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“The inexplicable didn’t used to eat planets,” she said “Even if the thing on Ganymede didn’t come up off Venus on its own, it’s pretty damn clear that it’s related And if we did it—”

“If we built that, it’s because we found a new technology, and we’re using it,” Errinwright said “Flint spear to gunpowder to nuclear warheads, it’s e do, Chrisjen Let me worry about that You keep your eye on Venus and don’t let the Martian situation get out of control”

“Yes, sir,” she said

“Everything’s going to be fine”

And, looking at the dead screen where her superior had been, Avasarala decided that ht it was true Avasarala wasn’t sure any longer So her, and she didn’t yet knohat it was It only lurked there, just underneath her conscious ertip She opened the captured video froh the ain

Kiki and Suri were going to grow up in a world where this had happened, where Venus had always been the colony of son, uncommunicative, and implacable The fear that carried would be nor they didn’t think about any more than they did their own breath On her screen, a man no older than Soren emptied an assault rifle clip into the attacker The enhanced i, the trails of filaain At least it had been quick for hiertip traced the outline of the attacker

“Who are you?” she asked the screen “What do you want?”

She was h that she knew the feeling, but that didn’t help It would come when it ca where it itched She shut down the files, waiting for the security protocols to ned out and turned to the

She found that she was thinking about the next tiet the next tilean frohter It was already perfectly clear in her ain, sooner or later Genies didn’t get put back into bottles, and from the moment the protomolecule had been set loose on the civilian population of Eros just to see what it would do, civilization had changed Changed so fast and so powerfully that they were still playing catch-up

Playing catch-up

There was so in the words, like a lyric froround her teeth and stood up, pacing the length of herShe hated this part Hated it

Her office door opened When she turned to look at Soren, he flinched back Avasarala took her scon a couple of notches It wasn’t fair to scare the poor bunny He was probably just the intern who’d pulled the short straw and gotten stuck with the cranky old woman And in a way, she liked hiht you’d want to know that Adht Interference in his field of coeneral”

Avasarala smiled If she couldn’t unlock all the mysteries of the universe, she could at least keep the boys in line And if he wasn’t appealing to the bobble-head, then it was just pouting Nothing was going to come of it