Then, about six weeks after his installation in the cottage, either Isthia or Besseva – both women insisted he drop the familial titles – started taking him out to dinner and an evening’s company. At first he suspected some sort of `kind’ conspiracy when he noticed no `Dinis present but his female relations, having so many homes to choose from, adroitly picked those which had no Mrdini associations. He often rode with Asia to her house because she’d listen to him sounding off on engineering theories. She often had some very adroit suggestions.
`Why don’t you speak out at the tutorials? Anyone would think you were just being tolerated in the class?’ he asked one day when she startled him with her grasp of jojunctions.
`Oh,’ and she waved her free hand nervously. `I might be wrong and then they’d all laugh at me.’ `You haven’t been wrong once with me, Rojer said, annoyed at her diffidence.
`Yes, but you’re different from everyone else in my family,’ she replied. `You listen to me.’ Rojer kept his annoyance to himself remembering all too well how much of a bully Roddie had been: probably the reason his sister wouldn’t speak up for herself `Would you care for a fish dinner? Say tomorrow night?’ he asked her several weeks later.
`Only,’ and he grinned broadly at her, `you have to catch your own fish.’ She had a rippling kind of laugh and, rather than send her scuttling back into herself he grinned back.
`I am, however, a very good cook so you don’t have to cook it.
`I really ought to study the quantums ` she said, already retreating from that moment of amusement.
`So ought I. We’ll make it a work evening: catch fish, eat fish and discuss quantums while we work.’ He knew Asia was a T-4 – she’d been tested – but it didn’t hurt to reinforce her and he was deft enough to do so. Like `so many Denebians, she was lackadaisical about honing the ability she had. That made it all the easier for him to make a few adjustments, to help her think better of herself `You do understand the quantums better than I do, -` `We’ll find out whether or not I do tomorrow.
Right? Gotta get on home now,’ he said, as they came to her turn-off. He kicked his pony, Koto, into a lope and waved one hand in an airy farewell.
They got together once or twice during the next few weeks. By then his studies had begun to intrigue him into making voluntary forays into the various aspects of spatial engineering. Such problems were the best meat to feed a healing mind. Many Ravens had been of an engineering bent and Rojer had caught his share of it, as well as a keen sense of spatial relationships. The maths were soothing, too, and, over the next four months, he advanced as fast as the computer Teach would let him.
When he and Asia shared tutorials, he realized that her grasp of the fundamentals was as firm as his own because she would volunteer answers if he was the only other student present.
Some days, when he had worked to total mental fugue, his grandmother would suddenly require some item of hers from the cottage and he’d have to ride Koto to wherever she was. He knew, and she knew that he knew, that either of them could have `ported the item to her if she needed it urgently but they both knew he was the better for the exercise. He submitted to her careful bullying with good grace.
Isthia never had cause to call him a cocky boy and she approved of his friendship with Asia.
But, oh, in the night, how he missed the feel of warm `Dini bodies snuggled against his. And oh, how often he was about to ask Gil’s opinion or share a wry notion with Kat. He’d still wake to find his pillow damp but Isthia insisted that tears were well spent.
I’m over five times your age, Rojer Lyon, and I still cry!
Isthia had told him rather forcefully the first time he protested that he was too old for weeping.