Page 46 of Honeyfires

Miller's eyes were on his coffee. "Like respect," he said quietly. "It should always feel like respect. The day it stops is the day you make a mistake."

Vera looked at me.

"Purpose," I said. "Whatever else it is—and it's a lot of things—it's always that."

She nodded. Smiled. My heart did the thing it had been doing for five weeks now, that involuntary expansion, like something in my chest had decided it needed more room, like it had been waiting for an excuse.

"You're all remarkable," she said simply, to the table. "I want you to know that."

Stevens opened his mouth.

"Don't make it weird, Stevens," Jackson said.

"I wasn't going to make it weird—"

"You were going to say something earnest and then immediately ruin it."

"I was going to say thank you—and," he admitted.

"And what?"

A pause. "...and I think you're pretty cool for a librarian."

"There it is," Jackson said, throwing up his hands.

Vera lost the fight completely. Real laughing, the kind that required a hand over the mouth. Miller watched her laugh, and the closest functional equivalent to a smile crossed his face.

Rodriguez looked at the ceiling with the expression of a man who had made peace with his situation.

Stevens basically levitated after lunch.

"Helicopter now?" Already in motion. "I'll show her the rope cache, the harness room, the cargo staging—"

"In order. One thing at a time."

We walked the apparatus bay first. Vera moved through it the way she moved through the library, stopping at things that caught her interest and actually asking about them. She stopped at the Pulaski rack and wanted to know why the head was shaped the way it was. She stopped at the spike kit shelf and said "how far is ten miles in full pack weight in smoke?" in a tone that was not even horrified.

Miller walked with us. This was not something Miller did for station visitors. He strode alongside and answered her questions with compact accuracy, and when she asked something he found genuinely interesting, he stopped walking to answer it fully, which was the highest compliment in Miller's register.

At the rope cache, she asked about inspection protocols.

"The kernmantle," Miller said. "You're looking for sheath damage, core deformation, heat exposure. A rope can look fine and be gone. You don't guess."

"Who taught you that?"

"Man named Kowalski. Fifteen years I worked under him. Never once cut a corner on a rope inspection." He looked at the coiled bags on the shelf. "Retired to New Mexico. I called him when Alves made crew boss and told him his replacement had more guts than him, and she's a woman."

I looked at Miller. "You called Kowalski about me?"

"He asked how the program was going." One enormous shoulder shrug. "I told him."

"What did you tell him?"

"That you were stubborn as weather and twice as reliable." He picked up his coffee. "He said that was the best kind."

I had nothing to say to that. Stood in the rope cache holding a piece of kernmantle and swallowed against something tightening in my throat.

Vera, standing beside me in the narrow aisle, found my hand and squeezed it once. Quietly, briefly. Only I noticed.