“What would you like the surveillance team to do?”

“Surveillance,” she snapped. “Watch him, see who he talks to and what he does. Daily reports back if it’s boring, real-time updates if it runs hot.”

“Yes, ma’am. Do you want him brought in?”

“Pull him and his people in when they try to leave Ganymede. Otherwise stay out of their way and try not to get noticed. Holden’s an idiot, but he’s not stupid. If he realizes he’s being watched, he’ll start broadcasting pictures of all our Ganymede sources or something. Do not underestimate his capacity to fuck things up.”

“Anything else?”

Another flash of lightning. Another roll of thunder. Another storm among trillions of storms that had assaulted the Earth since back in the beginning, when something had first tried to end all life on the planet. Something that was on Venus right now. And spreading.

“Find a way for me to get a message to Fred Johnson without Nguyen or the Martians finding out,” she said. “We may need to do some back-channel negotiation.”

Chapter Ten: Prax

Pas kirrup es I’m to this,” the boy sitting on the cot said. “Pinche salad, sa-sa? Ten thousand, once was.”

He couldn’t have been more than twenty. Young enough, technically, to be his son, just as Mei could have been the boy’s daughter. Colt-thin from adolescent growth and a life in low g, his thinness was improbable to begin with. And he’d been starving besides.

“I can write you a promissory note if you want,” Prax said.

The boy grinned and made a rude gesture.

From his professional work, Prax knew that the inner planets thought of Belter slang as a statement about location. He knew from living as a food botanist on Ganymede that it was also about class. He had grown up with tutors in accent-free Chinese and English.