"Behold the mighty eggplant!" Lynn heard Orel's raspy voice announce. "Noblest of all vegetables!"
A shiver twitched down her back even in the dusty afternoon heat; she stopped there in the middle of the road and let out a groan. Next to her, Malcolm cleared his throat. "Uhh, Lynn? I think your rachnoid--"
"Don't say it, Malcolm." She glared at him. "Don't even breathe it."
Malcolm shrugged, and Lynn couldn't help noticing how his rachnoid rode out the motion of his shoulders without even a click of complaint. He reached up and stroked the little robot. "You want me to send Keshia after him?"
The simple question, the assumption that she couldn't manage her own rachnoid, that was somehow worse than if he'd just started laughing at her. Lynn tried to keep her mouth from tightening. "Don't worry about it. You just go on ahead; I'll see you later in town, OK?"
He shrugged again. "How 'bout if Keshia keeps an ear open, then? In case he blows a gasket or something."
Keshia stirred on his shoulder. "Indeed, Miss Baden-Tan. Though it grieves me to speak so of a brother and colleague, Orel is far from the most reliable of our cluster. Please allow me to monitor the emergency frequencies should you find you require assistance."
"That's OK," she got out through clenched teeth. "I mean, thanks, but he's just being stupid. Like usual."
Malcolm shook his head. "I don't get it. Your Grampa did a great job on my Mom's rachnoid when the combine grabbed him last fall: you'd think he could fix Orel up no problem."
Lynn tugged at her backpack. "You'd think that, wouldn't you?" She forced a smile. "I'll see you at dinner."
"OK." He gave Keshia another pat. "Oh, the Conovers were going into town today, too, so I invited them to join us. Hope you don't mind." He smiled, turned, and started back along the road toward town.
Lynn stared after him. Mind? Why should she mind? Just because he had invited her parents' best friends along on what she had thought was going to be her first date, her first romantic evening alone with Malcolm, an evening she had been dreaming about all week! Why should she mind that her whole life was ruined?!
She spun away then, stalked to the edge of the path and down into the eggplant, all bloated and purple and shiny. Orel's tinny voice led her straight to him, clinging to a bush with all eight legs and muttering, "So round, so firm, so fully-packed...."
Like things weren't bad enough. She snapped her fingers in front of him. "Come on, Orel; this is not how I planned to spend my only day off this week."
His eyestalks fluttered toward her. "But mistress! Acres and acres of eggplant! How can such things be?"
"It's the only stuff that'll grow out here: you know that." She wiped the sweat from her forehead and squatted down. "Now are you going to walk, or do I carry you?"
His stalks wavered between her and the bushes. "Would you carry me, mistress? I'll be able to see the eggplant better from the vantage of your shoulder."
"Fine. But I don't want to hear one word about how my walking shakes you up, you get me?"
"I shall so endeavor, mistress."
She reached out an arm, watched him creep up the denim of her shirt, then tipped her head to give him room to settle on her left shoulder, his legs stretching all prickly down along her neck. She blew out a breath, made her way up the slope to the road, and set off toward town again.
It just wasn't fair. Here she was, the granddaughter of Dr. Marcus Baden-Tan, the man hailed throughout space as the leader of the only successful human colony on an already inhabited world, and she had to live with this stupid, malfunctioning rachnoid. Grampa could blather all he wanted to about Orel's delicate balance of organic and mechanical systems, the breakthroughs this was supposed to represent, but that didn't fool Lynn: Grampa always used big words when he was stumped.
Orel was vibrating on her shoulder now, his scratchy voice mumbling things like, "Hear how I shall rave and rant the virtues of the sweet eggplant," and "All ten worlds proclaim your fame: oh, eggplant, let resound your name."
Hopeless. Her dreams evaporating under Chaldi's pale blue sky, Lynn set her jaw and kept walking.
)
