Naomi looked at him, her eyebrows rising. “Why not?”
“Because whatever we do with Bobbie sets the precedent for what we do with any other crew we bring on.”
“Meaning Clarissa.”
“I don’t want to give Clarissa Mao ownership of the Roci,” Holden said. “I just … She’s here, and okay, fine. I’m still not sanguine about that, but I can deal with it. And I want to bring Bobbie all the way into the crew, but I just—I can’t. I can’t agree that Clarissa ever gets to call my ship her home. There’s a difference between letting her be there and pretending she’s like Bobbie. Or you. Or me.”
“No forgiveness?” Naomi asked, halfway between teasing and serious.
“Plenty of forgiveness. Loads of forgiveness. Some boundaries too.”
The cart lurched to the left, slowed. The chiming sound cycled lower as it stopped. Father Anton was waiting at the door, smiling and nodding to them as they lifted themselves out and bounce-shuffled forward. The quarters for Holden’s parents were better than most. The suite was tight and too small, but private. His mothers and fathers didn’t have to share it with anyone outside the family. Mother Tamara’s yellow curry scented the air. Father Tom and Father Cesar stood in the doorway to one of the bedrooms, arms around each other’s hips. Father Dimitri leaned against the arm of an old sofa, while Mother Elise and Mother Tamara came in from the little kitchen. Father Joseph and Mother Sophie sat on the couch, a thin magnetic chess set between them, the pieces scattered by their game. Everyone was smiling, including him, and none of them meant it.
It was goodbye again. When he’d left for his doomed tour in the Navy, there’d been a moment like this too. A leave-taking that meant something they couldn’t be sure of. Maybe he’d be back in a few weeks. Or never. Maybe they’d be here on Luna, or transfer to L-4. Or something else might happen. Without the farm and decades of social inertia to hold them together, maybe they would break apart. A sudden, oceanic sadness washed through Holden, and he had to fight to keep it from showing. Protecting his parents from his distress one more time. Just the way they were doing for him.
One by one, and then in groups, they hugged. Mother Elise held Naomi’s hand and told her to take care of her little boy. Naomi solemnly agreed that she’d do what she could. If this might be the last time he had his parents all together, he was grateful that Naomi was there to be part of it, right up until Father Cesar said goodbye.
Cesar’s skin was wrinkled as a turtle’s, dark as fresh-turned earth. There were tears in his eyes as he took Holden’s hand. “You did good, boy. You made everyone proud of you.”
“Thank you,” Holden said.
“You go give those fucking skinnies hell, yeah?”
Over Cesar’s left shoulder, Naomi went stiff. Her smile, which had been soft and warm and amused, became polite. Holden felt it like a punch in the gut. But Cesar didn’t even seem to know that he’d said something rude. Holden was trapped between asking his father to apologize and preserving this last moment. Naomi, talking to Mother Tamara, plucked at her hair. Pulled it over her eyes.
Shit.
“You know,” Holden said. “That’s—”
“That’s what he’ll do,” Naomi said. “You can count on Jim.”
Her eyes were on his, and they were hard and dark. Don’t make this more awkward than it already is glowed in them as clearly as if she’d written it. Holden grinned, hugged Father Cesar one last time, and started the retreat to the door, the cart, the Rocinante. All eight of his parents crowded outside the door to watch him go. He felt them there even when the cart turned the corner and started up the ramp toward the docks. Naomi sat silently. Holden sighed.
“Okay,” he said. “I see now why you didn’t want to do that. I’m really sorry that—”
“Don’t,” Naomi said. “Let’s don’t.”
“I think I owe you an apology.”
She shifted to look straight at him. “Your father owes me an apology. One of your fathers. But I’m going to let him off the hook.”
“All right,” Holden said. The cart lurched to the right. A man with a thick beard trotted out of their way. “I was going to defend you.”
“I know you were.”
“Just … I would have.”
“I know. And then I would have been the reason that everything had gotten weird, and everyone would have gone out of their way to tell me how they respect Belters and how he didn’t mean me. And you’re their son, and they love you. And they love each other. So no matter what anyone said, it would all have been my fault.”
“Yeah,” Holden said. “But then I wouldn’t feel as bad about it. And I feel kind of bad about it.”
“Cross you’ll have to bear, sweetie,” Naomi said. She sounded tired.
At the dock, Fred Johnson’s crew was loading the last of the supplies into the cargo airlock. The new lace hull panels stood out on the Roci’s side like scars. The cart, having dropped them off, rumbled and chimed itself away. Holden paused for a moment, looking up at the ship. His heart was complicated.
“Yeah?” Naomi said.
“Nothing,” Holden said. And then, a moment later, “There was a time I thought things were simple. Or that at least some things were.”
“He didn’t mean me. No, really. He didn’t. Because I’m a person to him, and skinnies and Belters … they aren’t people. I had friends on the Pella. Real friends. People I grew up with. People I cared about. People I loved. They aren’t any different. They didn’t kill people, they killed Earthers. Martians. Dusters. Squats.”
“Squats?”
“Yup.”
“Hadn’t heard that one.”
She put her hand in his, shifted her body against his, reached up to rest her chin on the top of his head. “It’s considered rude.”
Holden leaned against her as much as the weak gravity would allow. He felt the warmth of her body against his. Felt the rise and fall of her breath.
“We’re not people,” he said. “We’re the stories that people tell each other about us. Belters are crazy terrorists. Earthers are lazy gluttons. Martians are cogs in a great big machine.”
“Men are fighters,” Naomi said, and then, her voice growing bleak. “Women are nurturing and sweet and they stay home with the kids. It’s always been like that. We always react to the stories about people, not who they really are.”
“And look where it got us,” Holden said.
Chapter Thirteen: Prax
The thing that surprised him the most when it all changed was how little it all changed. At least in the beginning. Between the trailing end of the reconstruction and the rising tide of research projects, Prax sometimes went days or weeks without looking at newsfeeds. Anything interesting in the greater sphere of humanity, he heard about in the conversations of others. When he’d heard that the governing board was putting out a declaration of neutrality, he’d thought it was about gas sequestration and exchange. He hadn’t even known there was a war until Karvonides told him.
Ganymede knew too much about being a battlefield already. The collapse was too recent in their collective memory, the scars still fresh and raw. There were ice-flooded corridors still unexcavated after the last outbreak of violence, back before the ring gate, back before the opening of the thirteen hundred worlds. No one wanted that again. And so Ganymede said it didn’t care who ran things, just so long as they could continue their research, care for the people in their hospitals, and go about their lives. A massive We’re busy, you figure it out to the universe in general.