“See here, Acorna acushia,” put in Gill, “you can’t be talking to me that way, me that bathed you when you were a baby and that’s not so very long ago neither!”
In a few short, scathing sentences Acorna demonstrated that she could and would talk to Gill that way and worse. By the time she stalked away, Gill’s face was as red as his beard, and Pal later swore that he had seen small puffs of steam coming out of the miner’s ears.
“I knew it wasn’t a good idea to tell her,” Pal said.
Gill glared at him. “You could have explained why we had to doit!”
“Did you hear her give me a chance to get a word in edgewise?” he replied. “Besides, you could have explained, too, and I didn’t hear you saying anything!”
Gill’s deep laugh rumbled through the coin center, and he wiped his sweating forehead. “You’ve a point there, young Pal. Tell you what, let’s get a printout of all the messages we’ve deleted in the past ten days or so. That’ll explain it to her without us having to get that word in past the young lady’s offended fury.” ,
“Where‘11 we send it? The mood she’s in- “
“No matter what kind of a mood she’s in,” Gill said, “you can’t stalk off very far on a lunar mining base. And you should be able to guess as well as I where she’ll go to let off steam. Why don’t you give your sister a call, let her know what to expect?”
He leaned over the desk and began explaining to the corn tech exactly what arcane procedures he’d have to follow in order to retrieve the massive amounts of “junk mail” that he and Pal had deleted from Acorna’s files before she ever saw them.
“They treat me like an infant,” Acorna declared, stalking around the circular floor of the main dome in the living space Judit Kendoro shared with Gill. “I am not to search for my own people … I am not to read my own mail … I will not have it!” Her head came up, her nostrils flared, and the silvery mane that cascaded down her back quivered with the force of her indignation.
“Of course you will not,” Judit agreed, taking Acorna by the hand and leading her to a comfortable couch designed with her equine proportions in mind, “but perhaps you will have a cooling drink before you quite explode with indignation? Iced kava, perhaps, or madigadijuice?”
“If you are trying to make me forget about it,” Acorna said, seating herself, “I should tell you that it will not work! I am no longer to be treated as an ignorant child!”
“Of course you are not,” said Judit Kendoro understandingly. “You have grown up quite amazingly in the last two years. You never lose yourself galloping in the park anymore, or get into fights with street vendors, or …”
Laughing, Acorna stopped her. “Enough, please! I do not deny that I did some very foolish things when I first came to live with Mr. Li-but remember that nearly two years aboard a mining ship is not much preparation for social life on a planet! And I was much younger then.”
“That’s true,” said Judit, “and Gill and Pal now realize that they were wrong to screen your mail for you.”
Acorna looked at her suspiciously, “Then why did they not say so? And how do you know?”
“Did you give them a chance to apologize?” Judit asked. “Or did you just stalk off in high dudgeon, 0 mature and sober woman of the world? Pal guessed where you would go and called to tell me that he and Gill would be sending your intercepted mail from the last ten days over as soon as it could be retrieved and printed-and here it is now,” she said as the delivery bell chimed to signal arrival of a parcel.
And chimed.
And chimed.
And chimed… .
“Two dozen boxes!” Acorna exclaimed when the last of the boxes of printouts had been dumped on Judit’s floor. “Impossible! I do not know two dozen people apart from the children, and most of those people I know are right here on Maganos and would have no need to send me any mail. Gill is making a joke.”