“I wouldn’t mess with those,” Holden said.
Prax nodded and closed his eyes again. Sleeping, or trying to. The auto-doc pulled the tube out of Holden’s leg, sprayed it with antiseptic, and began wrapping it with a tight bandage. Holden waited until the medical pod was done doing whatever it was doing to his knee, then turned sideways on the bed and tried to stand up. Even at a quarter g, his leg wouldn’t support him. He hopped on one foot over to a supply locker and got himself a crutch.
As he moved past the botanist’s bed, Prax grabbed his arm. His grip was surprisingly strong.
“It’s dead?”
“Yeah,” Holden said, patting his hand. “We got it. Thanks.”
Prax didn’t reply; he just rolled onto his side and shook. It took Holden a moment to realize Prax was weeping. He left without saying anything else. What else was there to say?
Holden took the ladder-lift up, planning to go to ops and read the detailed damage reports Naomi and the Roci were compiling. He stopped when he got to the personnel deck and heard two people speaking. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he recognized Naomi’s voice, and he recognized the tone she used when she was having an intimate conversation.
The voices were coming from the galley. Feeling a little like a Peeping Tom, Holden moved closer to the galley hatch until he could make out the words.
“It’s more than that,” Naomi was saying. Holden almost walked into the galley, but something in her tone stopped him. He had the terrible feeling she was talking about him. About them. About why she was leaving.
“Why does it have to be more?” the other person said. Amos.
“You almost beat a man to death with a can of chicken on Ganymede,” Naomi replied.
“Gonna hold a little girl hostage for some food? Fuck him. If he was here, I’d smash him again right now.”
“Do you trust me, Amos?” Naomi said. Her voice was sad. More than that. Frightened.
“More than anyone else,” Amos replied.
“I’m scared out of my wits. Jim is rushing off to do something really dumb on Tycho. This guy we’re taking with us seems like he’s one twitch from a nervous breakdown.”
“Well, he’s—”
“And you,” she continued. “I depend on you. I know you’ve always got my back, no matter what. Except maybe not now, because the Amos I know doesn’t beat a skinny kid half to death, no matter how much chicken he asks for. I feel like everyone’s losing themselves. I need to understand, because I’m really, really frightened.”
Holden felt the urge to go in, take her hand, hold her. The need in her voice demanded it, but he held himself back. There was a long pause. Holden heard a scraping sound, followed by the sound of metal hitting glass. Someone was stirring sugar into coffee. The sounds were so clear he could almost see it.
“So, Baltimore,” Amos said, his voice as relaxed as if he were going to talk about the weather. “Not a nice town. You ever heard of squeezing? Squeeze trade? Hooker squeeze?”
“No. Is it a drug?”
“No,” Amos said with a laugh. “No, when you squeeze a hooker, you put her on the street until she gets knocked up, then peddle her to johns who get off on pregnant girls, then send her back to the streets after she pops the kid. With procreation restrictions, banging pregnant girls is quite the kink.”
“Squeeze?”
“Yeah, you know, ‘squeezing out puppies’? You never heard it called that?”
“Okay,” Naomi said, trying to hide her disgust.
“Those kids? They’re illegal, but they don’t just vanish, not right away,” Amos continued. “They got uses too.”
Holden felt his chest tighten a little. It wasn’t something he’d ever thought about. When, a second later, Naomi spoke, her horror echoed his.
“Jesus.”
“Jesus got nothing to do with it,” Amos said. “No Jesus in the squeeze trade. But some kids wind up in the pimp gangs. Some wind up on the streets …”
“Some wind up finding a way to ship offworld, and they never go back?” Naomi asked, her voice quiet.
“Maybe,” Amos said, his voice as flat and conversational as ever. “Maybe some do. But most of them just … disappear, eventually. Used up. Most of them.”
For a time, no one spoke. Holden heard the sounds of coffee being drunk.
“Amos,” she said, her voice thick. “I never—”
“So I’d like to find this little girl before someone uses her up, and she disappears. I’d like to do that for her,” Amos said. His voice caught for a moment, and he cleared it with a loud cough. “For her dad.”
Holden thought they were done, and started to slip away when he heard Amos, his voice calm again, say, “Then I’m going to kill whoever snatched her.”