Sunday dawned quiet and still.
Heather danced to a couple of songs in the recreation room to wake up, then wandered out to see who was around.
Ginny was sipping tea and looking at a magazine. “Good morning, kid.”
Heather smelled the corporal’s tea. “Mmm. I think I’ll get some of that.
You know, I love people, but need a break now and then. I think Sundays will be my quiet days.”
“You’re different from me. If I had my choice, I’d have six quiet days a week.”
Heather laughed. “Susan’s like that.” She hopped up, got a mug of tea from the new kitchen, and returned. “You know that good skater about twenty?”
“Yeah.”
“His name’s Mark and he thinks you’re cute.”
Ginny blushed. “I saw some boys looking at you, you know.”
Heather sipped her tea and looked far away. “I made a friend, eleven-year-old girl, and me and Lisa are gonna talk to George about it, but I bet he’d hit the ceiling if I wanted to bring a boy home.”
Ginny chuckled. “The boy’s parents would hit the ceiling, too.”
Heather
sighed.
The envelope in Heather’s mail drawer contained another easy near-future
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 94
question that she felt prepared to tackle after refreshing her memory with some background information from the encyclopedia.
She got the remodeling plans and spent an hour wandering around the building, checking things off her list and making sure all the new furniture had been ordered.
Ben arrived, and they all ate sandwiches together.
The afternoon passed slowly as Heather pondered the following day’s topic, danced, read part of Ginny’s magazine, and counted her gold coins.
“Good morning, everyone. Today’s topic may be about a small country with large strategic importance because of it’s location on one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, but it’s also an excellent case study of a human mental process that touches every level of our civilization, from family life to geo-politics. Doctor Bo-kamla, would you begin by describing cognitive dissonance from the psychologist’s perspective, please?”
Susan, much less comfortable speaking to groups of people than Heather, took a deep breath as she stood. “It’s very difficult to hold two conflicting beliefs in our minds at the same time. We get very uncomfortable, and usually push one of them away by denying it. The most deeply held notion usually wins, often the one we learned in childhood.
“For most people, the process of denial during cognitive dissonance seems to be necessary to avoid . . . a violent reaction of some kind . . . or insanity itself.”
Heather then asked Doctor Bo-leden, the team philosopher, to take over.
He described how the rational tests of logic and utility, that people used when thinking clearly, were usually forgotten during conflicts of belief. The winning idea could easily be the worst for everyone.
Heather then described two possible futures. One was based solely on the country’s culture and religion, the other on external pressures from international politics. The two futures were as different as night and day.
By the end of the session, the team was starting to get a good sense of why the little nation was so hard to understand, and would continue to be in the actual future that Heather described, which bounced back and forth between what they wanted to be, and what the rest of the world wanted, without ever
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 95
really deciding.
She knew it would take many more sessions before the team could see the same process at work in their own country.
All that afternoon and the next, Heather worked with the craftsmen on the new dance studio in the old conference room, and her own private bedroom in the old recreation room. She wasn’t bothered that the patio had steel bars keeping out, or in, anything larger than a sparrow, and smiled as she painted the gray bars blue.
The session on Wednesday caused all the officers to squirm when they learned how many of the military’s false-flag operations, in which they pretended to be the enemy to sway public opinion, would leak out in years to come.
On Friday, while talking about the future of some little alliance, Doctor Bo-leden explained the Ad Ignorantiam fallacy, the belief that if an idea is not proven false, then it must be true, or if not proven true, then it must be false.
With that bit of wisdom under their belts, most team members suddenly realized that the alliance was based on completely incorrect assumptions, and was therefore destined to fail.
Heather smiled, and was very happy that others, for the first time, could help her explain the forces at work in the present that would shape the future.
Also by Friday, all the walls and trim had been painted, new light fixtures installed, and every floor tiled that wasn’t destined to have carpet or hardwood.
As soon as the craftsmen ate lunch in their favorite dining room, they started hauling roll after roll of new carpet up the stairs.
“Interesting color,” General Bo-seklin commented. “About halfway between the green walls and the blue trim. What’s it called?”
“It’s a slightly de-saturated cyan,” Heather informed him.
He cocked his head and squinted. “Oh.”
Heather couldn’t do any of the carpeting herself, but was right there to sweep floors or move stuff. Again they started with the outer office, then the
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 96
general’s office.
When the workday drew to a close, the men sat down at a dining table with Heather to look over the plans and checklists. They estimated another day of carpeting, two for wood flooring, and one for furniture and clean-up.
“Perfect! Just in time for the open house on Friday! You guys have to be there — I could have the general make it an order . . .”
“Not necessary. We’re ahead of schedule, so no one will question it when I say the job goes through Friday.”
Heather grinned. “Just wear nice clothes!”
“Let’s look at this from their point of view,” Colonel Ba-kerga proposed, late Friday afternoon, after Major Ka-markla and Heather described the situation.
The two females nodded, glad he was willing to give it any consideration at all.
“One of the first things she, or her mother, is going to want to know, is where you go to school.”
“Since I’m not at my grade level, I have a private tutor,” Heather replied.
“Good so far. And where do you live, and when can she come over to . . .
play? . . . hang out? Whatever.”
Heather grinned. “In a top-secret military facility.”
“See the problem?”
“Sir,” Lisa began, “I realize it’s a problem, but we need some kind of solution. We can’t expect Heather to go her entire life without friends.”
The colonel set his jaw. “You’re right. I just don’t see it yet, and neither do you. But the public Priscilla Ka-mentha has to stay separate from the military, or anything top-secret, or we might as well just sell tickets to her sessions. So . . . do what you can out in the world with your friend, fudge on the questions about school and home, and put on your thinking caps.”
“We will,” Heather promised.
When they had gone, Colonel Ba-kerga mumbled to himself, “Safe-house security was so much easier.”
Major Ma-soran, at her desk, chuckled. “But not nearly as much fun.”
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 97
After everyone but the guards had gone home for the week, Susan came in.
She and Heather got desserts and headed for the bomb shelter.
Heather talked for more than an hour about a deep sense of loneliness, and the frustration she felt at not being able to have casual friends.
Doctor Bo-kamla had an insight, and shared it with Heather when the seven-year-old was done talking.
Heather thought about it for a few minutes while playing with the crumbs on her dessert plate, then nodded. Her loneliness was not just from her current life as a child, but partly, perhaps mostly, from the last ten or fifteen years of the life she remembered of a now-nameless retired psychologist.