Agreeing To Do A Favour

[rix_scaedu]

This is part six of this series which I first wrote months ago, but I have pulled my notes out of my travel bag where they have been living and here we are.

This runs to 792 words and I hope that you enjoy them.

Elliot Simpson was sitting in a one man shelter on the southern Tasmanian coastline conducting a marine life survey when his phone vibrated. The phone's screen told him that the call was from "Mum." He let the call go to voicemail and wondered what she was calling about. His parents' relationship was volatile, although they were each other's most ardent supporter they also disagreed strongly with each other on a regular basis, and while those arguments were at that their peak, they stopped talking to each other. Last he'd heard, his parents weren't talking to each other. When he and his siblings had been children, that had been the cue for one parent or the other to leave home for a while on a research trip. As an adult he was glad that he didn't have to understand their relationship, but he suspected that they should never have married each other. Indeed, he suspected that his mother had married his father just so she could change her surname - after falling foul of a vengeful penguin spirit she had placed an avoidance on her name, and he still had no idea of what either her given name or her maiden name were.

When the voicemail message notification came up, he plugged his headphones into the telephone and played the message. It said, "Give me a call back, please. I need your advice."

He left the headphones on and called her back. His mother answered almost immediately. "Thank you for calling me back so promptly. Where are you? I tried catching you at your place, but obviously you're not home."

"Down on the southern coast, Mum. I'm doing a marine life survey."

"Is that part of your degree? Are you warm enough?" His mother sounded both interested and concerned, and he knew that she didn't trust scientists in general to have the common sense to come in out of the rain.

"I've got myself a nice little spot here, all set up to keep the sun, rain, and wind off," he assured her. "This is a personal project - I don't think any of my marine biology professors believe in sea serpents."

He could hear his mother take in a deep breath across the ether. "You're out on a sea cliff, counting sea serpents as they go past you?"

"Not quite," he admitted. "I'm counting the numbers in the breeding site that I'm overlooking right now. What did you want to talk to me about?"

She took a deep breath, "Well, it's Richard Ashgrove's funeral today, so nominations for Grand Master of the Most Far and Further Diaspora Circle open tomorrow. Your father and I are both thinking of putting our names in, but if we do, we'd make our friends and allies have to choose between us, reducing the possible vote for each of as. Given that, we decided that only one of us should nominate. What do you think?"

He looked at the potential relationship chasm opening up in front of him and went with, "I think you'd both be good at it in different ways, as long as it didn't involve disagreeing with each other."

His mother laughed. "Fair enough. Is there anything you think might separate us as candidates?"

Elliot paused, then replied, "What name would you put on your nomination paperwork?"

"That was the point your father and sister both made," she admitted. "Which is why it's your father who's filling out the nomination form. Would you be able to fly up to Sydney in the next few days, once we've got it signed by the nominators, and hand it in at the head office? Just to make sure it gets there?"

"Of course," he agreed readily. "As well as doing this job for you guys, I can talk to Terry James about those Coral Sea scaleback sightings off Sydney Heads. Maybe even see one myself."

His mother said cautiously, "I thought you said they are a tropical species. What would they be doing in Sydney?"

"We think they're coming down on the Eastern Australian current. Let me know when you want me to collect the nomination form?" Elliot wrote down a new observation on his sheet, easily done because it was a new species for today.

"Of course," his mother agreed, "and because you're doing us a favour, we'll pay for the return flights. I'm sure I can do something to get you good flights and seats, even if they're not readily available. I'll call you soon."

"Looking forward to it already," Elliot acknowledged. As his mother ended their call, he hoped that she was only going to try for a little extra good luck and not a guaranteed result because sometimes she went a little overboard.