James S. A. Corey

The fight for survival made everything either resilient or forgotten.

Portraits of great war leaders or critical battles that looked flattering, well composed, and balanced always felt like propaganda. Tanaka had spent a lot of time in the halls of power. She’d seen many paintings of great men in uniform staring eagle-eyed into the distance where their future glory lay. She’d seen very few paintings of soldiers with only a ragged tent and a dying fire to hold back the cold nights before some stranger tried to bayonet them in the morning.

This was a new variation, but that was all. She wanted to believe that, and like anything she fund herself wanting to be true, she forced herself to double-check it.

She was reaching for supernatural answers when memory and mundanity were enough.

“I can’t see how this all plays out.”

“Sure you do. Everyone dies. That’s always been how it is. Only question now is whether we can find some way to not all go at once.”

“If we do, then civilization dies. Everything humanity has ever done goes away.”

“Well, at least there won’t be anyone who misses it,” Amos said, and sighed. “You’re overthinking this, Cap’n. You got now and you got the second your lights go out. Meantime is the only time there is. All that matters is what we do during it.”

“I just want to go out knowing that things will be okay without me. That it all keeps going.”

“That you’re not the one who dropped the ball.”

“Or maybe,” Amos said, “you’re not that important and it ain’t up to you to fix the universe?”

“You always know how to cheer me up.”

“It would have worked,” she said. “If we’d cooperated, it would have worked.”

“It would have been better.”

“I think about all the things we could have done, all the miracles we could have achieved, if we were all just a little bit better than it turns out we are.”

“What we’re doing here is bigger than politics.”

“I know,” he said. “I just keep hoping the politicians see it too.”

“There’s sensor data already? I mean, I figured there’d be a few hours at least before they gathered enough to have a meeting about.”

“When people don’t know anything,” Amos said, “they love having meetings to talk about it.”

Everything changed, and it went right on changing. A terrible thought when things were good, a comforting one now. Whatever happened, she could be certain that things wouldn’t stay the way they were now. And if she stayed smart and clever and lucky, she’d be able to affect how the next change came. Or take advantage of it.

It also meant that their reaching out to the artifact had gotten it to reach back. Her experiment was working.

She’d expected success to feel less like fear.

He was grandiose. He was ruthless. He was a genius at a couple of things and under the misapprehension that it meant he was smart about everything. But in his mind, he was doing the right thing.

We’re here to protect people’s freedom. I’m not sure what liberty is if you’re not permitted to decide what chances you’re willing to take.