The passenger area of the safe-house transport contained six comfortable seats. Jan’s swiveled when she pushed with her feet.
After switching on a dome light and closing the side door, Major Lisa Ka-markla took another seat. Unseen, a lieutenant started the engine and departed the air base.
Jan placed her shoulder bag on the floor, then looked at the female officer.
“You’re not very old for the rank you have.”
The major smiled. “Twenty-seven. I joined quite young, got a college degree, set goals for myself, and took extra courses whenever I could. I’ve been working for L-Six — the safe-house program — for more than a year now, but just a few weeks ago I earned the security clearance necessary to work in programs like . . . yours.”
“Top Secret Umbra,” Jan mumbled, gazing at the pretty wood-grain paneling on the walls.
Major Ka-markla’s eyes opened wide with surprise. “Um . . . when we get to the facility, the security sergeant will need to search your bag . . .”
Jan locked eyes with the woman. “As long as he’s just looking for dangerous stuff, and doesn’t scratch my records!”
The major swallowed. “Yes, he’s just concerned with weapons, explosives, things like that, and will be very careful. I guarantee it. What kind of music do you like?”
The girl relaxed. “Good dance music. My collection is from all over the
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world, and took every penny of allowance my mother could give me.”
“Do you dance?”
“All the time. It’s one of the things that keeps me from . . . going crazy.”
They continued the long drive in the unmarked military vehicle that did not allow its passengers to glimpse the passing city or countryside. As Major Lisa Ka-markla slowly got to know young Jan Ko-korna, she became aware that all her military training had not completely prepared her for this assignment.
“. . . and he was soooo handsome, but when I kissed him, he wiped it off and said something about germs.”
“I’m sorry,” the major said with sympathy. “Just too young, I guess.”
Jan nodded, then let a long moment of silence pass before speaking again.
“Lisa,” she finally said, gazing up at the dome light, “have you ever been in love?”
The major’s mind raced, remembering that her personal and military lives were supposed to remain completely separate. But it was her assignment to be this little girl’s body guard, and that would mean being her companion and confidant.
“Yes. When I was sixteen. But staying with him would have forced me to give up all my goals. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, much harder than any military training. After a long mental and emotional struggle, my goals won.”
Jan nodded. “I think I understand. That’s kind of like . . . me and my mother.”
As Major Ka-markla pondered the girl’s words, she overheard the driver talking to the facility by radio. “Any idea where we are?” she asked, assuming the girl would be clueless.
“Um . . . Appala Hills, about five miles past the big shopping center, then south on a back road, but not quite to the crest of the hills. So that would put us on 125th or 127th Road. But 125th doesn’t go far enough, so it would have to be 127th . . .”
Jan saw Lisa’s mouth hanging open, so she smiled. “You didn’t think they were starting a new top-secret-umbra program because I was slow, did you?”
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The major swallowed several times to find her voice. “Nothing . . . slow about you.”
The girl smiled again.
Jan heard an electric gate slowly open, and she easily noticed the echo of the concrete parking garage. The lieutenant shut down the van’s engine, and Major Lisa Ka-markla looked at her young passenger. “Ready?”
Jan nodded and shouldered her bag.
A military man saluted as the major stepped out of the van with the girl close behind.
“At ease, Sergeant. This is Jan, our new resident.”
“Welcome, young lady. I’m Sergeant Ben Ta-nibon. I . . . um . . . have to search your bag.”
“I know. You will handle my records as if they were fine art treasures.”
“Yes, Ma’am!” he said with a smile.
The sergeant led the way inside through a steel door.
“He’s cute!” Jan whispered to Lisa.
Lisa frowned back.
At the same level as the parking garage, on one side of a staircase, the girl glimpsed a little guard room with desk and radio. The three of them entered the room on the other side, with shelves and cabinets behind a table. Jan glanced at the poster of things not allowed upstairs, from knives to nuclear
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weapons.
“Even if you had something you couldn’t bring in,” the sergeant explained,
“we’d just keep it for you in a locked cabinet.”
“Even a nuclear bomb?” Jan asked with teasing eyes.
“Well . . . we might have to find a better place for one of those! ”
Major Ka-markla, standing in the background, chuckled.
“So this must be your music collection,” the sergeant declared, lifting the record holder out of the girl’s bag.
Jan held her breath.
He pulled off the cover, saw forty or more vinyl discs stacked up, looked for any hidden compartments, and replaced the cover. “Looks safe.”
He set it aside and Jan breathed again.
Everything else in the bag passed inspection, until the sergeant came to the girl’s tiger-striped dance leotard. He held it up and cleared his throat.
“Now that looks dangerous. What do you think, Major?”
The female officer grinned and laughed. “You could keep it down here if you want, Sergeant.”
“No,” he said, barely holding in a smile, “I’m not sure that would look good. I guess . . . with some reservations . . . I’ll have to let it in.”
“Thank you!” Jan said, grinning.
Major Ka-markla led the way up the stairs.
Jan frowned. The upper level, supposedly for use by human beings, was
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uglier than the parking garage. Concrete floors, gray walls, and a suspended ceiling with flickering lights gave the place all the charm of a prison. A few old couches and floor lamps were shoved together on one side of the large open area. For a moment, Jan remembered with fondness the observation room at the air base.
