Respect between Enemies – The BetanWerecat
Gundam Seed: "Descending Sword" and after. OCs with appearances by canon characters. The actions of Kira, Athrun, and the others have far reaching effects. Ah, interpersonal relationships! What joys they are. Rated T for language and off screen activity. (Reviews are welcomed but not required. This is written only for my own enjoyment. Flaming me will get you ignored.)
We go on. This story has an interesting tendency to expand on me when I'm not looking. I wasn't expecting to have any dealings with the Serpent's Tail at all. I'm kinda curious to see just where my characters are going with this now. Yes, I am writing again. Well, inbetween work and paying bills that is. I currently hope to be back to the average of a chapter a week or better from now on. I'm still not making that a promise though.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.
First Kay sat in the rocker and watched as her namesake napped quietly in the wide seat of the massive chair, a sleeping Adrian Ito tucked firmly into the bed beside her. He'd finally come to after ten days of near-coma four days ago, on the girl's watch. They'd spent the first fifteen minutes kissing and crying, when she was supposed to be letting Maria know he was awake. They would probably have wasted that entire first hour he was conscious if the young Fox hadn't walked in, taken one look, and gone racing off to fetch Maria.
Over these last four days, Adrian had given everyone a good demonstration of the differences between Coordinator and Natural when it came to recovery. He was sitting up on his own the second time he woke up and was capable of getting himself to and from the bath by the second day. He'd needed a cane for stability yesterday but it was only a precautionary measure today. He'd even managed a few stairs this afternoon when Maria had talked him into going out onto the back porch for some fresh air.
He still had healing bones of course. It would be another few days before the last of those were really securely solid again. But the internal bruising that she'd been so worried about was almost completely gone. What was left was no threat to his health. He tired very quickly and had a tendency to fall asleep whenever he sat for any length of time but those were about the only symptoms left from what had been a near-death situation.
Except, he'd lost some time. He couldn't remember anything that had happened after he'd torn the knee until he woke up in the bed in the main guest room. Maria thought he might never remember it. First Kay herself wasn't so sure.
She looked over at the other two cots and the exhausted boys sleeping there. Howard was taking full advantage of having everyone at home. He was putting the entire flock through the fall weighing, shots and hoof trimming. It was a couple months late but this was when he had the hands for it so this was when it was happening. The two Coordinator boys had offered to help. Poor young fools had no idea what they'd let themselves in for.
The Double Hawk had seventeen thousand sheep. Each animal had to be weighed, health checked, given its annual shots, and have its feet checked and trimmed as needed. With no training in animal husbandry at all, the Coordinator kids ended up in the one place their superior speed and strength could make a difference without having to have much specific training. They got to work the corrals, making sure the sheep moved steadily through the handling chutes. It was hot, heavy, dusty work even in the cool of early December. They spent a lot of time up on the bars of the chutes, lifting and turning some stubborn animal that had decided it was NOT going forward thank-you-so-very-much!
Working with the ewes and the wethers had been difficult enough. Merinos were not small sheep and they could be as stubborn about things as any mule. But today had been the last of the flock, today they'd done the rams. Dealing with a two hundred and thirty pound ewe or wether had had its challenges. Mastering a nearly three hundred pound ram with a full set of horns he had no hesitation about using on whatever part of you he could hit took it to a brand new level. First Kay wasn't surprised that the boys had come in, hit the showers, and then hit the sack after that.
She heard quiet footsteps coming up the hallway. The long but soft tread told her who to expect. She smiled a bit grimly as her son stepped gently into the room. People had a real serious tendency to underestimate her Howard. He was a lot sharper and a lot more capable than he liked others to know. And he'd been assessing these three Coordinator boys for two weeks now. When he looked over at her, she just nodded toward the straight chair she'd set beside her rocker a couple days ago in anticipation of this visit.
He picked the chair up and turned it around before he sat down, settling in with his arms resting on the raised back that was now in front of him. "Wore them out, looks like. Didn't think messing with a few sheep would do that to Coordinators."
She snorted softly. "Very funny. I saw what you had those kids doing. Have you told them yet that you replaced a team of eight with just the pair of them? Did a pretty good job too from what I could see."
