2 cobra 23

 

Chapter 23 Back to the Classroom

 

I walked into the staffroom.

“Oh, you’re back, are you?” said Adan Fentiman.

Adan Fentiman, teacher of English Language and Grammar, considered a gentle, quiet type who wants to be friends with all the world, traitor and spy, left in place rather than have to deal with a different agent, whose reports are intercepted and doctored by the new technology and computing teacher, Erica Gaylord. I had met Gaylord via Tarquin, so she knew that I wasn’t working against her, and could be called on to give her a hand at a pinch. Officially we didn’t know each other.

I smiled brightly at Fentiman.

“So good to feel the warm welcome of an old colleague,” I said.

“He’s still sore that the kids turned to you as a confidante rather than him; as if anyone could enjoy the little dunderheads prattling,” said Keith Barrymore, his grin of pleasure a slit in his almost black face. Keith and I were more or less friends. He taught English literature, and we had fun cross-quoting Shakespeare in the staffroom.

“You have my sister and my goddaughter now, Keith,” I said. “My goddaughter missed out a lot on education, but she’s keen to learn. I ask you to be gentle with her. My sister will give as good as she gets, but circumstances made her fall behind so she’ll be in my class.”

“And what circumstance is that?” demanded Jean Lawrence, Maths, twenty-seven going on fifty.

I looked her in the eye.

“I am sure the headmaster has told everyone that she has suffered considerable trauma, and asked you to be aware of that,” I said. “I don’t think I feel like bandying about my kid sister’s business any more than that. Unless you want me to tell the staffroom why you broke off your engagement and joined the staff here?” I asked pointedly.

Lawrence paled.

“How do you know that?” she demanded.

Sheer coincidence as it happens; when I was closing down the fraudsters known as The Lonely Hearts  Club, I happened upon one mark named Jean Lawrence, and went digging. She had been betrothed to a nice, but rather boring young man whom she threw over for a dangerous bad boy, despite him being older than her.

Why do women always seem to prefer bad boys?  I suppose it’s genetic programming to try to get the genes of men who make themselves successful at any expense; without thinking that once they’ve spread their seed, they aren’t staying around to bring home the mammoth meat. Her bad boy took her for the money from the sale of her parents’ house and their savings, so she had to work, and the nice but boring young man had a nice but boring wife and the standard 2.5 children.

Life’s about choices.

In answer to her question, I shrugged.

“I pick things up, and I get about,” I said.  “Point is, you don’t want it broadcast, and I don’t want it broadcast what happened to my kid sister. People like Fentiman might use it to reassure some other kid that things can be worse, because he likes to think himself well-meaning, and constantly paves the way to hell with his bumbling self-righteous arsery.”

She subsided, simmering.

I had never been on her Christmas card list to begin with, for having taken against me when I delivered the slow stream back to her at further on than her regular class.

“Now, look here!” said Fentiman. “I do my best to help the kids; they might be technically privileged but some of them have pretty awful home lives....”

“That you blab about freely,” I said. “Anyone would take you for a gossip columnist.”

I loathed him; he loathed me. We might as well get this into the open.

He turned his back pointedly.

“Ah, a better view,” I said.

I swear he flounced. 

The others nodded to me; I had done nothing to irritate any of them sufficiently to feel any despite towards me. Nico Contini did not like me much, because I made the odd dig about there being sciences other than physics, but he did not truly dislike me.  I don’t think. He nodded with more or less affability, anyway.

 

I went to meet my class.

“Paul Moorcroft,” I said, “I know you and your friend Hank Wenlow. And I know you were doing just fine last year with a few pointers.”

Paul beamed at me. He had a look of his sister, though his hair was paler than the honey gold of both his sisters. His eyebrows were so pale over his blue eyes that he looked permanently surprised and totally guileless.

“We heard you were coming back, sir, so we didn’t think we had to pretend to understand in class anymore. It’s remarkable how terribly dim we became, especially over Math. Just couldn’t get it at all.”

“Mr. Wenlow?” I said.

He was a solemn child with brown hair and eyes.

“It got suddenly much too hard for me,” he said. “Funny that.”

I sighed.

“You can help out if the others flag,” I told them. “Do not dare get marks below an ‘A’ grade for me, however, or I’m be improving your mens sana with a good bit of in corpore sana performing calculations for me whilst running round and round the field.”

“I’m sure we can manage to be more receptive for a good teacher,” Hank assured me.

Little monkeys.

