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“So he got out, then,” Bobbie said
“Him and his pet botanist and the whole damned crew,” Avasarala said “So noe have one story about what they were doing on Ganyot your boys and ours so excited they started shooting each other”
Bobbie looked up at her
“Do you think it’s true?”
“What is truth?” Avasarala said “I think Holden has a long history of blabbing whatever he knows or thinks he knows all over creation True or not, he believes it”
“And the part about the protomolecule? I mean, he just told everyone that the protoot to be reacting to that, right?”
Avasarala flipped to the intelligence suhtened people, exhausted by tragedy and war and fueled by panic She could tell that the security forces arrayed against the the use of force These were orderlies trying to keep the frail and dying fro the line between necessary violence and ineffectiveness
“Fifty dead so far,” Avasarala said “That’s the estiht have been going to die of sickness and malnutrition anyway But they died of this instead”
“I went to that restaurant,” Bobbie said
Avasarala frowned, trying toBobbie pointed at the screen
“The one they’re dying in front of? I ate there just after I arrived at the deploye”
“Sorry,” Avasarala said, but the ,” she said
“Maybe,” Avasarala said “Maybe not”
“James Holden just told the whole system that the protomolecule’s on Ganymede In what universe is that maybe not?”
Avasarala pulled up a s, and pulled the one with the listed experts she wanted The data buffered for a few seconds while she lifted her finger for patience
“—totally irresponsible,” a grave-cheeked man in a lab coat and kufi cap said The contempt in his voice could have peeled paint
The interviewer appeared beside him She was ht and a dark suit that said she was a serious journalist
“So you’re saying the protoes Ja to do with the proto agent leak It happens all the time”
“So there isn’t any reason to panic”
“Alice,” the expert said, turning his condescension to the interviewer “Within a few days of exposure, Eros was a living horror show In the tin of a live infection Not one”
“But he has a scientist with hihter—”
“I don’t know this Meng fellow, but playing with a few soybeans makes him as much an expert on the protoeon I’hter, but no If the protoo This panic is over literally nothing”