"Mom?" Mark asked."What honey!" Mark's mother said fusing with the collar for a second. She too grew slightly sad that the moment was passing."Are we..... I mean did that woman say we had to wear long hair or anything?" Mark asked."You know, I was thinking that very thing. I mean it would make perfectly good sense now wouldn't it?" Mark's mother said picking up on Mark's question as she added, "so would makeup, as I think about it! I mean when the time comes. I'm guessing the better the look,. " Do you know about the necklace?" Jan asked, fingering it."Yes, and what it represents." I want to wear it for both of you, Sheila. Until last night I'd never even considered being with another woman. Now I feel as if I..." Belong to both of us?" Yes. Each of you individually and together have given me everything I've ever wanted. The sex is wonderful, of course, but I feel so secure, so..." Accepted?" Sheila volunteered."Yes, as if, for once, I can forget my size and truly be accepted for. When we first met, her parents were still married and I've known them through all the mess of her mom getting caught by the wife of the guy she was fooling around with and her calling Rose's dad, Earl.So, they split the blanket and Rose stayed with her dad.He's a really nice guy, kind of quiet, nice looking, forty-one, I think. Rose has always been very close to her Dad and she still gets in his bed every night and he reads to her for half an hour, sometimes more, and sometimes they just talk.. Hank glanced at the data link in his hand, a device known commercially as a Palm Slave, and tried to discern the people carried in the slave compartment of the government-issue sky car. Normal people never paid attention to the contents of a slave compartment. They thought that nobody important was back there.As Hank climbed a spiral staircase to his office, he noted that the sky car had parked and that FOUR people had disembarked—and that there were three more people inside the sky car. Hank's.