Aneka Jansen 7: Hope Read Online Free

had already figured out that there would be no dissuading her, but she had to try…
    ‘But–’
    ‘ And I have been apart from my own love for quite long enough. Not wishing to make this sound like a hopeless task, it could require months of searching to find Ella and I am unwilling to be separated from Al for that long when there is no need. I am coming too.’
    To emphasise the point, the android settled her head on Al’s shoulder. She was perched on his lap on the bed in Gwy’s cabin. It had the advantage of privacy, if you discounted the fact that Gwy would tell Aggy what had transpired. Since everyone seemed to consider what was going to happen a foregone conclusion, that did not seem like an issue.
    ‘I have already made the necessary arrangements,’ Cassandra went on. ‘Everything is covered. My students have been allocated new tutors. Other lecturers can handle my timetable. I started arranging everything as soon as I heard she was missing.’ She shifted slightly, her brow wrinkling a little. ‘There is something… I debated whether I should say anything, but keeping it secret seems… wrong.’
    Aneka raised an eyebrow. ‘Cassandra?’
    ‘Ella was having an affair.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Cassandra’s frown deepened. ‘You do not seem particularly shocked.’
    ‘I… Maybe later. There were signs. When she came back from the planning trip to Lacora she was behaving… There was something not right. Hindsight suggests guilt. Please tell me it wasn’t Devor.’
    ‘Uh…’
    ‘No wonder she was going behind my back! Damn, I thought she had taste! Cheating on me is one thing, but Devor… Jesus.’
    ‘Does this change–’
    ‘Of course not!’ Aneka shook her head. ‘We’ve been together, what? Thirty years, give or take. We were both getting complacent. I should have done something when I noticed she hadn’t complained about me wearing clothes she couldn’t see my boobs through.’
    ‘Aneka, it’s not like you overdress…’
    ‘Huh. Maybe not, but… Anyway, no, we’re still going to go find her, and then I can ask her when her standards dropped to rock bottom.’
     

Part Two: Standards
    Lacora, 21.10.559 FSC.
    Ella looked at the morose face in front of her. The green eyes looked sad and she was convinced there were worry lines showing on the brow. It was not good.
    ‘Your standards have dropped alarmingly, girl,’ she said. ‘The stress is getting to you as well. You’re distracted. Your work is slipping. Pull yourself together or you’re going home. Clear?’
    There was no answer, of course, and she turned from the little mirror hung over her sink and headed back into her bedroom to get dressed. She was going to pull herself together and get on with her job. Breaking up with Ian had been the right thing to do, even if he was still trying to persuade her otherwise. Now she just needed to stick by her decision, get the job done and hope she got back to Shadataga before Aneka did. Because if Aneka got there first, she would come straight out to Lacora to do two things: see how Ella was doing and rip Ian a new one for his project plan. And if that happened it would all come out in… She decided to describe it as ‘an uncontrolled manner’ even if that sounded far too clinical. Sometimes being a psychologist was a pain.
    Dressed in a light environment suit, she let herself out through the airlock and started across the camp’s square to the main laboratory. The camp was set up on four sides of an open central area which they used for parking vehicles and storing non-essential equipment. The prefabricated buildings were not linked, you had to exit one to enter another, and the airlocks were there to keep the world’s atmosphere out, originally. They had discovered that the viral agent which seemed endemic to the world was carried in water, so now the airlocks were only required because Lacora’s atmosphere was thin, breathable, but thin enough that it left you breathless if you had to