Memory's Legion Page 3

  And yet, even as the fertile garden of his mind sent up a thousand different green shoots of ideas and projects, tests and tweaks and adjustments, he found himself dreading the part where he told his wife what he’d done. And when the time came, his unease was justified.

  “Oh, Sol. Oh, baby.”

  “I didn’t spend my salary on it,” he said. “It was all bonus money. And it was only mine. I didn’t use ours.”

  Caitlin was sitting on the bench in their multipurpose room, tapping her mouth with the tips of her fingers the way she did when she was thinking hard. The system was playing a gentle ambient music that was all soft percussion and strings loud enough to cover the hiss of the air recyclers but not so much as to overwhelm the conversation. As with almost all the new buildings on Mars, it was larger, better appointed, and deeper underground.

  “So what I just heard you say is you can spend as much money out of the account as you want without talking to me if the total you pull is less than whatever you’ve made in bonuses. Is that what you meant?”

  “No,” he said, though it was pretty close. “I’m saying that it wasn’t money we were counting on. All our obligations are covered. We’re not going to try to buy food and have the accounts come up empty. We’re not going to have to work extra hours or take on side jobs.”

  “All right.”

  “And this is important work. The design I have for the magnetic coil exhaust can really increase drive efficiency, if I can get—”

  “All right,” she said.

  He leaned against the door frame. The strings rose in a delicate arpeggio.

  “You’re angry.”

  “No, sweetie. I’m not angry,” she said gently. “Angry is yelling. This is resentful, and it’s because you’re cutting me out from the fun parts. Really, I look at you, and see the happiness and the excitement, and I want to be part of that. I want to jump up and down and wave my arms and talk about how great it all is. But that money was our safety net. You’re ignoring the fact that you spent our safety net, and if we both ignore it, the first time something unexpected comes up, we’re screwed. I love our life, so now I have to be the one who cares and disapproves and doesn’t get to be excited. You’re making me the grown-up. I don’t want to be the grown-up. I want us both to be grown-ups, so that when we do something like this, we both get to be kids.”

  She looked up at him and shrugged. Her face was harder than it was when they met. There were threads of white in the darkness of her hair. When she smiled, he felt the hardness in his chest erode away.

  “I may… have gotten a little carried away. I saw it was there and we could afford it.”

  “And you zoomed ahead without thinking about all of what it would mean. Because you’re Solomon Epstein, and you are the smartest, most rigorous and methodical man who ever made every single important choice in his life by impulse.” If there hadn’t been warmth and laughter in her voice, it would have sounded like a condemnation. Instead it sounded like love.

  “I’m cute, though,” he said.

  “You’re adorable. And I want to hear all about your new whatever it is you’re going to try. Only first tell me that you’ll try to think about the future next time?”

  “I will.”

  They spent the evening with him talking about power and efficiency, ejection mass and velocity multipliers. And when that was done, they talked about building a responsible retirement plan and making sure their wills were up to date. It felt like an apology, and he hoped that they’d be able to do it again when she understood how much maintenance on the yacht was going to cost. It was a fight for another day.

  The days, he spent working as usual with the team at the propulsion group. The nights, he sat on the monitors back at their hole and designed his own things. Caitlin started a program over the network with a group in Londres Nova discussing how companies like Kwikowski could intervene in the destabilizing spiral of threat and avoidance that Earth and Mars seemed locked in. Whenever he heard her talking to the others—about propaganda and divergent moral codes and any number of other plausible-sounding vaguenesses—she brought up lithium, molybdenum. Now tungsten too. All the other things were interesting, important, informative, and profound. But unless they could figure out the ore rights issues, they could address everything else and still not solve the problem. He was always proud of her when she said that. A liberal arts background was a hard thing to overcome, but she was doing great.

  Eventually, the time came to test his idea and plans. He made the long journey to the shipyards on the new public transport system: evacuated tubes drilled through the rock and lined with electromagnetic rails like a slow, underpowered gauss gun. It was cramped and uncomfortable, but it was fast. He got to his yacht an hour before the sun set at the nearby Martian horizon. He finished the last-minute tweaks to the prototype he’d fabricated, ran the diagnostic sequences twice, and took the ship up beyond the thin atmosphere. Once he reached high orbit, he floated for a while, enjoying the novelty of null g. He brewed himself a bulb of fresh tea, strapped himself into the captain’s chair, and ran his fingertip across the old touchscreen monitor.

  If he was right, the additions he’d made would increase efficiency by almost sixteen percent above baseline. When the numbers came back, he hadn’t been right. Efficiency had dropped by four and a half. He landed back at the shipyards and rode the transit tube home, muttering darkly to himself the whole way.

