Gene snorted. "And that makes exactly one other person who thinks so." The smile didn't vanish, but it dimmed just a little.

(Just as well, really - his name in the Speech, his full name, had to be a nasty, unwieldy thing. Comes of being who and what he is, after all.)

"Not very," he said. "Just a couple...hours?" His eyes went hooded for a second, as though he was thinking, or looking at something only he could see. "Hours. Ugh, when you're used to accounting for timezones, switching back to Julian reckoning's a bit of a hurdle."