‘Your mind is one of your most attractive features.’‘I think my boobs have it beat, but okay.’‘What have you been thinking about?’‘A sabbatical.’‘Okay…’‘I’ve been doing this for thirty years, running the department. My field time has got less and less. I’ve neglected… lots of things, but especially us.’‘We’re both guilty of a little of that.’‘Maybe, but I’m the one who went off and had an affair, so I get more blame. I don’t think you’ve punished me enough yet, by the way.’Aneka smirked. ‘I’ll hang you on the wall in a bit and we can test the soundproofing.’‘A good start. Anyway, I thought maybe we could take a sabbatical. There are a bunch of worlds out beyond Old Earth we’ve heard have interesting ruins on them. We could take Gwy, take a year, go out and see whether there really is anything worth looking at.’‘All right. We’ll talk to Gwy about it in the morning.’‘No we won’t.’‘No?’‘Oh no,’ Ella replied, ‘not if you’re going to punish me properly.
