Zoe's Tale (Old Man's War, #4)

by John Scalzi

My green friend stood there for a minute, doing that thing people do when they’ve just stepped in it: freezing and putting a smile on their face while their brain strips its gears trying to figure how it’s going to extract itself out of this faux pas. If I leaned in, I could probably hear his frontal lobes go click click click click, trying to reset.

Obin—which is what Hickory and Dickory are—don’t look exactly like a cross between a spider and a giraffe, but they’re close enough to make some part of the human brain fire up the drop ballast alert.

didn’t even know we had a physical copy—and invite me to find the part of the treaty that said I always got to have my way. I stomped over to Hickory and Dickory and demanded they tell Mom to let me do what I wanted; Hickory told me they would have to file a request to their government for guidance, and it would take several days, by which time I would already have to be in bed. It was my first exposure to the tyranny of bureaucracy.

he

Typo

“I would like to sing,” Dickory said. We all turned to Dickory in amazement. “It speaks!” Gretchen said. Hickory clicked something to Dickory in their native tongue; Dickory clicked back. Hickory responded, and Dickory replied, it seemed a bit forcefully. And then, God help me, Hickory actually sighed. “We will sing,” Hickory said.