Chapter Text
The day that Amos died, Prax woke up shivering. The blanket had slid off in the night and the air was cold, even this far back in the cave. Without opening his eyes, he felt around beside the cot, found the blanket, arranged it haphazardly one-handed over himself and Amos, and tried to fall asleep again.
It didn’t work. His brain refused to turn off, no matter how stubbornly he kept his eyes closed. As a matter of principle he didn’t get up, but used the time to go over his plans for the day while enjoying the warmth of the blanket and of Amos’s solid bulk against his back.
While he was calculating how many weeks were left before the long, slow, Laconian autumn gave way to the long, slow, Laconian winter (...earliest average frost date is three weeks from now, so hopefully at least that long...I still can’t get over all this unregulated weather. So disorganized...), Amos grunted and rolled over, throwing a heavy arm over Prax’s shoulder.
“Morning,” said Prax, pressing his chin against Amos’s forearm. “Sleep well?”
“Yup,” said Amos, and farted.
“Augh! You are so nasty!” Prax tried to roll away and get up, but Amos tightened his grip.
“What’s the matter, Doc? Don’t you want to cuddle?”
“Amos, if you pull that blanket over my head, I swear to God - “
There was a profanity-laced and giggly struggle, which ended when the cot collapsed under them.
“Ow. We’re too old for this shit,” groaned Prax, rubbing his backside.
“Speak for yourself,” said Amos, rising from the ruins and helping Prax up. “I say you’re never too old to give your man a dutch oven.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah, I am.”
They put the cot back together and got ready for the day.
Prax brushed his teeth while watching Amos plug the kettle into the backpack nuke, which doubled as their main power source. It’s so good to see him being playful again. Those awful months when Claire was dying by inches...and then the invasion, and everything that went down on Medina, and Claire sacrificing herself, and the captain getting captured...it took a lot out of him. Well, out of all of us, but I hate seeing him fold in on himself like that. He can’t stand not being able to fix things. I guess that’s why he was so eager to take this assignment.
*
Their assignment - part rescue mission, part assassination attempt - had come from Saba, via Naomi, when everything was in flux. Holden was gone; Duarte was in control; the Roci was hidden away on Freehold with Alex and Naomi; Bobbie was captain of the Gathering Storm, with Amos as her acting XO.
Prax had been on the Storm too, trying to be a med tech in a sick bay full of equipment that looked like it might grow legs and walk away at any moment. He’d felt useless, but at least he was with Amos - and at least he didn’t have to be part of decommissioning the Roci. Knowing that the dozens of greenwalls that Amos had made for him were being taken apart was bad enough. He wouldn’t have been able to destroy them (all right, to disassemble them - the plants were donated to the Freehold hydroponics center) without disgracing himself.
“A shot at getting Cap out and blowing Duarte to hell? Fuck yes,” Amos had said, when Naomi broached the subject, using a secure channel from Freehold’s surface to the Gathering Storm.
Prax sat beside him, full of dread. Amos had been much more like himself since he and Bobbie fought on Medina (Prax wondered if he ought to send her an appreciative fruit basket or a note - “Thank you for kicking the shit out of my lover, he’s much less homicidal now”), but there was still something...off. Prax tried to be patient, burying his own shock and grief in the daily round of things that must be done, but he worried. He worried that Amos was going to do something brave and stupid and get himself killed.
And then this came along, right on cue.
Great. A suicide mission, he thought, trying not to let his face telegraph his reaction to Naomi. He saw in her eyes that she knew full well what she was asking, and that she wouldn’t ask it if she didn’t believe that Amos was the best man for the job.
“Doc and I will pack right away,” Amos continued. “Have you told Cap’n Babs?”
“You want me to come too?” Prax blurted, flooded with relief, astonishment, and dismay.
Onscreen, Naomi shook her head. “I’m sorry, but Saba was clear. This is a one-person assignment.”
“Come on. He’s not that big. I can put him in my luggage.”
“I’m serious, Amos. And it wouldn’t be fair to ask of him. Laconia is a full g planet. Prax would be in real pain there. Trust me on this.” She grimaced. “Freehold isn’t as bad as that and it’s no picnic.”
Prax didn’t like being talked about as if he wasn’t there. “Millions of colonists have endured worse,” he said.
Naomi had looked at him then. “This isn’t a there-and-back mission, Prax. It’s got no solid end date. You could be there for years, and you’ll be going silent once you arrive. No communication - not with Mei, not with anyone.”
“I understand.” For the time it took him to breathe in once, slowly, Prax saw another version of his future - one where he said goodbye to Amos, to all the others, left this life behind, went to work in the Bara Gaon system, near enough to Mei and her family to visit his grandson.
No. I made my choice a long time ago.
He exhaled and looked over at Amos, whose eyes glinted with excitement. “I’m coming with you.”
“Fuckin’ A!” Amos put an arm around Prax and pulled him in tight. “You heard him, Boss. It’s both of us or neither.”
Naomi sighed. “All right, guys. I’ll sell it to Saba somehow. God knows I’ll feel better knowing you’re not down there all by yourself, Amos. And...thanks.”