He just grinned briefly. "Nope. Those people seem to come with somewhat swelled heads as it is. Wouldn't want them to inflate so bad their hats wouldn't fit. Mind you, these kids are better about it than most I've met but they still have some assumptions going that I doubt they even think about that they really should reconsider."
"Howard, not all of their assumptions are wrong." First Kay pointed out gently. "They did do the same work you usually have to hire eight men to do. And even Jamie admits they did a decent job of it despite knowing next to nothing about managing livestock."
"They know more than they may realize." He replied quietly. "I've been chatting with them. They both have been down here a number of times and have spent a good deal of that time in rural places around people working stock. No, they weren't doing any of the work themselves back then, but they both had their eyes open and don't appear to have been too shy about asking questions either. Their education on stock management is pretty diverse and includes some surprisingly antique methods but overall, they know a good deal more about it than I think they recognize."
He suddenly grinned again. "Well, stock in general that is. Neither one knew much about dealing with a pissed off ram. Still, it does seem like they do learn just about as fast as they like to brag they do. They only had to get hit once each to know they didn't want that to happen again!"
"Ah, I kinda wondered why the Jay was limping there."
"Yeah, old 1926 caught him a sharp but fortunately glancing smack on the knee there at the very end. Boy went down like the proverbial puppet with cut strings. Douglas had all three dogs on the old hog before he could turn back to hit the kid again. I swear, if he didn't throw the finest replacement ewe lambs in the entire flock, I'd make a rug out of that cranky rattlesnake. If it had been anybody but one of the Coordinator kids, I'd have had someone seriously hurt out there today."
"And what have you finally decided on the whole situation then Howard?"
He turned sober eyes on his mother. "They're all ZAFT officers, aren't they?"
"Yes they are." She admitted calmly.
He turned and just studied the young man sleeping in the bed beside his daughter, the one who'd started all this. The one who'd gotten her pregnant; and had had the guts to come down here to find her. The same young man who hadn't thought twice about taking four bullets to save her. He found it very ironic that Ito couldn't remember doing that.
Howard's eye turned back to his two 'helpers'. They both knew what would happen if the EA was informed there were three ZAFT officers in North America out of uniform, truce or no truce. Yet they'd followed Ito here and from all he could tell, not only of their own choice but over his strenuous objections.
"He does seem to inspire a pretty insane degree of loyalty." Howard muttered.
His mother heard him. "Friendship. They aren't here out of loyalty to their captain, they're here because Adrian is their friend."
She looked gravely at him, willing him to understand. "This isn't about Natural and Coordinator and it really has damn little to do with the war aside from it being how they met. It's about two young people who found each other. Who have made some very stupid decisions, and some very responsible ones. And who have very, very good friends who are willing to take unreasonable risks to help them."
He sighed softly. He understood his mother's point perfectly. And these boys, these young men actually, they sure weren't anything like the stories tried to paint them. Yet, in some ways, it only made things harder. How could boys as decent as these have taken his children from him? They couldn't be unique in the ZAFT. They wouldn't have survived if they'd been the only real humans among the 'space monsters' of the ZAFT as described by EA propaganda.
But he'd seen Ito's body. And the scars there hadn't come from flower gardening. Yuri Lubbek had lost that eye somehow and not all that long ago either to judge by the condition of the scar tissue he could see around the eyepatch. Howard had been fifteen years in the marines himself. He knew how a veteran acted. And Lubbek was a veteran. Only Joule still showed enough innocence to have missed combat. This did not make him any less a soldier of the ZAFT though.
He shook his head. He wanted his daughter to be happy. And, when he was being honest with himself, he knew Adrian Ito would make her happy, would be good to her and, most importantly, would be loyal to her. He'd certainly demonstrated what he was willing to sacrifice for her!
All of this was all very well and good. But it didn't change one immutable fact. Adrian Ito was also a serving ZAFT soldier. And there were four empty chairs at the table nowadays thanks to ZAFT soldiers.
"Howard, you got the look of a man running himself in ever smaller circles. You want to tell me about it or do you just want to make like that Ke-Ke Bird from the old joke?"
"Ke-Ke Bird?" His mother could come up with the most obscure references sometimes!
"Yep, that's the one who kept flying in ever tighter circles until he flew right up his own butt. He got the name 'cause then he started yellin' 'Ke, Ke, Ke, Ke-rist its dark in here'!" First Kay tipped her head at him. "So, are you a Ke-Ke Bird or are you gonna stop going in circles and just address the issue?"
