by Bob Blanton
“I’m talking to my friend, ADI. She tells me that you were not studying English before,” Catie said. Her Comm translated and vocalized her words.
“We don’t like school anyway,” the girl said.
“Why not? And what’s your name?”
“I’m Lílian, that’s Teresa, and she’s Benedita,” Lílian said.
“So why don’t you like school?”
“It’s boring.”
“Boring? Don’t you like to learn about stuff?”
“Why? We know everything we need to.”
“Can you read?”
“Yes, we read your book!” Teresa squealed.
“You did. See, if you hadn’t gone to school you wouldn’t have been able to read the book about me.”
“We could have watched the movie.”
“There isn’t a movie. They don’t make a movie about all the good books, so if you can’t read, you miss out on a lot of things.”
“But we can read, so why should we go to school?”
“Well, can you do math?”
“We can count, add, and subtract.”
“What about multiply and divide?”
“We can do that, but it’s not as easy.”
“Do you know how to draw?”
“They teach that at school?”
“Yes. They even teach you how to paint.”
“Do you go to school?”
“Dummy, she’s a princess, she doesn’t have to go to school,” Lílian said.
“Yes I do. And I did. I told you I liked school.”
“Is that where you learned how to be a princess?”
“Yes, I learned that at school and my friends taught me.”
“Is it hard being a princess?”
“Yes! You have to sit up straight all the time. You have to clasp your hands and talk fancy. Like, ‘Mr. President, we are delighted to have you come to our city.’” Catie gave her best impression of the English Queen.
The girls giggled at her. “That doesn’t sound too difficult.”
“Well, it can be very tiring. I’d rather fly Foxes and Starships around.”
“Cool, we like flying the Foxes.”
“Sergeant Ferra told me you guys were doing really well on the simulator. You know what I like to do as much as flying a Fox?”
“No, what?”
“I like to design them.”
The three girls looked at Catie skeptically.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No!”
“So you don’t believe I can design them or don’t you believe that I like to design them?”
“How can you design them?”
“I went to school,” Catie said. “Here look.” Catie brought up a wire diagram of a Fox on the big display the girls had been using for their simulation. “This is a Fox. It’s just like the one you’ve been playing with. You can see that there are two seats, one behind the other. The front one is for the pilot and the back one is for the weapons officer; he’s the one who guides the missiles when you’re using them.”
The girls nodded as they studied the Fox.
“Now if you wanted to make the Fox able to fly faster you would make it skinnier like this.” Catie changed the Fox so that the cross-section of the cockpit was half the size.
“Oh, that’s cool.”
“But if you did that, then you would have to find really skinny pilots. And if you wanted to let really fat pilots fly it, you would make it really wide like this.” Catie expanded the cockpit dimension to 50% bigger than the design.
“Then you could have the pilots sit next to each other,” Teresa said.
“To do that you would have to make the cockpit even bigger.” Catie changed the design to show side-by-side pilots in the cockpit. “But if you did that, then it would be too slow.”
“Why?”
“Air resistance.”
“What?”
Catie looked around for something to demonstrate. She grabbed the tray that was sitting on the table, probably it had held a snack for the girls. She removed the plates and glasses and handed the tray to Lílian. “Wave that around,” Catie instructed.
Lílian grabbed the tray and started fanning it in front of Catie.
“Now, hold it horizontal, like this,” Catie instructed, using her hands to demonstrate. “Now wave it. . . . No side to side like before.”
“Oh!” Lílian said as she started to wave the tray horizontally.
“Can you tell the difference? Which way was easier to wave the tray?”
“This way,” Lílian said as she waved it horizontally.
“Let me try,” Teresa and Benedita shouted together.
Catie waited until each girl had waved the tray before proceeding. “Now which way was easier to wave the tray?”
“This way?” Benedita said as she demonstrated waving it horizontally.
“And why is that?”
“Air,” Benedita said hesitantly.
“Correct. When you wave it the other way, the tray has to push a lot more air out of the way so that it can move. This is called the cross-section, and it just means how big a space the tray takes up when you hold it like that.”
“So?”
“So, the Fox has a cross-section just like the tray. And when you change it so that you can have two pilots next to each other, then you have to make the cross-section bigger. That means it has to push more air out of the way when it wants to go fast.”
“But isn’t that why it’s pointy?” Teresa asked.
“Yes, but look at it this way,” Catie said as she rotated the wire diagram so it showed the cross-section head-on. “It doesn’t matter how pointed it is, it still has the same cross-section, so it still has to move more air than the skinny version.” Catie brought up the original Fox design next to the fat one.
“Making it pointy helps. That was real smart of you to know that. It takes a lot of complex math to prove it, but it just makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So, when you design a jet that you want to go real fast, you try and make it have the smallest cross-section,” Catie said. “You look for every place where you can squeeze a little bit of space out, you even require that the pilots can’t be too fat.”
