Holden nodded slowly, then drank off all that was left of his coffee at once, put the mug on the table, and clapped Alex’s shoulder. “Yeah. I am. Thank you.”
“Glad I could help,” he said. And then, to Holden’s retreating back. “Least I think I am.”
Back at the table, Sandra Ip had switched to club soda. Bobbie and Arnold were comparing stories about free climbing at different gravities, and Naomi and Clarissa Mao were at the edge of the stage, getting ready to take a turn singing. Ip caught a glimpse of the foil package in Alex’s hand, and her smile was a promise that things were going to go very, very well for him. Still, she must have read something in his expression or the way he held himself when he sat down.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
Alex shrugged. “I’ll tell you when I find out.”
Chapter Seventeen: Holden
The girl was something like a hundred ninety-two centimeters, and she would have towered over him if she weren’t sitting down. Her hair was cut close to her scalp in what Holden figured was fashionable for adolescent Belter girls these days. There were probably hundreds of microfeeds about it, which he didn’t follow. Or maybe she was a rebel and the hairstyle was all her own. Either way, it made the slightly enlarged head less pronounced. She sat at the edge of the bench, looking around at the Rocinante’s galley like she was regretting that she’d come. The older woman she called Tía stood against the wall, scowling. A chaperone who wasn’t impressed with anything she saw.
“I’ll just be a second here,” Holden said. The software package Monica Stuart had sent him assumed a level of proficiency he didn’t have, and he’d managed somehow to turn off some of its intelligence defaults. The girl nodded tightly and plucked at her sari. Holden hoped his smile was reassuring. Or failing that, amusing. “Really. I’ve just about… Wait, wait, wait. Okay. There.”
Her image appeared in his hand terminal with tiny overlays for color correction, sound correction, and something labeled DS/3 that he didn’t know what it was. Still, she looked good.
“All right,” Holden said. “So, I figure anyone who watches this is going to know who I am. Could you maybe just say your name?”
“Alis Caspár,” she said, her voice flat. She could have been a political prisoner the way she spoke. So, it wasn’t going too well yet.
“Great,” he lied. “Okay, and where do you live?”
“Ceres Station,” she said, and then an awkward pause. “Salutorg District.”
“And, um, what do you do?”
She nodded, settling into herself. “Ever since Ceres broke away from Earth control, my family has been running a financial coordination service. Converting scrip from different corporations and governments into compatible. Mi family bist peace-loving people. The pressure that the inner planets put on the Belters is not the fault of—”
“Let me break in for just a second,” Holden said. Alis went silent, looked down. Somehow Monica made doing this seem really easy. Holden was starting to see how that might actually be the product of years of experience and practice and not something he could jump into without guidance. Except he didn’t have time for that, so he forged ahead. “When we met… we met like four hours ago… you were with some of your friends. In the corridor?”
Alis blinked, confused, and looked at Tía. The little incredulous glance was the first time the girl had looked like herself since she’d come on board.
“It was really amazing,” Holden said. “I mean, I was walking by and I saw you all there. And I was really impressed. Could you tell me about that?”
“Shin-sin?” Alis said.
“Is that what you call it? The thing with the glass balls?”
“Not glass,” Alis said. “Resin.”
“Okay, yes,” Holden said, pouring enthusiasm out toward her like dropping water onto a sponge. It all seemed to just soak in and vanish. But then Alis chuckled. It didn’t matter that it was more at him than with him. “Could you do it again? Here?”
She laughed, covering her mouth with one hand. For a long second, he thought she might call the whole thing to a halt. But then she plucked a little bag from her hip and took out four brightly colored clear spheres a little larger and softer than the marbles Holden had played with as a boy. Carefully, she set them between her fingers, resting between the second knuckles. She started singing, a high, choppy chant, and then stopped, laughed, and shook her head.
“Can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Please, just try. It’s really great.”
“It’s dumb,” she said. “It’s kid thing.”
“I’m… really immature.”
When she looked at Tía again, Holden glanced too. The old woman was glowering just as deeply as before, but there was a glimmer of amusement in her ancient eyes. Alis settled, laughed, settled again, and started chanting. When the rhythm was established, she started clapping her hands together gently, and passing the spheres from hand to hand, making them seem to dance independently of her. Every now and then the chant would hit a syncopated passage so that one of the balls could drop into her palm and get tossed across to be captured between her opposite fingers. When she reached the end, she stopped, looked shyly toward Holden, and shook her head.
“Better with two people,” she said.
“Like partners?” he said.
“Dui.” Her glance behind him was no more than a flutter, but Holden knew what it meant, and a touch of glee leapt into his heart. He turned to the stone-faced chaperone, who hoisted an eyebrow at him.
“Do you… Tía?” he said. “Do you know how to do shin-sin?”
She snorted in military-grade derision. When she came forward, Alis made room for her and handed over two of the spheres. They seemed smaller between Tía’s thick fingers. The old woman lifted her chin, and for a moment, Holden knew exactly what she’d looked like at Alis’ age.
The chant was more complex this time, sung as a round with the rhythms of one part informing and supporting whatever was happening in the other woman’s voice. The clear, colored spheres danced between their hands as they clapped palms together, crossing and recrossing, adding their claps to the song. At the moments of syncopation, they tossed the spheres across the space between them and caught them in their knuckles. By the end, both women were grinning. At the end, Tía tossed all the spheres up one after another so quickly they were all in the air at the same moment and then caught them in one hand. It wasn’t a trick that could have worked at a full g.
Holden clapped and the older woman nodded, accepting his applause like a queen.
“That is amazing. It’s wonderful,” Holden said. “How do you learn how to do that?”
Alis shook her head in disbelief at the strange Earther and his childish delights. “Is just shin-sin,” she said. And then her eyes went wide, and the blood drained from her face.
“Mr. Holden,” Fred Johnson said. “When you have a moment?”
“Yes, sure,” Holden said. “We were just… Yeah. Give me a second.”
“I’ll be in Ops.” Fred smiled and nodded to the two Belter women. “Ladies.”
Holden closed down the software, thanked Alis and Tía, and walked them to the airlock, out and into the docks. After they’d gone, he watched the captured video—girl and woman with their voices and hands playing against each other, the not quite marbles weaving between them like a third player in the game. It was exactly the kind of thing he’d hoped for. He ran the compression and sent it to Tycho Station and Monica Stuart, just the same way he had the others.