  The United Nations issued a statement that all future Martian ships would be contracted through the Bush shipyards on Earth. The local government didn’t even comment on it; they just kept on with the scheduled builds and negotiated for new ones after that. The United Nations ordered that all shipyards on Mars shut down until an inspection team could be sent out there. Seven months to get the team together, and almost six months in transit because of the relative distances of the two planets in their orbits around the sun. Sol was a little nervous when he heard that. If they closed the shipyards, it might mean grounding his test yacht. He didn’t need to concern himself. The shipyards all stayed open. The rumors of war started up again, and Solomon tried to ignore them. Tried to tell himself that this time would be no different than the one before or the one before that.

  Raj, to everyone’s surprise, resigned from development, rented a cheap hole up near the surface, and started selling hand-made ceramic art. He said he’d never been happier. Voltaire got a divorce and wanted all the old crew to come out to the bars with her. There were eight of them now, but pretty much nobody went. Julio and Carl had a baby together and stopped socializing with anyone. Tori went in on a little chemical safety consultancy that pretended to serve any business with a Martian charter, but actually got all their business from the terraforming projects. Malik died from an unresponsive spinal cancer. Life struggled on, winning and failing. Solomon’s experimental drives got to where they were almost as good as the unmodified ship. Then a little bit better.

  A year almost to the day after he’d bought it, Solomon rode out to the yacht with a new design. If he was right, it would increase efficiency by almost four and a half percent above baseline. He was in the engine room installing it when his hand terminal chimed. It was Caitlin. He accepted the request.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Did we decide to take that long weekend next month?” she asked. “I know we talked about it, but I don’t think we made a decision.”

  “We didn’t, but I’d better not. The team’s a little behind.”

  “Overtime behind?”

  “No. Just keep-showing-up behind.”

  “All right. Then I may plan something with Maggie Chu.”

  “You have my blessing. I’ll be home as soon as this is done.”

  “All right,” she said, and dropped the connection. He tested the housings, did an extra weld where the coil would suffer the most stress, and headed back up for the captain’s chair. The yacht rose through the thin atmosphere and into high orbit. Solomon ran th
e diagnostics again, making sure before he started that everything looked good. For almost half an hour, he floated in his chair, held in place by his straps.

  As he started the burn sequence, he remembered that the team was going to be in Londres Nova the weekend he’d been thinking about taking off with Caitlin. He wondered whether she’d put her plans with Maggie Chu in place, or if there was still time to change things. He started the burn.

  Acceleration threw Solomon back into the captain’s chair, then pressed his chest like a weight. His right hand landed on his belly, his left fell onto the upholstery beside his ear. His ankles pressed back against the leg rests.

  The ship sings a low dirge, throaty and passionate and sad like the songs his father used to sing at temple. He understands now that he’s going to die here. He’s going too fast and too far for help to reach him. For a while—months or years—his little yacht will mark the farthest out of Earth’s gravity well a manned ship has ever gone. They’ll find the design specs at the hole. Caitlin is smart. She’ll know to sell the design. She’ll have enough money to eat beef every meal for the rest of her life. He’s taken good care of her, anyway, if not himself.

  If he had control, he could reach the asteroid belt. He could go to the Jovian system and be the first person to walk on Europa and Ganymede. He isn’t going to, though. That’s going to be someone else. But when they get there, they will be carried by his drive.

  And the war! If distance is measured in time, Mars just got very, very close to Earth while Earth is still very distant from Mars. That kind of asymmetry changes everything. He wonders how they’ll negotiate that. What they’ll do. All the lithium and molybdenum and tungsten anyone could want is within reach of mining companies now. They can go to the asteroid belt and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. The thing that kept Earth and Mars from ever reaching a lasting peace isn’t going to matter anymore.

  The pain in his head and his spine is getting worse. It’s hard to remember to tense his legs and arms, to help his failing heart move the blood. He almost blacks out again, but he’s not sure if it’s the stroke or the thrust gravity. He’s pretty sure driving blood pressure higher while having a stroke is considered poor form.

  The ship’s dirge shifts a little, and now it’s literally singing in his father’s voice, Hebrew syllables whose meaning Solomon has forgotten if he ever knew. Aural hallucinations, then. That’s interesting.

  He’s sorry that he won’t be able to see Caitlin one more time. To tell her goodbye and that he loves her. He’s sorry he won’t get to see the consequences of his drive. Even through the screaming pain, a calmness and euphoria start to wash over him. It’s always been like this, he thinks. From when Moses saw the promised land that he could never enter, people have been on their deathbeds just wanting to see what happens next. He wonders if that’s what makes the promised land holy: that you can see it but you can’t quite reach it. The grass is always greener on the other side of personal extinction. It sounds like something Malik would say. Something Caitlin would laugh at.

  The next few years—decades even—are going to be fascinating, and it will be because of him. He closes his eyes. He wishes he could be there to see it all happen.

  Solomon relaxes, and the expanse folds itself around him like a lover.

  Drive

  Author’s Note

  Moving a little fast there, Sol.

  Puns may be the lowest form of humor, but that’s still one of our favorite lines in the project.