Later, while they were packing in their cabin, Amos said: “I kind of press-ganged you into this, Doc. Are you really OK with coming along?”
“I am. Or at least, I’m more OK with it than with any of my other options.”
“Don’t worry about the gravity thing. Ilus is over a g, and when I was there the Belters did fine, with some help from bone and muscle growth meds. They adapted. Humans are good at that.”
Prax sighed. “The physical side of things isn’t exactly the least of my worries, but it’s pretty low on the list.”
“What’s at the top, then?”
“I’m afraid that I’m going to make the mission harder for you. That I’ll be a distraction and a hindrance. I mean, look at me - I’m no action hero.”
Amos laughed, but without mockery. “Not expecting you to be what you ain’t. It’s just, uh...” He sat down on the edge of his crash couch and looked up at Prax, evidently struggling to find the right words. “It’s just everything, you know? Cap and Naomi retiring? Fine, it was time for them to move on. Peaches being sick? Fucking awful, but she made a good end. Cap getting his stupid, heroic ass carted off to Bad Guy Central? Classic Holden stunt. Putting the Roci on ice? Gotta do what we gotta do. She’ll fly again. But having it all happen at once...” He shook his head. “It’s a lot. You saw how I was when Peaches was on her way out. I hate not being able to do anything. Now there’s something I can do, and I’m gonna do it, but I’ll go into it a hell of a lot happier if you’re with me. I’m not ready to lose you yet, Doc.”
Prax sat beside Amos. “Same here, love. Same here.”
They’d spent the next four weeks wedged into a cargo container on a supply ship bound for Laconia. For company, they had two crash couches, an emergency support recycler, a water supply, and one backpack-sized nuclear bomb strapped securely into its own gel pad. They passed the time by exercising, studying the infopack on Laconia that Saba’s contacts had put together for them, and (in Prax’s case) mainlining bone and muscle enhancers to prepare for life in a full g.
“OK, smartass, what’s a sunbird?” said Amos, after Prax had defeated him in a round of Name That Member of Laconian High Command.
“Not a bird, for starters,” said Prax. “It’s a small flying creature with leathery wings, and has been known to swim in ponds and run along the ground. Your turn. What flora and fauna are edible for humans?”
“Easy. None. With the exception of water. The downside for us is that we have to bring or grow all our own food; the upside is that nothing will try to eat us, since we’re toxic to them too. Unless they take a bite out of curiosity or cussedness.”
“Yes, but then it would die, and we might not.”
“Some comfort. Your turn. How long is a Laconian year?”
“Just over three Earth-standard years.”
“Which affects us because...?”
“It affects us because we’re getting there in late spring, so we’ll have a good long time before the cold weather comes - about two Earth years. Your turn. What’s the first thing we do when we arrive?” Prax let the resistance bands drop, panting, and looked around for his water bulb.
Amos handed it to him, not breaking the rhythm of his bicep curls with the other arm. “Here. We’re to wait for our contact - “
“ - who is?”
“ - who is a woman named Singh, to let us out and get us through the fence around the capital. Then what?”
“Then,” said Prax, setting the bulb against the wall with a magnetic click and wiping his mouth, “we wander through the woods at the foot of the mountain outside the city, looking for the cache of supplies that are waiting for us at grid coordinates...uh...give me a minute...”
“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” said Amos unhelpfully.
“Damn. I lost it.”
“Ha! My point,” said Amos, and rattled off the coordinates.
Prax rolled his eyes. “Fine, your point. So we find our supplies and pick a spot to hole up - literally, since there’s caves all over the mountain. Totally empty and safe for humans, I’m sure.”
“The geological surveys say that the weird crystal caves that make people dizzy and see shit that’s not there are further south.”
“How reassuring.”
When he wasn’t working out, sleeping, or trying to commit the sum total of humanity’s research on Laconia to memory, Prax wrote to Mei.
He hadn’t seen her in person since he’d met her husband, Jamal, and Katoa, their newborn son. Five years ago, he marveled. Katoa must be starting school soon, if he hasn’t already. They’d always messaged each other regularly, and they’d been planning to get together on Ganymede to see Nat and Djuna and their families, but then the invasion happened.
Now Prax was a member of a bona-fide rebel alliance on his way to carry out a secret mission in the heart of enemy territory. It was so melodramatic that it was almost funny. The chances of him seeing Djuna, Natalia, Mei, or his grandson ever again were non-zero, but barely. He hadn’t been able to send them messages since he’d escaped Medina, and any communication was definitely out of the question now.
So, much in the way that he’d once recorded messages to Amos, he composed entries on his hand terminal’s document program. A never-ending letter to his daughter.
We’re here at last, he typed, his thumbs moving over the little screen with practiced speed as he lay strapped into his couch. Once the descent is complete we’ll have to wait while all the containers are unloaded. Then we wait until our contact shows up. Waiting and more waiting.
The trip through the atmosphere was bumpy and uncomfortable. They stayed in their couches until their container was finished being hauled around by machinery and left sitting, presumably somewhere in the unloading zone. Then they unbuckled themselves and sat waiting, their rucksacks on their backs. Prax’s pack held their personal items. Amos’s held the bomb.
