rest of the game, Maj had had some concern.
Most designers who simply adapted astronomical photos from the Hubble and Alpher-Bethe-Gamow Space Telescopes for their scenarios wound up, despite the sometimes spectacular nature of the images, with backgrounds that looked hard and cold. Maj wasn’t sure what Oranief had done to his “exteriors,” but they somehow looked hard and
She sighed and put the last mail aside, a panicky voice-mail from Bob, who had been complaining that he wasn’t sure the camber of the wings on the Arbalest craft was deep enough. Maj recognized this for what it was — last-minute nerves. “Mail routine,” she said.
“Running, boss,” said her work space in a pleasant, neutral female voice.
“Start reply. Bobby, baby,” Maj said, “if you think I for one am going to support you in yet another change of design the day before the balloon goes up, you’re out of your mind. We have a beautiful ship. We are going to beat the butts off the Black Arrows when they come after us.”
“Queue or immediate send?” said Maj’s workspace.
“Send.” She sighed, glanced up. “Time?”
“Nine sixteen P.M.”
“Oh, gosh, and the Muf is still up,” Maj said to herself. She got up, plucked the icon-sphere of the last e-mail from Bob out of the air, picked up the remaining ones from where they lay on the table, and strolled over to the “filing cabinet” where she kept the Cluster Rangers material — a virtual “box” the shape of an Arbalest fighter. She pulled up the canopy of the fighter and stuffed the little message spheres down into it, then closed the canopy and took one last look at the fighter’s design. The beautifully back-slanted wings were perfect, even though they were more often than not superfluous. The fighter spent most of its time in deep space. Still, the group had designed into the ship the ability to go atmospheric if necessary — it was intended to be an ace-in-the-hole. Not many designers retained that capability, opting instead to use shuttlecraft or transporter platforms for their on-planet work. In the upcoming Battle, conditions were ripe to exploit the ship’s versatility.
“‘Camber,’” she muttered. “Bob needs his head examined.”
She turned toward the “door” into the Muffin’s space and headed through it. Muffin was still sitting on her rock and reading to the dinosaurs — one particularly large stegosaur was looking over her shoulder, while chewing a mouthful of grass.
“And the woodcutter said—”
Maj peered over the Muffin’s shoulder briefly. “Come on, you,” she said. “Bedtime.”
There was a general groan of annoyance from the dinosaurs. Way up above her, a tyrannosaur bent down and most expressively showed its teeth. “Yeah, you, too,” Maj said, unimpressed, waving a hand expressively in front of her face. “Wow, when did you brush last?”
“It’s not my fault,” the tyrannosaur said. “I eat people.”
“Yeah, well, you could try flossing in between meals,” said Maj, wondering once more who was doing the programming for these creatures. They were
“I didn’t finish the story,” the Muffin said, annoyed.
“Okay,” Maj said. “Finish it up. Then bedtime.”
The Muffin opened her book. The dinosaurs leaned down again. “And the woodcutter chopped the wolf open, and Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother fell out. Then the woodcutter took great stones and put them in the wolf’s belly, and sewed the wolf up again, and threw it in the lake, and it never came back up. And the kindly woodcutter took Red Riding Hood home to her mother and father, who cried and laughed when they saw her, and made her promise never to go into the woods alone by herself again.”
The Muffin closed the book, and the dinosaurs stood up around her with a kind of sigh of completion. “Good night,” Muffin said to them, and there was a chorus of grunts and hoots and growls, and they all stalked off among the trees, where darkness began to fall.
Maj suddenly began to wonder why she had been bothering to worry about the saurians.
“All done,” said Muffin. The virtual landscape faded away, replaced by Maj’s little sister’s bedroom.
Maj got the Muffin into her pajamas and put her in bed. “What did you make of that story, small stuff?” Maj said.
“I didn’t make it. It was there.”
“I mean, what do you
“That you shouldn’t go into the forest by yourself, or talk to strangers,” the Muffin said. “Unless you’re a grown-up, or you have an ax. And it’s very bad to kill people, or eat people. Unless you’re a dinosaur and can’t help it.”
Maj blinked. “And that last bit, about the stones?”
“The wolf had it coming,” said the Muffin.
Maj choked on a laugh. “Oh,” she said. “You want a drink of water?”
“No.”
“Okay, honey. You have a good sleep.”
“Night night,” said the Muffin, and turned over and snuggled down among the covers.
Maj softly shut the door to her room and decided that she didn’t have to bother worrying about her sister’s relationship with the virtual dinosaurs. The Brothers Grimm, though, might be another matter, though in this area as well the Muffin seemed to be handling things her own way, calmly and with a certain panache.
She chuckled and made the rounds of the house, checking the locks before turning in. She had an early morning coming up, and then there would be this new kid, Nick, to deal with as well.
Six in the morning came all too early. It was not Maj’s idea of a normal time to get up, but some of the Group of Seven were on the Pacific Coast, and this was the time of day and/or night when it was easiest to get everyone together.
All the same, she was not going to go virtual at such an hour without at least a little preparation. She strolled out to the kitchen in her bathrobe, rubbing her eyes, and put the kettle on, then went back down the hall, hearing a voice — her mother’s, she thought.
By her mother’s office door she stopped and listened. No sound — the voice she had heard was coming down the hall from the master bedroom.