"Medicine Woman, I'm having trouble getting past the dead." He addressed his mother by her title, invoking her aid not so much as her son but as any with a problem had a right to.
"Thought so." She replied gently. "You might look at this then and consider what it means."
She held out a small pin, the kind suited to a collar or suit lapel. He took it, curious. The small shield had a gold eagle rising out of an oddly shaped, broken green and silver structure that had what looked like a mushroom cloud in the center of the damage. It took him several seconds to realize the smashed structure was a Plant.
"What is this?" Howard asked, turning the pin to study it from different angles. "Does it commemorate that Plant our people nuked, Junius something?"
"Junius Seven." First Kay corrected. "And no, it's not really a commemoration of the Plant itself. It's a survivor's pin. From what I understand, this specific design was only given to actual residents of the Plant who were there that day, and came out alive."
"There were fewer than two hundred of these given out if I've read the records right." She added quietly. "The pins with a silver eagle were given to surviving family members who weren't at home that terrible day. There were between three and four thousand of those. There is a third design for those who fought, however unsuccessfully, to defend the Plant. I don't know how many of those were issued."
Howard stared at her. "Mother, where did you get this? These have to be almost the rarest things in the whole of the Plants!"
"I borrowed it from the collar of Captain Ito's uniform." She replied with a small, meaningful smile.
Serin Ito watched a monitor with mild amusement. Lance Thoms had come with Jiro again, for the fifth time in as many days. And for the fifth time in a row, he'd managed to be in the right place at the right time to encounter Rebecca Grayhawk before he could be directed up to her office. His success was not entirely of his own making either. Rebecca had taken to watching for the Thoms Team's command car and making sure she was down in the main lobby in time to 'accidentally' cross his path.
These visits were doing the Grayhawk girl a world of good. She was only a couple years younger than Lance but for the first time, she was dealing with a relationship in which she was not the elder. Her Natural husband had been several years her junior, both emotionally and by calendar count. For the first time, she was talking one on one with another real adult, with another single parent too.
The children were growing fond of the Commander and his son as well. And, through knowing him, they were losing much of their fear of the ZAFT in general. Through knowing Jiro, they were beginning to learn about the Plants too. They were no longer so afraid of being up here now that they had the older boy to turn to ask their questions.
Lance had also taken to bringing his driver in with him, giving them a second ZAFT soldier to get to know. Fortunately, the Sergeant was generally good with children and either had the native courtesy, or the rigid instructions, not to bad-mouth the Earth Forces to the kids. The Sergeant had his daughter with him today, giving Shiloh someone to play with besides the boys for a change.
The children were finding the comparison between their father, who never said anything decent about Coordinators, and the two ZAFT soldiers they'd met so far, who were polite about their enemies, did not make their father look very good. But then, they weren't finding much of anything their Blue Cosmos father told them to be true. About the only thing he'd gotten right so far was the simple fact that the Plants were up in space.
Serin checked the monitors a final time. The children were in the play area of the garden, watched by Sergeant Hauker and the two staff orderlies on duty right now. Lance and Rebecca were having coffee at a small, somewhat secluded table in the cafeteria's outdoors' dining area.
Ah, yes, so he'd stopped denying his interest there had he? Good. It was about time. By the look of things, Rebecca wasn't averse to getting to know the Commander a bit better either. Uhmm. Perhaps a genetic compatibility workup was in order here. It wouldn't do to let this go too far only to have everything come crashing down on the rocks of Plant reproductive law.
"Serin!" Her intercom suddenly barked at her.
She turned off the monitors and activated the intercom screen and voice reply. Roland was staring out at her, eyes alert. And all three of his red pencils were lined up neatly in the brightly decorated cup that served him as a container for any and all longish objects that might accumulate on his desk. Something important had come in from Mendel!
"Yes?" She managed to ask with some indifference.
"Come up will you? This boy is confusing me."
"What boy?"
"This Junk Guild delivery boy you contracted for so we could start getting materials off Earth." He snapped. "What boy did you think I meant?"
"Never mind, I'm coming."
