“And you think…?”

“We killed Protogen, and you helped. I’m asking whether you know of any little boxes lying around somewhere. And I’m very much hoping you say yes.”

“Is this from the secretary-general or Errinwright?”

“No. Just me.”

“I’ve already said everything I know,” he said.

“I don’t believe that.”

The mask of his persona slipped. It lasted less than a second, nothing more than a shift in the angle of his spine and a hardness in his jaw, here and gone again. It was anger. That was interesting.

“They killed my daughter,” he said softly. “Even if I’d had something to hide, I wouldn’t have.”

“How did it come to be your girl?” Avasarala asked. “Did they target her? Was somebody using her against you?”

“It was bad luck. She was out in the deep orbits, trying to prove something. She was young and rebellious and stupid. We were trying to get her to come home but… she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Something tickled at the back of Avasarala’s mind. A hunch. An impulse. She went with it.

“Have you heard from her since it happened?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Since Eros Station crashed into Venus, have you heard from her?”

It was interesting watching him pretend to be angry now. It was almost like the real thing. She couldn’t have said what about it was inauthentic. The intelligence in his eyes, maybe. The sense that he was more present than he had been before. Real rage swept people away. This was rage as a gambit.

“My Julie is dead,” he said, his voice shaking theatrically. “She died when that bastard alien thing went down to Venus. She died saving the Earth.”