“Well, that’s good,” Anna said. She’d been about to offer to pay for his treatment, not knowing how she’d actually do that. She felt a moment of relief and shame. “Have you heard from anyone else who was in our group? I haven’t had time to find them yet.”
“Yeah,” Chris said with a chuckle, “I heard. You’ve been doing commando raids while I’ve been laid up. If I’d known they trained you guys to take down souped-up terrorists, I’d have paid more attention in church as a kid.”
“I ran away from her until she had a seizure, and then I taped her to a chair. Not very heroic.”
“I’m getting a medal for falling into a pressure hatch, sacrificing an arm and a leg to keep seven sailors from being trapped in a compromised part of the ship. I was unconscious at the time, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Heroism is a label most people get for doing shit they’d never do if they were really thinking about it.”
Anna laughed at that. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that exact thing recently.” Chris relaxed back into his pile of pillows and nodded for her to continue.
“Labels, I mean. People are calling the aliens evil, because they hurt us. And without context, how do we know?”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “I lose a couple limbs getting drunk and falling into a harvesting combine, I’m an idiot. I lose the same limbs because I happened to be standing next to the right door when the ship was damaged, I’m a hero.”
“Maybe it’s as simple as that. I don’t know. I feel like something really important is about to happen, and we’re all making up our minds ahead of time what it will be.”
Chris absentmindedly scratched at the stump of his left leg, then grimaced. “Like?”
“We came through the Ring to stop James Holden from talking to the aliens first. But this is the same man that helped send Eros to Venus instead of letting it destroy the Earth. Why did we assume he’d do a bad job of being the first human the aliens met? And now something has slapped us down, taken all our guns away, but not killed us. That should mean something. Certainly anything this powerful could kill us as easily as it declawed us. But it didn’t. Instead of trying to figure out what it means, we’re hurting so we call it evil. I feel like we’re children who’ve been punished and we think it’s because our parents are mean.”
“They stopped our ships to… what? Pacify us?” Chris asked.
“Who knows?” Anna said, shrugging. “But I know we’re not asking those questions. Humans do bad things when they’re afraid, and we’re all very afraid right now.”
“Tara died,” Chris said.
Anna racked her brain trying to remember who Tara was. Chris saw her confusion and added, “Short blond hair? She was a marine?”
“Oh no,” Anna replied, feeling the tears well up again. Her angry marine had died. A whole future in which she’d worked with Tara to find out the source of her anger vanished. Conversations she’d already had in her head, lines of questioning, the anticipation of satisfaction she’d get from having the marine open up to her. Gone, as if someone had flicked a switch. It was hard not to sympathize with Cortez’s view a little. After all, the aliens had killed one of her congregation now.
But maybe not on purpose, and intent mattered. The universe made no sense to her otherwise.
She managed to finish off her visit without, she hoped, seeming too distracted. Afterward, she went to find her own assigned tent and try to rest. She had no reason to think that sleep would come. After she found her place, Tilly Fagan appeared. Anna lifted her arm in greeting, but before she could get a word out, Tilly threw both arms around her and was squeezing until she could hear her ribs pop. Tilly was surprisingly strong for such a thin woman.
“I was furious with myself for letting you leave,” Tilly said, squeezing even tighter and leaning her weight against Anna. She was heavy. They both were in the spinning drum. It took some getting used to.
When Tilly finally let up the pressure a bit, Anna said, “I think I was… altered.”
“That was my fault, too,” Tilly said, followed by more squeezing. Anna realized the only thing to do was ride it out, and patted Tilly on the lower back until her friend got it out of her system.
After a few moments, Tilly released Anna and stepped back, her eyes shiny but a smile on her face. “I’m glad you didn’t die. Everyone else from the Prince is a pod.” Anna decided not to ask what a pod was. “The Behemoth has become the place to be,” Tilly continued. “If we never figure out how to escape this trap, it’s the place it will take us the longest to die. That makes it the high-rent district of the slow zone.”
“Well, that’s… important.”
Tilly laughed. She pulled a cigarette out and lit it as they walked. At Anna’s shocked look she said, “They let you do it here. Lots of the Belters do. They obsess over air filters and then suck poisonous particulates into their lungs recreationally. It’s a fabulous culture.”
Anna smiled and waved the smoke away from her face.
“So,” Tilly said, pretending not to notice. “I demanded they let me go on the first shuttle over. Did you manage to retrieve Holden?”
“I didn’t find him,” Anna said. “Just his crew. But I think I might have saved their lives.”
At first, she thought Tilly’s expression had cooled, but that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t coldness. It was pain. Anna put her hand on Tilly’s arm.
“I have someone I need you to talk to,” Tilly said. “And you probably aren’t going to like it, but you’re going to do it for me. I’ll never ask you for anything again, and you’re buying a lifetime of expensive markers to trade in with this.”
“Whatever I can do.”
“You’re going to help Claire.”
Anna felt like the air had gone out of the room. For a moment, she heard the throat-scarring screams again and felt the blows transferred through the buckling locker door. She heard Chris tell her that Tara had died. She saw Cortez, and heard the buzzsaw despair in his voice. She took a breath.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course I am.”
Chapter Thirty-Three: Bull
“Y
ou need to get up,” Doctor Sterling said. Spin changed the shape of her face, pulling down her cheeks and hair. She looked older and more familiar.