She cut the comm and headed for the door. If this was indeed an Earth materials delivery, it would be the first one in their experiment of using the completely neutral Junk Guild as their agents. The majority of the Guild were ship handlers or mechanics of one stripe or other but they had other skills in their inventory even if they didn't generally advertise them. Kayla had suggested using dummy companies to buy genetic material on the medical markets of Earth. But the Guild could do it just as well and be just as silent about who they were agenting for. And after a careful cost analysis, they were a good deal less expensive than setting up multiple layers of dummy companies would be too.
But those three red pencils were still on her mind as she took the elevator to Roland's office. Had someone inside the Guild decided to kill two birds with one delivery? If so, who? And why?
She arrived in Roland's office to find Skip Martin waiting for her. The unusually stocky Coordinator fell into the ship-handler category of the Junk Guild. Where and just how the twenty-three year old had acquired his own ship was a question probably best left unasked. Much of what the Guild did was somewhat open to legal interpretation after all. But no one would deny the reputation of the crew of One Man's Trash for delivering the most interesting goods in a timely manner and at the agreed price.
"Ah! The Boss Lady!" Skip surged to his feet and held out his hand.
"Good to see you again my friend." Serin smiled as she took the proffered hand in a firm grip. "But I must admit I hadn't expected you to come here yourself. I know you don't like coming into the Plants."
He looked at her soberly. "When Lowe Gear asks me to do a favor for a worried friend, I'll chance a trip to a Plant."
Her eyebrows rose. How had the infamous Lowe Gear gotten into this? More importantly, how deeply was he involved? Things tended to get explosive around that young man. He attracted trouble, and attention, more effectively than a magnet picked up iron filings. Nothing she was doing with Guild assistance would benefit from the kind of exposure having Gear around would bring.
"That's not promising." Roland was also familiar with Lowe's reputation. "What happened?"
"How secure is this room?" Martin counter-questioned.
"Secure enough." Serin replied. "Things discussed here often can't be mentioned in the outer office."
"Right!" The Guild ship-master nodded sharply. "It's like this. Lowe crossed my path three days ago. He said he was on his way to another job. He also said he just happened to be there but this is Lowe we're talking about here. Besides, given how much Doc and the Professor have been chatting lately I'd have to give the odds that it was chance a start point somewhere around a negative one thousand."
"The Professor being?" Serin interrupted.
Skip grinned. "A genius at ferreting out data. Handsome woman, terrible fashion sense, no modesty, and has probably saved Lowe's ass more often than his beloved Red Frame."
"Every good crew needs a data junkie." Roland agreed dryly. "I'm not so sure they all need military grade mobile suits though."
The Guildsman shuddered. "NO! Absolutely not! One of us with one military mobile suit is more than enough! He wouldn't get into half the trouble he does if that idiot didn't have that Red Frame!"
"The story please." Serin didn't want this wandering off track. "You can discuss Lowe and his mobile suit later."
"Right." Skip changed tracks smoothly. "It seems the ReH.O.M.E. got a call from one of the teams, there are four I think he said, scavenging on Mendel right now. Something critical had broken down and, as usual, Lowe had the spare parts to sell them. While he was there, helping install those self-same spare parts, a small flyer from one of the other teams dropped by."
Martian looked evenly at his boss and added. "The pilot was from your team."
"There is a great deal of genetic data of many kinds hidden in the ruins of that place." Serin replied neutrally.
Skip's eyebrows rose briefly but he let it pass as he continued with his report. "The man gave Lowe a package to deliver here. Then, as I said before, Lowe ran me down, traded on a favor I owed him, and I've brought it here. That and a verbal message that went with it."
"And that is?" She asked.
"Some kind of code phrase because it makes no sense standing by itself. The message is; 'wound my heart with a monotonous languor.'"
Serin blinked. That was nothing she'd set up with the team on Mendel. She looked over at Roland though and saw he'd gone tense as an over-wound spring. So it had meaning for him and not a good one.
"All right. You may take the message as delivered." Serin told him briskly. "What about that packet?"
"I buried it in with the materials from Earth that I was bringing." Martin gave her a rather oddly evil smile. "Since the seals weren't tampered with, no one searched them at Customs."
She looked over at the small cart just behind the Guild pilot and noted the neat stack of cryo boxes there. Each box carried three seals. One was belonged to the clinic where the materials had come from. Another was applied by Customs of the nation it had shipped out of. The last and only one they all shared in common was added by Aube Customs, where the shipment had been assembled and exported off planet. And as Skip had said, they all were in pristine condition.