“So, Paul, or Mr. Moorcroft, I should call you in school, perhaps you will introduce me to the others; and I will introduce Ruth Tiber, who is joining you for the rest of the year.

Ruth nodded.

There were three others, a boy and two girls, a class of six in all.

“Well, this is Sausage Clinton,” said Paul.

“James, or Jim, Clinton,” interrupted the boy with sandy hair, looking down his nose, flushing.

“We all garner strange nicknames at school, Mr. Clinton,” I said. “Mr. Moorcroft was out of line.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Paul. “The girls are Marie Kershaw and Hermione Obama.”

I looked askance at the bruise on Kershaw’s cheek. She was a plain child with brown hair, muddy hazel eyes, and freckles.

“Who hit you?” I asked, flatly.

“Nobody, sir; I fell,” she said.

“It’s true,” said Obama. “Marie is just clumsy.”

“If anyone helps you to be clumsy, Miss Kershaw, tell me, and I’ll be sorting them out,” I said.

She shook her head.

“I fall over my own feet and break things, and I’m all round useless at lessons too, as well as being ugly,” she said.

I wasn’t liking the sound of this.

“Who on earth says you’re useless – or ugly?” I said.

“Everyone,” said Marie. “My parents, most of the other teachers....”

“She’s an awfully good artist, and I think she should have special training,” said Obama. “It’s why I dropped out and deliberately flunked my grade to be able to help her along.”

From the look Kershaw gave her she did not want to be helped along.

“Helping people along is my job, Miss Obama,” I said.

“But you said to Paul....”

“I meant with homework,” I said. “He won’t be expecting to be helping in the classroom, he’ll have too much of his own work to be doing. As will you. I came back to help those who have genuine troubles, not a bunch of little slackers who have decided to be dropouts because they heard about the cake last year, and I’ll be making a different approach this year, as I understand you all managed fractions well enough.  We’re starting with trigonometry and some spherical trigonometry which is important for navigation; and I’m going to start by showing you a trid of Jay Silverheels and his explanation of how to navigate by the stars.”

The Clinton boy sat upright.

“Jay Silverheels is brilliant!” he said. “I bet you wish you were in his league, sir.”

Yes, I resented the air of condescension, and his assumption that a teacher was not likely to be in the same league.

I smiled, faintly.

“As it happens, and the reason I have this film, is that I am a friend of Jay’s, and I’ve trained with him,” I said. “You didn’t join the fitness club last year to run early in the morning. Mr. Moorcroft! I hope you have been keeping it up!”

“I... well, not exactly, sir,” said Paul.

“Well, you’ll just have to get fit in a hurry, won’t you?” I said. “And no skimping the days I’m not here.”

“Yessir,” said Paul.

“You can’t make Marie take part, she’ll hurt herself,” said Obama.

“Miss Obama, I don’t ‘make’ anyone take part,” I said. “But if Miss Kershaw cares to come along, I can help her to overcome her clumsiness, even as I will teach her to overcome her poor self image, instead of doing her no favours by telling everyone that she is clumsy and that she can’t do this or that, instead of boosting her confidence by helping her to do more, and not writing her off.”

“I’m only trying to help her, by insulating her from....”

I interrupted.

“Miss Obama! I don’t, in general believe in interrupting students, but you are about to dig yourself a hole and jump in it. You are not helping Miss Kershaw by being her nanny. You are merely reinforcing her own poor self worth. Miss Kershaw can speak for herself, decide for herself, and will learn that she can overcome any difficulties.  Leave her alone; your so-called help is on the verge of bullying.”

It’s harder to see a flush on dark skin, but flush she did; I could see it in the infra red range. Her mouth also fell open at me.

“I would like to learn,” said Marie.

“Good. But let us get on with the lesson,” I said. “I don’t require you to make notes of the film; I’ve got printouts. I’m hoping we will have time to make a simple sextants.”

Obama had raised her hand.

“Why should we need archaic tools, Mr. Tiber? Laser measuring devices are more efficient.”

“Well, now, Miss Obama, ever heard of Juliane Koepcke?” I asked. She shook her head. I went on, “She was, at twelve years old, the sole survivor of a plane crash in the middle of the jungle. She was fortunate to survive, because she had the right attitude. But she could have had better tools for survival. And if you were the sole survivor of a plane crash, I doubt you would be carrying laser measuring devices, but you would, I hope, have your brain with you, and the ability to improvise.”

She subsided.

I was going to have trouble with Miss Interference.

It must be in a name.

I read a book a long time ago which had a girl called Hermione in it; also a Miss Interference. Well-meaning and very bad at it.

