"I meant to talk to him before we left," Becki explained to Vickie as they sat in the Red Home, going over maps of Paris one last time before they would arrive for their mission. "But I never got the chance. Whenever I tried he was nowhere to be found."
"We've all been pretty busy getting ready for the mission," Vickie reminded her.
"I know, but now it's going to bug me until we get back. . . ."
Vickie stood and moved over to the Terran-style computer that had recently been installed in a corner next to the more advanced NR systems aboard the Red Home and switched it on. "Okay then. E-mail him. Sit down here and don't get up until you've got it off your chest."
Becki made a face at the suggestion. "I don't know. . . . We haven't e-mailed each other in months. It would have been easier face to face--"
"So what law says you have to wait for him to break the ice?"
"But what am I going to say to him? I don't know what's going on, where we stand right now. . . . I don't know where to start."
"Oh, I can help you there," Vickie grinned. "When you don't know where to start, there are only two possible options: 'I love you,' or 'I'm sorry.' Or any combination of the two."
Becki chuckled at this advice, considered a moment, then shrugged and joined Vickie at the computer. "I guess you're right. Anyway it's worth a try."
"They left sooner than I had expected," Thayer explained over lunch to his colleagues. "I missed her."
"You're making missing her a habit," Kirret scolded. "A particularly bad habit."
"Should've talked to her longer when she first got here, Boss," Reth agreed.
"You needn't remind me," Thayer grumbled.
"Call her," Lenka said.
"No, she's in the midst of a mission," Kirret said. "Even if they aren't operating under comm silence, a call at the wrong moment could put them in a tight spot."
"Well . . . e-mail her?" Lenka suggested.
"No, she . . ." Thayer began, then looked up suddenly with a light in his eyes. "Oh. I forgot that we'd put the Red Home online. I could e-mail her."
From: thayer.atner@palace.gov.me
To: three@terragroup.nri.me
Subject: Missing you
Bec,
You must think horribly of me, to have run off so quickly yesterday when you arrived. I am sorry; I oughtn't to have listened to my doubts. But it's been so long since we've talked: I'm no longer certain how things are between us. I've tried since yesterday to find you so that we might talk, but it was as it always is at time of a mission--you know--and I missed you every time. Almost I caught you this morning, but I was a moment too late and you were gone, on your way to Paris, when I reached the Batcave. Now I miss you all the more. Write back: or call me; I can't call you for security's sake, but if you have opportunity--I miss hearing your voice.
And be safe. It galls me that I could not hold you once more, before you left: come home to me safe and whole, love, or I shall never forgive myself for being a moment too late. Nor for letting such a silence grow between us as has been these past months; I ought to have written long ere now. Forgive me, come back to me--I love you.
Yours,
Thayer
From: three@terragroup.nri.me
To: thayer.atner@palace.gov.me
Subject: I love you. I'm sorry.Um. . . . Now that I've written it, it strikes me that this subject line could be easily misconstrued. I don't mean to say that I'm sorry that I love you. :-) Just the opposite, Thayer. . . . This year apart from you, I've missed you so; now I'm surer than ever that I do love you. What I'm sorry for is that everything's not as it should be between us, and I know that's at least in part my fault, so . . . I'm sorry, love. I wanted to talk to you before we left for Paris but didn't get the chance. E-mail isn't quite what we need but maybe it'll do for a start. Then we can talk for real, as soon as I get back.
rj
Etidorhpa silently congratulated herself on her good fortune. It was one thing to find the Dictator's office momentarily empty, and his computer still on. Careless though it was, he did that from time to time, left it on in his impatience to be somewhere else, five minutes ago, though he rarely left anything very sensitive open on it--and this wasn't one of the machines that held the more sensitive government data, anyway. But Eti, using the passwords that her older sister Dohrnaira had secretly discovered during the times that the Queen Mother had sent her to the Dictator, had done this before, finding his office empty and the computer on. She'd had a look at many of his older e-mail messages, old love letters to and from his would-be Queen; she drew hope from the fact that messages such as these became rarer and rarer and finally stopped altogether many months ago. She assumed it meant a falling-out, and that could only be good news, to a lady-in-waiting with aspirations to succeed where her sister had failed: to win the Dictator's heart and the Queenship for herself.
Old e-mails were one thing, but her find today was another matter. Eti reflected that it was lucky she'd thought to peek in here just now, what with the Palace network being down this afternoon--her instincts had served her well. In the Dictator's outbox was a message waiting to be sent; he must have composed it just today and then been prevented from actually sending it by the network failure. But they'd soon have the network working again, so the message would soon go out; Eti opened it and read it quickly before that could happen--
And promptly deleted it. For a lady-in-waiting with aspirations such as Eti's, that was one message she couldn't take a chance on.
But her luck continued to hold: having averted this one potential disaster, another came her way. She was snooping through old messages again when the network suddenly returned to life, and immediately a tone sounded indicating new mail. A message appeared in the Dictator's inbox that might well have been the twin of the one in the outbox. How amusing! They'd both been thinking along the same lines, it seemed. Well, a reconciliation between the Dictator and his fiancée would not suit Eti's plans, not at all. Good-bye to that message, too.
Eti smiled to herself and hurried back to the Queen Mother's chambers, well before anyone should have the chance to discover her at her secret work in the Dictator's office.