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Show CLOAK?" She leaned back in her chair at that and chuckled most heartily to herself. "I needst not tellest thee," she continued a moment later, "that I've sent most speedily for the tech!" The Tech appeared but four SevenDays afterwards, something of a record in turnaround for the BauerNetwork. He adjusted Nell's Sense of Balance and Judgement and instructed Dr'Anya on how to disengage the android's system if she malfunctioned a second time. "Nell is but feeling your poor sore feet, my Mother," her daughter explained. "Pray, be patient and she will learn." After repairing the ravages of gardening, Dr'Anya sat herself down in a high-back chair sipping a beaker of Nell's iced greenberry tea. The chair was out on the open gallery that stretched across the rosestone face of Needlesmith Hall. Such an enormous place, the Hall! It looked like a castle-turrets, battlements, and the like. It was ever a grand place to play for the Needlesmith children and their friends down through the generations, and many a victory had been chalked up over bewildered EarthTurkeys and DragonGeese-both red and green-who, being pelted from above with cannonballs fashioned from corn cobs, rewarded their tormenters with a deafening cacaphony of outraged gobbles, squawks, and screams before they'd take off pell-mell for the north pasture and a bit of peace. The Needlesmith standard, programmed to raise and lower daily at TwinUp and TwinDown, fluttered from one of the turrets in true BauerWorlde fashion, emblazoned with the Needlesmith device-a stylized fish of gold and a red dragon-goose rampant on a silver field. 20 |
