thinking about caliban's war again had me revisiting the wider context.
something about the interactions between amos and prax have been stuck in my mind since i first read them, and stick again now.
this post will contain spoilers for caliban’s war. if you are reading, or plan to read, the expanse novels and haven’t gotten that far yet: read no further.
here’s prax, a man who lost his daughter but not his hope. a man who fought through malnutrition and slow poison to find any scrap of information; willing to lose face both metaphorically and literally if it brought him closer to her.
here’s amos, a man not quite sure what he has left to lose. if pushed, he’d say nothing. he’s wrong. he fights for his own security and that of those he cares about. therefore, that is what he has left to lose. i’m not sure amos fully comprehends how wide a net “those he cares about” truly is.
there are two major interactions between these two that revolve in my mind.
first, the initial hunt for mei on ganymede. amos gives prax a gun. prax, weak from malnutrition and more skeleton than man. prax, who has dedicated weeks to an exhaustive search for his daughter, who has denied himself every opportunity to leave ganymede. prax, who has never held a weapon deadlier than pruning shears in his life.
amos puts a gun in this prax’s hand.
as holden rightly points out, the decision-making here is a little questionable. but, amos is doing his best. he’s never really made important decisions on his own before. he’s bound to make mistakes while he figures out his own morality.
what none of these three know, of course, is that amos fully knows his own morality. he’s simply never allowed himself the opportunity to act on it unchecked before.
here he is, for the very first time, acting on his own morals entirely unchecked.
in the fore of amos’ mind, the gun is for whomever gets in prax’s way. it’s a reasonable argument, and he doesn’t even have to say it. what he says is that prax is looking for his daughter. that’s as good as saying it. this is how prax sees it in the fore of his own mind, too.
in the back of amos’ mind, the gun is for whomever has mei. in the back of prax’s mind, that’s what it’s for, too. holden pretends he doesn’t see this, the same way he pretends not to think about miller.
and somewhere, deep in a recess amos pretends he doesn’t see, the gun is for mei. prax has not considered that possibility; he’d drop the gun if he did. holden has not considered that possibility: his mind is the wrong shape for it. it doesn’t fit.
when they find katoa’s body, it does not occur to anyone to take away prax’s gun. if it occurs to amos, he chooses not to, because this is what the gun is for.
when they find the soldiers in the tunnels, and prax raises his gun, he has no idea what he’s doing. the ensuing gunfight both literally and metaphorically flies over his head.
afterwards, prax is horrified; sees himself as responsible for all this death.
amos shrugs. this was an inevitability. someone was going to have to kill those soldiers, amos if no-one else, so it doesn’t matter to him who fired the first shot.
those soldiers were in prax’s way. the primary reason amos gave prax the gun was so prax had the power to get people out of his way. prax used the gun to this effect. mission successful.
what i’m fascinated by here is the manner in which amos shrugs, accepts responsibility for the bloodshed, and confiscates prax’s (gratefully surrendered) gun. so amos’ solo decision-making isn’t quite up to snuff. no big deal. there’s always next time.
it doesn’t matter who fired which shots. in prax’s mind, prax killed all those soldiers. in amos’ mind, those soldiers were dead the moment they dedided to get in prax’s way.
to my mind, amos killed those soldiers. he gave a traumatised, shaking, angry, desperate man a gun and said “let’s go get your daughter”. and i’m fairly confident that if someone said that to him, he’d shrug and agree.
someone really ought to have taken the time to explain this to prax back on the rocinante, because that man’s psyche is a piece of wet tissue paper and amos just put another hole in it.
------
the second interaction that sticks in my mind is, of course, the conversation about prax’s new reputation on the roci. after the smear campaign in the press, amos shows expertise he rarely puts to use.
rather than summarise, i’m going to present the entire exchange as-is. pay attention to amos’ language here.
“I’m sorry as hell to do this, Doc,” Amos said, putting a hand on his chest, pushing him back down. “I mean, you’re having a lousy day and all. But you know how it is.”
Prax frowned. Every muscle in his face felt bruised.
“What is it?”
“All this bullshit they’re saying about you and the kid? That’s all just bullshit, right?”
“Of course,” Prax said.
“Because you know, sometimes things happen, you didn’t even mean them to. Have a hard day, lose your temper maybe? Or shit, you get drunk. Some of the things I’ve done when I really tied one on? I don’t even know about ‘til later.” Amos smiled. “I’m just saying if there’s a grain of truth, something that’s getting all exaggerated, it’d be better if we knew it now, right?”
“I never did anything that she said.”
“It’s okay to tell me the truth, Doc. I understand. Sometimes guys do stuff. Doesn’t make ‘em bad.”
Prax pushed Amos’ hand aside and brought himself up to sitting. His knee felt much better.
“Actually,” he said, “it does. That makes them bad.”
Amos’ expression relaxed, his smile changed in a way Prax couldn’t quite understand.
“Alright, Doc. Like I said, I’m sorry as hell. But I did have to ask.”
“It’s okay,” Prax said, standing up. [...] He turned towards the galley, but the conversation wasn’t finished. “If I had. If I had done those things, that would have been okay with you?”
“Oh, fuck no. I’d have broken your neck and thrown you out the airlock,” Amos said, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Ah,” Prax said, a gentle relief loosening in his chest. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
from Chapter Forty: Prax. in my copy, the 2013 edition, this is on page 439.
first of all, i see the resolution of this conversation as firmly cementing prax and amos’ friendship.
second, and my point, is that amos’ opening question is expertly phrased.
