Kris: We’ll NEED a way To SETTLE CROSSED wires like THAT. Nelly, you HAVE any SUGGESTIONS?
Nelly: I COULD GIVE you all PRIORITIES. Kris FIRST, Jack SECOND.
Kris: I Don’T like THAT. Who says I’ll always HAVE The MOST IMPORTANT THING To say?
By trial and error, they found that three could talk at any one time, and that one of them could send a message to appear on Kris’s eye, or in one of the glasses or contact lenses that the others wore to allow them to interface with their computer. Between talking and messaging, they got matters settled.
Kris: IT’s NOT as easy To know who AND when To lisTen To when you Don’T HAVE SOMEONE’s BODY LANGUAGE To BUILD on.
Jack: I Don’T Think This will EVER replace a GOOD OLD-FASHIONED Bull session.
Penny: STILL, IT May COME in HANDY TONIGHT. There were a few TIMES LAST NIGHT I sure WOULD HAVE LIKED To offer Kris My Two CENTS’ WORTH BUT wasn’T ABOUT To open My MOUTH.
Kris: Hey, folks, JUST Because you can say IT in My HEAD Doesn’T Mean I’M MORE likely To Take ADVICE I Don’T WANT To hear.
ABBY: I knew she was GOING To say THAT. I knew IT.
Nelly: A HARD HEAD is STILL a HARD HEAD EVEN when you’re HAMMERING AT IT FROM The INSIDE. I COULD HAVE TOLD you THAT.
Kris: Weren’T you KNITTING BOOTIES or SOMETHING?
Nelly: My CHILDREN are GETTING ALONG QUITE well WITH Their new PLAYMATES.
Penny: Oh GOD, ALREADY we’Ve Been DEMOTED FROM GODPARENTS To PLAYMATES. How quickly The MIGHTY fall.
Kris: Is IT TIME for lunch YET?
The four of them headed for the wardroom, leaving Cara waving through a game and the others frowning nowhere in particular.
After lunch, Kris dropped by Iteeche country, only to find one of Ron’s Marines blocking the door. “My lord is in conference with his advisors and asks that he not be disturbed.”
It was unheard of for Kris to have nothing to do, but somehow it was happening today. She had a long list of questions she would love to have answered, people she’d really like to talk her problems over with, but there was no one she dared talk with about her present mess.
Finally, Kris had Nelly call up a college lecture she’d attended on Group Dynamics and the Problems of Public Policy. Back when she took the course, she thought the upcoming elections put it in good context.
Reviewing it now, it seemed the professor’s choices of historical challenges looked rather tame.
Early in the talk, Jack came in, settled down on her couch, and joined her. The two of them batted comments back and forth. She would have loved to curl up with her head on his shoulder, listened to another human breathe. Heart beat. She couldn’t do that, but still the afternoon and evening sped by in his company.
19
Kris’s two great-grandfathers slipped aboard the Wasp with no fanfare. Admiral Crossenshield accompanied them, as well as, to Kris’s delight, her brother Honovi.
“What are you doing back?” he asked, as Kris gave him a hug.
“It will be easier to show you than tell you. What did they tell you?”
“Only that you were back, and into something big, and they’d like some help keeping you out of trouble.”
“Too late for that.”
“It’s never too late,” Honovi said, sounding far too optimistic but very political.
“You haven’t seen what followed me home this time,” were the last words Kris risked as the small party was guided to the forward lounge.
The ship’s carpenter had knocked together a table that afternoon that was as high as the average bar. The tall chairs looked like they’d been stolen from one of the station’s more disreputable establishments.
“I think I remember the dive you got these from,” Grampa Trouble said as he passed Kris, heading for a seat.
“They promised me they’ll look a whole lot better when we turn down the lights,” Kris said.
King Raymond and General Trouble took the two center seats. Kris sat at Grampa Ray’s right, with Honovi beside her and Penny beside him. To Grampa Trouble’s left sat the intel admiral.
Jack and the colonel were in dress uniform along with the Marines at both ends of the table. Somewhere behind them, Abby oversaw a full suite of recorders.
Grampa Ray turned to Kris. “Are your Marines locked and loaded?”
“Every one,” Kris whispered, and showed her grampa where her own service automatic rode in the small of her back.
He showed her his. “Us Longknifes are a bunch of paranoids.”
“Just doing what it takes to stay alive,” Kris said.
“Yeah,” he said, and faced forward just as a recording blasted out the weirdest set of notes Kris had ever heard.
“So I didn’t live long enough never to hear those again,” Grampa Ray muttered under his breath. He set his jaw . . . and kept his seat.
Beside him, Grampa Trouble was coming to his feet at full attention. The rest of the people on Kris’s side of the table followed suit, but Grampa Ray put a hand on Kris’s knee.
“Let’s see how our royalty matches against his imperialism.”
Kris had spent a good half hour with Jack and Abby going over the history of court etiquette. A king should sit through the arrival of an Imperial ambassador, as senior to an equal’s representative. But they’d concluded that a mere princess was junior to an Imperial Representative, since he was standing in for the big man, and she was only in line for the throne. Which she actually wasn’t. But . . .
Kris kept her seat. She hoped her great-grandfather appreciated her obedience.
He did smile at something.
The Imperial herald entered, his pole weapon shortened to make it through the entry easily without dipping. Iteeche Marines came next. The wall across from Grampa Ray had been left vacant for them, and they quickly filled it in.
Grampas Ray and Trouble took the Imperial Iteeche Marines in with hard eyes.
The two Navy gray and golds marched in, squared their corners, and came to rest at either end of the table. Grampa Ray studied the two and seemed content.
His eyes grew hard again as the two green-and-white Imperial counselors slowly made their way in. They refused to look at anyone on Kris’s side of the table, fixing their eyes on the ceiling behind Kris’s head.
Finally, Ron processed in, his raiment sparkling in the dim light of the lounge. With full solemnity, he walked to the center of the table. He took in Kris, seated beside the king, and locked eyes with King Raymond. All four of them.
Then he bowed.
Kris took Nelly from around her neck and set her on the table between them.
“I greet you, King Raymond of the Long-Reaching Knife in the name of my Imperial master,” Ron started slowly, giving Nelly plenty of time to translate. “I speak to you with the full authority of my Imperial master and at the most special request of my chooser. You know him as a negotiator for our Imperial master when you and he met at what you call the Orange Nebula. There, you brought the blessings of peace once more to the People and to your own kind.
“He instructed me to tell you that he still holds fond memories of you and has told me to rejoice that you are in good health and still not with your illustrious ancestors. He hopes that you remember him well and also hold good hopes for his continued health.”
“I am sad to see that he has not yet been invited to drink the poisoned cup to its fill,” King Ray said in a soft growl.
The two green and whites’ eyes grew wide, and they looked at their young superior with necks dark red.
Kris had to work to keep her own head from swiveling around, and her mouth closed. Admiral Crossenshield went ghost white, showing that humans could use skin tones to communicate their feelings.