Her eyebrows rose in respectful admiration. "I don't think I want to know how you managed that one."
He snorted. "That wasn't half the challenge altering the paperwork to account for the extra box was!"
"No," Roland grinned, "I would imagine not. After all, you are Junk Guild. You people find the dandiest stuff floating lost in space. But it doesn't usually include the latest version of everyone's paperwork. And the revision issue of the forms you handed over to Customs here had to match the records of the revision issue that left Earth."
Skip just looked at the old man, his expression a study in neutrality. "I see you've had some experience in experiments in importing then."
"Just a bit." Roland agreed readily.
The Guildsman and the geneticist eyed each other for several long seconds. Then they both grinned. Serin recognized a problem when she saw one. These two were going to get on far too well together. She was going to have to bring Skip into the knowledge loop regarding Dullindal or he'd get into deep trouble helping out on some half-baked plan of her father-in-law's.
Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She should send the same warning to Lowe Gear too. It might not even slow that hothead down but it would help him survive. And Lowe meant more to the Junk Guild than he knew. In his own very unique way, he'd become something of a living symbol of all kinds of freedom the Junk Guild stood for. And that freedom, of action, of thought, of choice, was not something Gilbert had any sympathy with at all.
She stood and went over to the computer that held their 'special' data. Roland watched with his eyebrows going steadily higher as she made up two packets of information using the same special paper that they'd sent their warnings to their other friends on. She slipped them into the airtight envelopes and sealed them. Then she brought them both back and handed them to Skip Martin.
"These will last about ten minutes after their second exposure to oxygen. You'll need to read them fairly quickly." She told him quietly. "This information could get you killed. So could the lack of it. I leave it to your own judgment just which of your crew you want to share it with but I do not recommend you chose anyone with any weaknesses about the mouth. This second one is for Lowe. He may need it more than you do. The same warning applies to who he may choose to share it with. The subject is the future direction of the Plants political leadership. Let me say that I am not looking forward to the next few years and I will leave it at that."
Martin looked back and forth between them before he spoke slowly. "I rather thought Zala and his group had been dealt with."
"There are those as bad or worse than Patrick ever was." Roland remarked calmly as he studied the ceiling. "That message you brought tells me one of those people has taken a very unhealthy interest in what is going on out on Mendel too. I may need to do something about that very soon now. But it'll have to be done very indirectly too. So I'd appreciate it if you'd read that tonight and get back to me tomorrow. I'll have a job for you if you do. If you decide after reading that packet that you want nothing to do with anything beyond the legal contract we already have, I'll understand that too."
The Guildsman bounced the data packets in his hand thoughtfully before he looked back up at them. "I'd like an idea of what kind of job this would be."
"I'd need you to find a man and pass him an offer from me."
"Who?"
Roland Ito stared hard at the Junk shipmaster. "Gai Murakumo"
Skip's eyes narrowed. "I see. I'll read this and think it over."
"I can ask no more than that." Roland agreed.
They shook hands all around. Serin collected all the paperwork from Skip for the cryo boxes. Roland took them into the tiny lab in the back of his office.
Serin saw the Guildsman out, going all the way to the front door with him. She wanted it impressed on everyone, but most especially on Dullindal's spies, that this was a valued contact; one she would be watching for and over. She didn't want Gilbert to get any cute ideas about mishandling Skip or his people. Considering what he was doing for them, and she knew Gilbert would already know about that, he should be expecting some display of protection from her. It was sometimes just as important to do what was expected as it was to do what was not.
She got back up to Roland's office to find him with the paperwork spread all across his desk. He had one page set up over the magnifier. So, he'd found the report from Mendel. Good. She wanted to know just what the hell was going on.
"Sit down. This is not good." He ordered.
"What happened?"
"They have had several overflights of the facilities and a couple of teams come by on the ground. They did not recognize the planes or any of the people as belonging to any of the other groups currently set up on the colony. Moreover, quiet questions indicate no one else has been given this same attention."
She hissed, drawing in air sharply. This was not good. This was very, very not good.
"And that code line? The 'wound my heart' nonsense?"
He snorted, briefly amused. "I thought using poetry as instructions was your idea. It's a line from a Verlaine poem and was once used to warn resistance groups of the impending invasion of Europe during the Second World War, 1940's old calendar. I thought it would be appropriate to use it for a similar warning again, that's all."