Ruth knew that I was Jay Silverheels, but at least she was off men at the moment, and was not ogling my nearly naked body.

The only one who was, was Mr. Clinton, but I thought, since my expensive nose did not sense any arousal, male or female, [thank goodness] that it was the appreciation of hero-worship.

 

I gave them the sheet of instructions for making the sextant. I don’t know if any of you did it at school, but it makes a lot more sense of trigonometry to go out and survey a piece of land, determining the height of trees and so on. I’d prepared some measuring rods to use for determining distance, and we would use compasses as well for ready reckoning from two points. Tramping off to make maps with sandwiches is a fun day out as well as instructive. I caught Miss Obama about to take Miss Kershaw’s sextant away from her and do it for her.

“Miss Obama, take your work and your books and go sit on the other side of the classroom,” I said. “You are forbidden to sit next to Miss Kershaw, and if you don’t obey, you’re excluded my class.”

“But she needs help....”

“She needs your help like an aeroplane needs a hijacker,” I snapped. “You are a bully, Miss Obama, and not an exemplar of your illustrious name. Miss Kershaw is perfectly capable on her own, even if not as fast as you. And if I was you, I’d check you have not made mistakes for being slapdash and hurrying. Miss Kershaw knows to treat it as a drawing exercise; if she can handle double perspective she’s more than capable of making a sextant.”

Miss Kershaw’s face lit up with sudden enlightenment, and she applied herself assiduously.

Miss Obama was almost in tears, but it had to be said; she was making herself obnoxious and Miss Kershaw did not appreciate it.

I went over to Miss Obama, who had been having to make some corrections.

“Miss Obama,” I said, “You don’t appreciate me ordering you about and humiliating you in front of the others, do you?”

“No, sir,” she said, woodenly.

“Do you really think that Miss Kershaw appreciates you ordering her around, and humiliating her?” I asked.

“But I’m only trying to help her!” said Miss Obama.

“You’re lucky that I actually believe you, Miss Obama,” I said, harshly. “I’ve seen girls ‘just helping’ in such a way as to make other girls look bad, and they were doing it deliberately. And you know what? I wondered if you were doing so, at first, and if it was you who had bruised her. Because I saw a little bully.”

“I want to do what’s right! And she needs help!” persisted Miss Obama.

“You’re giving her the same sort of help of someone who kicks a cripple’s crutch out from under them and drags them by the hair,” I said. “The kid needs help, she doesn’t need everything done for her because she’s slower than you think she ought to be; and she doesn’t need you humiliating her by talking about her difficulties. How would you like it if she said loudly ‘hey, be careful of Hermione today, she’s on her period?’ I don’t think you’d like that.”

“Sir!” she was indignant.

“I’m married, you know; I do know about the manifestations of normal womanhood,” I said, dryly. “But you aren’t helping her. If you want to help her, wait to be asked.”

“She won’t ask for help, she’s stubborn,” muttered Obama.

“Good,” I said. “Stubborn will help her to help herself. You are making her feel more of a failure by refusing to let her try.  Am I getting through to you, child?”

“I... well, if I’m not helping Marie, I don’t need to be here,” she said, uncertainly.

“I am sure you can fit back into normal lessons if you are happy there,” I said. “I don’t appreciate my aid for those truly in need being diverted by little liars.”

“You should throw Paul and Hank out too,” said Obama, sententiously.

“You should not tell a teacher what to do, you little madam,” I said. “Did you hear what Paul said? That they could stop pretending to understand. I suspect he can manage with Miss Lawrence but I suspect he is struggling to keep up. He was, last year, when his sister was in my accelerator group. I’m here if there are any classes you are having trouble with, but frankly, I think you are wasting my time, and I am wasting yours when you are capable of keeping up. I will make sure Miss Kershaw achieves her full potential.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Shall I rejoin normal classes after break?”

“I think you, I, and Miss Kershaw will all be happier, don’t you?” I said.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

2 cobra 22

 I wonder if Our Lord ever feels dispirited that He came to save us, and we are busy trying to destroy ourselves? 

Chapter 22 New York, New York, so bad I went there Twice.

 

 

Poor Pulk was confused, but bless the child, she did as she was told.

It took a bit of lock-picking but we got through the hidden door, down a passageway, and...

“A subway station?” said Pulk, startled.[1]

“It was a private line for special guests,” I said. “I came upon its existence years ago, and I went exploring, and filed it away for future reference. This is the future reference. This way.”  I led her through the service tunnel to just beyond the platform at Grand Central station.

