Q & A - Keith R. A. DeCandido [24]
7
Enterprise
In orbit of Gorsach IX
One day before the end of the universe
“WE HAD ONE OF THOSE STUPID DEPARTMENT soirees tonight.” Vicenzo Farrenga’s pleasant round face filled the viewscreen in front of Miranda Kadohata, who was smiling with bemusement. Miranda knew that Vicenzo hated those get-togethers. However, Ian Karapips, the chair of Bacco University’s linguistics department, thought they “fostered a commonality.” Vicenzo opined that the phrase proved Ian had read a Betazoid psychiatric text as a teenager, memorizing it in order to torment future employees.
It was late at night in Lakeside on Cestus III, but ship’s time was early morning. Miranda had put the call through to Cestus when she got up and spoke to her husband while she got ready. They were lucky in that they were close enough to the subspace booster relay that there was only a four-second delay in communications with Vicenzo. Other missions might take them too far from any relay station—or be too many sectors away from Cestus—for anything approaching real-time communication, so she wanted to take as much advantage as she could to talk to her husband. Miranda had spent most of the previous night’s comm talking with Aoki and making incomprehensible noises at the twins—which was made all the more entertaining by the delay. Now, the time on Cestus meant that all three children were sound asleep.
“How dreadful was it?” Miranda asked, using the four-second delay to put her uniform jacket on.
Vicenzo ran his hands through his thick, dark hair. He was constantly adjusting his hair, even though it was always perfect, as far as Miranda was concerned. Finally, he said, “Not as bad as it could’ve been, really, but we’ve got Aoki to thank for that.”
That surprised Miranda. “Aoki was there?”
Vicenzo, however, was still talking. “Well, Aoki and the others. Ian encouraged those of us with children to bring them along—and yeah, she was there, I’m explaining that,” he added as her words finally arrived. “So Esmeralda, Bridget, and Jenni all brought their kids, and they were out playing on Ian’s porch. Before you ask,” he said quickly, “I got Dorian to watch the twins. I’m fine with a five-year-old ‘fostering commonalities,’ but there was no reason for the twins to suffer through it.”
Miranda smiled. Aoki loved “going out” and neither of her parents could stop her once she heard the word “out.” Aoki knew how to spell it in seven languages. Miranda was relieved that Vicenzo was leaving the house when he wasn’t teaching, and trusting Dorian to watch Colin and Sylvana. He had requested a lightened workload at the university—only two classes, which met only once a week each—for the year, so he could spend more time with the twins.
“So anyhow,” Vicenzo went on, “we had a decent dinner and spent the whole time gossiping about all the other departments—y’know, like usual—and the kids are out playing on Ian’s porch. I say ‘I want some air,’ but mostly I wanna check on ‘em, y’know? So just as I go out, they all scream and run into one corner of the porch. I check, and there’s this little greelak poking its head out from between two of the porch slats.”
Miranda nodded, even though Vicenzo wouldn’t see her do that for four seconds. A greelak was a lizardlike creature native to Cestus III, with seven legs—two in the back, two in the middle, two under the shoulder, and one under the neck—bright red scales, and rather than teeth had a shelf of enamel that looked nastier than it actually was, considering that greelaks were herbivores. They rarely grew more than ten centimeters long and were mostly harmless.
“The little guy’s just looking out, and the kids are all cowering and screaming, so I pick him up and hold him in my hand. I start telling ‘em that they’re harmless and all that stuff and that there’s nothing to be afraid of. After about a minute of that—and, y’know, of holding the little guy in my hand, showing he’s harmless—they