“Acorna, my love,” thundered Declan Giloglie, “you’re not going without the best defenses we can fit you out with, and that’s me final word on the subject!”
Calum heaved a dramatic sigh. “I see there’s no changing your minds.”
Acorna glanced at Calum, aghast at this apparent collapse of resistance. The side of his face that was turned toward her, away from the rest of the group, flickered in what might have been a brief wink.
“I suppose you are right,” she said, bo-wing gracefully toward Mr. Li. “Please forgive me for causing you anxiety. It was indeed extremely selfish of me to wish to find my own people before I die of advanced old age.” She could not restrain that comment, even though she recognized as she made it that her words might destroy Calum’s pretense at acquiescence … if it was indeed pretense?
“Women!” Calum said in a disgusted tone. “All sentiment, no logic. But I do see the force of your arguments, and I’ll explain it all to our pretty one here until she understands.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” Pal said. “That’s my job.”
“Convince me later, Pal,” Acorna said sweetly. “Right now-since we are all agreed on the necessity for installing the revised defense systems-I wish to go over some matters of the ship’s living space with Calum. I am afraid we may need to completely remodel a portion of the interior.”
“By all means,” said Delszaki Li, beaming in a way that reinforced Acorna s belief that this talk of the new defense system
was just another taradiddle designed to delay her departure yet again.
“Make whatever changes you wish. My architect will accommodate. ” Li bowed to Acorna.
Once they were alone on the Aca()ecki, Calum looked at Acorna.
“You didn’t really -want to redesign the living space again, I trust?”
“You don’t really want to wait six more weeks, which will
probably turn into six months if Mr. Li and Pal can arrange it, before we take off, do you?”
“No I” they both said in chorus.
“We’re well enough supplied for the initial voyage right now,” Calum said thoughtfully.
“If something happened to distract the others for just a little while …” Acorna murmured.
On their return to the base, it seemed that distraction might just be at hand. Pal and Gill were fuming out loud at one of the
corn techs, who had innocently sent the requested acknowledgment for delivery of a message to Acorna.
“What is the problem with this?” Acorna asked. “It seems perfectly standard behavior to me.”
Gill gave her a disgusted glance. “For people who aren’t celebrities, maybe. For you-the acknowledgment tells whoeverthis-is that they have found your Lattice node. Now you’ll be inundated with junk mail and worse. Damn it, people send these test messages out like confetti, hitting every node where they think they might find their target, and I thought we had trained all the corn techs never to acknowledge anonymous messages!”
Acorna put her hand on the techs shoulder. He was young enough to have been trained at Maganos in the past two years, thin enough to have come from one of Kezdet’s factories before that, and he was shaking under her hand. She sent soothing, calming impulses to the boy until she could feel that he was steadier.
“If you upset the people who work here for no reason at all, Gill,” she said, “how can you expect them to remember your wishes? Do not worry,” she said to the tech, “it is a small matter, soon forgotten.”
“That’s what you think!” said Pal darkly.
Acorna shrugged. “I’ve never had an anonymous message before, so there is no reason to suppose this one is the beginning of a flood.”
“Never-had-” Gill plunged both hands into his curly red beard and tugged as if he were trying to root it out. “Why, we must have bounced half a hundred of these confetti jobs back in the last week alone!” He glared at the younger man. “Didn’t you tell her, Pal?”
“I didn’t think,” Pal said unhappily, “it would be a good idea to mention that we were screening her mail. …”
“You were WHAT?” Acorna demanded in outraged tones. “Gill, whatever gave you the colossal gall to intercept my personal messages? And Pal, did you think that because I hadn’t absolutely rejected your declarations, you owned me and my communications ? “