Major Ka-markla guided Jan toward a conference room on the right side of the building. “General Bo-seklin is anxious to meet you. He’s the commanding officer of this facility, originally built as a high-security safe house, but it hasn’t seen much use in recent years. This is still the program office, but we have two other locations, smaller and nicer. The general’s excited about a top-secret-umbra program under his watch.”
They stepped into the conference room. More gray walls and buzzing fluorescent lights . . . a dark gray table . . . folding metal chairs. Three aging military officers looked at Jan, two male and one female. The general had to be close to retirement age, if not his own funeral. The colonel, a stern man with rough features, and the major, wearing a motherly expression, were not quite as old.
Lisa sat down and gestured for the girl to take the chair beside her.
Jan didn’t move.
“We just know what General Ko-fenral told us on the telephone,” the general said with a kindly old voice. “I realize it’s almost dinner time, but we’d like you to give us a brief description of your skills and abilities so we’ll know how to proceed. Please, sit. We don’t bite.”
Jan immediately liked the general, but still didn’t sit. Instead, she began to speak slowly and firmly. “I will tell you everything you could ever want to know, and probably many things you don’t want to know, but I do not live, or work, in rooms that look like jail cells.”
“Now listen here, young lady . . .” the stern colonel started to say, but General Bo-seklin raised his hand for silence.
After a slow breath while looking directly at Jan, the general spoke. “What do you suggest?”
Jan looked around the conference room a bit more, then wandered back out to the large main room, her bag still on her shoulder. Everyone followed.
“This place needs serious work, but I think we can cobble something
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together for tonight. No, I can’t tell you anything useful in five minutes while everyone’s getting hungry. If you want to know what I can do, then we need three or four pizzas and plenty of drinks. You have someone who can accomplish that?” she asked, turning and making eye contact with the general.
The security sergeant standing beside the stairs, with hands behind his back, had heard everything. The general pointed to him. He saluted and descended the stairs.
“The rest of you are on duty until twenty-one hundred,” the general informed.
“While Ben’s on the pizza run,” Jan resumed her instructions, “we need to arrange these couches in a circle, find some little tables for food and drink, and sprinkle the floor lamps around. Then we need to turn off these ugly lights before my brain starts flickering, too.”
Major Ka-markla failed to suppress a chuckle. “Sorry, Sir. I’ll move couches.”
The colonel stepped up to help her.
“Us old folks can do something,” the general asserted. “Sarah, help me with those little coffee tables stacked in the dining room.”
Jan smiled, and began arranging floor lamps.
An orange glow began to take form in the conference area of the life-monitor ship Tirilana Kril in high orbit. The glow soon became a large, golden bird.
“Greetings, Shemultavia!” a smaller white bird said as she waddled up from the bridge where a lanky reptile and a huge spider remained at their control consoles. “It appears that the Temporandek Teacher has installed herself in a situation like you described, bok.”
The golden bird nodded. “I am well-pleased, Captain Drinn-tala, and it is not at all too soon.”
“How long do you think it will take her to prepare her people?”
“Several years, I would think, at the least.”
“Bok. Isn’t that dangerously close to the first tipping point?”
“It is, but that’s what we have to work with. Melorania thinks we will have
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a human response-ship crew by then.”
“That would be very good, bok, since the monkey mammals of this planet are its biggest problem.”
“You may now return to Satamia Star Station for some well-deserved rest and less-stressful assignments, Captain.”
The white bird nodded thoughtfully as Shemultavia faded from sight.
Eventually she took a deep breath, shuddered slightly from the fatigue of a long mission, and returned to the bridge. “Navigator, flight plan for home, please.”
The spider went to work at his console.
Within an hour, a half-way comfortable meeting area had been created in the top-secret military facility, and the pizzas had arrived.
Getting the ceiling lights off was more difficult, as they didn’t seem to have a switch.
Jan sighed and headed down the stairs. The sergeant looked at the general, he nodded, and together Jan and Ben located the circuit-breaker box in the parking garage. While the sergeant wondered what the proper security protocol might be, Jan flicked off every breaker that said lights.
When they returned to the upper level, everyone was standing around in amazement. The flickering and buzzing had stopped, and the floor lamps cast a soft glow around the circle of couches and coffee tables.
“Now we can hear ourselves think,” Jan declared.
While everyone else milled about, the youngest person grabbed a paper plate, slice of pizza, and can of juice. She quickly claimed a small couch against the back wall, allowing her to see anyone who ascended the stairs.
After taking a few bites, she looked around.
“There should be a record made of our sessions. We’ll often want to go back and listen to them again, and I hate repeating myself. Tape recorder?”
The general, selecting a slice of pizza, nodded. “Excellent idea! Major?”
She was already in motion toward her gray metal desk next to the stairs.
From a nearby shelf she pulled an old reel-to-reel unit and tried to blow the dust off, then located a blank tape in her desk. “Can you operate this,
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Sergeant?”
“Yes,
Ma’am.”
During the next few minutes, everyone took the edge off their hunger while the security sergeant set up the tape recorder and a chair for himself just outside the circle of couches.
The executive officer passed out note pads and pencils.
Eventually, everyone and everything was ready that could be, given the circumstances. The little girl at the head of the circle of military officers set aside her paper plate, drew her legs up under her, and took a deep breath.
