Linda snorted. "Patricio? Business? He despises business."

"Oh, I know," Annie agreed. "He always did. Me, too. So I don't do it; I just live off the trust fund."

Annie sipped at her drink, sipped again… again. "I always understood him better than the others did. If I had been a man, I'd have joined the army too, to make my own escape."

She continued, "So, anyway, when he ran off to join the army at age eighteen, it just infuriated Bob. And enlisting rather than going to one of the military academies? Well, we haven't had an enlisted man in our family since Great-great-great-uncle Bill with the 12th Wichita Infantry in the Formation War. Then, when Pat insisted on staying in the army… well… it took the heart right out of Uncle Bob at first. That was when he cut Pat off, you know. It wasn't anything to do with you."

"Well, here I have one son and two daughters," Linda said. "They carry the name, they've even got your family's color rather than mine. And the women of my family insist on having children… lots of them. Speaking of which…"

"Yes?" Annie asked, expectantly.

Linda just smiled and held up three fingers, then slowly raised her little finger to make a fourth.

Cochea,

10/7/459 AC

As Linda and Annie dined in First Landing, in the Federated States, Hennessey, Parilla and Jimenez pored over maps from the Federated States invasion of Balboa, in 447, called "Operation Green Fork." Hennessey was working on a history of that invasion-something neutral and objective to balance the often propaganda- distorted works already in print. He had to work on something to keep busy and to feel useful, not having a job to call his own anymore. Indeed, he had several projects going at any given time. One of them was a translation into Balboan Spanish of a novel by an Old Earth writer he knew only as R.A.H.