. both at work and in bed. But he couldnt help but remember his increasing awareness of her bossiness and her subtle but hurtful attempts to lord her ...ducation and social position over him. As if she'd gotten hers any differently than he had gotten his. Hers were also injected nanobots that manipulated her synapses, but hers were apparently increased and altered to give her some feelings of superiority over him.'It's those fuckin' EAL bastards' fault.' he grumbled to himself for the latest in. He walked with trepidation out to the kitchen where he saw herbeautiful bottom slightly bent over the sink. "Is that you, darling?" "Yes mom, um, I saw that court envelope!" "Yes, wait till I dry my hands, honey!" "I guess I'm going to really get it now then?" he askeda little fearfully as he looked at the dreaded cane laying overa chair. She turned around, her big breasts distracting him, and noticedhis look and smiled as she shook her head. "I'm afraid it's a little more serious. "We have had a full day."We ate food by the roaring wall fire. It was some sort of mutton stew, the tastes harsh and brutal by the refined standards of elvish cooking but I had long ago grown use to such succour. Around us other travellers drank, ate and sang along to the slightly out-of-tune minstrel on a high stool by the bar.There was talk too. I heard snippets of conversation, pulled at random from the chaotic noise of the inn. Farmer Bradshaw had built his cowshed from stone salvaged from. "You've done that?" Not with the K-9," he said. "But I have twenty-five jumps."I looked him up and down. He didn't look crippled. I figured if you parachuted out of an airplane twenty-five times, you just had to come to grief during at least one of them. He seemed to know what I was thinking."You're trained to do it right," he said. "There's nothing like it. It's a sense of freedom you can't get any other way, especially if you do a HALO jump. That's high altitude, low opening." He grinned. "I.