MISC: The Girl Who Saved The World Part 20

George Phillies phillies at 4liberty.net
Sat Jan 2 19:28:14 PST 2016


The orange juice was wonderful.  Butter and currant jam did fine on the 
soda bread toast.  I remembered to pace myself on eating.  As the pangs 
of hunger faded, I started considering my to-do list for the next week. 
  “Heal” was at the top of the list. “Dye hair” was this afternoon. 
Eyelashes are a nuisance.  The Namestone was safe in its jar.  I wasn’t 
going near it until I was completely recovered.  It lurked behind a 
quarter-inch of impervium.  People looking for signs of my using it 
would be sorely disappointed.  My new bookcases were ready for mounting. 
  I’d finished painting them before I left.  Eventually  I would have to 
do barn work, a real nuisance while one-armed. Not today. The Healing 
matrix was emphatic on that.  The ponies would have to wait on being 
ridden.  Tomorrow I would curry-comb them and check their hooves. We 
have soft soil, and I do not ride on roads.  Not having to worry about 
horseshoes greatly simplifies my life.  The ponies still want to feel 
appreciated.  A few apples and some maple sugar would help.  I’d like to 
ride, but my ribs needed to recover first.  The barn cats had their 
automatic feeder, and good shelter for their nest.  I should pop the cat 
door behind the kitchen open.  Occasionally the cats do like to visit. 
They do not get to walk on my back while I’m sleeping, not until I am 
way better.  There was still reading, and lessons.  I can’t say I am 
behind, relative to my grade level, not hardly, and I am tougher on 
myself than Mum was.  I still have lots of reading I could do.

Now the League of Nations Secretary-General was on the video.  He was 
throwing three kinds of fit.  He was outraged.  I didn’t do what he told 
me to do.  There was a price on my head.  Two hundred tons of gold. 
Life loan of the Mona Lisa. A bunch of noble titles. I listened 
carefully to that one.  The Celestial Empire only gave titles to its own 
citizens.  Austria-Hungary was prominent for its complete absence. 
League artists had generated drawings and paintings of me.  The video 
signals from Atlantis actually showed me as a blur.

People saw sharp pictures of me, it seemed, because the Namestone had 
created illusions of what I look like, in front of every video screen in 
the world.  The news showed the drawings.  They made my hair 
gold-blonde.  I’m square-jawed, not pointy-tulip jawed. The garb looked 
impractical.  It was way too tight to move easily. Lots of girls, ten 
years older than I am, would happily kill to have the figure in the 
drawings. I’m much happier to be me.  How did the artists go that far 
wrong? Possibly Namestone showed them someone who was not me. That would 
explain why Valkyria was so confused.  She was looking for a hot babe, 
minimally dressed, in her mid-20s. She found me instead.  Not hot.  Not 
babe. Not vaguely mid-20s. Perfectly decently dressed.

Holmgren introduced his number-two man, the head of the League Peace 
Police. Mum had said this Dreikirch fellow was a Nationalist-Capitalist, 
someone barely fit to live.  His rant was even worse than Holmgren’s. 
Tonight the League had an emergency meeting to talk about me.  I could 
tell.  I wasn’t going to get their cheers and congratulations for 
solving the Maze.

I cleaned up after breakfast, and decided that it was time for another 
nap. I was alert, but physically exhausted. When I woke the sun was 
beyond the zenith, I felt much better, and I really wanted something to eat.



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