“I wonder if it’s day or night,” said Prax.
“Pretty sure it’s night. Hard to keep track from in here, though.”
“Yeah.”
Silence filled the rectangular space that had been their home for the past month. Amos sat across from Prax, elbows on knees, his big hands loosely clasped.
Prax probed his own mind, looking for regrets, and found none. Even if we’re gunned down the second that door opens, I’m OK with it. This is where I want to be.
A sharp bang on the outside of their container brought him out of his brown study. Amos heaved himself to his feet, settling the weight of the nuke on his shoulders. “Ready?” he said, drawing his gun.
“Ready,” said Prax, and placed himself behind Amos.
There was the sound of metal scraping on metal as the bolts were drawn. The door swung open with a hiss of depressurization, and Prax took his first lungful of Laconian air. It smelled of peppermint, which his brain (running up and waving facts at him to keep him from backing into the farthest corner of the container and never coming out) told him meant that it had rained recently.
“Welcome to Laconia,” said the woman on the other side of the door - Laconically, thought Prax, and bit down on a totally inappropriate snicker. The woman was small and unarmed, with a thin, intense face and a generic dockworker’s coverall. “I’m Singh. Come on.”
“After you,” said Amos, his finger still on the trigger.
“Hold it,” said Singh, catching sight of Prax. “There’s only meant to be one of you. Who’s he?”
“Slight change of plan,” said Amos amiably. “I take it Saba didn’t get around to telling you.”
Singh still frowned, but Saba’s name seemed to allay her fears somewhat. “No. Communications are irregular, to say the least.” She hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged. “All right. Let’s go.”
It was night. The three of them slunk through the shadows cast by the stacked containers in the floodlit unloading zone. Prax was grateful that their container, either by good management or good luck, had been on the bottom of a stack and not the top.
Singh led them silently through the maze in a series of darts and pauses that seemed to go on forever. Prax kept his eyes firmly on Amos’s boots. Now was not the time for an attack of existential dread at his first sight of the sky.
They arrived at a service door in the perimeter fence, which was three meters high and built of steel posts and tight-woven mesh. Singh punched a code into the number pad by the door and it opened with a faint squeak.
Prax and Amos looked through it at the other side. The light from the unloading zone illuminated a strip of close-mown turf between them and the edge of the forest. The forest itself was impenetrably dark, except for some small, greenish-blue lights flickering on and off - probably bioluminescent insect analogs, Prax’s brain informed him.
“You’re on your own from here,” said Singh, waving them through. “Get as deep into the woods as you can tonight. When day comes, find your equipment and a hideout. You’ve got the coordinates?”
“Sure do,” said Amos.
“Right. Good luck.” She closed the door behind them with a final-sounding click.
“Let’s move,” said Amos, already crossing the open space between the fence and the trees. Prax followed him, grateful for the punishing drag of gravity, which countered the fear that he would float off this rock and into the uncontained atmosphere.
*
That was two years ago.
Now, as he and Amos sat on a flat rock at the entrance of their cave and ate their breakfast, Prax thought of his former self with compassion and amusement. He recalled stumbling along in Amos’s wake like a drunk or a sleepwalker, appalled and entranced by the cataract of the new and the strange that poured in on him from every side. Nothing could have prepared him for walking on a planet’s surface without a vac suit, relying on unregulated gravity and air. And as for the weather -
He chuckled into his coffee mug.
“What’s so funny?” said Amos.
“Just thinking about what a mess I was when we got here. Remember the first time it rained?”
“God, yes. You wouldn’t shut up about scale and unpredictability and complex systems and shit. I thought you were going to pop a circuit.”
“If you hadn’t been there, I would have.”
“To be fair, it was a lot to take in - going from a tin can to a whole planet. I was freaked out too.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to be blindfolded to keep from getting the screaming meemies every time you noticed the sky.”
“That’s the Earther in me showing. Can’t take credit for it. Tell you what, though - “ He waved his spoon at the red canyon walls opening overhead to a pale sky, with feathery clouds stained gold and pink by the sunrise. “I’ve never seen any place like this either. Baltimore was a concrete jungle and Ilus was a fucking wasteland compared to this. Duarte picked a hell of a pretty planet for his evil empire’s home base.”
“I know. Half the time I forget why we’re here. I feel like we’re colonists, not spies.”
Amos grinned. “Just call us Adam and Steve, naming the shit out of everything in our own personal world.”
“Pretty sure Adam didn’t give animals names like ‘Vice Grips’ and ‘Zip-tie.’” Prax leaned down and patted the two repair drones that had followed them out of the cave and now lay at their feet like wall-eyed sphinxes.
The drones were one of the more puzzling creatures they’d encountered. The entries about them in the infopack had been tantalizing but not terribly helpful. First recorded sightings after the orbital construction platforms, or ‘stick moons,’ went online, it read. Doglike in appearance, they move in groups of five to twelve, and present no threat to humans. They are not organic as we understand the term. It is possible that they are sentient repair apparatus left behind by the makers of the protomolecule. There are unsubstantiated reports of broken equipment being carried off by the drones and returned in working order. No official study has been made.
