Page 37 (1/2)

Alex crossed the park to the farther gates, where the local tubes ran to the other neighborhoods Innis Shallohere Bobbie lived, didn’t have the best reputation The worst that Mars had to offer wasn’t as bad as an iffy sector on Ceres Station, though, and regardless anyone who took on Bobbie was either suicidal or had an army behind them

At the Innis Shallow station, Alex shrugged into his jacket and went on foot There were carts for rent and a girl of noon the corner It was a short walk, though, and Alex was dreading the conversation at the end of it

He’d walked the sa fro his hand terminal’s directions to Bobbie’s rooht that the Ring had lifted itself off the ruins of Venus and flown out toward the far edge of the syste that would distract hi until then

Bobbie was living in a very pleasant side corridor with its own greenway in the center and lights that had been fashioned to look like wrought-iron lained 1800s London He’d only had to stand at her door for a few seconds before it opened

Bobbie Draper was a big woman, and while years of civilian life had lost her a little of her th the way a fire did heat Every time he saw her, he remembered a story from ancient history about the native Sa Spanish conquistadors into the sea Bobbie was a woman who made that shit seem plausible

“Alex! Come in I’m sorry the place is a mess”

“Ain’t worse thanrun”

The main room ider than the ops deck back on the Roci, and done in shades of terra-cotta and gray that shouldn’t have worked together, but did The dining table didn’t seat more than four, and there were only two chairs beside it Through an archway across fro spray of colors, like Monet’s water lilies animated Wherehts beside it A spiral staircase led up and down in the den’s corner, baht

“Fancy digs,” Alex had said

Bobbie’s glance at her own rooetic “It’s ht I’d like the space Room to stretch out”

“You thought you would?”

She shrugged “It’s more than I need”

She put on a brown leather jacket that looked professional and minimized the breadth of her shoulders, then led him to a fish shack with shredded trout in black sauce that had been some of the best he’d ever had The beer was a local brew, served cold Over the course of two hours, the sting of Talissa’s voice and his feeling of self-loathing lost their edges, if they didn’t quite vanish Bobbie told stories about working veterans’ outreach A woet psychiatric help for her son ouldn’t stop playing console games since he’d finished his deployeant, and now the kid had a job at the shipyards Or the tied in his colon was service related When Bobbie laughed, Alex laughed with her

Slowly, he’d started taking his turn too What it had been like on the far side of the Ring Watching Ilus or New Terra or whatever the hell they wound up calling it as it went through its paroxys back with a prisoner, which led into the first tihter of Jules-Pierre and sister to the protomolecule’s patient zero, that one had been – and how Holden and A these days

That had been when the ache hit The homesickness for his crew and their ship He enjoyed Bobbie’s wit and the easy physicality of her company, but what he’d really wanted – then and in the days since – was to be back on the Rocinante Which hy the end of their conversation had been so aard for him