  One of the things that comes up a few times in the course of The Expanse is the idea that the prophet can lead people to the Holy Land, but cannot enter it himself. Solomon Epstein is that guy: the one who ushers in a whole new era but won’t live to see the effect of what he’s done. It’s a story that has power because it’s something we all experience, especially as we get older: that sense of momentous things coming just after we’re already gone. Existential FOMO.

  The story was written originally for Jonathan Strahan’s Edge of Infinity anthology, got repurposed as a San Diego Comic-Con-exclusive chapbook by SYFY, and put up for free online for a while. Of all the short fiction in the Expanse universe, this is probably the one that was read the most and for which we were paid the least. Sometimes the business is funny that way.

  Someone asked once if the Voltaire who went drinking with Sol way back then was connected to the militant OPA faction the Voltaire Collective that figured in the later books. It seems like there probably was a connection, but we never looked into what that was.

  The Butcher of Anderson Station

  When Fred was a kid back on Earth, maybe five or six years old, he’d seen a weed growing in the darkness of his uncle’s cellar. The plant had been pale and thin but twice as tall as the ones out in the side yard, deformed by reaching for the sunlight. The man behind the bar looked just like that: too tall, too pale, too hungry for something he’d never had and never would. Belters were all like that.

  The music in the bar mixed Punjabi rhythms with a high-voiced woman rapping in the polyglot mess of languages that made up Belter Creole. The battered pachinko machine in the back rang and skittered. Hashish smoke sweetened the air. Fred leaned back on a bar stool meant for someone ten centimeters taller than he was and smiled gently.

  “Is there a fucking problem?” he asked.

  The bartender could have been Chinese or Korean or a mix of the two. Which meant his family had probably come up in one of the first waves. Five generations of grubbing for air, packing extended families into surveying ships with seven bunks, looking back at a sun that was hardly more than the brightest star. It was hard to think of any of them as human anymore.

  “No problems, jefe,” the bartender said, but didn’t move. In the mirror behind the bar, Fred saw the door slide open. Four Belters slouched in. One had an armband with the split circle of the Outer Planets Alliance. Fred saw them see him. He saw one of them recognize him. The little trickle of adrenaline in his blood was automatic and pleasant.

  “Then how about you serve me my drink?”

  The barkeep didn’t move for a time, and then he did. Whiskey poured differently in spin gravity, but not so much that Fred could tell quite what was wrong about it. The Coriolis of Ceres Station shouldn’t have been enough to change the angle, not this close to the asteroid surface. Maybe it was just that it fell slowly. The bartender slid the glass across to him.

  “On the house,” the man said, then a half beat of silence. “Colonel.”

  Fred met his gaze. Neither spoke. Fred drank the liquor neat. It burned and left a taste at the back of his tongue like old mushrooms and bread mold.

  “You have anything that isn’t fermented fungus?” Fred asked.

  “Als u aprecie no, koai sa sa?” a voice said from behind him. If you don’t like it, why are you here?

  Fred twisted in his seat. One of the four-pack who had just come in was glaring at him. He was broad-shouldered for a Belter. Mech driver, maybe. Or maybe he just spent a lot of time in the gym. Some of them did that, using machines and weights and expensive drug cocktails to give them what gravity never would.

  Why are you here? Decent question.

  “I like whiskey that used to be some kind of grain. You want to suck fungus, don’t let me stop you.”

  The mech driver shifted in his seat. Fred thought he was going to get up, but instead the man shrugged and looked aside. His friends glanced at each other. The one with the armband had his hand terminal out and was tapping on the screen rapidly.

  “I’ve got some bourbon came from Ganymede,” the bartender said. “Cost you.”

  “Not enough to stop me,” Fred said, turning back. “Bring the bottle.”

  The bartender bent down. His hand shuffled under the bar. There was probably a gun down there. Fred could almost picture it. Something designed to first intimidate, and if that failed, to put a man down. A shotgun, maybe, hack-sawed down for close range. Fred waited, but the man’s hand came up with a bottle. He
put it on the bar. Fred felt a quick rush of relief and disappointment.

  “Clean glass,” Fred said.

  “So I think to myself,” the bartender said, reaching back toward the glassware by the mirror, “you’re here for something. The Butcher of Anderson Station in a Belter bar.”

  “I just want a drink,” Fred said.

  “No one just wants a drink,” the bartender replied.

  “I’m exceptional.”

  The bartender grinned.

  “You are,” he said, then bent low, his head almost level with Fred’s. “Look at me, Colonel.”

  Fred unscrewed the cap from the bottle and poured two fingers into the new glass. He put the cap back. The bartender didn’t move. Fred met the pale brown eyes. He was about to say something, not even sure what it was besides cutting, belittling, and mean. In the mirror, something moved. Men, behind him.

  Fred had a moment to brace himself for the knife or the bullet or the blow that didn’t come before a black bag dropped over his head.