MISC: The Girl Who Saved The World 39

[George Phillies]

“Arthur’s England? You!” Abigail’s jaw dropped slightly.

“Now that you mention it, yes, me.   By the way, the historical claims 
that would have had me sleep my way through the Knights of the Round 
Table, not to mention all their squires and pages, are severely 
fictional. Those people didn’t bathe.” Morgana wrinkled her nose. “They 
had fleas. And lice.” She turned to her food, which began to disappear.

“Oh,” Abigail said.

“I’m not at all bothered that you thought I might not be up to coaching 
your children, since you had no idea who I am. To finish off the grades, 
Brian has a first rate set of screens, not to mention several plasma 
attacks that did a fine job on Lord Roxbury’s robots. If he were a 
grownup, he’d be welcome on the Sons of Boston, though that would be a 
waste of his time. I think his model building is a gift, but a very rare 
one. He’ll probably develop other gifts as he goes on, but he’s the type 
that develops a few things deeply rather than many things broadly, at 
least at first. Janie is an absolutely first-rate mentalist. Besides 
telepathy and screening, she is one of the few persona I know who can 
read machine minds. Very recently, she developed a mentalic attack, 
something extremely effective at killing things. I emphasize that she 
has a very well developed sense of gifttruth, so she is safe with the 
gift in question, but if she is driven to the point that she decides 
that she has to kill someone, they will almost certainly be very dead 
very quickly.

“Brian and Janie between them have an additional gift, perhaps because 
they’re almost identical twins,  because the random sort of chromosomes 
for fraternal twins managed to give them almost the same set of 
chromosomes, though obviously not quite the same, namely they can trade 
their gifts. They did. It was Janie using shields and plasma torch who 
took down the last of Lord Roxbury’s robots. As we’ve said, Trisha has 
ultrafast flight, deep space navigation, life support, meaning she can 
breathe for the people she’s carrying through space, this invisibility 
which she just mentioned, and telescopic vision. On a clear night, 
especially if she goes above the atmosphere, she views a fair number of 
stars as having obvious discs. And planets. She can also use this 
superspeed to do things very quickly. The driveway, for example.  Please 
keep in mind that superspeed passes normally for her.  She actually had 
to shovel your driveway of two feet of heavy  snow, one scoop at a time. 
Fortunately she is a fitness fanatic. I’m significantly impressed if 
this Joe, whoever he is, is actually any stronger than she is. The three 
of them have a couple of friends who are personae. They assure me that 
you have both met Silver Knight, in both of her personas, and you were 
briefly introduced to Cloud and Gold Knight. Those three are all 
gifttrue personae their age. Questions?”

“Has Trisha actually flown a very far at high-speed?” Patrick asked. 
“I’d hate to think she tried flying to Mars and ran out of steam part 
way there.”

“We were going to discuss this, because she had this really neat 
photograph she wants to show you, admittedly taken with one of my 
cameras, of the Milky Way galaxy.  The picture was taken from well to 
the Galactic South, so that you can see all of the spiral arms. That’s 
about 200,000 light years out from the Galactic center, which she 
covered in under half an hour, notwithstanding the need for acceleration 
and deceleration and being careful not to fly through anything large and 
solid along the way. Oh yes, she has the safe form of superspeed, so she 
isn’t getting any older if she spends a couple of subjective hours 
shoveling the driveway, the way she just did.”

“I did say,” Abigail said, “that we should respect my children’s privacy 
so long as they were not going to get into any trouble or do anything 
dangerous. From what you’re saying, Trisha is perfectly safe flying 
places, and my twins are safer with their gifts than they would’ve been 
without. What am I missing?”

“There was the issue I learned about yesterday, which is alarming but 
not dangerous, and there is the issue I learned about tonight, which may 
be dangerous. The alarming but not dangerous issue is that on rare 
occasion the Wizard of Mars invites people for tea. The   people are 
very well advised to go. That’s totally safe for the people involved, as 
opposed to visiting the Wizard of Mars and playing trade questions. 
Trading questions with the Wizard of Mars rates up there with flying to 
the center of the sun… as a suicidal act. For reasons I do not know and 
am not about to fly to Mars to ask, the Wizard of Mars has been inviting 
Trisha and Janie and sometimes Brian for tea. He asked them that they 
not tell everyone, because it would be dangerous to the whole world but 
not them, and they fortunately had the wisdom to honor his wishes. If I 
followed correctly, I hope, he indicated that they could tell their 
sensei and I could tell you. So far as I can tell, he has been asking 
them completely innocent questions, and telling them educational 
stories. I think he’s the reason Janie got over her issue with 
gifttruth. I would strongly urge you to rely on the Wizard of Mars 
having good intentions. He always has in the past. Also, the warning 
‘dangerous to the world’ should be taken extremely seriously. If someone 
had given the Lords of Eternity that warning, they would’ve had 
conniptions.”

“Before we go farther,” Abigail asked, “how is it that I’ve ended up 
with you sitting in my kitchen?  It would be like discovering that you 
are Solara in disguise. I’m not complaining. I’m truly grateful for what 
you do for my children, but the coincidences seem strained.”

“Why am I here?  Far before you reach my actual age, you realize that 
you want to live in Athens.  The most civilized, cultured, sensible 
place there is. In the tenth Century, that was Heian-kyo. At another 
time, Byzantium, Baghdad, and Cordoba were perhaps more civilized, but 
less welcoming to women. Once upon a time, it was the Leviorkianu 
Domain, and others it was Marik-on-the-Sea or Gaia Atlanticea. And now 
it is Cambridge, the American Athens. Why am I having dinner here? That 
returns us to the issue I learned about tonight.

“Joe. Janie mentioned she had a regular playing partner of that name, 
which is perfectly reasonable at her age. It’s a very common name. I 
didn’t connect with the persona who saved her a few years ago. I don’t 
think the geas -- the one I just removed -- would have misled me. I’m 
very good at spotting geases that try to bother me.  However, the Joe 
who plays Janie seems to have been very careful to make sure that I 
never met him. After all, I’m the only person other than your daughters 
who knows what Joe-the-Public-Persona looks like. Two years ago, no one 
else got a good look at him.  However, I would’ve innocently assumed 
that if Janie had run into the fellow who saved her, she would’ve talked 
about it. She did, except for not saying that they were the same person. 
Do Janie or Trisha ever talk about what happened to them, two years ago?”