Prax had harbored secret hopes of running across some drones during their stay, so he was delighted when no fewer than eight of them showed up outside his and Amos’s cave one day. The drones seemed to take a liking to them and became regular visitors. In honor of their inorganic nature, Amos named them all after things from his old machine shop. Now he nudged Zip-tie aside, stood up and stretched, joints popping. “I’d better get going.”
“Me too.”
They went back into the cave, passing through the sandstone-like entrance, then the eldritch blue-lit middle section with the coiled shapes in the walls, and finally entering the comparatively cozy back section where they lived. Having packed their lunches, they went their separate ways - Amos to watch the State Building through high-powered binoculars, and Prax to work in the greenhouse.
“Have a nice day at work,” said Prax, kissing Amos on the cheek.
“You too, sweet-ass.” Amos gave Prax’s rear a squeeze, laughed when Prax flipped him off, and departed.
Prax watched him walk along the dry riverbed that curved away and down from their cave. With his sturdy, practical clothes and bulging satchel, Amos was the picture of a hard-working colonist off for a day’s labor under an alien sun. Although his beard had been white for several years, it was as thick and lush as ever, and time hadn’t made his bulk run to softness so much as condense. He still moved with the same easy, unhurried strength as always.
That man ages like fine wine, thought Prax, and glanced down at his own body, which he found totally unremarkable, despite the years of bone and muscle density meds. Bless him for not being picky.
His own bag full of food, water, his hand terminal, and a carefully wrapped bag of compost, Prax left the canyon and took one of the game trails that led through the forest, heading for the greenhouse.
Amos had built him the small plexiglass-and-metal-tubing structure with a kit included in their supply cache. The cache, when they had found it more or less in the place indicated by the coordinates, had turned out to be a collection of sealed bins left over from the first wave of pre-Duarte settlers. It had been abandoned in the woods and left to be overgrown by verdant, reeking vinegar weed. Prax and Amos, clearing this away, found themselves in possession of industrial yeast incubators, small-scale hydroponics equipment, seed banks, vacuum-packed blocks of soil imbued with beneficial bacteria, heating elements, water filters, cots, blankets, clothes, boots, coats, dehydrated food, solar ovens, composting toilets, and, of course, the greenhouse kit. Enough to keep the population of a small town alive in relative comfort for a very, very long time.
“Good to know we have spares of - well - everything,” Amos had said, as they sorted through their embarrassment of riches.
Prax held up a couple of winter coats. “Think we’ll need these?”
“God, I hope not.”
Amos set up the greenhouse about half an hour’s walk away from their cave, in a grassy hollow ringed by tall, graceful trees with blue-green, oval leaves. That was back in their early days on Laconia, when Prax couldn’t stay outside for more than half an hour without serious anxiety. Not a trait that made him much use for staking out the State Building.
“I figured you might adjust quicker if you’ve got something familiar to do,” explained Amos, when he told Prax about the greenhouse. “I can take care of all the spy stuff for now, and you can have fun with xenobotany.” Prax, overwhelmed with gratitude and guilt, tried to raise some objections, but Amos waved them away. “Come on, it’d be a shame to waste all that soil and seeds, right? Not to mention all the stuff coming out of our lovely composting toilet. I mean, you can’t really call yourself a space botanist until you’ve grown potatoes in your own shit.”
Finding this reference to Mark Watney irresistible, Prax gave in to Amos’s good-natured manipulation and started making regular trips to the greenhouse. He had to admit, having something to do did help. It was also nice to have something between himself and the sky, even if it was nothing more than a quarter inch of acrylic.
It took him a few weeks to get the base layer of soil prepared to his liking, but once that was done, things grew and throve in the kindly climate. The little greenhouse was now bursting with pole beans, tomatoes, radishes, kale, and - yes - potatoes. Prax and Amos’s diet of dehydrated meal packs was greatly enhanced by the fresh vegetables. Amos was especially fond of the zingy, fast-growing radishes. “I like food that bites back,” was his comment.
Even after Prax adjusted to life at the bottom of the well, he continued to spend more time taking notes on the local flora than joining in Amos’s endless study of the State Building compound. This bothered him so much that he eventually brought up the subject with Amos.
Told Amos my troubles this afternoon, he wrote to Mei after the fact. Told him I felt awful that I wasn’t doing anything to help with our mission. He looked at me like the idea had never occurred to him and asked, Did we have the same jobs as each other on the Roci? I said no, of course not. He said, then why should I assume we’d do the same things here? Which is a good point.
Then he started making all these Star Trek jokes, saying we’re like an away team and he’s the Chief Engineer and also head of security. “What about me?” I asked, and he said I’m the Science Officer, the medic, the quartermaster, and the counselor. It was surprisingly helpful to hear. Holden would be proud that his stupid show has embedded itself in our psyche so thoroughly.
