“Alright, sir. I’ll get onto that right away, sir.”
“Yes. You will. I’ll expect a book report on the first volume this evening.”
Now she really did feel like a cadet back at the academy. Book reports? Required reading? And for what? Did he want her to brush up on Authority protocols? Was there some Kitari literature in there? From what she’d heard, Kitari literature always had the narrative structure of the hero dying at the beginning of the story and everybody else wandering around slowly dying throughout the rest of the course of the book in various terrible ways. True dark literature, and something she was actually interested in.
It was not Kitari literature. Those books were always titled things like The Unbearable Agony of Regretful Existence: A Love Story. Humans often said Kitari literature was depressing, but she was pretty sure they were comedies. Kitari scholars claimed both were true when they would deign to answer any questions at all.
“The fuck is this?” she muttered under her breath. The book she was holding was covered with very strange illustrations, but not alien ones.
“The Water-Babies,” he said.
She opened the cover and was astounded at the release date. 1863. So long ago she could barely begin to fathom it. “This is an old as hell book. And not at all possibly relevant to being a DSN on an Authority ship.”
“Perhaps not. But I’ve told you to read it, and so you will read it.”
It was as simple as that. Her life had come to a point where Atlas could issue any order to her and she would have to carry it out. No questions asked, or answered if they were asked.
“I will come back in a couple of hours and check your progress,” he said.
“You want me to read this now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
That question did not receive an answer.
She was done by the time he came back. It was not the longest book in the universe, though it was undoubtedly the strangest book she had ever read, and possibly one of the saddest and also the sweetest and…
“I’m done,” she said the moment he walked in the door, his Authority uniform doing absolutely nothing to make him look more human. Usually when one served with aliens, one became accustomed to their appearance. She barely noticed that Lara was a wall-walking angel. But Atlas, he seemed even more alien every time she saw him. When his bright red gaze fell on her she felt hot flushes rushing through her. “That was a very odd, very sad book,” she said.
“Ancient humans were not kind to the young. I thought you might see yourself in Tom.”
“In the urchin chimneysweep? That’s how you think of me?”
“As someone who has suffered and yet needs to transform themselves, yes.”
“Well. Great.”
“Suffering leaves marks on those who endure it. It shapes them, makes them believe they are their suffering. They mistake their pain for their personality.”
“And by they, you of course mean me.”
“We all have unlearning to do. As much as we have learning to do.”
“But mostly me.”
He nailed her with a crimson glare, coming abruptly to the end of his tact. “Yes. Brat. You.”
She’d have liked to take offense but there was some part of her mind, the watchful observer who usually shook her head at her antics, who was in complete agreement with him.
“You know, you’re not my dad.” She took immediate refuge in comfortable and familiar petulance.
It was a simple statement of the truth. Atlas wasn’t deploying her on new duties, he was trying to get her a domestic education of his choosing.
“Not your biological father, no. I am well aware of that. But you are clearly in need of some paternal attention. I’ve never met anyone as talented and yet as chaotic as you.”
“Then you don’t know humans very well,” she said with a laugh. “If you think I’m a mess, you should see a civilian colony. Any civilian colony. Hell. Pick a person from any human world anywhere and I’d bet on them being worse than I am in every way you could measure.”
“I don’t think you’re a mess. I think you’re a brat. And I think you need someone to take care of you.” He reached out, his rough fingers surprisingly gentle as they caressed her cheek. “I’d like to be that someone.”
She stared at him, not knowing what to say. Certainly not knowing what to do. “You beat me and left me…”
“I spanked you very hard and put you to bed after an absolutely unacceptable outburst. I did what I needed to do. More important, I did what you needed me to do.”
“I didn’t…” Jerri’s argumentative sentence was interrupted before she could finish it.
“Commander Atlas, Lieutenant Tessil, please report to the captain’s ready room.”
“Let’s go,” Atlas said, snapping his fingers at her. She bristled, but did as she was told.