perfect. cheerios and experimental-gene-therapy anxiety and tyk. this is absolutely the kind of conversation rodney would have if his conscience and sounding-board were external and ever-present; and unlike the sam his subconscious hallucinated for him, rodney listens to tyk; tyk can make him listen. tyk is her own thing and she is awesome. i loved this:

The angle gave her a view directly up his nose, but she didn’t mind. She’d seen all sides of him by now.

Then her whiskers twitched, as she wondered if that were really true. There might be more to see, yet.

and i like that something about nioke frightens tyk; is rodney frightened by something in john? is it the same thing? so many subtleties and possibilities in this world. oh, and i did end up checking out his dark materials and promptly fell in LOVE. i'm trying to linger over the third book, but most likely i'll inhale it at the next available opportunity. you ought to be working on commission for pullman, honestly.