“I have a season ticket and I got you one as well,” I said. I gave it to her.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Central Park,” I said. “I arranged with my contact to give us a lift out, at six o’clock. We’re running close to it.”

“I’m sorry I needed a rest,” said Pulk.

“You’re hors de combat, or in other words, wounded in action,” I said. “Don’t worry, kid. We’ll be there on time.

I pulled her into a run as this loudly humming silver behemoth hurtled down from the sky. The door opened, we leaped in, and sprawled as Jim was off again.

“He’oow,” said the big Sealpoint Siamese cat.

“Ah, meet Oscar,” I said. “He’s uplifted, so yes, he was saying ‘hello.’”

“Hello, Oscar,” said Pulk, putting out a hand. Oscar put his paw to her palm, his version of shaking hands.

“I ask Oscar how loathsome my passengers are,” said Jim. “If he talks to you, I can relax, you’re not likely to try to hijack me.”

“We wouldn’t!” said Pulk, shocked.

“Listen, kid, I call this bird the ‘Condor.’ She’s big and she feeds on carrion. Most of my passengers, I’d happily throw out of the airlock. But I take the cred from whoever can pay; she’s like most ladies, expensive to upkeep.”

“Jim’s a bit cynical,” I said.

“And you ain’t, killer?” said Jim.

“Oh, I overcame some of it when I got married,” I said.

“Now that’s an expense which is too much to pay for any woman,” said Jim. “Becoming soft. Ain’t no woman in the world worth it.”

“You don’t know my Neon Flower,” I said.

“Huh, you retiring then?”

“Apart from the odd pro bono work, yes,” I said. “I’m going to be a school teacher.”

Jim laughed so much I feared for our safety; but we hit space, and I was busy coping with Pulk, who had never been weightless, and was not enjoying her first experience.

It wasn’t for long, however, and we hurtled back down to the Arena.

Pulk looked around as I led her to where I’d left my car, horrified.

“Do... can people really live here?” she asked.

“Can and do; and in many cases, have no other choice,” I said. “That’s why I’m working to develop it. But for the good of the residents, not to make money. I actually own this land,” I added. It had been part of my negotiations with Tarquin; and I had bought the entire of The Rubble. It meant there wouldn’t be any quibbles over whatever I did here.

 

oOoOo

 

Willow took one look at Pulk, and hugged her.

“Oh, Carnation! Did he?” she asked.

“Does everyone know?” sighed Pulk.

“Some of us who have seen how the wicked world wags can make a guess,” said Willow, grimly. “I didn’t say anything at the time, in the hopes he was just an overly harsh disciplinarian.”

“I think he forced my mother to her death,” said Pulk, in a hard little voice.

She spilled the whole to Willow, who cuddled the weeping bundle she turned into.

“I’ll be going back to New York in a more regular fashion,” I said. “You’d better discuss a new name; Carnation isn’t very usual.”

“My mother’s name was Ruth,” said Pulk. “I always thought it was classy and timeless, though Pop said it was real Puritan.”

“Ruth, then,” said Willow. “Now then, are you going to go back to do a final year at Junior High to get yourself back on your feet, and go in as the schoolmaster’s sister? You can’t really go into a boys’ dormitory.”

“I... yes, I was happy there, once Mr. Tiber sorted me out,” said Pulk... Ruth. If she was my kid sister, I needed to think of her as Ruth. Ruth Tiber.

Willow would arrange all the documents, birth certificate upwards. I had parents to hang on the e-meritus degree which she had sorted, so Macauley and Lucilla [née Miles ] Tiber would go on Ruth’s birth certificate too. Of course, Keith Barrymore, the literature teacher, might figure it out from her essay style, but I thought him the only one capable. And he was amenable to a little straight talking. Now Ruth needed to meet Hana, and they could at least share experiences and have some peer group self-help.

Puss had already helped herself to Ruth’s lap and was making her presence felt with her purrs.

Stroking cats was always a most excellent therapy.

And Willow would give her a morning after pill, just in case.

 

oOoOo

 

I had to make sure no trail ended back in Seattle, so I did not take a plane out of SeaTac. I took the El to Portland instead, flew local to Denver, changing personae at each change, and went from the Mile-High city by plane to JFK Airport as Michael Gamboll, minor treasury agent, who had an appointment with whichever level lickspittle to the secretary Ashton J. Pulk happened to be.

I got to kick my heels when I arrived, of course, to impress on me how important Ashton J. Pulk was.

I despise people like that.

But then, I despised him already for what he done to his wife and little girl.

