Tiamat's Wrath (Expanse 8)

Soft padding sounds came from ahead. Not human sounds, and not Muskrat either. The footsteps weren’t even animal, not really. The repair drones were a little smaller than Muskrat, with dark, apologetic-looking eyes and multiply jointed legs. Totally alien, but they were the closest things to canine friends that Muskrat had, and the real dog ran around them, yipping excitedly and sniffing their rears as if there were anything doglike to smell back there. Teresa shook her head and moved forward. The repair drones made their query tone, trying to intuit whether Muskrat wanted something. The drones were surprisingly good at judging at least the rough intentions of humans

. Real dogs still seemed to baffle them.

The repair drones, the light gnats, the slow, creeping, wormlike stone diggers were all in the weird space between life and not-life. Designed by an intelligence that evolutionary forces had taken in a direction very different from humanity. They weren’t exotic to her at all. As far as Teresa was concerned, they’d always been there, just like that.

“Hello!” Teresa called. “Are you here?”

The words echoed weirdly out of the deepness. “Hey, Tiny. I wondered when you were coming back.”

Timothy’s part of the cave was like another phase change. Nature to alien to human, if not exactly the kind of human residence she was used to. A backpack reactor leaned against the wall, thick yellow power cords going to a wooden rack of neat, well-maintained machines. She recognized the yeast incubator and the emergency recycler from her tours of the early settlements. Other decks she didn’t know. All together, it was enough that Timothy could live like a monk and a wise man in his mountain for more than a human lifetime. His bed was a cot against one wall with a blanket of woven polycarbonate that seemed never to show wear. He didn’t have a pillow.

The man himself sat next to a length of wood, a knife in his thick, callused hand. A pile of thin, curled slivers rested between his feet where they fell as he carved. He was bald and pale, with a thick, bushy white beard, wide shoulders, and arms with muscles like ropes.

She’d come across him months ago during one of her first excursions. She’d been trying to get high enough on the mountain to see the State Building, and there he’d been, eating his lunch and drinking from a scarred ceramic water purifier. He’d looked like nothing so much as an old cartoon of an enlightened guru meditating on a mountaintop. If there had been any threat in his smile, she might have been scared of him. But there wasn’t, and she wasn’t. And anyway Muskrat had liked him immediately.

“Sorry,” she said, sitting on the edge of his cot. “I’ve been busy. I have a bunch of new things I’m studying. What are you working on?”

Timothy considered the half-carved wood. “I was going for a marking gauge. I’ve got one already, but it’s a little big for the fine work.”

“And you can’t have too many tools,” Teresa said. The phrase was something of a joke between them, and Timothy grinned.

“Damned straight. So what’s up?”

Teresa leaned forward. Timothy frowned and put down the wood and the knife. She didn’t know where to start, so she started with her father’s plan to train her up.

He had a way of shifting his attention so that she felt like he was actually listening, not just preparing a reply in his head and waiting for her to stop talking. He focused on her the way he did on the wood he carved or the food he cooked. He didn’t judge her. He didn’t quiz her. She never worried that he would be disappointed with what she said.

It was the way she imagined her father would listen to her if he weren’t her father.

She wandered from topic to topic, telling Timothy about Connor and Muriel, the briefings and meetings her father was adding to her schedule, and all the day-to-day worries and thoughts that had built up without her even knowing, and ending with the unnerving conversation with Holden the dancing bear and the weird way he’d said You should keep an eye on me like it meant something more than it seemed…

When she ran out of words, Timothy leaned back and scratched his beard. Muskrat had curled up on the floor between the two of them. The dog snored softly, and one leg twitched as she dreamed. Two repair drones queried each other, their voices clicking in descending musical tones. Just telling the story left her feeling better.

“Yeah,” he said after a while, “well, for what it’s worth, you’re not the first person that felt like the captain was a splinter they couldn’t dig out. He has that effect on people. But if he says you ought to keep an eye on him, maybe you ought to keep an eye on him.”

Teresa leaned back against the wall and pulled her knees up. “I just wish I knew why he bothers me so much.”

“He don’t treat you like you’re special.”

“You don’t treat me like I’m special. We’re friends.”

He considered that. “Maybe it’s because he thinks your dad’s an asshole.”

“My dad’s not an asshole. And Holden’s a killer. He doesn’t get to judge other people.”

“Your dad’s kind of an asshole,” Timothy said, his expression philosophical, his voice matter-of-fact. “And he’s killed a lot more people than Holden ever did.”

“That’s different. That’s war. He had to do it or else no one would have been able to organize everyone. We’d just have stumbled into the next conflict unprepared. My dad’s trying to save us.”

Timothy held up a finger like she’d made his point for him. “Now you’re telling me why it’s okay he’s an asshole.”

“I don’t—” Teresa started, then stopped. Timothy’s comment made her think of a philosophy lesson, and Ilich talking about consequentialism. Intention is irrelevant. Only outcomes matter.

“I don’t tell anyone how to live,” Timothy was saying. “But if you’re looking for moral perfection in your family? Prepare for disappointment.”

Teresa chuckled. If anyone else had said the same thing to her, she would have bristled, but it was Timothy. That made it okay. She was glad she’d made the time to come out to see him.

“Why did you call him captain?”