Alana stepped close to him and put her hand on his shoulder."Now I understand why Uncle Botho always scorned the Hani. He used to say that they did no... care a whit about slavery as long as we kept shipping ore to them. He was right, you know."Thesia joined them. "I had been looking forward to coming home to Helas," she said dejectedly. "Now I just want to leave."Alana hugged her. "This isn't your wrongdoing, Thesia. In Tanitsar, everything used to be about noble ancestors. Here, everything is. I want to do it properly this time, seeing as it’s not just a bunch of randy boys.”Once Trish had gone, Dave sat down with Sally and they worked on what food to serve. Sally, of course, asked if she was to be stripping at this one. Dave said to her that it was not that sort of event, so no, she wouldn’t be. But once he ran the menu past Trish that night, she brought up the fact that he could not prepare and serve all that on his own. “We need to have Sally there on the night.”But Dave. They also got their ID card and a temporary corporate phone with a preloaded call list.All 10 of them had flown into BWI yesterday and waited at the MAAR site until there were groups of four to make their way to the eastern shore. They were put up in the Holiday West last night; tonight they were split between the Horsey house and the Crash pad.We had finally made a decision on the Crash pad to get better utilization out of it. Bob’s Construction was going to remodel it by increasing the length. In his second year, Dan met a girl called Charlotte. It wasn’t a serious thing for him – it never was, and I don’t think it was much of a serious thing for her either. It was just acceptable regular sex. One evening there wasn’t much else going on, so we all went out as a couple plus gooseberry (me) to one of the nightclubs off Covent Garden, I forget which one. As per usual, Dan and I were knocking back the pints. We were getting quite drunk, and Charlotte was not so far behind. Dan had to go.