"Dad, this is Kolya."Dad, this is Kolya." "Good to meet you lad. How are you?" The elder Markal held his hand out. Nickolai shook it briskly. "Fine, sir," he replied, feeling uncomfortable. The paw was warm and dry. He wasn't Jofuran's "friend," was he? "Good, good. Well, enjoy your trip. We're returning home after ten years, and Joey's going to be going with the tour group because when we left she was only six years old. Probably doesn't remember much of the old Ring." "Oh, Dad," Jofuran said testily. "I remember enough. It'll be great." "Okay, dear." Nickolai thought that Jofurans' parents sounded just like some sort of video his mother would watch, except that they looked like oversized mice. "Parents," Jofuran said in a grumbling tone after the two elder Markals had stepped away. "I can't decide if I'm supposed to be embarrassed by them or not." "Well, I know I'm embarrassed by my mother." "That's your mother. Ever since the Saman revolution, Earth hasn't really had 'parents.' Hey, how did that happen, anyway?" Nickolai shrugged. He'd told this tale more often than he could recount. "Dad died in space. Asteroid miner, hero of the stars, that kind of thing. He didn't have to, y'know. He actually owned land on Earth, and you know how rich that made him." Jofuran nodded. "Well, in his will, he left some of his money to his present SO..." "Es Oh?" Jofuran asked. "Significant Other." Nickolai shrugged. "It means the person you're involved with. From what I've read, Dad kept SO's because he felt he had to... he was really in love with his ship. Anyway, when he was declared dead, his SO, namely my mother, was also given his Right of Replacement key." "I thought Right of Replacemnt was a registered act, not some thing." "Well, it is. But most Terrans have a symbol in which their copy of the registration is kept. Usually looks like a big key." "Oh." "Anyway, because he was rich and eccentric, Dad's SO's were usually kinda strange, too. Mom's an artist type, you know, splashes pigments onto big sheets of canvas, covers the outside with stuffs, pins big sheets of Reytape to them and then runs an analog reader over the whole mess. |