The dark side of Venus pulsed like a sudden, planetary flash of lightning under the obscuring clouds. And then it glowed.
Vast filaments thousands of kilometers long like spokes on a wheel lit white and vanished. The clouds of Venus shifted, disturbed from below. Prax had the powerful memory of seeing a wake on the surface of a water tank when a fish passed close underneath. Vast and glowing, it rose through the cloud cover. Spoke-like strands of iridescence arced with vast lightning storms, coming together like the arms of an octopus but connected to a rigid central node. Once it had climbed out of Venus’ thick cloud cover, it launched itself away from the sun, toward the viewing ship, but passing it. The other ships in its path were scattered and hurled away. A long plume of displaced Venusian atmosphere caught the sun and glowed like snowflakes and slivers of ice. Prax tried to make sense of the scale. As large as Ceres Station. As large as Ganymede. Larger. It folded its arms—its tentacles—together, accelerating without any visible drive plume. It swam in the void. His heart was racing, but his body was still as stone.
Mei patted his cheek with her open palm and pointed to the screen.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Epilogue: Holden
Holden started the replay again. The wall screen in the Rocinante’sgalley was too small to really catch all the details of the high-resolution imagery the Celestinehad taken. But Holden couldn’t stop watching it no matter what room he was in. An ignored cup of coffee cooled on the table in front of him next to the sandwich he hadn’t eaten.
Venus flashed with light in an intricate pattern. The heavy cloud cover swirled as though caught in a planetwide storm. And then it rose from the surface, pulling a thick contrail of Venus’ atmosphere in its wake.
“Come to bed,” Naomi said, then leaned forward in her chair and took his hand. “Get some sleep.”
“It’s so big. And the way it swatted all those ships out of the way. Effortless, like a whale swimming through a school of guppies.”
“Can you do anything about it?”
“This is the end, Naomi,” Holden said, pulling his eyes away from the screen to look at her. “What if this is the end? This isn’t some alien virus anymore. This thing is what the protomolecule came here to make. This is what it was going to hijack all life on the Earth to make. It could be anything.”
“Can you do anything about it?” she repeated. Her words were harsh, but her voice was kind and she squeezed his fingers affectionately.
Holden turned back to the screen, restarting the image. A dozen ships blew away from Venus as though a massive wind had caught them and sent them spinning like leaves. The surface of the atmosphere began to roil and twist.
“Okay,” Naomi said, standing up. “I’m going to bed. Don’t wake me when you come in. I’m exhausted.”
Holden nodded to her without looking away from the video feed. The massive shape folded itself into a streamlined dart, like a piece of wet cloth plucked up from the center, then flew away. The Venus it left behind looked diminished, somehow. As though something vital had been stolen from it to construct the alien artifact.
And here it was. After all the fighting, with human civilization left in chaos just from its presence, the protomolecule had finished the job it came billions of years before to do. Would humanity survive it? Would the protomolecule even notice them, now that it had finished its grand work?
It wasn’t the ending of one thing that left Holden terrified. It was the prospect of something beginning that was utterly outside the human experience. Whatever happened next, no one could be prepared for it.
It scared the hell out of him.
Behind him, a man cleared his throat.
Holden turned reluctantly away from the image on the screen. The man stood next to the galley refrigerator as if he’d always been there, rumpled gray suit and dented porkpie hat. A bright blue firefly flew off his cheek, then hung in the air beside him. He waved it away like it was a gnat. His expression was one of discomfort and apology.
“Hey,” Detective Miller said. “We gotta talk.”
Contents
By James S.A.Corey
Copyright
Prologue: Mei
Chapter One: Bobbie
Chapter Two: Holden
Chapter Three: Prax
Chapter Four: Bobbie
Chapter Five: Avasarala
Chapter Six: Holden
Chapter Seven: Prax
Chapter Eight: Bobbie
Chapter Nine: Avasarala
Chapter Ten: Prax
Chapter Eleven: Holden
Chapter Twelve: Avasarala
Chapter Thirteen: Holden
Chapter Fourteen: Prax
Chapter Fifteen: Bobbie
Chapter Sixteen: Holden
Chapter Seventeen: Prax
Chapter Eighteen: Avasarala
Chapter Nineteen: Holden
Chapter Twenty: Bobbie
Chapter Twenty-One: Prax
Chapter Twenty-Two: Holden
Chapter Twenty-Three: Avasarala
Chapter Twenty-Four: Prax
Chapter Twenty-Five: Bobbie
Chapter Twenty-Six: Holden
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Prax
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Avasarala
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Holden
Chapter Thirty: Bobbie
Chapter Thirty-One: Prax
Chapter Thirty-Two: Holden
Chapter Thirty-Three: Prax
Chapter Thirty-Four: Holden
Chapter Thirty-Five: Avasarala
Chapter Thirty-Six: Prax
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Avasarala
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Bobbie
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Holden
Chapter Forty: Prax
Chapter Forty-One: Avasarala
Chapter Forty-Two: Holden
Chapter Forty-Three: Bobbie
Chapter Forty-Four: Holden
Chapter Forty-Five: Avasarala
Chapter Forty-Six: Bobbie
Chapter Forty-Seven: Holden
Chapter Forty-Eight: Avasarala
Chapter Forty-Nine: Holden
Chapter Fifty: Bobbie
Chapter Fifty-One: Prax
Chapter Fifty-Two: Avasarala
Chapter Fifty-Three: Holden
Chapter Fifty-Four: Prax
Epilogue: Holden
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Acknowledgments
The process of making a book is never as solitary as it seems. This book and this series wouldn’t exist without the hard work of Shawna McCarthy and Danny Baror and the support and dedication of DongWon Song, Anne Clarke, Alex Lencicki, the inimitable Jack Womack, and the brilliant crew at Orbit. Also gratitude goes to Carrie, Kat, and Jayné for feedback and support, and also to the whole Sakeriver gang. Much of the cool in the book belongs to them. The errors and infelicities and egregious fudging was all us.
About the author
James S. A. Coreyis the pen name of fantasy author Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, George R. R. Martin’s assistant. They both live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.