MISC: The Girl Who Saved the World Part 38

[George Phillies]

“You much look as though you need dinner,” Patrick announced, “and you 
three young ones need to give us a private conversation. Your grades 
from Morgana, remember?”

“Yes, sir,” Brian answered. “Forward to modelling.” The three children 
headed upstairs.

“And now, Morgana,” Abigail said, “we are going to hear our children’s 
grades, on your coaching them with their gifts, and you are going to get 
a reasonably solid dinner. The latter was not meant as a suggestion. 
Young people like you are too careless with eating properly at the right 
hours.” Abigail turned to the sideboard and began bringing dishes back 
to the table.

Morgana looked at the ceiling. “Patrick, you really didn’t tell your 
dear wife what you know about me through the tenure committee, did you? 
I know you promised, and I understand that you Americans are very strict 
in respecting the privacy of private personas, but under the circumstance…”

“Young lady, we Americans,” Abigail said, “since Patrick did mention 
that you were an Englishwoman but took American citizenship, just like 
several of my ancestors did two and three centuries ago.  Yes, Patrick 
has completely respected the privacy of your private persona, enough so 
that I knew there was a Professor Morgana Lafayette, and I knew there 
was a public persona Sunssword, but I had never met you, the Professor, 
to know that you were Sunssword. And now you have half of a roast 
chicken, shoe peg corn, sliced potatoes with sautéed onions and sour 
cream, and what is left of the tossed salad with Roquefort dressing. Oh, 
yes, several croissants with butter. And Brian was too busy with his 
cooking to snatch any of my chocolate fudge, which is just as well as it 
would have gotten him into all sorts of difficulty. Now I can sit down 
and hear what is going on.”

“I hope you don’t mind I eat a bit while we’re talking,” Morgana said. 
“There are ways to cheat on eating, in an emergency. Your cooking, from 
the smell, is absolutely wonderful, far better than the alternative. In 
any event, to use a line almost as old as I am, the kids are just fine. 
The worst problem was that Janie has an extremely rigid and accurate 
sense of gifttruth, at the level that sometimes leaves people paralyzed 
with fear that they have done something wrong. She got over the fear. 
Fortunately, she got over that before Emperor Roxbury’s robots showed up 
at her school, because she had to do something violent to deal with 
them. She did. She’s absolutely fine.”

“I was more worried about Trisha. Flying faster than light means that in 
a few minutes you could be millions of miles from Earth, and have 
trouble finding your way home. I suggested to Patrick that perhaps she 
needed specialist coaching, but he assured me that everything was in 
good hands,” Abigail said.

Morgana giggled. “Patrick, you must have been truly tactful in handling 
that.  I’m the specialist. The short form answer is that Jessamine 
Trishaset has true deep space navigation. She cannot get lost, up to 
local hazards that she can fly away from, anywhere in our universe. She 
knows exactly where home is.” Patrick swallowed deeply.

“You are the specialist?” Abigail asked. “But,then, I inherited 
grandmother O’Rigamy’s second sight. I saw what you had on the table, 
Morgana.  You are no mere hedge witch, are you? That was a full ritual 
casting.”

  “I think I’d better go back a step, Abigail, since you have absolutely 
no idea about my other public persona,” Morgana said. Abigail nodded.

“I try not to tell people this,” Morgana said. “The tenure committee 
agreed to a memory shield block, meaning that if anyone tried to read 
their minds about this, the block would use up the memory before the 
shield was worn through.  They could remember what I told them, but no 
one else could extract the information from them. I’d rather you agreed 
to the same, it being much for your own safety.” Abigail nodded. There 
were a few moments of silence.

“First of all, Trisha did need a specialist coach who was good at 
high-speed flight.  Trisha is a bit faster than some would think. To be 
precise, we did a timed flying run. Trisha is undoubtedly the fastest 
persona in the world, including any of the Lords of Eternity

“Second, notwithstanding that half of the grad students in my and 
several other departments have what is supposed to be a secret betting 
pool on which of them will be the first to seduce me, the woman who is 
obviously the youngest Professor at RTI,  I am not a young woman. I am 
much older than I look.   My persona name is not Sunsword.  It is Sun’s 
Sword, as translated from Heian epoch Japanese, because I was, once upon 
a time, the Golden Warrior, the Living Sword of the Sun Goddess 
Amaterasu. Some of my enemies made me out to be the Supreme Seductress 
in King Arthur’s Court,” Morgana said.