"Soon."
"Ah, then let us continue teaching you antonyms."
Hane was busy in his play corner with the blocks and the miniature vehicles that Zainal had fashioned for him. He was mimicking the solar panel hum as he played, oblivious now to the adults.
She had no sooner reached for the list than there was a knock on the door, and Zainal called out "Enter!"
Kurt Langsteiner peered cautiously around the door, a thin-faced man with an expression of perpetual anxiety. He smiled, which altered his face considerably to a pleasant appearance, and stepped inside, carefully closing the door with one foot as both hands were full.
"Name plates would help," he said. "This is the third house I've tried in your neck of the woods."
"Let me help," Kris said, rising to take the basket from one hand. She immediately exclaimed with real pleasure at the three long loaves of bread that stuck out around the stew pot. "Rocksquat…"
"What else?" Kurt said with a droll laugh, "but they put some salad in as well and something for young Zane." He stepped up to the table now and placed on its surface the six large bottles of beer that had been tied at the neck and clanked against each other.
"Remnant of my student days when I found that beer made the studying go more easily." He put the bottles down, and he shook his creased fingers to circulate blood to them.
First Kris brought three glasses to the table. They were still sort of odd shaped, with uneven blemishes from the not-quite-expert glass blowers. In fact, some said that the glasses, with their slightly skewed sides, looked half-drunk. A new guideline had been formulated: if a drinker was asked if his glass was straight and he answered "yes," you had proof he had had more than enough to drink. She was setting out plates and utensils as Kurt started pulling out notepads and books from the various pockets of his ship suit. It still looked new, by which Kris figured he must have been in the Sixth Drop. She didn't know that group of arrivals as well as she did those from the other five.
"What is the worst trouble you're having, Zainal?" Kurt asked as he made an orderly pile of his materials.
"It is the words that sound the same that are not the same," Zainal said with considerable asperity.
"Quite understandably. They're bitches to get right at any age." Then he turned to Kris. "I used to teach computer in junior high school before I got rounded up so Mitford thought I'd be the best candidate to do both jobs on Zainal," Kurt said to her as he organized his teaching materials on the table. "And Zainal here," and Kurt nodded at him, "said he'd teach me how to read and write Catteni."
Now Zainal grinned at Kris and pointed to the third chair. "You will learn, too."
Obediently Kris settled down. Leave it to Zainal to throw her a real curve ball. Oh, well, she had only herself to blame.
"You learn a lot better on an full stomach… and it gives you a base for the beer. Zane, please wash your hands for dinner," she said, using hot pads to lift the stew kettle to the table.
The three males obediently went to wash their hands as she finished setting the table. Kurt must be well liked by the caterers for a whole cake had been carefully tied between two baking tins to keep it from being damaged by the hot stew pot. And so had a good portion of salad greens, though the heat from the stew had wilted some of them.
THEY MADE A GOOD MEAL, with Zainal beginning his part of the teaching bargain by using the Catteni words for everything on the table.
Even Zane tried to repeat them, giggling as easily at his own mistakes as at his mother's but had the good sense to cover his mouth when Kurt had trouble. Though Langsteiner certainly seemed to get the guttural sounds more easily.
"German was my first language," he said in an aside to Kris.
"You'd never know it to hear you speak English," she replied.
"My parents spoke both," he explained.
"We really should make Zane learn Catteni, too," Kris said, leaning toward Zainal.
"And Rugarian and Deski," Zainal said at his blandest.
"Them, as well, of course," was her quick, equally bland response, and Kurt laughed.
"And what a hodgepodge they'll all be speaking," he said.
"It will be helpful," Zainal said, "when we free Rugar and Deski, too."
Kurt's eyes bulged at that, and he looked quickly at Kris to see her reaction.
"Why settle for freeing just ours?" she said with a diffident shrug though this was the first she'd known of that facet of Zainal's master plans.
"Besides, Zane already speaks some Rugarian and Deski at day care."
"Really?" Kurt was startled.
"Gets a bit like the Tower of Babel in there some days," Kris said, dipping the ladle into the stew pot to offer second helpings. The pot had been graciously full.
They all had two pieces of the excellent nutty-flavored cake that had a topping of thick sweet blue-colored berries that did not at all taste like blueberries, nor had similar seeds.
As was often the case with young Zane, he was ready to go to sleep with his stomach nicely full so Kris prepared him for bed while the two men cleared the table. When she returned, she rather thought the humorous glint in Kurt's eyes was for the accustomed manner in which the Catteni had performed the KP duties.
The beer helped a great deal as the two Humans struggled with the guttural, harsh Catteni words, first jotting them down phonetically and then in the Catteni script. This was a cross between runes, Kurt's definition, and glyphs, which was Kris' notion. By the time the beer had run out, the two of them knew how to count to five hundred in Catteni, and Zainal could now spell all the words that had bothered him as well as understand all the computer abbreviations which had so baffled him. They set a time for the next lesson, and then Kurt got into the runabout and made a slow but competent turn to head back to the main settlement.
SINCE THE MIND-PROBE had discovered very little useful information -apart from some shady dealings among the former administrators and administrations of the planet's political divisions-the Ix had abandoned the project: bored even by the occasional scientific theories that had yet to be proven. Most of these were already in use by the Eosi: and far more sophisticated usage than the silly Humans had ever thought to employ.
Unfortunately the obsession to destroy those protected by the Bubble had become so entrenched in the Ix Mentat's mind that it thought of nothing but the means to do so. Where the Bubble had come from and what comprised the amazingly invulnerable material was almost a secondary consideration.
The Juniors-which was not how they were called in Catteni but the translation was close enough to their actual position and authority within the Eosi context had repeatedly tried to divert the Ix with other matters. Lest the Ix be provoked by their counter-arguments into another seizure, they had no choice but to proceed with the Mentat's latest plans: to organize the greatest force the Eosi had ever assembled, even larger than the one with which they had assaulted a planet that many High Emassi wished they'd left strictly alone. But it had seemed such a useful place: with a population density that would provide other, less desirable locations with an endless supply of workers needed to produce and refine the raw materials that kept Catteni ships in space. There was also the added fact that the Eosi were committed to extending their control of this arm of the galaxy as far as they could-and as fast as they could.
So the orders were sent out to the naval shipyards and the plants and planets that produced the materials needed to build more AA-ships, and devise heavier, more devastating missiles to launch at this mysterious Bubble.
The Ix Mentat was approached by one of its peers and tactfully asked why one small, insignificant world was its target.
"Because it's there," the Ix replied, glowering and seething with rage.