When I was ushered in at last, and waited for the secretary to depart, I sat down without waiting for an invitation.

“Now, what’s all this that couldn’t wait?” he demanded. “I’m a busy man, and I have my own problems.”

It was national news that Carnation Pulk had been abducted by someone whose rather blurred picture showed him talking amicably with the girl.

I smiled, put my briefcase on the desk, and opened it, standing as I did so.

“Carnation says ‘hello,’ I said. Then I shot him.

It was a standard sort of pistol, with a silencer, and I left it on the desk.  It had his fingerprints on it, because I had managed to lift them from the report book the poor child had kept with her. I would strip of those second skin gloves and dispose of them.

I shut the briefcase and walked out, nodding to the secretary.

“He appears to be dead tired,” I said, and left the building.

A smooth sanction. The simple ones are usually the best.

I took the subway, found a toilet in which to change my face, burned my gloves, and donned another pair; and have good luck finding me with those. They had Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fingerprints on them.

As I was wearing Abraham Lincoln’s face now, but with green hair electrostatically lifted in a mohawk [the most modern feature of follicolour^TM] I felt all-American, in the cowboy jacket I had changed into. My suit trousers were denim when turned inside out, and my shirt had a similar technology to follicolour^TM which Dr. Elizabeth Barnard had invented for me, and went from office-boy blue and white pinstripe to green and magenta background with a grinning skull.

People avoided me for some reason. Can’t imagine why.

I made another stop, went to a sleek blond haircut, a plain dark blue shirt, and carried my cowboy jacket slung over my shoulder.

And I took the train to Seattle because there’s less security. So, even with the Maglev technology on part of the line, it takes 24 hours; I had some sleep to catch up with, and I took a sleeper. I did let Willow know that all was good.

“One night in Tokyo,” she said.

It was our security check.

“One night worth all my love,” I replied.

“Can I play with madness?” she asked.

“Give me Ed ‘til I’m dead,” I said.

She heaved a sigh of relief.

“Take care,” she said.

“I will,” I assured her.

I changed face once more, got off at Spokane, and took a small local flight into SeaTak.  And it may be unduly cautious, but an importantish man in the wheels of government whose daughter disappears and is then killed might have people actually taking notice.

 

Ruth cried, and laughed, and hugged me.

“And he’s dead? Truly?” she demanded.

“People I sanction stay dead,” I told her.

“And you said it was from me?”

“I did.”

“I wonder what the last thing was to go through his head after you said that,” she said, viciously.

“A .38 slug of titanium,” I said, with more accuracy than poesy. “I wasn’t sure if he had any headware or subdermal armour, so I decided to make sure with armour piercing.”

“He did have headware,” said Ruth, “And I think it was armoured.”

“I should have asked you,” I said. “You were a little distraught. Though at least you managed to talk about it.”

“Why should I not? Since Mommy died you’re the only grownup I ever trusted,” she said, simply.

I suppose it was partly because she did not have a relationship of any sort, to speak of, with her father, that she felt no need to protect him out of false loyalty; and partly that it was the first time, and done on the spur of the moment by a man who craved more sex than he was getting, and had been tempted into a crime of passion too loathsome to really come under crimes of passion, even for the French, who tend to ignore Republic of Europe law where ‘l’amour’ is concerned. Normally a pervert will groom his – or occasionally, her – little victim to accept that they must be acquiescent, and that it was their little secret. When Ashton Pulk belatedly told his daughter it was their little secret he was several steps of grooming too late. Because though he was technically a paedophile, he was looking on her as a woman who was available and under his control, like his poor wife. I suspect if she had had a proper autopsy, old scars of thrashing would have been found on her, too.

“You’re going to have to decide whether to turn up so you can claim your inheritance, or stay hidden,” I said.

She frowned.

“Do you have any contacts that could do it on my behalf?” she asked.

“I’ll phone Tarquin,” I said.

 

oOoOo

 

“I am shocked,” said Tarquin, when I helped Ruth to stumble through her story. “I need a written deposition, Miss Pulk, and I can explain that you have been taken to a safe house, having complained to a social worker you happened to meet at school. Rick, did you take any photographs?”

“I did,” I said. “I’m sorry, Ruth, I didn’t tell you, but I thought you would be glad of it if you needed to sue, and did not want him sanctioned.”

“Mr. Tiber thinks of everything,” said Ruth. “I... I would rather they were not used....”

“Having copies in my possession means I can put on pressure,” said Tarquin. “No connection between you and his untimely death?”