“So that’s what you learn in school?”
“That and lots of other things. Sergeant Ferra had to go to school to learn how to be a Marine.”
“She did?”
Catie motioned Ferra over.
“Yes, I did.” Sergeant Ferra said, speaking in Portuguese. “They call it Basic Training. After that, I had to go to school to learn how to be a security guard.”
“A security guard? What do you need to learn to be one of those?”
“Lots of things. How to spot the bad guys, how to beat them up,” Sergeant Ferra said.
“She had to learn threat assessment. You’ll notice that her partner is standing by the door now.”
The girls looked over at the door and spotted the second security guard standing there.
“When I asked her to come over and talk to you, she immediately signaled her partner to come out and take up her post by the door. That way nobody could sneak in on us.”
“So you have to go to school to learn how to do stuff like that?”
“Yes. At first, they’ll teach you things like math, reading, art. Stuff you need to know for most jobs. Then they’ll teach you how to do the things you need for a specific type of job. And of course, you can take classes to learn some stuff just for fun.”
“Like what?”
“Dancing, horseback riding, painting, playing an instrument, even acting,” Catie explained.
“I’d like to do horseback riding,” Lílian said.
“Silly, we’re on a space station.”
“Well, one day you’ll be able to go back to Delphi City. There’s a big horse park there where you could learn how to ride.”
“Why do we have to have a security guard?” Ben
edita asked.
“They want to make sure bad guys don’t bother you,” Catie said. “I have to have a security guard with me all the time.”
“You do? Where is yours?”
Catie signaled Morgan to come in.
“See? That’s Morgan. She’s my main security guard. There are others since Morgan has to be able to take time off, but she’s in charge of them.”
“Wow. That means you get to go to all the royal balls,” Teresa oohed.
“Princess Catie doesn’t go to many royal balls,” Morgan said. “She likes to do other things.”
“Like what?”
“Flying; of course if she’s flying a Fox, she doesn’t need me to protect her.”
“What else?”
“She went to the Academy.”
“The Academy?”
“It’s the school where we send all the people who want to learn how to be officers. There they learn how to boss people like me around,” Morgan said.
That got a laugh out of the girls. “What do they teach you at the Academy?”
“Oh things like this,” Morgan said as she brought up a video on the display. It showed Catie crawling through the mud at the base in Guatemala.
“Oh, yuck. Is that you?”
“Yes it is,” Catie said. “How did you get that?”
“Hey, I was your security even when you were at the Academy. I was always around. Here is the princess learning how to climb a rope.” Morgan changed to a video showing Catie jumping up to climb the rope and being told to go back and start without jumping. You could clearly hear the sergeant yelling at her.
“And here she is learning how to fall.” Morgan showed a video where she managed to throw Catie to the mat.
“Hey! I threw you way more times than you threw me.”
“Yeah, but those aren’t as fun to watch,” Morgan said. “And here she is learning how to maneuver in microgravity.” Morgan showed a video of Catie when one of the twins pulled an exceptionally good juke on her and Catie wound up doing a face plant into the wall.
“Hey, you weren’t even my bodyguard back then.”
“Natalia and I share everything,” Morgan said.
All three girls were giggling uncontrollably by this time. Their laughter enticed Celia out of the kitchen.
“You're all having fun out here?” Celia asked in Portuguese.
“Yes!”
“Would you two care to stay for dinner? It would be no trouble to set two extra places.”
“We wouldn’t want to intrude,” Catie said.
“Please!”
“Okay.”
“I’m on duty,” Morgan said.
“Come on!”
“Okay, I’ll call my backup.”
“Hello, I’m Catie,” Catie said as she stood up and offered her hand to Celia.
“Yes, I heard. Thanks for coming. I think it’s made their day, probably their month,” Celia said.
“I’m happy I did. I really came to see what they want to have happen after the trial. I want to make sure they get a good start on their new life.”
“That’s nice of you. I’m sure people like you don’t usually worry about the likes of us.”
“Why not? You were a good citizen, and nobody can blame them for getting into the situation they were in.”
“It’s nice of you to say that, but . . .”
“Hey, tell me about yourself while Morgan entertains them with more unflattering videos of me.”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. One, I’m curious and two, you’re obviously important to them, and I’d like to know you better.”
“Well, my story is nothing like theirs. I came to Delphi City when I was seventeen; we were refugees but we had a pretty good life in Brazil until the gangs took over our neighborhood. I finished school that year and move out of my parent’s house. I was lazy. I didn’t like the job they gave me, so I started hooking. It was easy money. I got to go to parties. It was okay. But then that creep brought the girls to Delphi City. I worked parties for him sometimes, and that’s how I met them.”
“I heard you told a friend, an enforcer,” Catie said.
