Joe made a cup of fragrant sweetgrass tea before opening that last parcel, expecting one of Grampa Sam’s usual dense, multipage, borderline textbook letters filled not with small talk but large ideas; letters which proved the old man was still dedicated to helping educate him.
The tea smelled of his childhood and tasted of nostalgia, making him feel like the little boy he had been again approaching his grandfather’s knee. Yet this time the old man surprised him. The parcel contained only a small flat package with a short note attached. The note read: My son, now your are in charge of a mission to a new People and have become an elder in your own right. A warrior for the Sacred. If you can only remember the lessons of history, and how they teach us the fragility of treaty and trust, you will be wise indeed. You do us proud.
Inside the package was a hand-stitched doeskin vest, the leather the color of caramel and softer than velvet, the buttons slices of antler. Designs he did not recognize were painted on the breast and back. It was not newly made but very old, and had the feel of a well-cared-for relic.
He stood up and put it on, feeling slightly foolish, like he was playing dress up. The whole buckskin and feathers thing had never appealed to him. Yet the vest settled onto his shoulders and felt oddly right, like a lost belonging only now returned to him.
He fell asleep in his chair not long after, still wearing the vest. His dreams were of the hours he and his grandfather had spent huddled over one of the old man’s many computers, stalking wily and elusive bits of information in the trackless cybotic wilds. In those dreams he smiled, for on that ground he was a hunter and warrior equal to any but the one who taught him.
Joe got up early the next morning, made coffee, and settled down into being a full-out flatbutt bureaucrat. The Kube the BAA had sent was indeed a daunting mass of cybotic forms which had to be filled out and sent back with the supply ship. Among other things he was expected to list every transaction, infraction and redress that had occurred during his tenure. That wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d just wanted the dry bones of facts and figures. As station chief he was also expected to give his assessment of the gravity of each instance where BCT had exceeded the bounds granted them by the natives, and his opinion as to whether it was accidental or a calculated attempt to infringe on their rights.
Sighing and cursing Frank under his breath with every third entry he filled out that part, struggling to maintain a balance between shooting straight and shooting himself in the foot—dancing around the facts like someone from an old Western dancing around the bullets fired at his toes.
The next part did give him some comfort. He was able to enter big beautiful None’s in the section labeled NATIVES ACCIDENTALLY KILLED, WOUNDED OR MURDERED AND HUMAN PERSONNEL ACCIDENTALLY KILLED, WOUNDED OR MURDERED. Human/Guy relations had been blessedly peaceful. He probably couldn’t take too much credit for that, but it did prove he wasn’t a total disaster at his job. Massacres on your watch didn’t look good.
He was laboring over the section titled Recommendations when his comm chimed, that sound closely followed by Mabel’s voice.
“Mr. Swamp?”
“Yeah?” he called, wondering at the sudden promotion to Mister.
“You have a visitor, sir. It’s—” A hushed pause. “It’s Madame Serena Caltefores.” This last was spoken in the voice of someone announcing visiting royalty.
Joe closed his eyes and hung his head. He’d clean forgotten about his promise to play tour guide to the crown princess of BCT. Having spent much of the morning trying to justify their actions and his responses to them hadn’t put him in the best of moods to deal with this.
But a promise was a promise, and there was no telling how someone like her might react to disappointment.
“Send her in, please.” OK, he’d give her a whirlwind tour and hope she found it boring enough—or the Guys frightening enough—to want to go back to her nice comfy ship as fast as her high heels could carry her. He stood up and put a smile on his face.
The door opened, and the woman who entered was so unlike his expectations that his first thought was that she was some sort of aide or flunky. But the woman looked him in the eye, nodded, and said, “Hello, I’m Serena Caltefores,” in a low husky voice as she headed toward his desk.
“Uh, hello,” he responded lamely.
She reached his desk and offered her hand to shake. “You’re Joe Swamp, right?”
“Joe Swamp. Yes ma’am. That’s me.” He gingerly shook her hand, then gestured toward a chair. “Please sit down, ma’am. If you want to, I mean. You don’t have to or anything.”
“Thank you, I will.” She looked around, and oddly enough chose the hassock there for visiting Guys to use. The only reason he sat down was because of manners his mother had hammered into his head as a child. It wasn’t really a conscious act; one moment he was standing, then next his chair was under his butt.
She regarded him solemnly. “I’m not quite what you were expecting, am I, Mr. Swamp?”
“Uh, no ma’am,” he answered, his mouth seemingly on some sort of weird autopilot.
“You can dispense with the ma’ams. Please, just call me Serena. I’ll call you Joe if that that’s all right.”
“All right, ma’am. Sure.”
“You seem quite taken aback, Joe. Maybe even poleaxed. You aren’t disappointed, are you?”
He shook his head hard enough to make his braided ponytail whip around. “No ma’am. Just kind of, um, surprised I guess. I’d kind of thought you’d be, well…”
“Fancier?” she supplied with a raised eyebrow. “Younger? Prettier?”
“Yeah—I mean, no—” He made a helpless gesture. “I just thought you’d be, well…”
“I’m quite well, thank you.” She chuckled, a smile creeping out onto her face. “I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t tease you like this. It’s not fair, but it is fun. You look like someone who was expecting a visit from Cleopatra the Queen of the Nile and got a drag queen instead.”
She sketched an ironic bow in his direction. “Yes, I’m Ramon Caltefores’ daughter, heir to a gigabillion dollar business that spans entire star systems. No, I’m not exactly the pampered, fluffy little rich bitch you seem to have been expecting.”
Her smile grew wider and a challenging note entered her voice. “I may be rich, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who think I’m a bitch, but I am not, nor have I ever been fluffy. I’m built like a truck and couldn’t fit into anything under a size sixteen at gunpoint. I don’t wear makeup or heels, I cut my own hair, and the only way I could win a beauty pageant is by bribing the judges.”
She wasn’t the glamorous young debutante he had pictured, but a woman his own age who looked like she could have come from the sort of place where he grew up. Short, straight, glossy black hair framed a wide brown face that could only be called plain, with heavy dark eyebrows, a snub nose, and a wide mobile mouth. Her eyes were dark, short-lashed, and glittered with merry intelligence. Her build was widehipped and sturdy, maybe even chunky, her hands large and capable looking, her nails short and unpainted. In her baggy jeans, plain red T-shirt, worn multi-pocketed vest, and scuffed boots she could have easily passed for a farm wife or some other type who spent a lot of time outside, a park guide or naturalist maybe. One look and you knew she was solid, self-reliant, and utterly self-possessed. Her rugged appearance did nothing to detract from the air of earthy femininity he felt coming off her.