Leviathan Falls

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Jim

The experience, when it came, was overwhelming. Jim remembered everything from before it, but with the sense of distance that trauma could sometimes bring. He could still picture Amos, strapped to the medical couch, suffering seizures and pain. He remembered following Elvi down to the catalyst’s chamber and seeing Fayez and the technicians there.

He remembered looking at the woman they called the catalyst and thinking of Julie Mao, the first person he’d seen infected by the protomolecule, and how long it had taken her to die. Or if not die, be transformed. And the victims of Eros Station, injected with the protomolecule sample and exposed to massive doses of radiation to drive the spread of the alien organism or technology or however people wanted to categorize it. Even then, they’d died slowly. Or been unmade and repurposed without the release of dying in between. He remembered thinking how perverse it was that the catalyst could live in that state indefinitely, a skin to hold the protomolecule. A tool made from human flesh. He remembered wondering if there was anything left of her that could be aware of what she’d become.

Then Elvi had opened the isolation chamber, taken out Cara and Xan in hope that they could interrupt the ongoing assault that was killing Amos. All of those memories were clear and unmuddied, but it felt like they’d happened weeks or months before. That was because of what happened next.

There had been a brightness: light that was also a sound that was also an impact like being punched in each cell of his body individually. He’d felt like something in him was opening and opening and opening until he was afraid it would never stop opening, that he’d become a single, ongoing act of expansion that could only end with annihilation.

Then, like a dream, he was a hundred places at once. A thousand people. A vastness in which the idea of “James Holden” was lost like a stone in the ocean. He was a woman with an aching shoulder in the galley of a ship he didn’t know, halfway through a bulb of cheap coffee that had been secretly spiked with alcohol. He was a young man in a small, cramped engineering deck, engaged in a sexual act with Rebecca—whoever she was—and torn between guilt and delight at his infidelity. He was an officer in the Laconian Navy hiding in his ready room, the lights off, trying to keep his sobs quiet so that the crew wouldn’t hear them and know how afraid he was.

Like a kaleidoscope made from other people’s intimate lives, his memory was bright and shining and fragmented. It left him a little dizzy just thinking about it too much.

“So,” Elvi said, “I think we can agree that Colonel Tanaka’s reports were accurate.”

Tanaka, on the wall screen, nodded. Naomi was on the screen beside her, the Roci’s ops deck around her like a frame. Jim and Fayez floated in Elvi’s office. All of them together, and all of them scattered.

Amos, along with Cara and Xan, was being scanned by the medical team. As was everyone else on the crew. The hours that had passed since the failed dive had been a whirlwind of activity. The science teams checking and rechecking their data, searching for any patterns that might shift and fade before they were quite erased. Jim didn’t doubt that they’d find all the same things Tanaka had found the first time, when the Preiss had been saved.

The idea caught him. “Was there someone transiting? When this happened?”

“No,” Naomi said. “The trigger wasn’t the things inside the gate this time. It was us.”

“That’s my assumption too,” Elvi said. “Duarte or the station or some combination of the two rejected us. Pushed back. I believe that Colonel Tanaka’s drug regimen blunted the worst of the effect. At least for us.”

“Wait,” Fayez said. “At least for us? As opposed to who?”

“It seems like the event may have been broader this time than before. I’ve had reports from five scientific missions that were close to their gates reporting experiences similar to ours. I won’t be surprised if more come in later.”

“How far could it have reached?” Tanaka asked.

“It’s a nonlocal effect,” Elvi said. “Without better understanding how it propagates, I couldn’t make any meaningful guess.”

“I think I have some indication,” Naomi said, and her voice was hard as slate. Her image disappeared from the screen, and a series of tactical maps took its place. Solar systems cycled through, a few seconds of one, and another, and then another. As Naomi spoke, they went on and didn’t repeat. “The underground and its allies are showing that since the event, a hundred and five ships in seventy systems have changed course in ways that will bring them through the gates. They’re a combination of Laconian, underground, and purely civilian vessels. And they’ve also gone silent.”

“Silent?” Jim echoed. He meant it more as an expression of shock than a question, but Naomi answered him anyway.

“No broadcast. No tightbeam. No offers of explanation or filed changes of flight plan. Just all of them turning toward us.”

“Radio silence seems weird,” Fayez said. “Their drive plumes are still visible. What do they think they can hide by running in radio silence? What do they gain?”

“They don’t gain anything,” Tanaka said. “They just don’t need comms anymore. They’re all thinking with the same head.”

Elvi let out a little noise, somewhere between a sigh and a sob.

Tanaka either didn’t notice or chose to ignore her. “I’ve taken the liberty of reaching out to Admiral Trejo. I’m hoping we can get some backup here in time.”

“In time for what?” Jim asked.

“The battle,” Tanaka said as if it had been a stupid question.

“Are we sure that these are enemies?” Elvi asked.

“Yes,” Tanaka said. “We tried to get into the station. We were pushed back. Now an ad hoc flotilla of hive-mind-controlled ships are running toward us. If they’re just rushing here to bring us cake and party decorations, we’d know because we’d be in the station chewing the fat with the high consul.”

“There are eighteen systems we’ve ID’d that don’t seem to have any enemy activity,” Naomi said.

