"Meow?"
The cat's chirping call tugged Becki out of a sleep troubled with strange dreams. It also left her confused for several seconds: first she thought it was Pogo's meow, but Pogo wasn't supposed to be an indoor cat; then memory started to catch up -- she was in Mendellia, not Indiana -- and she thought it was Macavity, but then Macavity hadn't come with her to the Palace this time.
She opened her eyes and found herself nose-to-nose with Rogue. And then she realized that she wasn't even in her own room of the Palace: she'd fallen asleep over a table spread with maps of Paris, down in the Batcave.
Paris. A mission today. 0900 departure. "Je m' souviens," she muttered, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
She reached out to pet the inquisitive cat. "Is it morning already, Roguie? Or should I go find my bed and sleep for real?" Rogue didn't answer. But she did turn and hop down from the table, so Becki stood and stretched, watching as the cat stopped and looked up at the door leading out into the hangar, then back towards her. "You want to go out, Rogue?"
Before the cat could answer, the door opened. Rogue dashed out, while Josh Cochran peeked in, looking surprised to see Becki there. "Oh!" he said. "You're down here already?"
"Never left," she admitted with a sleepy shrug. "Parisian maps make such good bedtime reading, you know."
"You slept down here?"
"Unless Ewoks transported me from my room in the middle of the night, it would seem that I did."
He chuckled and stepped back from the door, and she followed him out into the hangar. Bright sunlight struck her eyes from the hangar's entrance, where it looked out on the ocean. She blinked in surprise. "What time is it, anyway?" she asked.
"Quarter past two," said Josh with a perfectly straight face.
"What?" That couldn't be; if he meant two a.m., what about the sun out there? And if two p.m., the sun should be on the other side of the island, but she could see it there, due east out the hangar's entryway, rising over South America.
"In Paris," Josh amended, grinning now.
Becki groaned. "You're as bad as my wingmate, lately. Would you care to translate that? I hate time zones. . . ."
"Seven hour difference," he offered. "Rich should be just about ready with breakfast now. And now I've got to find Rogue and see about her breakfast, so I'll see you later. We're leaving at 0900, don't forget."
"Right," she said, rolling her eyes at the reminder. Seven . . . Sept heures? She did the calculation, and . . .
"Quarter past seven?" That gave her nearly two hours, but she'd not finished packing, hadn't even changed clothes since the day before. She hurried to the turbolift between the Batcave and the upper levels.
Thayer reached up to knock on the door and then hesitated. He'd had no luck the last time he sought her in her room. He'd had no luck reaching her by comlink, either; she must have turned hers off or left it somewhere. So he'd decided to try her room once more, first thing this morning, perhaps to wake her ahead of her own plans, so that they might talk before the business of the day could steal her away again: but now he hesitated.
But Terra Group's mission was to begin today, and this might be his last chance. He knocked on the door, softly at first, then again, louder, when no answer came to the first knock.
No answer came to the second, either. He waited a moment more and then gave up in frustration. This guessing game, trying to catch her here and there, now and then, throughout the Palace, was not working. There were just too many ways to guess wrong.
But she was leaving on the Red Home for Paris today--in that, at least, there was no guessing. He could catch her there before the team left.
Her room was in one of the Great Towers, the ones broad enough that they were nearly small Palaces in their own right. Even so, this was one of the smaller ones, not so wide as the tower whose eleventh floor had held Eugor's prison facilities; but it had the same sort of layout, with hallways arranged like the spokes of a wheel and one outer hall running the circumference of the tower. Becki exited the turbolift at the center of this wheel and headed down one of the spokes toward her room.
Rounding the corner into the circular hallway, at first she thought she was seeing things. Up ahead of her, someone was just disappearing past the curve of the hall. She had only the briefest glimpse, but-- could it be? She hurried after him, past her own door, around the curve, until she reached the next spoke-hall. But he was no longer to be seen, not in the spoke nor further along the curve of the outer hallway. Maybe she had just been seeing things. She turned and walked back to her own room.
By the time she'd showered and dressed, it was almost seven-thirty. Josh had mentioned breakfast, she recalled, so she left packing till later and headed for the mess hall.
Terra Group was already beginning to gather there, sleepy but, for the most part, eager with anticipation. There were a few faces that Becki didn't recognize--the new recruits, she guessed; but she would meet them later. First--
First she was ambushed by a droid. "Bonjour, Mademoiselle Bush!" Zee enthused. "Er . . . or should it be 'Bon matin'?"
"Salut, Zee," Becki sighed. "Either one's fine. Watch your intonation."
"Oh, dear," said the droid. "What did I--"
"Hang on a second, Zee," Becki said. "Just got to check something first and then we'll work on that." Before the droid could respond, she crossed the mess hall and peeked into the kitchen.
Rich was hard at work there, of course, but he greeted her and smiled. "So," she said, "a mission today . . . breakfast-time . . ."
"Don't worry," he laughed, "I know. Batter's all ready to go."
"Oh good!" she smiled. "Um, Rich . . . dear kind wonderful Chef Rich . . . Can I do the first batch? For luck?"
"You people have the weirdest superstitions," said the chef. "Sure, go ahead. The griddle's hot."