The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

whether you’ll ever be a professional singer again, Teri, but I can tell you this: you’ll find a lot of kindred spirits where you’re going, especially Gavin Holchuk. You two have a lot in common.”
    That sparked her interest. “You’re kidding. Someone else who ticked off Harry Mintz?”
    “Not exactly. Holchuk ticked off the Relocation Authority.”
    “Ouch!” Then, switching to Galactic Standard, she asked, “So how long until we get there?”
    For the moment that it took him to translate her question into Ameranglo, and his reply back into Standard, Drew was speechless. But she was right to begin using the off-world language now, he realized, since it would be the common tongue spoken on Daisy Hub; and despite his bravado yesterday in the garage on Lamont Street, Drew hadn’t held up his side of an entire conversation in Standard in more than twenty years.
    “We be — arrival — in one interval. That is ten plus one days of Earth,” he said at last.
    Teri’s eyes were dancing. With visible effort, she managed not to laugh as she inquired, “Which Enclave are you from, Mr. Townsend?”
    He was able to reply almost immediately. “No Enclave.” Not recently, anyway. Not since I was turfed out of Clearmeadow at the age of twelve and left to survive as best I could on the streets of New Chicago…. His jaw tightened momentarily at the memory.
    “That explains it,” Teri declared. “We speak — spoke — Gally all the time in the Enclave. Fortunately,” she added, her lips now curving in a wicked grin, “we have ten plus one days of Earth to get you up to an acceptable level of fluency.”
    She was batting her eyelashes at him from across the cabin. Drew felt his face grow warm and his stomach lurch again, but not because of weightlessness.
    It was going to be a very long interval.

Chapter 4
    “Ten plus one days of Earth” later, the long-hopper finally docked at Observation Platform Zulu, just four hours by short-hopper away from Daisy Hub. Unaware of the situation, both Drew and Teri were out of their seats when the ship entered the platform’s gravity field. They landed with a double thump, Drew on his side, Teri on her backside, both uttering the same angry expletive — in Gally — as they hit the deck.
    “He did that on purpose!” Teri fumed.
    Unfortunately, she was right. A councilor or a courier — somebody who could have lodged a complaint or made things difficult for the ship’s pilot — would probably have received the courtesy of a warning.
    Drew heard something knocking against the hull. Docking clamps, most likely. “Come on,” he said, rubbing his hip with one hand as he pulled Teri to her feet with the other. “We have to debark now.”
    “Oh, no… Do people have to see me like this?” she moaned, pawing at her hair and her clothing. “I haven’t showered in — gawd, I feel like something found in the wreckage.”
    She actually didn’t look too bad, but Drew wasn’t about to tell her that. After traveling together in a tin can for eleven Earth days, swabbing with pre-moistened towels, sleeping with the light constantly on, eating vacuum-sealed field rations, and sharing a single null-G toilet, he and Teri Mintz had reached an understanding, of sorts. She now understood that he could not be moved by any quantity of whining and complaining, and he now understood that nothing he said to her, regardless of its content or his manner while speaking, would get the desired or expected response. In part, that was because of his accent, which was apparently heavy enough to garble the meaning of some words. Still, even Teri had to acknowledge that his fluency and grammar had remarkably improved over the past week and a half.
    Four men emerged from the cockpit then and busied themselves around the cabin. One of them paused to toss each of the passengers a silver-colored bundle and a transparent bubble helmet. The rest ignored them.
    Teri had obviously done this before — she