"I see. Who is this Gai Murakumo? The name rings a bell but I can't place it."
"He leads the Serpent's Tail." Roland looked up at her with a mirthless smile. "And I want to talk to him because he's currently based on the colony himself. I can use that placement very advantageously right now."
"Serpent's Tail?" She dug in the back of her mind, she should know about this.
Then it dawned on her. "They're mercenaries!"
"That's right. Mercenaries with a very unusual reputation for staying hired once you pay themby the way." He looked up and she almost hissed again; his eyes were the molten gold they only got when he was very, very, very angry. "Oh, and they're good at their work too."
"Roland, good mercs don't come cheap!" She snapped. "Our resources are getting dangerously close to the point where they could honestly be called stretched. We can't afford mercs of that caliber."
He turned to her grimly. "We can't afford to lose the team digging at Mendel either. Nor can we afford to just have them driven off. They are finding too many interesting things. None of which, I should point out, are things I want in Gilbert's hands! Besides, I don't intend to use our limited resources for this. There is more than data hidden in the ruins of Mendel and I know where to look for some of it. I was something of a snoop back then and we used to get rewarded for industrial espionage."
He grinned, the flash of amusement brief but quite real. "One of my own team had a nose for money. Thanks to his work, we often knew who was funding some of our competitors and just how they were doing it. Raul was a thief at heart. He liked to know where the cash and other valuables were and just how they were guarded. He helped himself to a couple of caches that weren't very well defended and he had many more on record. I hacked his system and copied his data just before I left. And I did it again on my one trip back there for the University to visit their research station on the colony. One never knows when having your hands on the money trails will be useful you know. Even the University wasn't above blackmail sometimes. That was only days before Blue Cosmos destroyed the whole place. I've never needed to go after any of that cash before. Even so, the chance that every last one of those treasure troves is gone is pretty remote. No, I should be able to pay Serpent's Tail with someone else's money. Just like I'm paying the Junk Guild."
"Pay them to do what? I thought we didn't want to draw any attention to our efforts there! How inconspicuous do you think a team of mercenaries hanging around is going to be?"
"Serin, they're already based there." He reminded her. "All I want the Serpent's Tail to do is get a bit more, ah, defensive, yes that's the perfect word, defensive of their base."
"Roland . . . . . . . ."
He just looked at her, eyes flat. "Serin the team has been there just over three weeks. This is only the second shipment they've gotten out. Yet someone is already too interested in them. There is still something there to find. And someone has been guarding it. Unfortunately for them, they were not doing a very good job of it and we have our team on site now. But we planned for stealth, not for a war. Now we either back out, or make a stand. And you know damn well which we can not afford to do."
She just looked at his crooked smile and knew he couldn't be talked out of this. He had a responsibility to those people on Mendel. He'd hired them after all. They wouldn't be there if it weren't for his actions. But the biggest reason she knew she'd never persuade him not to try it was her own complete lack of any other plan to offer in its place. She let her gaze drop. Roland was right; they did owe their Guild techs' protection.
And he was likely also right about there being something to find as well. What he'd described so far indicated the guards were more watchers than defenders. They must have been caught by surprise when the Guild team had moved in. But if they were just watchers, then how long would it be before they did manage to summon the real defenders? She shook her head angrily. Time didn't appear to be on their side at all.
So when Captain Martin came by in the morning to agree to carry the message, she kept her mouth shut. All she did contribute to the discussion was a check for the work Martin and his people had already done. Well, that and she did happen to have the opportunity to tell Skip just where a patrolling mobile suit team had spotted a drifting Alliance long-range fast courier ship. If it was readily repairable as the report indicated, that Alliance ship was one of the fastest things in space. This would only work if the word of Roland's offer reached Murakumo quickly. It didn't surprise her when Skip came up with reasons to leave only minutes after he'd gotten the details from her.
Roland watched the beads of his curtains steady back into stillness after Martian left.
"Serin, where did you hear about that ship?"
"Oh, it was something Miranda mentioned."
"Ah, and where did Miranda happen to hear about it?"
She turned to him calmly. "You know, she never said."
He just stared back at her. "Women!"
"Be grateful for women. We get things done."
He had no answer for that.
