“Vance and I just decided to leave something for the troops,” Del said. “The latest Mad Rabbit.”
“What in heaven's name is a mad rabbit?”
“Do you believe it, Vance, she never heard of us.” Del feigned insult. ”Carol, we were famous.”
“What do you mean, ‘were’? You’re pretty famous now.”
“We were famous in Port Orchard, Del,” Vance said mildly. “That isn’t exactly big time.”
“Port Orchard?” Carol said.
“See?”
“What’s Mad Rabbit!”
“I’m Mad,” Vance said, “and he’s Rabbit.”
“As in March Hare. We started a minor revival of Lewis Carroll all by ourselves.”
Carol flung up her hands in resignation. “Del, I guess you’ll let me in on the secret when you get good and ready, right?”
Del started to explain. “We used to have a company when we were kids. It still exists; we just haven’t done anything with it since—before grad school, I guess, huh, Vance?”
“Reality is a lot more interesting,” Vance said. He pulled a chair around and got Carol to sit down.
Del grinned. “If you call quark chemistry reality.”
Vance took heed of Carol’s impatience, and, as usual, brought Del back on track. “We used to write computer-game software,” he said. “Our company was called Mad Rabbit Productions. It did pretty well. In Port Orchard, we were ‘local kids make good’ for a while.”