MISC: The Girl Who Saved the World Part 47

[George Phillies]

So you're immune to poison?  And you have a headache.  It's a shame 
aspirin is poisonous.



Chapter Eight
The Invisible  Fortress
Morning
January 13, 2018
I’d be even more delighted to say that on the third day I was fully 
recovered.  Not hardly.  Not with the amount of damage I’d taken.  The 
healing matrix was doing all it could, including prodding me to eat 
more, a request I was happy to honor.  At least all my teeth were in the 
right places. Regrowing teeth is really unpleasant.

However, it was day three after I left the Maze, so all the bruises were 
vigorously reminding me of their existence.  That’s what day three is 
like, the time of maximum discomfort. The matrix changes how fast you 
heal, but some matters remain the same. I felt like I had a really bad 
case of flu, something I only know because I can read other people’s minds.

I was sore, stiff despite morning exercises, and half-inclined to go 
back to sleep.  The worst part of being uncomfortable was that I could 
do very little about it.  Mind control on yourself is fine for averting 
severe pain, but awareness of all the discomfort is tied into the 
healing process.  It’s part of how the matrix knows part of what needs 
fixing.

The ungifted trick of aspirin and warm tea does not help.  After all, 
having a good set of gifts does mean you are mostly immune to being 
poisoned. I assume Mum was teasing when she told me not to try breathing 
nerve gas just to show that I could. I knew perfectly well that I could, 
but saw no reason to take a chance on it, if I didn’t have to. Immune to 
poisons, though, also means that drugs like aspirin and codeine don’t 
work on me, so minor aches and pains are something I have to live with. 
The chemicals in coffee are kind of at the edge.  Like I said, it’s a 
while until I discover if chocolate matches the fairy tales about it.

Breakfast was things that were not much work to cook. I finally 
remembered to turn on the television,and then very much wished I hadn’t. 
  There was the League Peace Executive in its chamber. The ambassadors 
weren’t screaming at each other,which made their words all the more 
frightening.  Half the Great Powers were promising to send personae to 
attack me, so soon as I was found, no matter where in the world I was at 
the time.  In particular, no matter if I were found inside the territory 
of another Great Power. The other half of the Great Powers were saying 
that if the personae of another Power showed up to attack me, in their 
territory, they would come to my defense. My vigorous and violent 
defense.  Discussion went downhill from there.

The video had a post-meeting interview with League Chancellor Holmgren. 
He was not in a good mood.   No, he was outraged.  I didn’t do what he 
said I should.  He’d put 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 gives titles to its 
own citizens.  Austria-Hungary was prominent for its complete absence.

I had assumed that people would be grateful that I had recovered the 
Namestone.  Instead, they were preparing to start wars over me. An 
argument about which approach should be used to execute me, the Aztecan 
god-feeding ceremony being discussed at some length as a closer, was a 
tiny bit dismaying. I am perfectly happy to believe that priests of 
Huitzilipochtili can flay someone alive without killing them, 
preparatory to frying them and then cutting their still-beating heart 
out, but I don’t need them to prove it by doing it to me.

I finished my breakfast, strongly considered putting some more 
pear-raisin compote in the microwave, and decided that I should check on 
my cats and horses first. I did that yesterday, mentalically, and I 
could tell from their minds that everything was fine. Everything, of 
course, except they missed having seen me. I rinsed everything and 
dropped it into the dishwasher.

I felt awful, but Medico said I should stop whining, that exercise would 
be good for me. At the back closet I changed into my barn-cleaning 
clothes. Bending over to slip on my heavy outdoor socks and sneakers 
reminded me of some of my bruises. It reminded me a lot.  However, I 
wore black sneakers. No girl in America would be caught dead in black 
sneakers. White sneakers? That was totally different. Sometimes I don’t 
quite understand that sort of thinking. Actually, almost all the time I 
don’t understand that sort of thinking. I slipped into my heavy, loose 
windbreaker, my right arm complaining loudly even though I was very 
careful, and dropped into a paper bag four apples, two big chunks of 
maple sugar, and some cat treats.  It was cold enough I could pull up 
the hood on the windbreaker without looking suspicious. That was enough 
to hide my hair.

The barn was two hundred yards from my house. I did it at a slow walk. 
The realtor had apologized profusely to the person he thought was my 
mother for the bad layout. He was actually speaking to me. Fortunately, 
I’m in a state where lawyers never got involved in conveyancing. When it 
came time for everyone to sign the papers, the title insurance people 
confirmed the past owner had signed, they thought they witnessed my 
mother signing, and we were done. I signed.  I paid for it, after all. 
It’s truly wonderful how putting down the cash in advance, a good chunk 
in silver cartwheels and gold thalers, makes people agreeable, 
especially when you offered a bit more than the asking price. Not too 
much more, not enough to make anyone suspicious, just enough that you 
could say “I really want your house. And I wouldn’t dream of 
interrupting your vacation on Pago Pago. The embassy can witness your 
signing, and the people here can witness mine.” Everyone was happy, 
especially after I paid the closing costs.

There had been a time, right after mom threw me out of the house, when I 
was panicked about where I would get money. Fortunately I already had 
another persona ready. Pointelisme flew, teleported, was very good at 
long-range telepathy, had extremely solid force fields, and was very 
good with tools, just like me.  After all, she is me. Close-in solar 
observatories run into technical problems, but very few persona are 
comfortable flying into the solar corona to fix them. The people who 
hired me could tell I was completely comfortable with viewing the sun at 
a million miles. I did not mention that I was completely comfortable 
because three months ago Mum and I had flown to the core of the sun just 
to see what was there. I got to use ultravision to look at the solar 
deep structures. Yes, I have a real headache afterward, but I can use 
ultravision. Notwithstanding the dozen past technical human 
civilizations that have studied them, people really do not understand 
what the solar core structures are, other than that  they are highly 
regular, huge, not made of physical matter, and gradually change in time.

A reasonable solar observatory costs five billion dollars to construct, 
another billion dollars to get into low solar orbit even with persona 
help, and tends to break down. The people who hired me were delighted to 
pay a large sum of money in cash, provide me with the tools, and walk me 
through everything I would need to do. Pointelisme’s garb is opaque 
everywhere, not to mention not vaguely formfitting. They had no idea who 
I am. Everything worked almost perfectly, except half the bolts were 
seriously stuck. It is truly wonderful what telekinesis can do to 
amplify the torque your screwdriver is applying, in a way which 
absolutely for sure will not damage the head of the screw. I switched 
out bad modules for good modules, looked carefully at everything to see 
if anything else was going wrong – rather I looked carefully and the 
three people watching through my eyes checked if anything else was going 
wrong – and came back to earth. I now have in my subbasement an 
extremely large amount of cold cash. Cartwheels and gold thalers are so 
much better than bank transfers or paper money. If you are careful to 
heat treat them, there is absolutely no way they can be traced, which is 
why vast numbers of people insist on using them.

It was a perfectly respectable walk out to the barn, and would’ve been 
considerably more of a walk if we had had a half-foot of snow. I say 
‘barn’ but the lower level is a three-and-a-fraction-sided shelter, 
while the top level is enclosed.  The land is low enough that we do not 
get snow very often, never more than a half foot, and besides snow 
shoveling is superb exercise. Snow does mean that the horses prefer that 
I feed them.  I spotted my Appaloosas in the lower pasture grazing. That 
pasture had gone to seed in the fall, so they would have had plenty to 
eat, even if there had been two feet of snow on the ground.