“Not unless his office is bugged and heard me say ‘Carnation says hello,’” I said.

He sighed.

“I will have to check.”

“If so, thrown the fictitious social worker to the wolves, acting independently,” I said.

“Would you like me to teach you how to strip and clean an Ingram?” said Tarquin, with heavy irony.

I laughed.

“Sorry, of course you were well ahead of me,” I said.

We left that in Tarquin’s capable hands.

 

oOoOo

 

Naturally we had follicolour^TM installed for Ruth, and she became dark-haired to go to school as Miss Tiber.

The head was not pleased when I rang him and asked to include her.

“Why didn’t you enrol her before?” he barked.

“Keep your hair on, Gunny,” I said. “Because before, she hadn’t been sexually assaulted in what should have been a safe place by someone she should have been able to trust; and so she wants to change schools.”

“Oh, I see,” he said. “I apologise; I’ll sort out all the paperwork.”

“I’ll be glad to have an older friend for my Goddaughter, Miss Smith, as well,” I said.

“I was amazed that an old stick like Tarquin had a daughter stashed away,” said Griffiths.

“I don’t intend to gossip about how he acquired a daughter,” I said, firmly.

So, that was that, we had everything sorted out, and I was expecting a nice, restful time, merely dealing with a few misfits, a nice easy term for Ruth and Hana to find themselves and make friends, and no blood pressure worries for Willow.

It shows that one should never assume anything, and that some of us are the sort of people who are found by trouble no matter how hard we try.

It was meant to be a nice, quiet term.

 

---

[1] Yes, there really is an abandoned station for exalted visitors beneath the Waldorf-Astoria.

2 cobra 21

 

Chapter 21 New York by Suborbital Express

 

 

Apparently it was my time to have to deal with abused children.

I got a call on my phone,  from a number which I did not recognise.

“Hello?” I said, guardedly.

Willow doesn’t even do that; she opens the receiver, and if anyone talks, she answers. Half the time for her it’s advertising from a call centre and it just bleeps out after 4 seconds. I’m exdirectory so anyone who has my number ought, in theory, to have a right to it.

“Mr. Tiber?” said a female voice. It was vaguely familiar.

I had taught as Horatio Tiber, and I saw no need to change that.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“It’s me – Carnation Pulk,” she said.

“Miss Pulk! Of course!” I said. “You won’t be in my class this year; you’ve moved on to senior high, haven’t you?”

“I.... Mr. Tiber, I need to talk to a sensible grown-up who listens,” said Pulk. “Can we meet? As soon as possible?”

“I guess so,” I said, warily.  I think Pulk and I parted on good terms; I didn’t think she’d want to set me up. “Where are you at the moment?”

“New York,” she said. “But if you live anywhere near the school, I can come to wherever you are.”

“Go to the Moonbuck’s on Whitehall Street, South Ferry,” I said. “I’ll be about an hour... maybe an hour and a half.”

Willow was listening.

“Pulk was having trouble with her father,” she said. “He works in the treasury department and he beat her for not understanding fractions, but wouldn’t explain.”

I nodded; I remembered how Carnation Pulk had broken down on me when I guessed that she was being stubborn about learning to pay her father back.

“He’s a bully and stupid, too,” I said. “I’ll be back for tea, possibly with Pulk.”

“I’ll prepare her a room just in case,” said Willow.

I made two calls.

One was to Sodger to get him to make sure the arena was cleared.

The other was to a contact of mine, named Jim.

Jim was fitted up for embezzlement when he was in the British Navy, by some high-ranker who needed a scapegoat. They couldn’t indict him, so he was asked to leave. Feeling that he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, he left in a vehicle he had put his life on the line to acquire for the Royal Space Navy.  A prototype Muscovite space plane.

He’d relabelled all the controls, of course, as his Russian was, shall we say, rudimentary ... more rude than elementary, as you might say. I mean, he knew words like ‘blyat,’ ‘suka’, ‘idi nakhuy’ and the like, but would have been stumped if he had to walk into a shop to buy a bottle of milk.

He’d been working on the prototype with the boffins to improve it, too; and it was ‘off the books’ so to speak, being stolen, so the authorities could not actually accuse him of taking something they did not officially own. I’d hooked him up with someone able to design him a transponder which could lie about what this vehicle was. Jim would fly anyone anywhere... for a fee. And being able to go suborbital meant that he was only ever about an hour away from anywhere.

