Memory's Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection

by James S.A. Corey

His mother smiled at him, and it looked like love, but it was love for some other boy. The one she thought he was. He smiled back because he was supposed to.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but it is the mother of any number of other things as well: sacrifice and monstrosity and metamorphosis. Necessity is the mother of all necessary things, to coin a tautology.

At the pond, a rock deer lifted its head at her approach, its scales shifting and reflecting starlight like a little slice of sky that had come down for a drink.

The sky had taken on an almost emerald green. To the west, pure white clouds billowed up so high, they seemed like they’d reach orbit. Filip didn’t like looking at them. He’d gotten to where living without the safety of a ship didn’t panic him, but something about the cloud banks made the scale of planetary life harder to ignore.

Doing the right thing has to be enough in itself. It’s not about getting the pat on the head.