Babylon's Ashes

“There was a thing you read me one time. About jack pines,” she said, digging through her jewelry box for her necklace and the gold bracelets that would go with the embroidery. “Do you remember it? All I have is that it ended ‘da-dah, da-dah, da-dah, da-dah, and paved the way to Paradise.’ It was about how the seeds needed a fire before they could spread. I told you it sounded like a sophomore girl trying to make the break up with her abusive boyfriend sound deep. That poem. I can’t get it out of my head now, and I can’t remember it either. It’s annoying.”

The bracelets slid into place. The necklace settled too lightly on her collarbone. She sat at her table, touching on eyeliner, tapping a nearly homeopathic bit of rouge onto her cheeks. Just enough to make her look more vital than she felt. Not enough to make it seem like she was wearing makeup. The smell of the rouge reminded her of the apartment in Denmark she’d kept during university. God, her mind was everywhere these days. When she finished, she turned to her hand terminal. The indicator showed she was still recording. She smiled into the camera.

“I have to put the mask on now. Go wade into it all again. They still haven’t found you, but I tell myself that they will. That I would know it if you were dead. I don’t know it, so it isn’t true. But it’s getting harder, love. And if you don’t come back soon, I’ll have saved so many of these messages, you’ll spend half a semester just catching up to me.”

Except, she thought, there wouldn’t be semesters. Or poetry courses. Or any of the things that had made her life hers before the rocks fell. And then, almost as if he was there, Arjun’s dissenting voice murmured in her mind, There will always be poetry.

“I love you,” she said to the hand terminal. “I will always love you. Even…” She hadn’t said it before. Hadn’t let herself think it. There was a first time for everything. A last time too. “Even if you’re not here.”

She stopped recording, repaired the damage her tears had done to the makeup, and lowered her head like an actor preparing to take the stage. When she lifted her eyes again, they were harder. She made the connection request to Said, and he answered immediately. He’d been waiting.

“Good morning, Madam Secretary,” he said.

“Cut the bullshit. What fresh hell are we facing today?”

“You have a meeting with Gorman Le from the scientific service in half an hour. Then breakfast with Prime Minister Smith. An interview with Karol Stepanov of the Eastern Economic Strategic Report, and then the meeting with the Strategy and Response Committee. That will last until lunch, ma’am.”

“Stepanov. He was the one who got the Cigdem Toker Award three years ago for the piece on Dashiell Moraga?”

“I… I can check, ma’am.”

“For fuck’s sake, Said. Try to keep up here. He is. I’m sure of it. I should talk to his wife before I meet with him,” she said. “Is there a place we can push him to in the afternoon?”

“I can make space, ma’am.”

“Do that. And make sure Smith is a private audience. I’m sick of every fucking thing I do being under a microscope. If I get an ass polyp, I’ll find out about it on Le Monde.”

“If you say so, ma’am.”

“I say so. Send the cart. Let’s get this over with.”

Gorman Le was a thin man with light brown hair salted with white and jade green eyes that Avasarala guessed were cosmetic. She hadn’t known him before she came to Luna. He’d been promoted above his level of preparation when the rocks fell, and it showed in his overly somber bearing and the way he cleared his throat before he spoke.

“The ships that… failed to complete the transition tended to be larger in mass,” he said. “The Oleander-Swift, the Barbatana de Tubarão, and the Harmony all follow that pattern. The Casa Azul doesn’t match that, though.”

The science service had always been a large presence on Luna. It was where the first broad-array telescope had been built, up free from the interference of atmosphere. The first permanent moon base had been equally divided between military posturing and research. But the generations that had risen and fallen since then had left the Luna science service behind, pressing out to the places where the action really was: Ganymede, Titan, Iapetus. God help them all, Phoebe. It left the Luna-based service office hardly more than admin offices and children’s science-fair projects. The meeting room they were in was gray-green with wall screens left cloudy by years of fine abrasion and fake leather chairs.

“I’m hearing you say there’s no consistent pattern,” Avasarala said.