 

I drove to the rubble and left my car with Sodjer, just as the graceful silver bird came straight down out of the sky. Yes, it was VTOL; and it had a fusion engine, so the net product of its exhaust was water. I got on board quickly, tossing a cred stick to Jim. He caught it adroitly, and we were off.

I do not like going into space but it was not for long.

He landed on the bowling green, to the outrage of the bowlers.  I got out and managed to shift and merge with crowds before anyone thought to pursue me whilst he was lifting off again. I had a rucksack of goodies for if I had to get Pulk out of there; it would mean a bit of jiggery pokery if she had not lost the minders she undoubtedly had. And of course I was wearing a forgettable face – a second skin^tm over a dialled throwaway. I’d brought a second skin face for her, too. We had to get somewhere Jim could land to pick us up.

I was wearing a carnation so I hoped she would twig.

She was sitting there, and had not drunk enough of her coffee to be getting irritable.

“May I sit here?” I asked.

“I’m waiting for someone,” she said, brusquely.

“I’d say someone turned up,” I said, facetiously. She looked up, angrily, and I said, “Decimals are fractions, too. Hundredths.”

Her eyes widened.

“You’re from Mr. Tiber? You are Mr. Tiber? But how?”

“Let’s just assume I am not all I appear, and that’s probably to your advantage right now,” I said. “Now, tell me what this is all about.”

“Well, you know I started senior high in September,” said Pulk. “And Pop had been pleased that I did well in my end of term exams.  Only I don’t get on well with the math teacher, she’s so brusque and she makes me feel stupid. And I got a bad end of term report, and Pop gave me until half term to shape up. And... well, I couldn’t. So there I was, bending over his desk for the caning of my life, and... and he gave me a couple of blows, and then he swore, and... oh what’s the use! You won’t believe me; he said it would be our little secret that he had another way to punish me.”

“He pulled down your panties and fucked you,” I said.

Her eyes widened.

“You... you can know that?” she said.

“Kid, it’s the most terrible thing in the world for you, but you aren’t the first it’s happened to, and you won’t be the last, I’m afraid,” I said. “It’s the worst betrayal of trust any adult can do to a child in their care, but it happens. You don’t have a mom?”

“She died of an overdose about two years ago,” said Pulk, flatly. “I found her. There was a note which said that Pop’s expectations were unreasonable. She kept having miscarriages trying for a boy, and her figure just went and Pop kept her on this strict diet and made her exercise; got a trainer for her.”

“He was killing his own children,” I said, flatly. “What a fucking bastard your father is.”

Her eyes went round again.

“I didn’t know teachers could swear,” she said.

“Oh, hell yes; and you’ve been forced into being an adult, so the least I can do is to treat you with the respect you deserve, and let you know that I am human too, and that I can swear like a trooper when people like that anger me.”

“I wish he was dead,” said Pulk.

“Do you? Genuinely? Or are you just sounding off?” I asked. “Because I can make it happen, and nothing would delight me more.”

She gave me a very straight look, and in her eyes I could see the little girl find a young woman.

“I don’t think people who do that ought to be allowed to live,” she said. “I can’t help being bad at Math. I have been trying; you told me that I could be anything I wanted to be. I... I was dreading twenty strokes with the cane, I could barely walk from the six he gave me last time, and I had to sleep on my front without bedclothes for two weeks. And he made me come to meals and sit on hard wooden chairs, and the welts would open up again. But... It hurt in a different way and it was... it was dirty. And he told me when he’d done that I’d made him do it, and he gave me another couple of whacks with the cane, and said that if I was going to misbehave like a wanton, I’d have to learn to do it properly and come to his bed at night. I.... I put together some clothes and grabbed my pocket box, and I climbed down the drainpipe outside my window, and ran away. I went to the library, and I managed to get into the school’s records to find your number because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“How long will it be before your father misses you?”

“I... dinner time, I should think. At six. We dine at six.”

It was almost four.

“Unless he went to your room to look in on you – and I don’t think he will, because he’s coming to terms with what he’s done – you have until then before your description goes out to all the cops in New York,” I said. “And when it does, every camera on every street corner will have face recognition software. We are being filmed in here. He will know you met this person which is why I have a throwaway face.”

She looked horrified.

“So, you mean I can’t get away?”

“I never said that,” I said. “What I mean is, that you will have to take orders from me, even if I don’t have time to explain.  You’re going to take a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian, and so am I, separately. We’ll meet inside.”

She nodded obediently, got up and went out. I gave her a couple of minutes, and followed.