Prax spared Mei the rest of the conversation, in which Amos drew increasingly ridiculous parallels between Prax and Counselor Troi, concluding by saying that Prax should start wearing jewel-toned skin-tight jumpsuits. And also grow his hair long.
So their roles gradually solidified. Amos was in charge of maintaining the equipment - in spite of the repair drones’ efforts to the contrary. They were always trying to sneak off with any broken items and bring them back later, mysteriously mended. It was common to see Amos snatching stuff that he wanted to fix himself out of their reach. To the drones’ credit, once told to stop it and go away, they did - though with many reproachful looks.
Prax was in charge of supply and their own health. So far they’d escaped any injuries worse than superficial cuts and aching joints.
Every few days they sat down together and went over Amos’s latest notes and observations about the compound guards’ movements and schedules. This went on for the spring and part of the summer (the equivalent of one and a half Earth years) without them coming up with a solidly workable plan. They did, however, have the satisfaction of catching sight of Holden now and then.
The first time they saw the captain was in late spring, when Prax had finally felt confident enough in his ever improving planet-legs to join Amos in his favorite stakeout spot. It was near the top of an immense tree, fifty yards back from the compound wall, and gave them a good view of the garden. They went a little before sunrise to give Prax greater cover as he made his ungainly ascent.
“Did I mention I’ve never climbed a tree before?” he’d whispered, stopping to catch his breath partway up.
“You’re doing great,” Amos whispered back from somewhere above him. “Just don’t look down. And don’t put your hand on a gruncher by accident. They like to hide on the underside of the leaves. Scared the shit out of me the first time I flushed one.”
With this encouraging anecdote to spur him on, Prax eventually made it, and they settled in relative comfort on the highest branches that could bear their weight. Prax found that looking down wasn’t an issue, since the tree’s leaves (slivery grey on top, rusty orange underneath) were so thick that he couldn’t see the ground even if he’d wanted to.
They peered through binoculars at the guards strolling along the inside of the wall, noting who was on duty (Amos had given them all nicknames) and how long it took them to do their rounds.
Presently Prax’s attention was caught by a small creature like a furry frog working its way up the trunk of their tree. Without meaning to, he began watching it instead of the compound.
“Holy fuck!” said Amos, in a sotto voce version of a shout.
“What? What?” said Prax, clutching at the tree for dear life.
“It’s Cap! It’s Holden! Look, he’s walking behind that big purple bush!”
Prax looked, focused his binoculars, looked again, and saw him. There was their missing captain, ambling around a magnificent lilac bush in full bloom. He looked healthy and, while not exactly happy, he was not in any immediate distress. “They’re just letting him walk around?”
“Where’s he gonna go? Those guards are clocking him. I don’t know what the deal is, but damn, it’s good to see that he’s alive.”
That was their first major discovery. Their second came some months later, when Prax fell into a hole that turned out to be one end of an old drainage tunnel. The end he fell into was about twenty meters away from the compound wall and well hidden by the forest. The tunnel looked like it led directly back towards the compound and possibly into the gardens themselves. It was too narrow for Amos to fit through, so after some debate, they decided it was worth the risk for Prax to make the attempt.
“If you’re sure you want to do this - “
“I am.”
“ - then we’ll do it at night,” said Amos. “And don’t poke your nose out into the garden to see what’s growing, OK? All we need to know is if the tunnel goes all the way through.”
“Stop worrying. I’ve got no desire to join Holden in there.”
“I’m not worried about that. They’d probably shoot you on sight,” had been Amos’s reassuring theory.
The tunnel proved to be damp and unpleasant but passable, and it did indeed lead into the State Building’s garden. For the first time they had the glimmering of a plan. The problem had always been how to find Holden and how to get him out of there without being spotted. Now, with careful planning and good luck, they might be able to sneak him out right under everyone’s noses.
“They’ve got surveillance cameras up the wazoo,” said Amos, “and they’ve probably planted a tracker on him, so it won’t give us much of a start. But we only need long enough to set off the nuke to cover our tracks.”
“And kill ourselves too.”
“Bullshit. We’ll hide in the cave and detonate it by remote. Then we can steal a ship and get off this rock.”
“Easy at that, huh?”
“There might be a few details left to work out,” Amos admitted, but he’d grinned when he said it. Prax grinned back. It felt good to finally have an idea of how to proceed, however faint.
Then they’d met Teresa.
*
They were enjoying their lunch in a clearing that also happened to be their primary pickup zone, should they ever choose to call for evacuation, when a teenage girl and a dog appeared out of nowhere. Prax and Amos had never seen a single Laconian put so much as a toe outside the perimeter of the capital, so it took them a moment to realize what they were seeing. Amos laid a hand on his gun. Prax simply stared.
The girl had stared back at them warily, but didn’t run away or scream. The dog - a real Earth dog, the first Prax had ever seen - bounded straight up to them, nosing their empty food containers and licking Amos’s face.
“Come back here, Muskrat!” commanded the girl, coming a few steps closer. Prax inhaled sharply. There was something familiar about her. Surely he’d seen her before - or someone very like her...?
