"Yvette and the twins laughed. "I'll call Gina," Jillian said. "She can meet Mary when she arrives."I turned to the teleport room and went inside, mak...ng the adjustments required to connect with the pad inside the Stagecoach. A moment later the pad activated and a cute blond lady who was no taller than Meiko stepped out of the beam. She was wearing only the flimsiest of negligees and smiled at me as she stepped off the pad. "Thank you," she said to me. "I need it bad."I smiled. "I'm sure Gina. “Who are you?” I say. “Ma’am, you better go inside. I need to explain something to you,” he says.He walks into the house. He tells me to sit down. “Ma’am, I represent some concerned interests. Your boyfriend has some gambling debts. He hasn’t been paying on them,” the man says. “What?” I say. “My boyfriend doesn’t gamble.”He hands me a piece of paper. It’s written in my boyfriend’s handwriting. It says he has secretly been gambling for a long time and he has lost a lot of money. It says that he. "You shouldhave chosen geography." But you have that subject?" asked Mike."It came up twice on the options sheet. I'm interested in both, soseeing the opportunity to do both, I took it," said Paul."But why do they have to do politics?" asked Mike. "What about theinteresting stuff, like warfare and torture chambers?" I have to agree with you there," said Paul. "Oh, there goes the bell.Finished at last."Paul met with Kelly outside and they made their way home as normal."I was on the phone to. 15The thick mane of blue and gold feathers tingled along the back of Gwark's sinuous neck. What was that noise? Were the eggs in the incubator hatching ahead of time? Gwark wasn't sure he was quite ready to be a father again so soon.He turned his head away from the screen of runic characters he'd been reading and focused his huge eyes on the corner of the room where the incubator stood just by the connubial bed he shared with Duwinki, his wife of many decades. What he saw reassured and alarmed.