No museum can cover every corner. Basically they want to make sure nobody is vandalising the exhibits or nicking anything; but they have electronics on the show cases for that.  They survey people coming in to see if they have anything that looks like it might be dangerous, and on the way out to check you have nothing bulky that you should not have. It was towards the end of the day; it shuts at five o’clock, all school parties were gone, if any, parents with kids on half term breaks were heading thankfully home, and we had the place almost to ourselves. I found Pulk regarding an exhibit about a famous movie star Native American, called Jay Silverheels.

“Yes, I took the name from him,” I said.

She gasped.

“You mean, my teacher is also Jay Silverheels, winner of ‘Extreme’?” she said, awestruck.

Bugger, I didn’t have to tell her that.

“How come you were watching that at school?”

“Oh, we all watched on our pocketboxes under the covers,” she said.

“You also need to know that Miss Peacock is a good few years older than she was pretending, and she’s my wife,” I said. I didn’t want hero worship to tip over into anything else.

“Oh!” she said. “That explains a lot about her. I wish I was as tough as her.”

“If I kidnap you, you will be,” I said. “Right, we’re going into the disabled loo, because it’s large enough to change clothes in, and become two different people. I’m also going to put some salves on your backside to ease the welts; I brought plenty. And you can put some more, er, privily. I’ve patched up friends who were girls before, I’ll be perfectly clinical.”

She flushed quite darkly.

“I... I guess it’s like being with a doctor,” she said.

“Exactly; or living in your skivvies doing ‘Extreme’ crapping into  a piece of bark because it’s too cold and dark to go outside to do it,” I said. “They didn’t film things like that.”

She giggled, slightly hysterically.

 

I didn’t take more than a few seconds to break into the disabled toilet; I wasn’t about to ask for a key.

“Kneel on the toilet seat,” I ordered. She went white, and swayed. “I promise you I will not touch you inappropriately,” I said.

She obeyed, and I slathered salve onto some of the most vicious cane blows I have ever seen. I gave her the salve.

“I... rub it in?”

“It’s safe to go inside,” I said. I turned away from her, and took back the salve when she touched my arm to hand it back.

“Strip to your skivvies and put these on,” I said. ‘These’ were plain bluejeans,  a shirt, and very sloppy sweater. “I’m going to cut your hair, and give you a new face.”

She was a shapely enough girl, but coltish enough to be androgynous in a big enough sweater. She took a scarf out of her own bag.

“If you tied it tight at the back, it would squish things,” she said.

I did so. It did help. Her hair went in a bag; if flushed, some would be bound to float. Then I fitted the second skin^TM which I’d dialled to look much like the one I was wearing under my second skin, which I put back in the bag. They don’t have many times they can be used over before the nanotractors wear the skin and it starts cracking, but no reason to be profligate. We now looked like brothers as my follicolour^TM did its business. Her eyes were big again.

We walked out of the toilet.

“Here! You didn’t ought to be in there together,” said a security guard.

“Oh, please, embarrass the kid even more, do,” I said, sarcastically. “He’s had a bad time of it, and just because he doesn’t look disabled, doesn’t mean he isn’t. He needs help, and I’m his carer.”

The man looked at us both, and decided that we did look enough alike to be brothers.

“One of the visitors said he saw a man and a girl come in here,” he said.

“Are you making cracks because he admires Jay Silverheels and wanted to wear his hair like him?” I asked. “That’s damned impudent of you. I shall be making a complaint to your superior.”

“I’m sorry sir,” he said. “But if there was any hanky-panky in our toilets....”

“Well, there isn’t,” I said.

“How would you like it if you had to be manually evacuated?” said Pulk, managing to look defiant, embarrassed, and angry all at once. She probably felt all of them from our sojourn in the toilet and her feelings about her father.

We walked out. Despite the salves, Pulk was limping a bit, which actually loaned credence to our story.

I asked,

“So, how do you know about manual evacuation?”

She shrugged.

“All the late miscarriages messed up Mummy,” she said. “Pop wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t get her a nurse, so I had to.”

Poor little kid.

We took a street bus via grid to the Waldorf Astoria and booked into two rooms. Pulk did not blink at the price; she was used to the best places. We allowed ourselves to be tenderly ensconced in our rooms, after I had bamboozled the clerk, who had not wanted to let two young men in jeans in, by being terribly upper class British at him. You might almost have sworn that I had an unnaturally high palate, and overbite of a prize quarterhorse to go with it.

Once in the hotel, having paid upfront for the day, I took Pulk to the restaurant for high tea; the poor child was all in.  A cup of tea and some indigestible comestibles did wonders; and that was when I led her to the basement.