"Ship's locked in, Portmaster," Sakerson said, leaning back with a sigh. Big ships were a lot easier to dock. He glanced over at Migonigal's screen and nearly fell out of his chair.
"Yeah, pretty as a picture," Migonigal went on, oblivious to the consternation of his assistant. "Perez y Jones, Chiquita Maria Luisa Caterina, b. 2088, Mining Base 2047, educated Centauri, specialty. Quartermaster. Not that much experience for we only need someone who can remember to order what we need and where it's stored."
Sakerson stared with panic-widened eyes at the ID scan. This had to be the weirdest coincidence in the galaxy. Granted that out of the trillions of physical possibilities, someone vaguely resembling his "dream" girl was theoretically possible, but the probability… Sakerson's mind momentarily refused to function. HOW? The mainframe had just been vetted: all the boards, the circuits; there hadn't been so much as a tangerine or a cherry appearing for a week, nothing since the SysEng's banana.
"I'll go down and greet her, give Sigi the good news. He won't believe it either. Yeah, while I'm doing courtesy, you call Sigi and tell him to save some of the gin for his fare- well blast." Migonigal left Sakerson to stare at the visual realization of his imagined perfect woman.
After his watch, it took all Sakerson's courage to enter the wardroom. He could hear the laughter, the cheerful conversation, always stimulated by the arrival of new personnel. Everyone would be getting to know her, getting to know his Chiquita! Rando might horn in, he and Cliona had had that brawl over slogans… Sakerson resolutely entered the cabin.
"You gotta avoid this guy, Chiquita," Rando exclaimed, seeing him first. "He's the weightless wit responsible for Slogan!"
As she turned to look at him, Sakerson's throat closed and he couldn't even gargle a greeting. She was his holo, from the slight cleft in her chin, to the way her hair was dressed, curling over a band, green eye/blue eye and sparkling, with a grin of real welcome on her sweetly curved lips. She held out a hand and even her nails were as he had imagined, long ovals, naturally pink. Dreamily, he shook her hand, reminding himself to release it when he heard a titter.
"I'm pleased to meet the man who invented Slogan," she said, her eyes sparkling candidly. How come he hadn't realized that her voice would be a clear alto?
He slid into the free chair and grinned, hoping it didn't look as foolish as it felt, plastered from ear to ear, because he couldn't speak, couldn't even stop grinning.
"Slogan's all you hear about Station Three these days," she went on, not dropping eye contact, although her left hand strayed briefly to her hair.
"That makes a nice change," Sakerson managed to say, making his grin rueful. He knew from the tilted smile on her lips and the sparkle in her eyes that she had heard the ghost rumor.
"Now," Rando said, breaking in, "war games are far more a test of intelligence and foresight."
"Oh, war games," she said, dismissing them with a wave of her hand and further entrancing Sakerson. "I played every war game there is when I was growing up on the MR And won!" Deftly she depressed Rando's bid. "Now Slogan stimulates the brain cells, not adrenaline." She wasn't coy, she wasn't arch, but the way she looked sideways at him made Sakerson's heart leap. "Say, didn't you dock the PV?"
"I did."
"You're smooth!"
"Watch it, Chiquita," Rando warned. "This guy's dangerous. He's single-spaced."
Ignoring Rando's thinly veiled leer, Chiquita tilted her head up to Sakerson and just smiled.
"Give over, lout," Cliona told her mate, elbowing him playfully out of the way. "Say, Chiquita, how'd you snaffle a posting like Three?"
Chiquita lifted both hands and shrugged. "I don't really know. I didn't think I was very high on the short list. And then suddenly I was handed orders, shoved toward the PV as the first available vehicle coming this way." She flashed a charming smile around the wardroom. "But it's great to be in such good space!"
"Why waste space?" Sakerson demanded, winking at her.
Even in the free and easy atmosphere of a space station, where personnel have little privacy and every new association is public knowledge, Sakerson did not rush Chiquita. She had indicated a preference for the way his mind worked, and more directly, that she liked his physical appearance. He let her get settled into the routine and waited until the next day before he asked her to the hydroponic garden. She smiled softly and winked at him before turning back to her supply texts. Like any space-bred girl, she knew perfectly well what generally happened in such facilities.
"This is a splendid hydro," she said, and paused as the path took them to the banana palm. "Well now," and she flushed delicately so that Sakerson knew she was aware of the Slogan for her name. "How… how very unusual."
"That's tactful of you," Sakerson said before he realized that his words were tantamount to an admission of the truth of the scuttlebutt.
"I think you're tactful, too," she replied and stood right in front of him. It would have taken a much more restrained man than Sakerson to resist the urge to see if he only had to bend his head. So he did.
Then, just after they had thoroughly kissed one another, easily, gracefully, with no stretching or straining, Sakerson distinctly heard a soft smug sung sound.
"What's the matter?" Chiquita asked, sensing his distraction.
"I could have sworn… no, it couldn't be…"
"We're not to have secrets from each other."
He could sense that he'd better think quickly or lose the best thing that had happened to him. Then it occurred to him that when it came time to tell her the truth, he'd have the logged-on holo program to prove it. Right now was not the appropriate moment for that. He answered the immediate question.
"Part of a slogan, I guess." But Chiquita tilted her head, prompting him. "Something like… 'the lessons are free.' "
Zulei, Grace, Nimshi, and the Damnyankees
I remember very clearly the day Zulei and her son, Nimshi, arrived at Majpoor Plantation. Papa had just finished giving me a sidesaddle jumping lesson on Dido when Mr. James, our overseer, arrived with the new slaves. Despite Mama's best efforts, there had been some deaths among the field hands from an outbreak of measles. So, when Papa heard of the auction of prime bucks being sold off in Greensboro, he'd sent the overseer, Mr. James.
"And if you should chance to find a likely lad to exercise the 'chasers…" I'd also heard Papa say, when Mr. James stopped by the office on his way out of the place. Petey, a wizened little black who looked more like the monkey Mrs. LaTouche owned, had been broken up by a bad fall at the Greensboro 'Chase, and no other black boy could measure up to Papa's high standards to ride our 'chasers.
I wasn't supposed to know that, but I did. Being the youngest of six, and the only daughter, I knew a lot more of what went on than Mama would have thought proper for a girl. She had been plain scandalized when I had informed Papa that I was perfectly willing to ride our entry in the next 'Chase. Hadn't he said I had the lightest hands and the best seat on Majpoor? My brothers had howled with laughter and I'm sure that even Papa smiled a bit behind his full beard but Mama had made me leave the table for such pertness.
"I declare Captain Langhorn, I just don't know how I'm going to raise Grace properly if you, and your sons, encourage her improper behavior."
Mama was a Womack of Virginia and had standards of behavior from her strict upbringing that sometimes clashed with Papa's. Most of the time she laid that to his being English and having lived so long in India, fighting for Queen Victoria among pagan heathens. He even treated our slaves as if they had minds of their own and opinions to be heard.