Then she introduced herself as Teresa Duarte. Of course, thought Prax, remembering the endless hours studying the infopack while stuck in the transport container. She’s grown up a lot since then, but I should have recognized her.
Amos nodded like he’d been expecting her. “Nice to meet you. This is Doc. Call me Timothy,” he said, which threw Prax momentarily until he remembered (a) that Timothy had been Amos’s name before he left Earth and (b) that it would be the height of idiocy to reveal their real names to the dictator’s daughter.
Perhaps reassured by the behavior of her dog, who took an instant liking to Amos, Teresa sat on a fallen tree and talked with them for a while. She hadn’t seemed to think it strange to find two old men picnicking outside the city limits. If anything, she was impressed and envious.
Prax stayed quiet, his mind vacillating between This is it, we’re toast, she’s going to have us arrested and executed and It’s nice to talk to someone new for the first time in almost two years. Amos, exercising his talent for getting along with anyone who wasn’t actively trying to kill him, chatted with Teresa easily. By the time she got up to go she was smiling and laughing, some of her mannerisms so strongly reminding Prax of Mei and Nat at that age that he had to blink back tears.
“I’ve got to get back before they notice I’m gone,” she said. “Here, Muskrat.” She slapped her leg and the dog galumphed over to her, grinning doggily. “Um - can I see you guys again sometime?”
“Depends,” said Amos. “Can you keep your mouth shut? I have a feeling your dad wouldn’t be too pleased to hear we’re camping in his backyard.”
“Don’t worry,” Teresa said. “You can trust me. Bye, Timothy - bye, Doc!”
“See you, Tiny,” said Amos, and Prax sighed.
As soon as I heard him call her that I knew we’d never use the nuke, Prax wrote to Mei that night. She’s one of his Lost Girls now. Like you were. Like Clarissa was. Now that he’s met her, there’s no way he’ll ever take the chance of blowing her up. Not that I was ever a fan of making an irradiated crater in the middle of this beautiful place, killing God knows how many innocent people - but it does mean that we’ve got to go back to the drawing board.
“Don’t sweat it,” Amos said, when Prax brought this up the next day. “We’ll find another way.”
Teresa was a regular visitor after that. She didn’t seem to find their presence alarming - not even when Amos, with what Prax considered ill-advised candor, described himself to her as “an assassin with a pocket nuke.” She’s never even asked who we’re here to assassinate, thought Prax. Perhaps she’s just so desperate from someone to talk to that she doesn’t care.
Prax nearly had a heart attack the first time she showed up at the cave, preceded by an excessively self-satisfied Muskrat. “She knows your scent, I guess,” explained Teresa. “She took off up the trails as soon as we came through the old tunnel in the garden.” (So that’s how she got out. So much for our big secret, thought Prax). “Sorry if we scared you.”
“It’s OK,” said Prax. I hope. “You startled me is all.”
“Wow! This is beautiful,” said Teresa, peering past him at the crystalline stalactites and gently glowing whorled stone walls. “This is the farthest I’ve ever been outside the compound, you know.”
“Like a captive princess,” said Prax, thinking of all the stories with a similar premise that Mei used to love.
“Kind of. I mean, everyone else stays inside the walls all the time too.”
“A nation of captive princesses, then,” suggested Prax, and she laughed. He liked seeing her laugh. It made her look less like a preoccupied statesman and more like a teenage girl.
Her friendship may have cancelled out their nuclear option, but it also provided them with many useful insights into life at the State Building. Most importantly, she told them things about Holden.
Prax and Amos had agreed not to tell her why they were there, so they were careful not to show any special interest when she brought him up. Over the course of her repeated visits they learned that he steadfastly refused to give Duarte either information or loyalty, but that Duarte considered him so harmless that he treated him like a particularly well-guarded guest. “A dancing bear,” Holden apparently called himself once. Amos snorted when he heard that.
“Sounds like he’s keeping his sense of humor, at least,” he said to Prax after Teresa had gone.
“Will we ever be able to get him out?”
“I don’t know, Doc. I don’t know. But I’m damned if I’ll go back to Naomi without trying my absolute hardest.”
*
Holden, Teresa, the tunnel, the bomb, the oncoming winter, the problem of getting off Laconia - Prax turned all these things over in his mind as he walked the game trails to the greenhouse. As soon as he got there, they all faded away in the face of more immediate concerns. The greenhouse vents were wide open because of the recent stretch of mild weather, and a swarm of some sort of insect analog had made its way in and then died, either from overheating or starvation.
Breathing through his mouth because of the smell, he collected the little corpses with gloved hands and tossed them out into the woods, mentally apologizing as he did so. Sorry, little ones. Guess I need to rig some screens over those vents.
That done, he moved on to the more pleasant task of harvesting radishes and pole beans. Then he got out his set of tiny brushes and pollinated the tomatoes. It was a fiddly job, but one that had to be done in this bee-less world. He’d done it so many times during his career that his mind wandered as he worked, this time to the ominous recurrence of the blackouts. “Events,” people had called them, back when they first happened during the invasion.
