She was still in her real quarters, could see the real walls and light, but they were augmented by black spirals whose fine detail she was more aware of than the dim light could justify. They seemed to weave and reweave themselves as she watched them. Filaments of black thread that reached out, found each other, built together into a new shape that was also part of the old one. Tiny blue lights wove in and out of the constantly remade spirals too, glimmering like fireflies. As hypnagogic hallucinations went, it was probably the most beautiful her brain had ever come up with. She felt like she could watch the black spirals forever and never get bored.
Her father stood beside them, looking down at her. His eyes were a perfect blue that they hadn’t been in reality. He was smiling. Teresa closed her eyes, willing herself to wake up. This wasn’t a dream she wanted to have. When she opened them again, the spirals were gone, but her father was still there. He looked strange. His hair was longer than he’d worn it, and though he was in the tunic and trousers Kelly had dressed him in back on Laconia, he wasn’t wearing shoes.
She sat up slowly, careful of the low gravity. The dream didn’t fade.
“Teresa,” he said, and his voice was like water to someone dying of thirst. Tears began to sheet her eyes.
“Father,” she said, and even though she could feel the vibrations in her throat—even though she was almost certainly really speaking out loud—he didn’t vanish. The sense of being awake grew in her. The sluggishness of dreams loosened its grip, but his image didn’t fade. Not yet.
“Happy birthday,” he said. “Everything is going to be all right.”
She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “It’s not, though,” she whispered.
“It will. I only need a little more time, and we will all be together. I dreamed too small before. I can see better now. You’ll see better too.”
Teresa shook her head, and a sharp knock came at the door.
“You decent?” Alex’s muffled voice said.
“Yes,” she said, and the door opened a crack. For a moment, it seemed like her dream and her reality would come together face-to-face, but as the light spilled in, her father blinked back into nothingness. She wiped her eyes again, trying to hide that she’d been crying.
“Hey there,” Alex said. “We’ve got some grub. You hungry?”
“Sure,” Teresa said. “Give me a minute.”
Alex nodded and retreated, but Muskrat nosed the door open and hopped in, barely constrained by her own weight. Her brown eyes shifted around the room like she was looking for something, and she whined softly.
“It’s okay, old lady,” Teresa said. “Everything’s fine.”
It was almost true. Well, it was less untrue than it might have been, anyway. The Rocinante was almost at the New Egypt ring gate, and while the Sparrowhawk—far back down the local sun’s gravity well—apparently hadn’t died, it also was far enough that even a killing burn wouldn’t have been able to catch up with them. About to make a transit without a clear idea of the traffic through the ring space, and with the Laconian military chasing them but out of firing range, was as close to okay as Teresa could expect these days. But Timothy—Amos—had defied death again, Muskrat was still with her, and she wasn’t at a religious boarding school at the ass end of nowhere.
She was surprised how relieved the plan’s failure left her. The immediate aftermath had been fear and shock. The horror of seeing Amos’ shattered body, the violence of the firefight, the anxiety of wondering whether the Sparrowhawk would risk firing on them to get her back. But as soon as that had passed, she’d found herself smiling more. She was still here, and it wasn’t even her fault.
When she went out to the galley, the crew of the Rocinante were standing around a little table with a sad, yellow-white cake. It had two candles printed from medical resin in the shapes of a one and a six. The flames were almost spheres. It was pathetic.
“It’s pretty much the same yeast and fungus as everything else,” Naomi said. “But it’s got sugar and it looks nice.”
“It’s… You’re all very kind,” Teresa said. There was a knot in her throat that she didn’t understand. Maybe gratitude, maybe sorrow, maybe the chaotic wake of the powerful dream of her father. Amos and Jim started a little song, and Naomi and Alex joined in, clapping along. It felt cheap and small and unimaginative, but it was also an effort they had put out for her that they didn’t have to. When Alex told her to make a wish and blow out the candles, she just blew them out. She couldn’t think of anything to wish for.
Amos plucked the resin candles out and dropped them into the recycler while Naomi cut the cake and Jim handed out bulbs of tea and coffee.
“Not a traditional breakfast,” Naomi said, handing a corner piece to Teresa. “But we wanted to take a moment before the Freehold transit. Once we get in the shipyard, we’ll be busy.”
“Anything the ship needs, we better get now,” Jim agreed.
Her last birthday had been in a ballroom of the State Building. The most important people in the vast spread of humanity had been there, and Teresa had been one of them. Her father had already been wrecked by the catastrophe that had destroyed the Typhoon and Medina Station, and she had felt the weight of the empire on her shoulders. She’d known what to wish for then. A way out. And now here she was, her wish granted. It wasn’t at all what she’d imagined it would be.
She took a bite of the cake and it was… fine. Inoffensive. A little too dense, a little too dry, but fine. It wasn’t made by the best bakers in a thousand worlds vying to impress their god-emperor. It wasn’t preceded by a formal speech crafted to give the right political signals or followed by a presentation of ostentatious gifts that she didn’t care about and wouldn’t remember a week later. She couldn’t imagine an experience less like the ones she’d had before. Even if they’d ignored her birthday, it would have been more familiar. There had been any number of times she’d felt ignored while standing in the spotlight.
Muskrat put a wet nose against her arm and barked a soft, conversational bark. Teresa broke off a corner of her cake and passed it over. The dog chewed loudly and with enthusiasm.
“What’s up?” Jim said, and it took her a moment to realize he was talking to her.
“Nothing,” she said. “Why?”
“You sighed.”
“I did?”
Alex nodded. “You did.”
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I was thinking about how different this is from last year. That’s all.”
“Not exactly the best Sweet Sixteen ever,” Alex said with a grimace. “This should have been the big one.”