When Heather and Ginny arrived at the facility on Saturday afternoon, laughing and chatting about the many exciting moments on their recent river-rafting trip, they found Susan talking with George in the general’s office.
Heather wondered why George was sitting behind Sam’s desk, but didn’t say anything.
Hearing them arrive, Lisa emerged from the dining room with a cup of herb tea.
“Come on in, everyone,” George said.
Heather sensed something was wrong, and was sure of it when Lisa pulled the door closed.
“General Bo-seklin would do this himself if he could, but he cannot,”
George began. For the next quarter hour, he went over the facts of the situation, and handed Heather her letter of dismissal as an independent contractor for the Department of Defense, which also released her from her P-Seventeen secrecy oath.
Both he and Susan watched closely to see how their young friend was taking it. Her eyes were not dry, but she was holding herself together.
“You still retain your top-secret-umbra clearance,” he explained, “and that might be useful. It means, among other things, that you must keep the location of this facility to yourself.”
Heather
nodded.
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 245
“I am now in command of the entire safe-house program for this area, and in another week or two, this will be the only facility in that program. I am able to keep this building because it was recently remodeled, and because it has three sleeping rooms.”
A tear rolled down Heather’s cheek. “I can move in with Susan.”
“I know,” he assured. “I also know that this has been your home for a very long time.”
“More than half my life.”
George nodded. “So I have an offer that might interest you.”
Heather frowned, unable to guess what he could be talking about.
“I need an on-call cook. I could always get someone from the air base, and still can if there’s ever a scheduling conflict, but I know from experience that safe-house people hate military cooking.”
“What about Maria?”
“Maria wants full-time work, and can easily get it, especially with the glowing recommendation Sam wrote her. Safe-house usage is, as you know, very unpredictable. But you’d always get a day’s pay each week to keep the kitchen stocked and the plants watered, and you have the clearance to come in any time you want, putter around the kitchen, dance in the studio, sleep in the bomb shelter, whatever.”
Heather smiled slightly. “That would . . . be nice. I think I’ll get a bicycle.”
George spent another hour getting familiar with the safe-house files, then said good-night and went home.
Susan, Lisa, and Ginny stayed with their friend as she slowly packed her things.
“Grieving process,” Susan said with a gleam in her eyes.
Heather laughed. “I think I’m grown-up enough to skip the denial step!”
“Your
heart may not be as grown-up as your head.”
“Good point,” the girl admitted as she continued to pack books into a box.
“What does all this mean for you, Lisa?”
“I’ll be security and executive for the safe house, so we’ll see each other often.”
“It’ll be strange not having a body guard.”
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 246
“You still have a thirty-eight and a concealed carry permit.”
Heather smiled weakly. “Yeah, I guess I’ll be safer than your average teenage girl on a bicycle.”
“I pity the poor guy who tries to mess with you! ” Ginny declared.
Heather chuckled as she started pulling clothes out of her wardrobe, and trying to get her head around the new circumstances of her life.
By the time the sun neared the horizon on that warm summer evening, Heather had removed all the personal belongings from her room, including her precious old vinyl records and master reel-to-reel tapes. She left some tapes in the dance studio that were just copies, as she always did, for safe-house people.
With her friends tagging along, she checked her bathroom, the laundry room, her mail drawer, and the bomb shelter for anything of hers, then wandered into the kitchen.
“Help me out, guys. It needs sandwich makings all the time . . .”
“Milk, juice, coffee, and tea,” Susan said.
“Bacon and eggs,” Ginny added.
“Stuff to make hearty meals quickly, like noodles and sauce,” Lisa suggested.
Heather searched pantry cabinets and refrigerators as they spoke, and found most things well-stocked. The only missing items were already on a shopping list Maria had started.
“My sadness over what just ended will pass, right, Susan?”
“You know the answer as well as I do.”
“Yeah, I know. I just feel about seven years old again, normal seven, and want my mommy to tell me everything’s gonna be okay.”
Ginny wrapped her arms around the forlorn fifteen-year-old. “Welcome to life, kid.”
“I hope I get to see you often, too.”
“Since I already have safe-house experience, I’m sure Lisa will be asking for me, especially when women and children are here.”
Lisa
nodded.
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 247
Heather’s boxes filled a blind transport. Last of all, she went with the corporal to the inspection room for her gun.
As they returned to the parking garage and all four lingered near the transport, Heather took on a serious expression, reminding her friends of the many times she had stood before the team and led the session.
“The P-Seventeen program is no more. The name Heather has no further purpose. I am now Priscilla Ka-mentha at all times and places. I have top-secret-umbra clearance, I have passed a Doctoral Entrance Exam, I am legally an adult, and I carry a concealed weapon. And besides all that, I’m now a safe-house cook!”
They laughed, climbed into Susan’s car and the blind transport, and waved to the corporal who stood at attention beside the open exit gate.
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 248
Chapter 50: “It begins.”
On Sunday morning, while Priscilla, still in pajamas, yawned and unpacked a few boxes in the spare bedroom at Susan’s house, Po Publications was burned to the ground.
Sunday afternoon, as Susan and Priscilla worked their way up and down the grocery store aisles, twenty-seven bookstores across the country were broken into. Although Priscilla didn’t know why — and Susan wouldn’t say —
their grocery cart contained a large number of sweet rolls, sliced cheeses and meats, individual cans of juice, and paper plates and cups. None of the bookstores had their cash registers broken open, and only one thing was missing or set afire, the same thing in each bookstore.
In the evening, while Priscilla alternated between dancing on the hardwood floor in Susan’s living room and unpacking more boxes, Susan made or received more than a dozen telephone calls, all of them in her bedroom with the door closed.
