A driver was waiting for them in the open skimmer. As she climbed in, she noted with some discomfort that his greeting grin was directed not at her face but at a less public portion of her anatomy. This despite her official standing and the presence of her husband.
Settling excitedly into one of the three empty seats, Jack introduced the driver. “Lauren, meet Hasa. Hasa, this is my wife—the chief administrator.”
Their pilot had the canopy sealing and the skimmer ready to go even before she was properly seated. “Pleasure, Administrator. What the hell took you so long to send someone out after me? And as long as you were at it, couldn’t you have sent a couple of competent human techs instead of a stinking two-trunks and a moronic long-monkey?” Raising the skimmer, he scraped not one but two other parked craft as he recklessly gunned the compact vehicle out of the hangar and toward the forest, sending several pedestrians and the angry pilot of a delivery vehicle scattering for cover.
And that was her introduction to the exceedingly clever and much reviled Shadrach Hasselemoga.
After more than an hour in the skimmer with him, she, too, would not have been especially disappointed to see him vanish permanently into the depths of the unforgiving Viisiiviisii. But when they finally set down in a pile of fallen, decaying trees and Jack began to explain what their guide had located, she forgot all about his rude stares and loutish behavior.
Like magic, the black tendrils responded smoothly to her hand movements. Around them, the varzea sang and hooted and cackled. Hasa spoke while keeping watch, side arm at the ready.