human would persist. No more first kisses. No more prayers. No more moments of jealousy or insight or selfishness or love. They would be taken apart and fit back together like the bodies on Eros. Something would be there, but it wouldn’t be them.
Naomi was in a clean jumpsuit when he got to the cabin. She smelled of soap and fresh water. The light from her screen showed the lines in her face—sorrow and laughter both. She was beautiful, yes, but she’d always been beautiful. When they’d been young together, they’d been beautiful just because youth had a beauty all its own. It took age to see whether the beauty could last.
She narrowed her eyes and laughed. “What?”
“Just admiring the view.”
“You cannot be horny right now.”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t be,” he said, then moved beside her and put his hand on hers. “We aren’t getting out of this one, are we?”
“I don’t see how. No.”
They were silent for a moment. Jim felt a tremendous sense of peace washing over him. For the first time since he’d been taken prisoner on Medina, he felt deeply at ease. He stretched, and it actually felt pretty good.
“You are the central fact of my life,” he said. “Knowing you. Waking up next to you. It’s been the most meaningful thing I’ve done. And I am profoundly fucking grateful that I got that. I think of how easy it would have been for us to miss each other, and I can’t even imagine what that lifetime would have been.”
“Jim—”
He waved to have a few seconds more to say what needed to be said. “I know I made choices that cost you. I’ve got this habit of rushing into things because I think they needed doing. I lost time with you, but it was always my choice. Heading to the Agatha King. Sounding the alarms on Medina. Trying to get to the bullet on Ilus. Going back to see what was really happening on Eros Station. They were all risks I took, and I told myself it was okay because I was only risking me. But I was risking someone important to you too, and I am so grateful that I’ve been someone important to you. I didn’t mean to take that lightly.”
She turned off her screen, then squeezed his hand. “You are remarkable. You have always been remarkable. Not always wise, not always thoughtful. But always, always remarkable. Yes, I have paid a price for letting someone as headstrong and impulsive as you matter so very much to me. But I’d do it again.”