Her Brother's Keeper: A Story of Alpha Centauri

A Hint of the Truth is Revealed

Christy stretched as she entered the penthouse suite of The Chateau Duflot. After tossing her floppy hat on the nearby sofa, she made her way to the kitchenette and grabbed a sizeable tumbler from the cabinet. After looking inside the refrigeration unit, she paused. "I just had grape. I think I will go with orange this time," she muttered as she got out the transparent pitcher and closed the fridge door.

After pouring herself a glass of sweet juice, she carried both the container and the drink into the main common room. The woman took a sip from her cup before putting both items on the low table in front of the sofa. After sitting on the comfortable couch, she let out a contented sigh.

"Call Coop, voice-only" she commanded the suite's automated system.

After a pause, a response came from the speakers scattered around the room. "Cooper, here."

"Heya Coop," Harris said with a fairly heavy inflection quite distinct from the way she was speaking at dinner. "All done."

The person on the other end of the discussion also shifted her voice. If anyone with a knowledge of Old Earth dialects had overheard her, they would have realized she had a Britanian intonation. "Christy, how did it go?"

"It went well. Jus' like we though, she wanted to be wif her sis," Harris replied.

"Ok, back off on the Belter slang. Even I am having a hard time following you," Cooper responded.

The young lady giggled when she heard this. "Says the person with the North Folk accent. I just do that to get a rise out of you."

"Yeah, yeah, but I'm trying to correct this report from the President before I send it on to Duflot while talking with you," Cooper retorted. "You know how he gets if there are any grammatical issues. He seems to forget that the documents are drafts typed directly by the head of state herself and not by her secretarial staff."

"His Highness does have some weird hangups," Harris noted. "I just think he needs to spend more time with Rose to release his backed-up tensions."

"Hey, show some respect. He is your grand-sire after all," Cooper came back absentmindedly.

"Yes, Mom," Harris responded with a snicker. "Still, he has a lot of hang-ups when it comes to reports. It's like he has a stick up his butt when it concerns them."

"That dates back from the time he was very young," Cooper replied. "He used to double-check his father's communications from his early teens onward. He saw so many mistakes that he had to rewrite half of them before passing them on to the king. It is weird that the crown prince had to do this, but Alsace-Lorraine couldn't afford a court scribe. All of their money went to defense since they didn't want to get gobbled up by the Franks to the west or the Germanics to the east."

"If Duflot hadn't been so highly educated, he never would have been turned on his deathbed," Harris pointed out.

"It wasn't just his education, it was his literal genius," Cooper stated. "Plus, it was only through the mages his family had secretly rescued from the Purge that they were able to make the arrangements when he fell ill. So if he had not been in the right place at the right time then he wouldn't be here today."

"And neither would you and, in turn, neither would I," Christy noted.

"I doubt this colony would be here if not for Duflot, but then you and I have discussed that ad nauseum over the centuries," Cooper replied.

"The only reason you know all of this is because you're his favorite child," Harris teased.

"I'm no more his favorite than Simmons is," Cooper replied in exasperation.