"Okay."

"For a local consultant."

"I said 'okay'."

And someone knocks on the door of a shabby little house on an obscure uncontacted planet in Warp.

A woman - not the Rebecca, probably her mother - with cerise-pink hair opens the door. She is startled. "- s-sir?"

"Hello! My apologies for dropping in unannounced, I'm looking for -"  illusion - "this person."

"Is - is she not at work, sir -" She keeps looking at his hair.

He's very courteously not looking at hers, which she hasn't braided. "She is very likely at work! I am an alien from a different planet and accordingly unfamiliar with where she works. When are you expecting her back?"

"An -? I - I - think she - gets leave on - the fortieth -"

"How long is that, she's invited to a wedding in six days."

"........it's the twelfth now, sir."

"Would you be willing to help me arrange for her to get leave sooner? Assuming there aren't really any resource limitations."

"I - sir, she -"

There is a baby cry from upstairs. The woman twitches but doesn't run off to answer it.

"Is that her daughter?"

"- yes sir -"

"You can, ah, go get her, I'm not a temperamental alien."

...she takes a tentative step back, then another, then turns and looks over her shoulder, then flees up the stairs. She comes back down with a shaved-bald baby and a bottle for her.

He manages to mostly not make a face at the people who shave their babies. There could be a reason. He waves reassuringly. "I'm sorry. I could do the whole shiny-spaceships first-contact thing first but I wanted her to advise me on what the most important things to get right would be."

".......the baby?"

"Uh, no, her mother. Whose name I am assuming has a phonetic resemblance to "Beka" or "Rebecca"."

"...Peka."

"Peka. And the baby is something in the genre of 'Catherine' and 'Kat' -"

"...her name is Katin, sir."

"It is an honor to meet her. Where does Peka work?"

"Peka's in the army."