Babylon's Ashes, Page 53

  Tomás Myers, a short, thick-set man in a formal white shirt, held the lift for her, and she trotted to it so as not to seem ungrateful. It lurched a little as it rose.

  “Going to the Humanist meeting?” he said.

  “Once more into the breach.” She smiled back.

  As they rose, she felt the first inklings of the week’s sermon starting to fall into place. It revolved, she thought, around Tolstoy’s idea of an invisible dependence and the choice they’d all made to come to the Abbey, and Nami saying, We’re spending our whole lives together, so we need to be really gentle.

  Because that was always true. The Abbey and Eudoxia were small enough it became impossible to ignore it, but even among the teeming billions of Earth, they were spending their lives together. They needed to be gentle. And understanding. And careful. It had been true in the depths of history, and at the height of Earth’s power, and it would still be true now that they were scattering to the more than a thousand new suns.

  Maybe, if they could find a way to be gentle, the stars would be better off with them.

  Acknowledgments

  While the creation of any book is less a solitary act than it seems, the past few years have seen a huge increase in the people involved with The Expanse in all its incarnations, including this one. This book would not exist without the hard work and dedication of Danny and Heather Baror, Will Hinton, Tim Holman, Anne Clarke, Ellen Wright, Alex Lencicki, and the whole brilliant crew at Orbit. Special thanks are also due Carrie Vaughn for her services as a beta reader, the gang from Sakeriver: Tom, Sake Mike, Non-Sake Mike, Jim-me, Porter, Scott, Raja, Jeff, Mark, Dan, Joe, and Erik Slaine, who got the ball rolling.

  The support team for The Expanse has also grown to include the staff at Alcon Entertainment and Syfy, and the cast and crew of The Expanse. Our thanks and gratitude go especially to Hallie Lambert, Matt Rasmussen, and Kenn Fisher.

  Special thanks also go to Leo Tolstoy, translators Louise and Aylmer Maude, and Project Gutenberg for Pastor Anna’s comfort reading.

  And, as always, none of this would have happened without the support and company of Jayné, Kat, and Scarlet.

  ALSO BY JAMES S. A. COREY

  THE EXPANSE

  Leviathan Wakes

  Caliban’s War

  Abaddon’s Gate

  Cibola Burn

  Nemesis Games

  Babylon’s Ashes

  THE EXPANSE SHORT FICTION

  The Butcher of Anderson Station

  Gods of Risk

  The Churn

  Drive

  The Vital Abyss

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

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