They’d gone years without any, and then two had happened in the last couple of months. Fortunately there were no ill effects, as far as Prax could tell, although the repair drones did walk a little clumsily for a few minutes afterwards. But Prax couldn’t shake the feeling that the Events signaled the approach of something big. Something new. Something not necessarily good.
“Amos says we’ve got one shot at rescuing the captain, and we can afford to take our time, especially since we know he’s being well-treated,” he told the Brandywine tomato plant that he was working on. “If we have to live through a Laconian winter, we will. But I can’t help feeling that things are going to come to a head sooner than that.”
Time flowed past him unnoticed while he worked. When he finally stopped to eat his lunch - rehydrated lentils and onions, mixed with imitation feta cheese - his hand terminal told him that he’d been at it for over two hours. Having eaten, he packed his things back into his bag and set out for home, taking the long way around this time.
The ten kilometer loop took him most of the afternoon, since he kept stopping to take photos and make notes about things like the way the trees retracted their leaves in the cold weather. The novelty of seeing an ecosystem in the act of going from spring to summer to autumn to winter had yet to fade, and he was determined to miss as little as possible. He was further delayed when a colossal herd of bone elk came rattling through, forcing him to scramble up a tree to avoid being trampled.
Amos was there when Prax got back. They had mushroom noodles and black sauce for dinner, with roasted radishes and beans on the side.
“Good day?” inquired Amos, slurping down some noodles.
“Oh yes. The beans are doing especially well. I hope the greenhouse stands up to the cold weather - I’d hate to go back to nothing but ship rations until spring.”
“You’re made us weak and soft with all this fresh food.”
“I saw a bunch of bone elk on my way back. They nearly ran me over. I had to sit in a knot tree for half an hour before they went away.”
“Creepy fuckers.”
“How about you? Anything new at Casa Duarte?’
“I don’t know exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t explain it. Everything looks the same - the same guards on duty, and I’ve seen Holden in the garden as usual, chatting with Tiny - but it seems...tensed up. Like everyone’s waiting for something.”
“I know the feeling.” Prax yawned. “Well, waiting or not, I’m wiped out. I walked over ten klicks today. Aren’t you proud?”
“Though you’re little, you’re fierce,” said Amos, and kissed him.
“Bleagh! You taste like black sauce. But listen to you, quoting from ‘Midsummer’! Alex would be thrilled!”
“Well, we did watch five different movie versions of it. Something was bound to stick.”
*
Sleep came for Prax quickly. He was not pleased to be woken up a couple of hours later by Amos sitting up sharply, making the cot squeak and bounce. “What is it?” Prax mumbled.
“Someone’s out there.” Amos climbed over him and rummaged in the heap of discarded clothing on the floor. In the pale blue glow from the middle section of the cave, Prax saw him pick up his gun.
“Do you really think you need that? It’s probably just a drone.”
“Better safe than sorry. Sit tight.” Amos melted into the shadows, gun ready, hugging the wall.
Torn between exasperation and worry, Prax got up and pulled on his pants and coat, muttering about paranoiacs and interrupted sleep. His heart thudded when he heard Teresa’s voice at the cave mouth.
“Timothy? Doc?” she called, her voice trembling. “Are you there?”
Amos exhaled. “You got to be more careful, Tiny,” he said, stepping out into the blue light. “My eyes ain’t what they used to be.”
Prax joined him in time to see Teresa dissolve into laughter with more than a touch of hysteria in it. She laughed so hard that she couldn’t stand up straight. She laughed until it changed to sobs, and then she cried as hard as she’d laughed, while two men, a dog, and assorted repair drones watched her helplessly.
Presently she calmed down, breathing unevenly, her hand on Muskrat’s head. The drones made soft querying noises. Probably wondering if they can fix her, thought Prax. I’m wondering the same thing.
“Yeah, OK,” said Amos, in his glad-that’s-over voice. “Rough night. I get that. Come on back. You can...I don’t know what you can do, but I want to sit down, so let’s go back there.”
Teresa looked a little happier as she followed them into the rear of the cave. Amos sat on the cot, rubbing his eyes, and Teresa sat on a metal box of rations.
“Here,” said Prax, offering her a clean hand towel from the drying rack. Teresa mopped her eyes and nose with it, then tried to hand it back to him.
“You can hang on to that,” said Prax with a smile, and sat down beside Amos.
“So,” said Amos, “I don’t really know how to do this part. But I think the way it goes is you tell us what’s bothering you?”
“So much has happened,” said Teresa, damply.
“Yeah?” prompted Amos.
And Teresa told them. She poured out a story that fulfilled all Prax’s premonitions of doom and then some. Duarte, gone suddenly insane in the wake of an Event - the empire held together with lies and duct tape - Admiral Trejo using Teresa as a figurehead and a puppet - it beggared belief, but Prax believed it all. This poor kid. Is this what we’ve been waiting for? Is Laconia’s government about to implode without any help from us?
Eventually Teresa wound down. Prax didn’t know what to say. He wanted to go put an arm around her, but he wasn’t sure how she’d take that in her current state, so he stayed where he was. Amos rubbed his head, his hand rasping on the stubble. Muskrat, out near the cave mouth with the drones, barked happily.
