No One Listens

I heard a startled and oddly terrifying scream, so naturally I left the relative safety of my office to investigate.

Rhonda was standing over one of the more offensive ice busters. I don't know his name because I'm a horrible-thoughtless-person. He was lying on the ground and holding his personals.

"I told you, Vac-Head. I said you were standing too close. Now you know. If you are standing close enough for me to knee you in the groin, you are too close." Then she kicked him again.

"Um? Rhonda?" I asked, not standing too close.

"What?"

"After you kick a guy once, you don't really have to do it again."

"Why not?"

"He probably won't notice," I said diplomatically.

"Yeah," Rhonda said, turning away from him. "I'll kick him harder next time."

"Or call security," I said. "We got a whole department..."

"Up yours, Dee," Rhonda said. "I've been dealing with jerks like that my entire life. The only thing they understand is pain. The kind of pain that bypasses the brain and goes straight for the libido."

"Um..."

"No one listens," Rhonda said. "I tell Rita the material is contaminated, but she ignores the entire report until it's about to go wrong. Then she wants to know why I didn't tell her. This all happened a couple of weeks after Rita's two days of annoying demands for the report she didn't read. Then this guy wants to smell my hair... the freak. Acted like it never even occurred to him I wouldn't approve."

"Um..."

"What?"

"Maybe you could play spinball with Simon, or talk to Doc about some time off to do some ice hopping, or something," I said.

"Sell it to someone else, Space Monkey. I would have kicked that guy anyway. Weren't you listening?"

"Yes," I said firmly.

"Could have fooled me," Rhonda said. "Has that shipment of hydro-silicates arrived? I've got three experiments holding at critical stages. Much longer and I'm going to lose weeks of work."

"Um..."

"That will make me very cranky," Rhonda said.

I held up my magic summoning wand and spoke softly into it. "Help."

Sandra Quinn must have been really close. "Yes sir?"

"Please assist Rhonda in her search for a late shipment of..." I turned to look at Rhonda.

"Hydro-silicates."

"Those," I said.

"I was just going over the latest manifests," Sandra said, grinning. "Sam has been nagging me about a shipment of honey from Earth.

"Come on," Sandra said to Rhonda. "Let's go find your rocks."

"Hydro-silicates," Rhonda said mildly, following along.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The Selmon sisters scare me.