When he’d been a boy, Duarte had seen an optical illusion that changed one face into another as the viewer came near it. Holden was like that. There was something about the way the pattern of his thoughts moved that reminded him of dry riverbeds. The traces of something that had been there and was now gone, but not without leaving the trail of its passage behind it. Patterns inside patterns.
“You’re Winston Duarte,” Holden said, snapping Duarte’s attention back to his more usual ways of seeing.
“Yes,” Duarte said. “I am.”
Holden pulled his knees up, rested his arms on them. His eyes were wide, and even a little bit frightened. “What the fuck happened to you?”
It took Duarte a moment to understand, then he chuckled. “Yes. I forget. I’ve been through some changes. Not everyone notices, but there have been some … I don’t know. Shifts?”
“You’re using that shit on yourself?”
“I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot, Captain. Let me try this again. I’m High Consul Duarte. You and I have a shared interest, I understand, in the origins and function of the protomolecule. Did I get that right?”
“You have to listen to me. I saw what happened to them. To the things that made the protomolecule. There was a record on the ring station from before they got shut down.”
“I read the report on that,” Duarte said. “Even before I came here. It was part of what inspired me to take the steps I’ve taken. Not just”—he gestured at his own body—“but all of it. An empire is a tool, just like everything else.”
That brought Holden to a stop. The pattern around his head was shifting and vibrating like a hive of angry wasps. Again, he had the sense of seeing the remnants of something in Holden’s mind. Traces of another pattern. There was a term for this, but …
“Palimpsest,” Duarte said aloud, then shook his head when Holden frowned. “I was trying to remember a word. I just got it. Palimpsest.”
“You came here because of the thing that killed the protomolecule?”
Duarte leaned back, considered James Holden and, now that he’d met him, how best to build rapport. Radical honesty for radical honesty, maybe? Worth trying.
“I was connected to the MCRN intelligence services when the gate opened. The first one. Sol gate. And when the other gates opened, I saw the probe data sets as they came in. The early surveys of all the systems as fast as we could get them. And I saw an opportunity here. The most clearly intact ruins. A set of orbiting structures with what appeared to be a ship or something like it halfway through being constructed. And I recognized that the protomolecule had the potential to act as a handle of sorts. A way to interact with the artifacts that had been left behind. So I got the sample that we still had, and the best minds I could find on the subject. And through discipline and commitment, we developed new technologies faster and better than all the other worlds put together. Laconia is Mars. The Martian ideal taken to the next level.”
“That’s all great,” Holden said. “Except for the part where something came and killed the shit out of all the things that made the artifacts. I saw whole systems going dark. They shut down the gates just to try to stop whatever was killing them, and it didn’t work.”
“I know.”
“That thing that popped up on your ship? That’s the same thing that killed the protomolecule. That wiped out the civilization that built all of this.”
“I know that too,” Duarte said. “Or I guessed, anyway. It seems the most promising hypothesis. And it’s related, I believe, to the missing ships. Something deep, something profound, doesn’t like anyone using these technologies and powers. Didn’t like when the last ones did it, don’t like it now that we’ve turned them back on. It’s an interesting problem.”
Holden stood up. The guard stepped forward, but Duarte gestured for him to stay back.
“Interesting problem? Something fired a shot at you. At your ship. It turned off people’s minds all throughout the system, and that’s an interesting problem? That was an attack.”
“And it didn’t work,” Duarte said. “We aren’t the same thing that got wiped out before. What killed them affected us, but it didn’t destroy us.”
“You seem pretty sure it’s not going to find some slightly different approach that’s going to wipe us all out. You’re not picking a fight with the things that made the protomolecule. You’re picking a fight with whatever killed them. Orders of magnitude above the things that were orders of magnitude above us. You’ve got to know this is going to escalate if we keep using these technologies.”
“We were always going to keep using these technologies. That was inevitable the moment we opened the gates,” Duarte said. “If you’ve studied any history at all, you know that. Never in human history have we discovered something useful and then chosen not to use it.”
Holden looked around the cell like there might be something there to help him. Duarte didn’t need any new fields of perception to see the agitation in Holden’s mind. Duarte softened his voice the way he had with Natalia and Elsa, offering comfort and consolation in his tone if not his words.
“There was no path where we left the gates alone. No future where we didn’t use the technologies and lessons we learned from them. And there wasn’t likely to be one where we didn’t face the same kind of pushback that killed the ones who came before us. There was only the way forward where we were scattershot and chaotic, or the one where we were organized, regimented, and disciplined. And the missing ships are a promise that the killers in the abyss will come back. That they’ve never really left. You, more than anyone else, should understand that.”
“I did,” Holden said. “I do. It’s why I came here. To warn you.”
Duarte leaned back. The bunk was thin and uncomfortable. He didn’t envy Holden’s having to sleep on it. But there was a breeze through the window and a bit of sunlight. The cell was still more luxurious than half of the ship cabins Duarte had been assigned early in his career.
Holden’s hands were open as if he were offering something. And he was, but it wasn’t what he thought.
“I don’t need a warning,” Duarte said. “I need an ally. You have seen things no one else has ever seen. You know things I need to know, and you might not even be aware of the significance of some of it. Doctor Cortazár has been trying to find that. Help him. Work with him. Work with me.”
“To do what?”
“To take the shards of the protomolecule’s broken sword and reforge it. To bring humanity into a single community that is functional and strong. And prepare us.”
Holden laughed, but there was no mirth in it. Duarte knew he hadn’t reached the man. That was disappointing.
“Prepare us for what?” Holden asked. “To poke gods with a sharp stick?”
“No, Captain Holden. No sticks,” Duarte said. “When you fight gods, you storm heaven.”