“Yeah, that all sucks,” said Amos. “It’s like that sometimes.”
“It gets better, though. Right?” said Teresa.
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just one shit sandwich after another,” said Amos, with his usual honest tactlessness. “What are you gonna do? It’s the only game in town.”
Teresa frowned, twisting the towel in her hands. “I just want - “
Amos held up a hand. Muskrat barked again, sounding excited.
There were voices outside.
“It’s OK,” said Teresa. “They’re probably just following me.”
Amos nodded and picked his gun up from where he’d laid it beside him on the cot.
“Following you?” said Prax.
“I have a tracker,” said Teresa, all red-rimmed eyes and innocence. “They planted a tracker on me, can you believe that?”
Prax looked from Teresa to Amos in rising horror. Amos only shook his head. “Ah, Tiny. Didn’t see it coming down like this.” He sounded rueful and amused. “You should like down on the floor there. Flat as you can. Put your hands over your ears, OK?”
Who’s there? came from the entrance, sharp and hard.
“No, it’s all right,” said Teresa. “They’re not going to be mad at you.”
“What - “ began Prax, but Amos talked over him quickly, quietly.
“Doc, get under the cot. Don’t come out no matter what. We’re not done, you understand? One of us has to finish the job.”
Prox nodded mutely. Amos grabbed his hand and kissed it, then stood. “Tiny - don’t tell anyone about Doc. Promise me.”
“I promise,” said Teresa, uncomprehending.
Prax crawled into the dark space under the cot, his brain spinning. Amos was out of sight, but he could see Teresa staring after him, the realization of what she’d done dawning in her eyes.
There were voices - shouts - then someone fired a gun. Magnified by the confines of the cave, the noise was unbelievable. Prax clamped his hands over his ears, then immediately unclamped them, straining to hear over the ringing in his head.
What is happening what is happening what do I do oh shit oh shit AMOS -
Amos roared, guns fired, men yelled. Teresa shouted “No!” More gunshots. Voices. Teresa shrieked, high and panicked. A confusion of footsteps, shouts, an electric motor revving, tires crunching on sand - and silence.
Don’t come out no matter what, Amos had said. “Fuck that,” muttered Prax, and pulled himself out from under the cot. Legs trembling, he lurched through the cave, ducked through the sandstone entrance and out into the darkness, lit only by the stars.
“Amos?” he whispered.
The only response was the semi-musical trilling of the drones, crowding behind him. Their eyes gave off a faint light by which he could see bright, wet splashes of blood on the ground. At the edge of the light was a bulky shape, dark and twisted on the pale sand.
“Oh no.” Prax fell to his knees. “No.”
He crept towards the shape, needing to know but wanting to be anywhere but here, doing anything but this. The drones came with him, bringing the light.
He stared at the ruined body.
“That can’t be him,” he said to the drones. “Amos didn’t have a big hole in his chest. I’d have noticed. And he definitely kept his brain inside his head, not - oh, God...” He crawled away, weeping and giggling, not unlike Teresa when she came by that night to destroy them.
Getting up, Prax staggered back to the cave, pausing to be sick before he went in.
Those men will be back as soon as they’ve gotten the girl to safety, said a distant part of his mind that wasn’t consumed with the image of that terrible corpse. There’s a chance they’ll think Amos was working alone, if Teresa keeps her promise. Either way, I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to remove all evidence that a second person lived here, but leave enough behind that they don’t suspect anything’s been taken.
Steadied by having a definite task, he worked methodically, taking tell-tale items like his toothbrush, canteen, and mug. Not knowing whether he could rely on their supply cache remaining undiscovered, he also took what he’d need to survive. Water filter. Heating element. Med kit. Knife. Spare blanket. Sleeping pad. Clothes. Winter coat. Rations. Headlamp.
There was no question of taking the nuke, which was far too heavy for him. I’m not going to be blowing anything up anyway.
The cave floor was too rocky to take footprints, so he didn’t have to worry about leaving tracks. He took one last look around. There. If they do any DNA testing or fingerprinting it’ll be obvious someone else was here, but just maybe they won’t bother. Bowed under the weight of his loaded rucksack and his grief, he walked past the drones, who stood around one of their number that lay on its side, struck down in the gunfight. Some things can’t be fixed, boys.
He flicked on his headlamp, kicked sand over the place where he’d upchucked his dinner, and went to take one last look at Amos’s body. He wanted to do something with it - bury it, make a cairn - anything rather than leave him lying in his own blood, his red-stained beard jutting up at the sky, the top of his head simply not there. But that would give his presence away for sure.
“I’m sorry,” Prax said, standing back from the blood so that he wouldn’t get any on his boots. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve done something. I couldn’t have saved you, but at least we’d have died together.” He swallowed around the tightness in his throat. “I’ll try to finish our mission. I don’t know how, but I’ll try.”
Something tickled his cheek. He brushed at it with his hand, brought it away wet. Apparently he was crying. “I love you.”
He walked out of the canyon and into the blackness of the forest.