“All this bullshit they’re saying about you and the kid? That’s all just bullshit, right?”
bullshit. no “you didn’t really do that?” no “is there anything i ought to know?”. just bullshit.
he opens with the assumption that it’s bullshit. he asks the question as though the obvious answer is “yes”, as though he already knows it’s bullshit but he just has to ask, you know, because anyone would.
amos knows that, truth or no, prax will answer with “yes” here. that’s alright. these are merely the pleasanetries prior to the real conversation. we needed to get that one out of the way.
next, amos layers on excuses:
“sometimes things happen, you didn’t even mean them to.” “lose your temper maybe? or shit, get drunk.”
you didn’t mean to, you lost your temper, you were drunk. familiar excuses all, easily reached for even when they’re not true.
now he adds personal experience with another possible excuse:
“some of the things i’ve done when i really tied one on? i didn’t know about ‘til later.” said with a companionable smile.
it’s personal now. this isn’t one person accusing another of abusing a child. this is someone talking casually about things he’s done in the past, didn’t mean to of course, but you know how it is.
the “didn’t know about ‘til later” is a flawless excuse thrown out casually. maybe you don’t even remember, you only know what others have told you. it happens.
notice how vague amos is here. sometimes things happen. some of the things i’ve done. we’re not talking about abusing a child here, that’s bullshit, we both know that didn’t happen. we’re talking about doing things without meaning to. it’s a mistake, it happens. no big deal.
this vagueness is dual-purposes. first, it allows them both to talk about this without using dangerous words like “hurt” or “touch” or “throw” or “sex”. it’s none of those. everyone knows those are bad. it’s just things. things aren’t bad.
second, it allows prax to hear what he knows amos is talking about, without amos having to guess at what is or isn’t true.
finally, the grandest excuse of all:
“if there’s a grain of truth, something that’s getting all exaggerated, it’d be better if we knew it now, right?”
a grain of truth getting exaggerated.
“it’s okay to tell me the truth, doc. i understand. sometimes guys do stuff. doesn’t make ‘em bad.”
following on from amos’ own vague confession, this puts amos and prax firmly in the same category. they’re guys who do stuff. they’re not bad guys, they didn’t mean to.
amos is handing prax a script, seductive and easy to follow for those to whom it even vaguely applies. he’s handing out confession, excuse, and absolution, all in one easy-to-follow package.
i think it’s obvious that amos learned this script first-hand from his own abusers. he honed his own version of it, vague and multi-purpose. how many people has he used this on? how many confessions has he handed to abusers? how many frozen corpses litter the system, whose final conversation was this script?
we don’t know. i think amos doesn’t know, either, but i think it’s a lot.
this is a conversation amos had entirely of his own volition. he took his very first opportunity, his first time alone with prax, to have it. this wasn’t about making sure the roci was working for a good guy, or that holden’s cause was just, and it wasn’t about the wider politics of how their actions affect the system.
i don’t think it was even about wanting to know if he should have been helping prax look for mei, if he should or should not have advocated for prax. the past cannot be changed. amos knows that better than anyone.
i think this, very simply, was amos needing to know if prax needed to be dead.
i truly believe that if prax had followed amos’ script, he would have been out the airlock before the rest of the crew even knew the door was open.
i think about this a lot.
------
for blacklisting purposes, here are some strings i won't be putting in the tags:
i re-watched the gunfighters last night. one scene dug at something in my mind.
in episode three, i believe, dodo points a gun at doc holliday and demands he take her back to tombstone. holliday takes it well. he’s jovial enough, put that down, dodo, i’m not going back, and we both know you won’t shoot.
dodo cocks the hammer.
holliday’s demeanour changes at once. he takes her seriously, agrees to go. dodo surrenders the gun gratefully, weak at the knees.
i don’t think dodo truly understood what she was doing here.
the safety catch had not yet been invented. the first six-shooters could, and would, fire at the slightest knock once a bullet was chambered.
so, to keep them safe, they would only be loaded with five bullets. the empty chamber would be kept aligned with the barrel. this was the only way to reliably prevent a loaded gun going off by accident, sometimes into its wearer’s leg.
the barrel can be spun independently. however, the real innovation of the revolver was that cocking the hammer turns the barrel.
when dodo picked up the gun, holliday was facing an empty barrel. this is not a threat, especially from a young lady who, by her own admission, had never handled a gun. her grip and posture supported this claim.
when dodo cocked the hammer, she turned the barrel. now, holliday faced a loaded gun with a cocked hammer. a loaded, cocked gun in the hands of someone who’d never held a gun in their life.
whether she meant to or not, dodo could kill him with a twitch.
it brings to mind a passage in an expanse novel, caliban’s war. specifically, the scene in the ice corridors of ganymede, between prax and the soldiers.
it’s the same basic scenario: someone who’d never before held a gun (prax) points one threateningly at experienced gunfighters (the soldiers), and makes demands. no-one is quite taking prax seriously here.
prax cocks his gun.
several people respond to this act by firing immediately.
prax’s only context for gunfighting was through fiction. in his mind, people holding guns tended to cock them as punctuation. it was practically polite. it was a normal, natural part of negotiation while holding a gun.
in reality, people cock guns because they intend to fire them. in an instant, prax changed himself from “rambling idiot with a gun” to “active threat”, and the soldiers responded to that threat by firing first.
i think dodo was operating under the same misunderstanding: that cocking the hammer punctuated her demand, that it was how conversations happened when guns were involved.
she didn't understand how close she came to murder.
