I will come over as soon as I got stuff settled at the diner,’ Ben said. ‘What does James think of the place?’ ‘He’s… not thrilled,’ Kar...n replied and laughed once. ‘But Christine and I have talked to him about it this past week. We reminded him of his last stay at the hospital. He had been lucky that a neighbor happened to walk by his house and found him lying on the porch and sent him to the hospital. He won’t be so lucky every time and in the end, he agreed to it.’ ‘Does River know his. “Ok. What do you want to talk about?”“I’m a bit confused about our relationship. I mean, there are times when you show real concern for me then there are times when you seem to hate me. Is it something I’ve done or didn’t do?“I thought, dear sister, that I made it clear that I loved you dearly. I explained my ‘meanness’, as you call it, was only to help you to think before making some decisions that would be bad ones. I chose humiliation as the best way to do that.”“Fine. Humiliate me, but why. Soon we were used to it, and floating in the deep water, splashing each other. It was pretty innocent, despite the naked bodies. Great fun.Eventually we all got a little chilly, and decided to return to the grass bank and warm ourselves up. The girls huddled together in one of their private conversations again first though, and then Vicki turned to me."I drew the short straw." Oh? What for?" The guided tour. Upstream." Oh? What's up there?" You. And me."I looked at Steph. She was grinning. It had appeared to be frozen, locked in place, but Mother had told us that it moved in a constant, infinitesimal creep along the track at a rate that we could not perceive. The gnomon indicated Longshot’s progress between Old Earth and Gaia, our target planet in 82 Eridani. In some 500 years, when the trip was complete, it would be back where it started, having swept through the entire circumference of our home.Across the border, at the far end of the alpine meadow, a herd of red deer grazed,.