“Oh yeah. Eduardo. He’s a nice guy. At least to us girls. I guess he’s not too nice to the johns we tell him are being vicious. He straightens them out for a small fee.”
“What do you want to do when this is over?”
“Do you mean, will I go back to hooking?”
“Yes, will you?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure what options I have.”
“The same ones you had when you got out of school,” Catie said.
“I don’t know, I really don’t have any skills.”
“Ferra says you’re a good cook. You could get a job in a diner.”
“You think they’d hire me once they saw my résumé? Past experience, hooking.”
“I’m sure they’d overlook it. It all depends on what you want to do. You could even get a job in Deogenes here on the station and learn to be a chef.”
“Oh, I’d like that. But they’d never give me a shot.”
“Oh, I bet they would. I know the owners, and they wouldn’t hold your past against you. They had nothing when they opened their restaurant. I could set up an interview for you.”
“Would you? Oh, but I can’t. I’ve got to stay with the girls.”
“I’m sure they would be able to deal with you going to work for a few hours,” Catie said. “We can bring in someone to watch them. And they will have to go to school. It starts next week.”
“Oh, you’re going to put them in school? Do they have one up here?”
“Sure. It’s set up in multi-grade level pods since there aren’t that many students, but that will work better for them anyway. Their level of skills will be all over the map. So do you want the interview?”
“Sure, set one up.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“What do you girls want to do when this is all over?” Catie asked once everyone had filled their plate.
“You said we have to go to school,” Lílian said.
“That’s right, but do you want to say up here on Delphi Station, or do you want to go back to Delphi City, or would you want to go back to Sao Paulo?”
“No! We want to stay here!”
“On the station or in the city?”
Lílian Looked around at the other two. Seeming to get confirmation by telepathy she turned to Catie. “Here on the station?”
“Do you have any family who could come and take care of you?”
“No.”
“What kind of family would you want?”
“We don’t want a family. We’re all we need,” Lílian said.
“So you want to stay together?”
“Yes, with Celia,” Benedita said.
“Oops,” Catie gasped. “But Celia isn’t your parent.”
“But she’s our best friend. She’s the only one who cared about us.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“I didn’t see that coming,” Catie said to Celia as she helped her clear the table after dinner.
“Neither did I.”
“Well, we won’t know what they really want until after the trial and the doctors can really treat them.”
“Really treat them? What does that mean?”
“Once the trial is over, the doctor can go in and dull the memories associated with the abuse. They might even be able to erase them,” Catie explained.
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It’s not, I’ve had it done. And my friend Liz finally had it done to dull an assault she suffered. She kept having nightmares. Once she finally got treated, the nightmares went away. She told me she wished she’d gotten the treatment as soon as she learned about it instead of waiting.”
“Will they forget me?”
“No, the doctor will only modify the memory associated with the trauma. You’re a good memory, so they won’t touch it.”
“Oh, that�
�s good. Maybe we will stay together. But I’m not sure I’ll make enough money to support them.”
“Delphi will pay for their support until they finish school,” Catie said.
“Really. They won’t just put them in an orphanage?”
“No, it’s better and less expensive to support them inside the community.”
“Well, it might work then. Of course, we’ll have to find a smaller place to live.”
“No you won’t. If you take care of them, you could stay here until they finish school.”
“But how?” Celia asked, then when she saw Catie's face she laughed. “I guess you kind of own the station.”
“Only part of it. But I can take care of the rent. One of the perks of being a princess.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Uncle Blake,” Catie called out as she caught him leaving his office.
“Hi, Catie. Do you need something?”
“I wanted to talk about the Belousov case. Do you have time?”
“Sure, let’s go back into my office. I was just heading down to Delphi City, but there’s nothing pressing. What did you want to discuss?”
“How can someone like him get into Delphi City?”
“I think I know what you’re asking, but be more specific.”
“We screen our immigrants for criminal records. How did he slip through?”
“He doesn’t have a criminal record. He has a second cousin that’s been involved with prostitution before, but that’s a pretty loose connection. If we excluded everyone with an unsavory second cousin, we’d have a hard time getting anyone to come to Delphi City.”
“So he just shows up and decides to form a gang that prostitutes ten-year-old girls?”
“We assume he came here specifically to start a prostitution ring. Likely he and his cousin or someone else he knows were talking about how Delphi City is this nice, innocent place. Kal says they can connect him with a few attempts to force prostitutes to work for him. Didn’t work since it’s not illegal here. After a few failed attempts to intimidate them, he apparently decided that pimping minors would be more cost-effective. Fortunately, we caught him.”
“But how can someone do something like that? What did he do before he came to Delphi City?”
“He ran a bar. It was a normal bar; if it had had a history of illegal activities, we would have turned down his immigration request.”
“But . . .”