“Will you gather the objects of your name and subsistence, Brother? It is past time that we were home, and I understand men to require some time of sleeping every moontime.”
Val Con stood for a long time, as men measure such things, squinting up at the T’carais. Then he smiled and turned toward the ship.
“I will not be long.”
“So be it,” said Edger, settling to wait. He considered the T’car and sighed gustily.
“Aaii, and they called me hasty anon!”
A Day at the Races
THE SKY WAS nearly Terran blue overhead, shading to a more proper Liaden green toward planetary east. Shadows were beginning their long evening stretch across the lawns, from the topiary maze to the house.
Up the drive came a slender young man in the leather vest and leggings of a spaceworker. Despite the peremptory summons from his sister, he had walked from Solcintra spaceport, enjoying the taste of natural air.
He paused by the cumbersome landau parked messily across the drive. The crest of his aunt, the Right Noble Lady Kareen yos’Phelium, Patron of the Solcintra Poetry Society, Founder of the League to Preserve the Purity of the Tongue, and Chairperson Emeritus of the Embassy of Form, glittered in the fading light.
Scout Captain Val Con yos’Phelium sighed. Perhaps it was not too late to turn about, catch the evening shuttle to Chonselta City, and thus avoid any contact with his father’s sister, a course he had pursued whenever possible throughout his childhood and halfling years.
He sighed again. No, he decided, better to attend to the business at once and have done.
Thus virtuously armed, he continued up the drive and let himself into the house.