Babylon's Ashes

“I mean you’re not wrong. You aren’t uneasy and disturbed by all this because there’s something wrong with you. This is all uneasing and disturbing. You aren’t fucked up. The situation is.”

“That doesn’t… You know, that actually does make me feel a little better.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I need to know this isn’t about Marco and Filip. That… all that isn’t making it hard for you to have me around.”

“No,” Holden said. “We covered that.”

“And we’ll cover it again after this, I’m sure. But if you’d just keep saying it?”

“I would put everyone else that exists headfirst out an airlock just to keep you around. It isn’t that. The only concern I have about you and Marco Inaros is that he’ll try to hurt you again.”

“That’s nice to know.”

“I still love you. I will always love you.”

He was answering the question he thought she was asking, but her gaze cut away. Her smile was rueful, but it was also real. “Always is a long time.”

“I’m captain of this ship. Technically, I could marry us right now.”

Now she laughed. “Would you want to?”

“I’m easy. It seems a little redundant. Husband and wife seems like a less interesting and committed relationship than Holden and Naomi,” he said. “He can’t win, you know.”

“Of course he can. Marco’s the one who decides when he wins.”

“No, I’ve been thinking about it. The Free Navy… is untenable. They did a lot of damage. They killed a lot of people. But all of this is really about the gates. If it wasn’t for all the people rushing out to try to found a new colony, Mars wouldn’t be collapsing. The Belters wouldn’t be worried that they’ll get marginalized out of existence. None of the things that gave Marco a toehold would have happened. But the gates aren’t going away. So all the pressures he’s fighting against? They’ll outlast him. People are still going to want to get out to the new systems, and they’re going to find ways to do it. And the colonies that are already out there are going to want to keep in contact and trade with us. At least until they’re really on their feet, and that could take generations.”

“You think he’s on the wrong side of history.”

“He is,” Holden said.

“Then what does that say about people like me? I grew up in the Belt. I wouldn’t want to live down a gravity well. The gates aren’t going away, but neither are the Belters. Unless they are.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Human history has seen plenty of genocides. If you’re right, then the long term is either the gates or the Belters. And Belters… We’re human. We’re fragile. We die. The gates? Even if we could destroy them, we wouldn’t. There’s too much real estate involved.”

Holden looked down. “All right. That was my turn.”

Naomi lifted a questioning eyebrow.

“That was less comforting than I meant it to be,” he said. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Anyway, that’s not what I meant when I said Marco decides when he wins. You don’t understand how slippery he can be. Whatever happens, he’ll shift so it was his plan all along. If he were the last person alive, he’d say we needed the apocalypse and declare victory. It’s what he is.”

Even though they were the agents of Chrisjen Avasarala’s will, it took seventeen hours for the Rocinante and the Azure Dragon to get berths on Luna. When they finally did, they were at a military yard outside Patsaev complex, where the civilian relief ships were landing. The docks were crowded with people in bunches and lines, some of them staring blankly ahead like victims of a fever, some weeping with relief or exhaustion or both. The air stank of sweat and felt stale, even where the intakes made the greatest breeze.

The Luna Station complex—shipyards and convention centers, hotels and residence centers, schools and office complexes and warehouses—was big enough to fit a hundred million bodies, but the environmental infrastructure would overload at something like half that, even with the advantage of the moon’s mass and conduction to soak up waste heat. The Lagrange stations had less margin. Holden tried to do the math in his head as they forged their path through the crowd. The estimates said that one-half of Earth was dead already. Fifteen billion gone or going so fast there was no way to save them. Of those still alive, two-thirds were living in what the newsfeeds were calling “distressed situations.” Ten billion people who needed food or water or shelter. And up the well, there were places for maybe as many as a quarter million. Two-and-a-half-hundred-thousandths of a percent of the people in need. He couldn’t believe that was right, and tried to figure it again. He came to the same number.

And a thousand worlds out there, just on the other side of the gates. Hostile worlds, most of them, but not more hostile than Earth. Not now. If there were a way to teleport them from Boston and Lisbon and Bangkok, maybe they’d be saved. Maybe they’d go on to raise something new and beautiful out of the ruins of Earth, and if one system didn’t, there’d be a thousand other chances.