Priscilla blinked like an owl when she awoke on Monday morning to the sounds of Susan working in the kitchen. She glanced at the clock and frowned. Susan had clearly said she only had clients in the afternoon. Why was she loudly making breakfast at seven in the morning?
The fifteen-year-old tried to ignore the noise, but when she started hearing furniture being rearranged at about seven thirty, she could stand it no longer.
She hopped out of bed, yawned, and opened her door.
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 249
“You’d better get dressed!” Susan said firmly as she carried platters back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room.
“Why?”
“Because it’s Monday morning!”
Priscilla shrugged and staggered into the bathroom. She had been thinking of sleeping until nine, warming up slowly, then taking the bus that afternoon to the bank and a bicycle shop. She was, after all, still grieving the loss of the P-Seventeen team and her entire life’s purpose. Now . . . she wasn’t sure what her day would look like.
When she emerged from the bathroom, she immediately spotted Doctor Bo-leden the philosopher, Colonel Bo-torin the political scientist, and Lisa, all lounging in the living room. Priscilla, only half-dressed, slipped into her bedroom before they spotted her.
With her heart pounding from a mixture of happiness and confusion, she quickly dressed and brushed her hair.
When she finally stepped into the living room to see what was going on, more than a dozen team members were circling the dining table, loading sweet rolls and other goodies onto paper plates, doctoring cups of coffee, or opening cans of juice.
“Good morning, Heather!” several said.
“Priscilla,” she said softly, but they didn’t seem to notice.
More team members came through the front door, including Doctor Tu-feltin the blind historian, led by a man she didn’t immediately recognize.
Then she laughed aloud at herself, realizing it was General Bo-seklin —
retired General Bo-seklin — out of uniform.
“Good morning, Sam and Richard!” she called.
“Good morning, Heather!”
“Priscilla,” she mumbled.
By eight thirty, the entire team had crowded into Susan’s little house, with only the enlisted military people missing. Some team members had brought folding chairs, and the eldest were given priority on the two couches. A few even made themselves comfortable on the floor.
“Well, girl,” retired Colonel Ma-soran began, juggling a plate and cup of
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 250
coffee, “are you going to get some breakfast, or just stand there with your face hanging out?”
Priscilla tried to master the grin she had been wearing for the last few minutes, without much success, as she got a plate.
While she was at the serving table, someone put a comfortable chair in front of the unlit fireplace in the living room, but didn’t sit in it.
When the youngest person in the room turned to see where there might be a space for her, everyone set down their plates and cups and started clapping.
Priscilla
blushed.
Retired Three-star General Ko-fenral pointed to the free chair.
She was embarrassed to take the chair of honor, especially with some people on the floor, but he was, after all, a three-star general.
“I . . . don’t know what to say . . .”
“Don’t say anything,” General Ba-kerga, her new boss, ordered. “It’s not nine o’clock yet. Just eat your breakfast.”
She smiled. “Okay.”
As the traditional starting time of the old P-Seventeen team approached, everyone took a break from eating and chatting to get rid of plates, refill cups, or accept offers of pillows from Susan.
Eventually they all got settled and the room fell silent. One by one they looked at the girl.
“I . . . um . . . thought the program was . . . cancelled . . .”
“You
have
no idea what you created, do you, Heather?” Sam asked.
“Priscilla. My name is Priscilla Ka-mentha.”
“Okay, Priscilla,” he responded with a smile. “Over a period of almost eight years, you created a team that is dedicated to walking with you down the road you are destined to walk. You can’t get rid of us, any more than you can get rid of — what you know is coming.”
Suddenly he frowned. “You do remember what is coming, don’t you?”
She sighed. “You mean the end of human civilization because of anthropogenic climate change, and all that? Yes, I remember, although I often — three, four, five times a day — wish I could forget.”
Sympathetic chuckles coursed through the room.
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 251
“Maybe you will forget someday,” Doctor Po-selem the wild-haired physicist said, “and we have reason to believe that will be a day of celebration, as you know. But today, we beg you to accept our apologies for the . . . um . . .
unwise actions of persons with power who are hiding in their ivory towers.
And we beg you to lead us, as you have done for eight years, although we will share with you the actual work whenever we can.”
In the silence that followed, Priscilla breathed, at first unsure she could do it anymore. Then she felt her mind kick in, and her emotions take back seat, a transition she had gone through countless times before.
“Okay . . . we don’t have a tape recorder, so we need someone to take notes.”
Retired Colonel Ma-soran raised her hand, note pad and pencil already in her lap.
“Thanks, Sarah. Let’s start by sharing recent events that some team members may not know.”
“We can skip Po Publications events because Harold will be here at eleven hundred thirty,” Sam said. “I propose that we continue to NOT share with him the exact nature of our . . . um . . . research methods.”
“That would be best,” Doctor Po-morna the biologist asserted.
Heads nodded all around the room, Priscilla added hers, and Sarah recorded the decision.
Retired General Ko-fenral took the next hour to go over everything that was known about the process that led to the cancellation of the P-Seventeen program, and the forced retirement of its commanding and executive officers.
Doctor Ko-silma the chemist reported recent news about scholarly articles the team had endorsed, and shared her belief that future endorsements would be almost as effective if the publishers received a large number of letters from individual scientists and retired military officers.
Finally, with a few minutes remaining before Harold To-kamra was expected, Priscilla talked about her new job as the on-call cook for the safe-house program at the top-secret facility they once shared.
The entire team sat wide-eyed and open-mouthed as the chief editor described the national security order to stop publication, his response, the
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 252
back-pedal, and the fire that had destroyed their building.
He went on to tell about the bookstore break-ins and fires that were sweeping the country. Some of the perpetrators left religious pamphlets, which were allowing police to make some arrests.
When Harold concluded his presentation, Priscilla took a deep breath. “It begins.”