“Good that you care.”
“Oh,” Miller said with that same vaguely frightening laugh. “I really don’t. I mean, I remember being human. The simulation is good. But I remember caring without really caring, if you know what I mean.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, hey, look at this,” Miller said, pointing at the black sky. Instantly the sky was filled with glowing blue Rings. The thousand-plus gates of the slow zone, orbiting around them like Alex’s dandelion seeds, seen from the center of the flower. “Shazam!” Miller said. As one, the gates shifted in color and became mirrors reflecting thousands of other solar systems. Holden could actually see the alien stars, and the worlds whirring in orbit around them. He assumed that meant Miller was taking a little artistic license with his simulation.
There was a croaking sound at his feet, and Holden looked down to see something that looked like a long-limbed frog, with grayish skin and no visible eyes. Its mouth was full of sharp-looking little teeth, and Holden became very aware of his bare toes just a few dozen centimeters from it. Without looking down, Miller kicked the frog thing away with his shoe. It blurred away across the field on its too-long limbs.
“The gates are all open out there?”
Miller gave him a quizzical look.
“You know,” Holden continued. “In reality?”
“What’s reality?” Miller said, looking back up at the swirling gates and the night sky.
“The place where I live?”
“Yeah, fine. The gates are all open.”
“And are there invading fleets of monsters pouring through to kill us all?”
“Not yet,” Miller said. “Which is kind of interesting in its own way.”
“I was joking.”
“I wasn’t,” Miller said. “It was a calculated risk. But it looks clear for now.”
“We can go through those gates, though. We can go there.”
“Can,” Miller said. “And knowing you, you will.”
For a moment, Holden forgot about Ashford, the Behemoth, the deaths and the violence and the thousand other things that had distracted him from where they really were. What they were really doing.
What it all meant.
He would live to see humanity’s spread to the stars. He and Naomi, their children, their children’s children. Thousands of worlds, no procreation restrictions. A new golden age for the species. And the Nauvoo had made it happen, in a way. Fred could tell the Mormons. Maybe they’d stop suing him now.
“Wow,” he said.
“Yeah, well let’s not get too happy,” Miller said. “I keep warning you. Doors and corners, kid. That’s where they get you. Humans are too f**king stupid to listen. Well, you’ll learn your lessons soon enough, and it’s not my job to nursemaid the species through the next steps.”
Holden scuffed at the ground cover with his toe. When it was scraped, a clear fluid that smelled like honey seeped out. This world was in the station’s catalog, Miller had said. I could live here someday. The thought was astounding.
The sky shifted, and now all the ships that had been trapped around the station were visible. They drifted slowly away from each other. “You let them go?”
“I didn’t. Station’s off lockdown,” Miller said. “And I’ve killed the security system permanently. No need for it. Just an accident waiting to happen when one of you monkeys sticks a finger where it doesn’t belong. Is this Ashford cocksucker really thinking he can hurt the gates?”
“And there are worlds like this on the other side of all those gates?”
“Some of them, maybe. Who knows?” Miller turned to face Holden again, his blue eyes eerie and full of secrets. “Someone fought a war here, kid. One that spanned this galaxy and maybe more. My team lost, and they’re all gone now. A couple billion years gone. Who knows what’s waiting on the other side of those doors?”
“We’ll find out, I guess,” Holden replied, putting on a bold front but frightened in spite of himself.
“Doors and corners,” Miller said again. Something in his voice told Holden it was the last warning.
They looked up at the sky, watching the ships slowly drift away from them. Holden waited to see the first missiles fly, but it didn’t happen. Everyone was playing nice. Maybe what had happened on the Behemoth had changed people. Maybe they’d take that change back to where they came from, infect others with it. It was a lot to hope for, but Holden was an unapologetic optimist. Give people the information they need. Trust them to do the right thing. He didn’t know any other way to play it.
Or maybe the ships moving was just Miller playing with his simulation, and humanity hadn’t learned a thing.
“So,” Holden said after a few minutes of quiet sky watching. “Thanks for the visit. I guess I’d better be getting back to my gunfight.”
“Not done with you,” Miller said. The tone was light, but the words were ominous.
“Okay.”
“I wasn’t built to fix shit humanity broke,” Miller said. “I didn’t come here to open gates for you and get the lockdown to let you go. That’s incidental. The thing that made me just builds roads. And now it’s using me to find out what happened to the galaxy-spanning civilization that wanted the road.”
“Why does that matter now, if they’re all gone?”
“It doesn’t,” Miller said with a weary shrug. “Not a bit. If you set the nav computer on the Roci to take you somewhere, and then fall over dead a second later, can the Roci decide it doesn’t matter anymore and just not go?”
“No,” Holden said, understanding and finding a sadness for this Miller construct he wouldn’t have guessed was possible.
“We were supposed to connect with the network. We’re just trying to do that, doesn’t matter that the network’s gone. What came up off of Venus is dumb, kid. Just knows how to do one thing. It doesn’t know how to investigate. But I do. And it had me. So I’m going to investigate even though none of the answers will mean f**k-all to the universe at large.”
“I understand,” Holden said. “Good luck, Miller, I—”
“I said I’m not done with you.”
Holden took a step back, suddenly very frightened about where this might be going. “What does that mean?”
“It means, kid, that I’ll need a ride.”
Holden was floating in free fall in an environment suit in absolute darkness. People were yelling. There was the sound of a gunshot, then silence, then an electric pop and a groan.