“If we retreat, we’ll never get this territory back,” Tanaka said, leaning in toward her camera. Jim detested and feared the woman, and that made it worse when she seemed right. “Either we get inside now, or we talk to the high consul when he’s inside us and pulling our strings.”

Naomi’s voice was gentler, but just as firm. “Do we know why the experiment failed? Why could Jim get into the station, back before the gates opened, and we can’t now?”

“The station was on a kind of autopilot when you first came here,” Elvi said. “It opened for the bit of protomolecule that stowed away on your ship because it didn’t have anything telling it not to. Now it does. Our catalyst can turn something on, and Cara and Amos can react to it, but Winston Duarte was remade with the protomolecule. It’s part of him now. We aren’t getting in that station because he doesn’t want us to. It’s as simple as that.”

“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.”

He didn’t know which of them started to pull the other close, only that they folded together. Her arm found its way under his, and she ducked her head, pressing her cheek against his chest. He put his chin on top of her head, a rare thing when she was so much taller than him. Her first little sobs shook them both, and then his did. They drifted gently in the cabin that had been theirs. Jim had the sense of other minds drawn to the moment like insects following pheromones, but he couldn’t pay attention to them. Not with her there in his arms.

After some stretch of time that might have been minutes or hours, the weeping reached its natural end and they were only quiet together. Naomi uncurled a little, raised her head. Their mouths met, gently, and with only the barest hint of the hunger of their youth.

“Whatever you think you have to do? Whatever it is,” she whispered, “wait until I’m asleep.”

Jim nodded, and she pressed herself against him in the dark. He counted his own breaths up to a hundred and back down again before her breath grew deep, then up to a hundred again to give her time to fall past where his leaving would wake her. She shuddered once, then gently snored. Carefully, he unfolded himself, reached out to tap the wall and push to the cabin door. He opened it as quietly as he could and closed it behind him with a click.

Somewhere down on a lower deck, Muskrat barked happily, and he could hear Amos’ rough voice, if not the exact words. The ship creaked softly as it warmed and shed its heat. Somewhere, Alex was sleeping or watching his neo-noirs or feeling guilty about Kit and Giselle. Somewhere Teresa was eating herself with disappointment and adolescent confusion. Bobbie Draper wasn’t there, and never would be again. Clarissa Mao was gone too, though both of them had left their marks on the ship and the people who lived in it. For a moment, he imagined Chrisjen Avasarala beside him, her arms crossed and her lips in a smile that managed to be sharp and consoling at the same time. For fuck’s sake, this isn’t the last day of summer camp. How many fucking tearful embraces are you planning on?

In the med bay, he pulled an emergency kit with a red ceramic shell and tucked it under his arm. He patted the autodoc like it was someone he knew and liked and might not see again for a while.

The airlock wasn’t restricted, and he was able to cross the bridge and enter the Falcon without anyone taking particular notice of him. The Laconian crew had gotten very used to pretending he wasn’t there, and his place, first as Elvi’s guest and then as the resistance leader’s boyfriend, gave him a kind of undefined status in their own rigid pecking order. As long as he seemed to know where he was going, they assumed that he did. It was like being invisible.

The catalyst’s room was empty except for the isolation chamber. He closed the door to the corridor behind him. There wasn’t a lock on it or a way to jam it closed. Well, nothing was ever perfect. He cracked open the emergency kit and went through it item by item. Bandage. Antiseptic. Hypox injector. Hypodermic needle.

His head felt weirdly clear. Even with the distant awareness of the others, the moment was his own. He felt as alone as he ever had, and also a kind of satisfaction. A falling away of doubt. The anxiety that had haunted him since Laconia had cooked off like dew on a warm day. He was only himself now.

The isolation chamber opened easily, and he pulled the catalyst out. Her blind, empty eyes swept past him. Her mouth worked as if she were saying things that only she could hear. She didn’t react at all when he slid the needle into her arm and drew out the plunger.

The hypodermic filled with a swirl of iridescent blue and black. Five ccs. Ten. An alert was sounding somewhere nearby, and he assumed it was because of him. He’d intended to roll up his sleeve and inject the sample into the veins at the bend of his elbow, but he was suddenly worried that the Falcon’s crew would come too soon, would stop him. Grimacing, he pressed the needle through the leg of his flight suit and into his thigh. He pushed the plunger down until it stopped. The catalyst smacked her lips and writhed like she was trying to remember how to swim.

Jim closed his eyes.

At first, it felt cold: a thread of ice that went from the site of the needle stick up into the gut. Then a wave of nausea that came and went and left a burning sensation behind it that spread through his abdomen and up into his chest. His heart started pounding, each beat slow, hard, and violent as a hammer strike. He tasted metal.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, blue fireflies flickered in and out of being. He had a feeling like blood flowing back into a limb that had been pressed too hard for too long. It felt like desert rain filling dry arroyos. It felt like remembering.

He took a long, slow breath. He was trembling. He opened his eyes, looked around the room, and found what he thought he’d find. What he’d hoped for. The slouch. The half-apologetic, half-astonished sad-dog face. The porkpie hat.

“Well,” the familiar voice said where only Jim could hear it. “This can’t be good.”

“Hey, Miller. We need to talk.”