"I thought you said you didn't want anyone getting off thinking about your girlfriend."I thought you said you didn't want anyone getting off thinking about your girlfriend." "You don't bother me. Thinking about Foster doing it does. Besides, all I have to do is tell you Kiza is unattached and that the reason she like Furry so much in the first place is 'cause she wants a Terran boyfriend like Furry, and I know just how your mind operates. You bed squeaks every night anyway. Ee-ee-ee-ee," Nickolai squeaked, trying to sound like ancient bedsprings and failing. "My bed does not squeak!" "Only because you're fanatical about keeping it oiled." "I am not!" "Okay, it's only every other night." "That's more likely," Garth admitted, smiling. They both broke up laughing. The sport of fencing hadn't changed all that much in the past millennia, the invention of impulse gels and the rise of Practical Swordsmanship notwithstanding. Although Nickolai had to admit that the modern fencer, when compared to his ancient sporting equivalent swaddled with padded clothing like an ugly white turtle, looked more like a ballet dancer or a Shakespearian actor in his colorful tights. Impulse gel, a composite substance that felt like gelatin sandwiched between two sheets of plastic and imbedded with a symmetrical pattern of ball bearings, could sense when a piercing or other localized strike was occurring to the region it covered, and the gel would solidify instantly, using the energy of the attack to distribute the impact over as wide a region as possible. It worked as well against bullets as it did swords; a Terran invention, the addition of Pendorian ceramics had made it nearly impervious to anything travelling less that 12 meters per second. |