Getting there, getting there. Here’s a piece of some additional text I worked on today, at the suggestion of my editor…
“Three people on a trip? Sure, that’s a minimum safe party.” I poured myself another drink. “So who’s your ‘colleague?’ Burcu?”
“Oh, no. She’ll be too busy. No, I’ll be escorting the Anticipant Named Tyler.”
Oft left it like that, just as if I didn’t need any further information. “Right. And who, exactly, is an ‘Anticipant Named Tyler?’”
“Ask her yourself, Chief Pilot Tanaka. She’s sitting at this table, after all.”
The reaction of Syah and Nur would have been funny, if I hadn’t been so startled myself. Someone else was sitting at this table. She was utterly unremarkable, in every way: beige hair, beige eyes, beige skin, and her features could have come from any part of Earth. They say that the Terran gene pool’s a lot less variegated, after the Terran Consolidation Wars. I guess they weren’t kidding.
“How did… how did she get there?” Syah gasped, looking just a little too gray for my liking. I took a quick look at his readouts, but they were already turning blue again. He’d been surprised, not shocked.
“She sat down when I did,” Oft replied. “The Anticipant is extremely good at not being noticeable. She also has a bad habit of being overly dramatic, when she does want to be noticed,” he went on. “My apologies for her little ways.”
“Charming. You got any other fun habits I should know about, Tyler?” I thought at the time I surprised the Anticipant by speaking to her directly, but in retrospect I think she just wanted me to think that. At any rate, she just blinked and shrugged at Oft.
“Ah… it’s difficult to explain, but she reacts to ‘Anticipant’ more readily than she would ‘Tyler.’ She didn’t mean any harm.” Oft looked uncomfortable enough for me to believe him.