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Kitai said dismissively.
    She smiled at that. “Yes,” she said with soft assurance. “He’ll be happy.” Then she noticed the book in his hand. “When did you start reading that?”
    “I’m trying to get done before the general gets home.”
    Kitai nodded, sure that if he were a newly named Ranger, that alone would be enough to prompt his father to hang around, at least for a while. He tapped the book. “There are lines underlined. Does that mean the general and Senshi liked these parts?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Maybe I should memorize one. Do you think he’d like that?”
    “I think he’ll like the fact that you’re reading the book.”
    “Are we doing a cake?” he suddenly said, shifting subjects.
    “We’re not doing a cake. We’ll just be together.” After a moment’s silence, she slapped her legs, causing a bit of dirt to rise up. “I’m going to wash off all this dust. I’ve been on the ridge all day.”
    “Mom …?”
    She’d been about to stand, but something in his voice caught her. She focused her attention on him. It took him a few moments to find the words, and even then she didn’t fully understand at first.
    “What was it like when Dad became the first? How did he do it?”
    “The first?” Initially she stared at him without comprehension. But then she understood. “Oh. You mean the—”
    “The first Ghost, yeah. How did he do it? I’ve tried looking it up, and I haven’t found anything. It’s all just … vague.”
    “How vague?”
    He licked his lips, collecting his thoughts. “Well … it’s just that everyone knows that the Ursa don’t have any eyes. That they find us through sense of smell. And what they smell is our fear. It’s how they work. They track us through fear. They hunt us through fear. Everything is fear with them. And the Rangers go out there and do everything they can to control their fear, but it’s almost impossible.
    “Ursa are monsters, and they come at you with everything they’ve got. And they’ve got a lot. Six legs, teeth, paralytic venom … everything. It’s almost impossible to go up against one of them and be totally unafraid. But Dad did it. I mean … he just, you know, he did it. He did it when no one else in the history of humanity had done it. And they called him a Ghost. The first oneever. So I’d just kind of like to know how it was that first time. How he did it.”
    “Honey …”
    He realized she wasn’t looking at him. Instead she seemed to be staring off into space, as if her mind had partly checked out. Kitai expected that she was putting together her recollections of that moment.
    For a surprisingly long time, she said nothing at all. Then, finally: “Have you ever tried asking him yourself?”
    “Yeah. He, uh …” Kitai shrugged. “He would just shrug. And he’d just say that fear was something that could be controlled, and he just, you know … managed it. But he’s never gone into any detail beyond that, and I …”
    “Stopped asking.”
    “Yeah.”
    She stroked his short hair as she sighed. “Okay, well … so did I. Maybe he’ll tell you someday.”
    Kitai nodded but said nothing more. There didn’t seem to be much point. If there was one thing Kitai had learned after all this time, it was that everything having to do with his father fell into the realm of “maybe” and “someday.” The problem was that Kitai couldn’t decide if he wanted to be there when the maybe or the someday actually happened.

1000 AE
Nova Prime
    Kitai’s father stared at him. Just stared.
    Kitai took the opportunity to practice his attitudes. At first he indulged himself with a huge smile, but then he decided that it made him look too smug, and so he changed it for something extremely modest. After that, he tried an expression in between. All during the smile time, he practiced different oral sentiments ranging from “I knew I had it the entire time” to “I think they were being generous” and