KRIS, I’M TRYING TO FIND A PATTERN IN ALL THIS, BUT NEITHER I NOR ANY OF MY KIDS CAN SPOT ONE. Such an admission from Nelly and her family of supercomputers was unheard of, but not to be unexpected. Biological diversity could introduce such random factors that defied rational analysis.
What came next was more rational, but no less surprising.
The Alwans had a serious debate.
For Alwans, that meant putting on wild displays of motion and plumage, what they had left of it. The Alwans may have started as birds, but they hadn’t flown in several million years, and feathers now were quite vestigial. Still, the plumage was colorful and made for some rather bright displays.
Among these Alwans, particularly the ones Kris knew as Roosters, all this dancing around and flapping resulted in no actual harm. No doubt among the southern clans, the Ostriches, there would have been some heavy chest butting, maybe even a head kick or two.
When it was all over, the plaza emptied in a blink.
“What just happened here?” Kris asked her Granny Rita.
“Damned if I know,” the old woman replied. Rita was the titular head of the human colony for near on eighty years, a survivor of the Iteeche War as well as a marriage to Kris’s great-grampa Ray, known better to most as King Raymond I of the United Society.
She turned to one of the Alwans who worked with the humans, and, using Nelly’s translator, repeated her question about what just happened.
Bringer of Harmony Between the People and the Heavy People waved her own arms in what almost came off as a human shrug. “They have agreed to disagree. They will take this back to their own associations. There will be much more dancing and posing. Then, who knows what will happen? Maybe we will see different elders at the next Association of Associations.”
And if the news reports were true from the Sharp Eye View, Alwa’s main news network, the debate in the local associations were going long, loud, wild . . . and just about as inconclusive.
Kris was only too willing to let them do their arm waving while she spent her time on the beach.
Kris reached for Jack. She found him, fondled what she found, and let her smile grow into a happy leer as he responded to her.
“Wife, won’t you let a man rest?” Jack said with a groan that failed to reach below his belly button.
“But you seem ready for more. I’ve learned that you men need a lot of rest, but . . .” Kris said with a pout that she knew had too much eager smile in it.
Her husband reached over and caressed her closest breast. “Hmm, the wife does seem willing, and it appears the husband is recharged.”
“Kris, are you decent?” came from the bowl where Kris had put both her computer, Nelly, and Jack’s computer, Sal, so the two supercomputers, easily worth as much as any of the warships in orbit, would not get sand in their self-organizing matrices.
“Nelly, what does it matter to you? And why are you interrupting my husband and me?” Kris demanded.
“I don’t care what you two humans do with your time. I’m enjoying working on some refinements to the new Smart Metal they’re producing at the lunar mills, but Penny wants to know.”
“Why?”
“Because she and Mimzy are coming up the beach, and the view from Mimzy says you don’t meet the normal human standard for decent.”
Kris grabbed for the sarong provided by the hotel and lay it over herself. A glance down showed that it had merely added color to her skin and hid nothing. Jack doubled over the sarong he had worn from their cottage, but it really did no better.
Kris tossed the spare towel over his lap.
“I’d rather you cover up a bit,” was his response. “No doubt, Penny has her boyfriend, Lieutenant Iizuka, with her.”
Now Kris did glance down the beach. Yep, Penny, one of her recent Maids of Honor and her boyfriend, sidekick, and fellow intelligence officer, but from the Musashi Navy, were coming up the beach. He was well behind Penny and making a studious effort to keep his eyes anywhere but where Kris and Jack were.
“Nelly, tell Penny to go away. I’m on my honeymoon.”
“She says that you’ve gotten more of a honeymoon than she ever got, and you sent her off to find the alien home world and have been avoiding her ever since she got back.”
“Ouch,” Jack said.
Kris lost her smile. Penny did have a claim on short honeymoons. She and her bridegroom Tommy had enjoyed only one night before they’d followed Lieutenant Kris Longknife into a hopeless and desperate fight to save their home planet. They’d won through, but the last shot from a dying battleship had skewered their tiny fast attack boat. Tommy had made a heroic leap that shoved Penny to safety and left him pinned in the wreckage. Kris made one of those horrible calls you do in a fight that saved most of their lives . . . but cost Tommy his.
That Kris had been silently in love with Tommy long before he met Penny only added to the pain.
That, however, was an old scar. It had nothing to do with Kris’s being too busy to see Penny during the last two weeks and choosing her honeymoon over something Kris was sure could wait.
“Is there any chance you will give me another week?” Kris asked, through Nelly.
“Nope,” came back quickly. Down the beach, Penny didn’t even hesitate as she made her way through the soft sand toward Kris.
Defeated by her own subordinate, Rear Admiral Kris Longknife stood to meet the lieutenant commander. She wrapped the sarong around herself several times, resulting in her almost becoming decent. Beside her, Jack did the same, his being wrapped at the waist while Kris’s started at her oh-so-small breasts that her husband seemed very satisfied with, so Kris was doing her best to be satisfied with them, too.
Jack’s sarong failed to hide a certain bulge, so he sat back down and settled the extra towel in his lap.
“We’re decent,” Kris grumbled in resignation.
Penny and her fellow intelligence officer labored through the soft sand to stand before Kris. Iizuka Masao was ever the dutiful gentleman. He spread a towel, and the two of them settled their khaki-clad bodies cross-legged on the cloth.
Without preamble, Penny said. “You sent us to find the alien home world. I think we did. You really need to see it.”
2
Kris studied her friend. The short sleeves of her khaki uniform showed pale skin starting to burn.
“Are you wearing any sunscreen?” Kris asked.
“I told her she needed sunscreen,” Lieutenant Iizuka said, “but she insisted on charging out here as soon as we arrived.”
“It can wait,” Penny snapped.
“Let’s adjourn this meeting to the veranda of our bungalow,” Kris said, pointing to where she and Jack were staying.
“Kris, you can’t put me off.”
“I’m not putting you off,” Kris snapped. “I’m just moving this meeting to someplace where you won’t be laid up for a week with sunburn if it goes more than, say, fifteen minutes.”
“Okay,” Penny said, and stomped her way through the sand toward the nearest shade. Kris followed, leaving the men to collect the blankets, towels, and computers.
At the bungalow, Kris offered Penny a seat at their breakfast table, then excused herself to dress. Jack soon joined her. Both of them chose the most covering of the clothes provided by the inn, rather than their uniforms. For Jack, it was a pair of shorts and a three-button shirt; for Kris it was a muumuu. Both took the time to reinstall their computers. For Jack, it was just a harness that settled easily on his head. Kris, however, had paid to have Nelly jacked directly into her brain. She removed the plug that had kept sand out and plugged a wire from Nelly back in.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH, were the first thoughts that formed in Kris’s head. I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT FORGET ME.