******
Dots and Tally, who were sharing a tent, were sitting outside Jade and Ro’s tent the next morning waiting for them to emerge. Jade was the first out, bright eyes blinking in the early morning light.
“Good morning, Tally, Dots,” she said cheerfully. “You guys had breakfast yet?”
They had. Rachel and Sparrow were in the mess tent and had graciously provided a meal for them.
Tally privately wished, for the umpteenth time, that the Change, in addition to rendering Dogs and Cats sentient and able to speak, had also provided them with hands and opposable thumbs. There were some few ex-pets that had been lucky enough to be endowed with telekinesis and were able to prepare their own meals if they so desired. Unfortunately, he was not one of them. Neither was Dots, so they had to rely on the Humans or the Elvwists to do that for them.
Not that they appeared to mind doing this, and Tally was appreciative but it always annoyed him to not be able to get a civilized meal for himself. He had always imagined he would be an excellent cook. Or, at least better than Jade. Of course, it would be practically impossible to be worse than Jade.
He snickered at that thought: Jade was an awful cook. Opened cans well, though. As soon as he could save enough credits, he was going to go have himself outfitted with some of those artificial arms just coming out called…he thought for a moment, trying to remember what they were called…oh, yeah, “evolved appendages”, EA’s for short. He was willing to bet either a Cat - or a Dog - had come up with the idea.
“They’s gonna be a meetin’ at th’ mess tent in a few minutes, and Rachel sent us to make sure ever’body knew.” said Dots. “Ever’body else is either already there or on th’ way. I thoughtcha might be up ‘n ready, Jade, but I knew Ro warn’t gonna be.” She chuckled, “I nearly always have to drag her outta bed back at th’ work camp.”
Jade grinned back at her. “Yeah, I know. I would hear her cussing and whining sometimes, about it being way too early to get up.” She laughed, “And guess where she is now?”
Dots chuckled again and shook her head. “Wait rightchere, I know ‘xactly how to git her outta that bed.” She trotted into the tent.
In about thirty seconds, Jade and Tally heard a shriek, then a whole string of curses coming from inside, something was growled out about it being “indecent ta git up at this awful hour”, followed by some more curses, then resigned groans and moans and a few whimpers. This was interspersed with the sound of Dots making sympathetic, soothing noises in that beautiful voice of hers.
They looked at each other trying to keep straight faces.
In a few more minutes, Ro came staggering out of the tent fully clothed, Dots right behind her providing her with gentle nudges for encouragement.
Dots was chuckling and saying, “I love ya anyways, Sunshine. Here,” she indicated something that was tied around her neck.
Jade saw it was some kind of cylinder.
“I broughtcha some liquid he’p this mornin’.”
Ro, looking like somebody’s little lost and abused waif, stared groggily at Dots. Her eyes fell on the container. She gave a loud cry of pure joy and lifted it from around Dots neck, fumbling it open.
Jade could smell the aroma of coffee as the lid came off.
“Oh! Thanky, thanky, Dots!” cried Ro as she brought the barrel shaped cup up to her lips and took a loud slurp. “I takes ever’thing back I said in there. You know I din’t mean it! I loves ya, loves ya, loves ya!” This was being said in between slurps as she staggered beside them on the way to the mess tent.
Jade, Tally, and Dots, maintained straight faces all the way there - mostly. Ro definitely was not a morning person.
When they got to the tent, Ro spotted Alex and slogged over to sit next to him. Kendis was sitting on the other side of Alex, and Jade was trying to decide whether to sit beside him when her mom waved her over to her table.
She didn't see the disappointed look that momentarily crossed Kendis’ face when she turned and headed to her mother’s table.
Maggie had made breakfast for her, and Jade thanked her profusely and dug in. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she saw the food.
Maggie watched her eat, trying to keep the worry out of her eyes. Alex had told her about Jade levitating in her sleep last night, and she was debating asking her to come sleep in her tent so she could keep an eye on her. She decided against it.
Jade would see it as being treated like a child and Maggie didn’t want to get into that argument - again. She would just have to trust Jade’s friends to look out for her. Most of all, she would have to trust Jade. And she did, really.
She just had to remind herself of that from time to time.
Rachel was sitting with Morgan and Sparrow. She stood. “I know you’re still eating,” she started, “but we need to discuss what we’ll be doing today.”
She had their attention. “First, Sparrow will try to contact its home planet. It will have to go into a trance to do this and will need Tally and Dots to help boost its link.”
Heads nodded with understanding.
“It has prepared a space here,” she indicated a cleared area on the other side of the hover-cart piled with comfortable looking pillows and quilts, “and will probably be at this for the rest of the morning. Kendis and Maggie will stay with it to ensure its well-being and to keep Tally and Dots refreshed. The rest of us will go back to the ship.”
Jade felt a pang of disappointment that Tally - and Kendis - wouldn’t be going with them this morning but that was offset by the excitement of actually going back to poke around the ship. Besides, there was always this afternoon.
Rachel continued. “Our main objective this morning is to locate the communications device that our ancestors used to keep in touch with Earth.”
From what records they had, Rachel knew they had called it the Universe Spanning Communications System, or USCOMS.
She paused, then went on. “We thought it would be in the auxiliary control room as indicated by the records but we were unable to locate it yesterday. We don’t know why, but it appears to have been moved, and we can only hope it’s still aboard somewhere.”
It was to have been one of the last things removed before the ship was finally dismantled and should still be in place but the records were spotty at best, and, unfortunately, those incomplete records were all they had.
Sparrow looked over at Jade. “Jadewyn, your newly identified esa of psychic-location may be of some help in finding your communicator,” it commented with an encouraging smile.
Startled, Jade stared at it. She hadn’t even thought about that. She had never, to her knowledge, consciously set out to locate an object.
She said, “Well, I don’t know if I can be of any help with that. I always know where people are, never tried to locate…things.”
“Think about it, Jade,” said Alex slowly, remembering some odd instances from their childhood. “Have you ever put anything down you couldn’t find again if you wanted to? Shards, I even remember you finding things no one else could, even when you’d never seen the item before.”
Jade looked at him, puzzled.
Maggie gazed at her, thinking. She was remembering occasions too, when Jade had found something that no one else could.
Jade sat very still, thinking, going over incidents in her mind. There were times when, perhaps, she had been finding things like that now that she’d had it pointed out to her that such an esa even existed, but still…
“Well, all I can do is try, I guess,” she said doubtfully. She was wondering just how close she had to be to an object to locate it but she had no idea. With people she just found their mental signatures and homed in on them that way - at least that’s how she thought she found them. She didn’t know how she found objects.
She was getting a woozy feeling in her head thinking about it so she decided it was best not to try and analyze it.
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