Conics Unfortunately: 74 (end)

I had just found our car when Tejal spun his head around to track someone who was running toward us. When his eyes widened, I followed his gaze and let out an almost embarrassing chirp.

Ellie was back.

She looked different in person. I knew she had grown her hair out, but seeing it stream out behind her like a tail hammered in how long it had grown. Her face seemed somehow different, too. I make no claims to be an expert on Earthlings and the tiny details of their faces, but it seemed the roundness of her cheeks had faded, rather like Tejal’s had while we were testing the first pinpoint fold generator network.

Ellie dropped to her knees and slid the last fin-width or so, and then collapsed onto me in a tight hug.

“Oh my goodness!” she sobbed, her pitch wobbling. She pulled back, tears glistening in her eyes, and looked back and forth between me and Tejal. Then she surged up to catch Tejal in another hug. “I missed you so much!”

Tejal let out a broken laugh and patted Ellie’s back. “We missed you too.”

She released Tejal and blinked, pink splotching over her face. It is so funny that earthlings blush pink instead of green.

“Oh my gosh. I am crying in a train station,” she said in English. “That is so embarrassing.”

“I’m about to cry too, so, it’s cool.”

I wiggled and felt my gills wave. I had seen it before, but the way Earthlings expel water from their eyes sometimes is strange. One would think the scrunching and stretching of their faces would be enough to show that they are sad.

Ellie sniffled loudly and swiped across her face, and then gave me and Tejal a red-eyed grin. “I cannot believe you are here. What if we missed each other? I meant to see a bit of Paris today.”

“I thought the trials were still ongoing,” I sang.

“They are just about done with me,” Ellie replied, standing up again. She unhooked the luggage from the back of Tejal’s wheelchair and fidgeted with the button on the handle. “You remember I called you after my contract was annulled?”

Of course we remembered that.

“Well, after that I had to give testimony at Andra’s trials—they are under house arrest, though we have no property on Earth—and then I spoke at one or two smaller convictions, and then part of the big ongoing Andra-Media trial, and by now the court is getting into bureaucracy stuff that I had nothing to do with.” As she spoke, Ellie hunched over slightly, but she perked up right after and rubbed more saltwater off of her face, clearly not willing to let the more sober thoughts of law and court get in the way of our reunion.

“So,” she continued, “were you two coming to see me?”

“Ah, yeah,” Tejal said. “We were in the neighborhood, relatively speaking, so we wanted to see you in person.”

“We tried a few more investment markets,” I added. “Did you know that your planet is better designed for me to get around than it is for Tejal?”

Ellie arched an eyebrow. “I am not surprised. What system are you hitting next?”

“Maybe Gant,” Tejal and I answered, almost at the same time. Ellie squinted at us, trying to pick apart the simultaneous answers, and then nodded.

“Crane and Shell wanted to get back into bounty hunting work, right?” she asked next. “For their retirement funds?”

It was a rather sudden change of topics, and Tejal tilted his head at the question. “Yeah. They were thinking about it.”

Ellie looked down at her shoes and clasped her hands together. “Cool. Cool. I uh, assume that means you two will need a new ship for your scientific endeavors.”

Tejal sent her a funny look, and as soon as Mouthbot finished translating, I wrinkled my nose at her.

“That sounded rehearsed.”

Smiling in a pinched way that seemed both wry and embarrassed, Ellie scratched the back of her neck and looked away. “I spent part of my severance suit settlement on a ship,” she said, very quickly. I know this because after Mouthbot stumbled over the talking speed, she sang the same thing to me.

I hit the ground lightly with my tail. “I thought you put that money away for university.”

“I did!” Ellie explained. “But there was just so much, and I heard from Soph that Captain Maj was buying a new ship—it is called the Statistics—so I sent a slow transmission and hoped it reached them in time for me to buy the Conics.”

I wrapped myself around Ellie’s legs immediately. “You bought the Conics! We get to use her for research?”

She nodded. When I looked over at Tejal, he wore the same gleeful expression I did, though obviously his facial structure was different.

“Are you coming with us?” he asked, leaning forward in anticipation.

“For a little bit while I write my university applications, yes.”

I squeezed tighter, and Ellie wobbled, almost toppling over.

“Okay,” she sang, voice tight, “maybe we should get somewhere else to talk about all this. Doing it in the middle of a train station feels weird.”

We abandoned the train to Rotterdam and strolled, slow with the effort of talking and catching up, discussing what would happen next. Sometimes I remember it wrong, but Ellie and Tejal both confirmed as I was writing that we did, in fact, talk about what would come after the pinpoint fold generator. We wanted to put Mouthbot out into the world, and Ellie wanted to work on a formal Titan independence.

We had so much work to do.

- A Rough Translation of Focci's Ballad