Wow, Alix’s family is not remotely happy with her situation and their arrangement. Until kids started coming along, seems they pretended she was dead. In the Change, it is a much more conservative culture, world-wide, but damn, family is still family.

Speaking of, interesting to see that Pai thinks of ancient analog computers as something like a great-to-the-fourth grandparent and wants to show respect. Interesting juxtaposition to Alix’s fam. While I hope dinner is on time, I think it would be hilarious to have her mom and Pai sitting opposite one another at the table.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

Having only seen the pictures Alix sent him, and only receiving those the few times they were in signal along the Rocky Mountains, Graf looked at his tablet once they were seated on the S-2 and in flight to where she and his two kids lived.  Wrightsville Beach, but on the landward side.  The place had a tiny dock for their canoe.  Alix came to love fishing once I taught her.  She thought she would find it boring but now realizes it’s a peaceful way to feed a family.

“We’ll be making a stop just a few klicks short of the house,” Pai announced from next to him.  “on the Cape Fear River.  I want to visit an ancestor of mine and not be in y’all’s way.”

“You are not in the way, Pai,” he chided her.  “Yes, I know Alix’s family is not at all happy with how things turned out, but she is and we are.  And, what ancestor?  There are no Machines…”

“The floating museum of Battleship North Carolina,” she educated him, “contained analog computers.  Amazing what you humans did centuries ago.  I want to walk about her.  Later, I shall invite myself over.”

“Humans, my wife?”

“Oops.  Apologies,” she said with a kiss.  There was no one else on the ship besides the crew, but they would not have minded, anyway.

“I guess we are kind of ‘on leave,’ until the Empress summons us, wherever she is.” After three years, he was adept at changing the subject.  “It will be nice to be in a bed with a roof over my, er, our heads.”

I still get this wrong every now and again.

The little ship slowed then dropped.  Pai stood.  “Since I don’t eat, expect me, oh, around twenty-hundred.  I’ve sent a message to her, so she knows you are coming.  Speaking of, she’s fertile right now.”

“Pai?” She paused.

“Yes?”

“The kids really like you, even if they do call you Auntie.”

“I’m aware.  Go do something nice for my rival, Husband.”

There were the usual stares of the locals when he dropped out of the ship and onto the beach.  February, it was fairly cloudy but still much warmer than the Front Range.  With his kit across one shoulder and his rifle over the other, he walked west.  No more than two hundred feet later, he paused.

That’s her mother’s car, Graf noted.  As much as her father and brother, both very good engineers in the Empress’ service, did not like this situation, her mother acted as if Alix was dead until Suza came along.  Now, from Carolina Province, she will at least visit to see her and my little boy, Tér.

And why did Alix choose those names?  I admit things in former Wisconsin were pretty boring.  Then again, where did my mom get “Graf.”  Growing up, I read it was some kind of title, but still.  He stepped up to the porch, took a breath, and rapped on the screen door, immediately answered by a “boof!”

Their dog, Snow, a white Husky mix of about thirty pounds, came loping and barking.  Behind him was Suza.  “Daddy!” she screamed.  He let himself in and scooped her up.

“Best girl!” he said as she covered his face in kisses.  I should be home, more.  She took after her mother:  dark of hair and eye but full of smiles and laughter.  “And where are…”

Alix came around the corner, holding Tér.  Who takes after me:  his hair coming in sandy-blond over light blue eyes.  Speaking of eyes…

“Those are new,” he said to Alix before kissing her.  She never wore glasses and the little wireframes were perched on her nose.

“Vision started to get worse after our boy, here,” she said, passing him over.  “I suspect by our tenth child, I’ll be blind.”

“Then we’ll fix it,” he chided her, bouncing his son in his arm and Suza, who had glued herself to his lower leg.  “After all, I’ve some connexions…”

“Stop it and come on,” she said, not wanting to be reminded.  “Graf is home, Mom.”

At the kitchen stove, her mother, tall and pale, looking nothing like her daughter, looked up from stirring a pot.  “Mister Winstead,” she allowed, her face closed.

“Whatever that is, it smells wonderful,” he tried.  This is exasperating.  “Thank you for looking after your daughter and grandchildren.”

“Didn’t know they were mine,” she said with ice on her shoulders, turning back to the stove.

“Goddam it…” Alix muttered and with a wave indicated they should head out back to the little pier on Banks Channel.  To make it easier to walk, he picked up Suza off his leg and into his other arm.

“Da,” Tér finally managed.  I hope that’s for Daddy and Pai has not been sneaking him Russian.  Even though she plugged it into my skull just before the wedding.