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It wasn’t hard to understand how Errinwright and Nguyen and their cabal would turn their backs on Venus, on the alien chaos that was beco order andat the back of her ames, the old patterns, the history of warfare and conflict, deception and death For all its horror, it was fairl, she’d seen a film about a man who saw the face of God For the first hour of the fil on basic on the coast of southern Africa When he saw God, the fil and then another hour of slowly building hiinning Avasarala had hated it Now, though, she al aas natural Even if it was moronic and self-destructive and ehter Death All the violence that Errinwright and his men—and she felt certain they were al, they were drawn to because it was co And they were scared

Well, so was she

“Pussies,” she said, and restarted the playback

“Venus can think,” Michael-Jon said instead of hello or any other social pleasantry “I’ve had the signal analysis tea the datafrom the network of water and electrical currents, and we’ve found a model It’s only about a sixty percent correlation, but I’ot different anatomy, of course, but its functional structure isprobleap, and I can’t help with that part, but e’ve seen, I’ They were the actual thoughts, like neurons firing off”

He looked into the ca her to answer and then looked ht you’d want to know,” he said, and ended the recording

Before she could fore froratitude and relief that she was slightly ashamed of

“Chrisjen,” he said “We have a problen the sa noas over twenty-eight minutes She put in a standard request, expedited it, and stood up Her back was a solid knot She walked to the common area of the suite Bobbie, Cotyar, and three otherin a circle, the deck of cards distributed ah the hips where ravity made her joints ache She lowered herself to Bobbie’s side

“Next hand, you can deal uyen, and at first glance it made no sense at all Six UN destroyers had been ordered off the Ganyh burn on a course that seemed to lead essentially to nowhere Initial reports showed that after a decent period of wondering what the fk, a siuyen was up to so, and she didn’t have the first clue what it could be But Souther had sent it and thought she would see so

It took another hour to find it Holden’s Rocinante had departed Tycho Station on a gentle burn for the Jovian systeht plan with the OPA, but he hadn’t infor hi to kill hi ah-stakes round, which meant the pile of little bits of chocolate candy they were using for chips was almost five centieant Draper With me, please”

The cards all vanished The men looked at each other nervously as she walked back into her bedroom She closed the door behind them carefully It didn’t even click

“I aer,” she said “If I do this, the coe”

Cotyar and Bobbie exchanged looks