“But—” Kriss looked at the thick book helplessly. “It will take years!”
Tevera laughed. “Start with the section on shipboard life. I doubt you’ll need to know about the rules governing bloodswapping and market information exchange among Family ships anytime soon, and hopefully, that section on funeral rites can wait, too.”
“Hopefully.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll manage.”
At that moment, carrying a book so thick he was glad they were in zero-G, so he didn’t have to risk muscle strain lugging it around, Kriss doubted it. But of course, Tevera was right; he did manage. For one thing, he soon discovered that learning whom to salute and whom to call “sir” or “ma’am” was no problem, because absolutely everybody on board (except for certain small children) outranked him—but he also learned that whe
