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A
“Certainly,” he said, smiling back. “Come this way, ma’am.”
Looking around her, A
“Is that okay?” Ichigawa said after a moment. A
“Well, if I didn’t like you I’d ask you to call me Reverend Doctor, but I do like you very much, so please don’t,” she said.
“Thank you,” Jin said, and the back of his neck blushed.
“And if you were a member of my congregation, I’d have you call me Pastor A
“Only when I’m at my grandmother’s house,” Jin said with a wink. “The rest of the time I’m a navy man.”
“Is that a religion now?” A
“The navy thinks so.”
“Okay.” She laughed again. “So why don’t you just call me A
“Yes, ma’am,” Jin said. He stopped at a gray door marked OQ 297-11 and handed her a small metal card. “This is your room. Just having the card on you unlocks the door. It will stay locked when you’re inside unless you press the yellow button on the wall panel.”
“Sounds very safe,” A
“This is the battleship Thomas Prince, ma’am. It’s the safest place in the solar system.”
Her stateroom was three meters wide by four meters long. Luxurious by navy standards, normal for a poor Europan, coffinlike to an Earther. A
She wondered how long it would take Nono to get her Earth legs back. How long it would take before Nami could walk there. They were both spending the entire trip back pumped full of muscle and bone growth stimulators, but drugs can only take a person so far. There would still be the agonizing weeks or months as their bodies adapted to the new gravity. A
Thinking about it made A
She tapped the shiny black surface of the console in her room, and the room’s terminal came on. She spent a moment learning the user interface. It was limited to browsing the ship’s library and to sending and receiving text or audio/video messages.
She tapped the button to record a message and said, “Hi Nono, hi Nami!” She waved at the camera. “I’m on the ship, and we’re on our way. I—” She stopped and looked around the room, at the sterile gray walls and spartan bed. She grabbed a pillow off of it and turned back to the camera. “I miss you both already.” She hugged the pillow to her chest, tight. “This is you. This is both of you.”
She turned the recording off before she got teary. She was washing her face when the console buzzed a new-message alert. Even though it didn’t seem possible Nami could have gotten the message and replied already, her heart gave a little leap. She rushed over and opened the message. It was a simple text message reminding her of the VIP “meet and greet” in the officers’ mess at 1900 hours. The clock said it was currently 1300.
A
“Reverend Doctor Volovodov,” a booming male voice said as soon as she walked into the officers’ mess.
The room was laid out for a party, with tables covered in food ringing the room, and a hundred or more people talking in loose clumps in the center. In one corner, an ad hoc bar with four bartenders was doing brisk business. A tall, dark-ski
A
“Doctor Cortez,” A
“Of course,” he said, smiling vaguely and already looking around the room for someone else to talk to. She had the sense that he’d come to greet her less out of the pleasure of her arrival than as a chance to extricate himself from whatever conversation he’d been having before, and she didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted. She settled on amused.
Like a smaller object dragged into some larger gravity well, an elderly man in formal Roman Catholic garb pulled away from the central crowd and drifted in Doctor Cortez’s direction.
She started to introduce herself when Doctor Cortez cut in with that booming voice and said, “Father Michel. Say hello to my friend Reverend Doctor A
“Reverend Volovodov,” the Catholic man said. “I’m Father Michel, with the Archdiocese of Rome.”
“Oh, very nice to meet—” A
“Don’t let him fool you with that humble old country priest act,” Cortez boomed over the top of her. “He’s a bishop on the short list for cardinal.”
“Congratulations,” A
“Oh, it’s nothing. All exaggeration and smoke.” The old man beamed. “Nothing will happen until it fits with God’s plan.”
“You wouldn’t be here if that were true,” Cortez said.
The bishop chuckled.
A woman in an expensive blue dress followed one of the uniformed waiters with his tray of champagne. She and Father Michel reached for a glass at the same moment. A
“Please,” the woman said to A
“Thank you, but—”
“What about you, Hank? I’ve heard you can put down a few drinks.” She punctuated this with a swig from her glass. Cortez’s smile could have meant anything.