Chapter 10

I sent an inquiry to Oscar Menendez on the net as soon as I got up Monday morning, requesting permission to call him. I got permission almost immediately, but had to wait until lunchtime at school before I did. The call went straight to him, not to a secretary.

"Skye, this is Oscar Menendez, how are you doing?"

"I'm doing well sir, thanks for agreeing to speak to me."

"Please, call me Oscar, or even Uncle Oscar. I would hardly be able to believe that Andy McKesson is a grandfather now if the same thing hadn't happened to me too," I laughed at that, more at the way he said it than the words themselves.

"Okay Uncle Oscar."

"Now, Cor tells me you are interested in gravitics, is that true?"

"Now I know why you accepted my request so quickly," I teased.

"Well, none of us gravy geeks could ever deny her anything. Still can't."

"I'm more interested in the kind of grav units the grav suits and the emergency pods in hang gliders and rock climbing belts use," I began.

"I see, are you getting into those sports?"

"I've been rock climbing for a while now, and just had my first tandem ride in a hang glider this past Saturday."

"Did you like it?"

"Yes and no."

"Which brings you to me?"

"Yes, but I'm probably just using my family connections to avoid a few hours of boring research on the net. I could probably find out what I need to know there."

"Family connections can be a good thing, and they need to be used to remain strong. Besides, I'm more of a figurehead around here these days anyway. They let me play with the R&D department a little, and I let them trot me out whenever there's a speech to be given or a golden shovel ceremony somewhere needing the old school touch. So, in other words, my time is yours."

"Thank you, and I'll remember what you said about connections," I said with a chuckle. "I've been told I'm a bit headstrong, and tend to forge on ahead without considering those sort of things."

"A McKesson? Headstrong? Imagine that..." He grinned as he let that thought die at the end of the sentence.

As with Grandma Cor and the wizard Trellis, 'Uncle' Oscar gladly answered my questions and pointed me where I needed to go to find the resources I should need later. I thanked him for his time, and his warm welcome and promised that if and when my curiosity resulted in something, he'd be one of the first I'd share it with.

I got in a little trouble when I got back, having 'stayed out' past my bedtime, but a quick check of where I'd been, and with who, got most of that eased up. Still, Melissa was not pleased and I was informed I was officially 'on thin ice'.

Spring brought a renewed interest in dancing, it seemed. We had three dances in six weeks, including the annual Arbor Day dance, which I secretly found amusing. I was briefly tempted to wear my old clothes from home to that dance, but Teddy would have had a heart attack. As it was, the closer the school year came to ending, the more agitated she became. I was beginning to wonder if she could survive another summers apart, let alone my leaving forever once I graduated. Our last few days together at the end of the year were not pretty. Yet another thing to dwell on during my summer away from Angels Camp.

Two years at Bret Hart high, and I had a perfect GPA, had officially lettered in Cross-Country for the second year, and Teddy and I were officially recognized as 'the couple' in our class. It seemed that without really trying I had managed a notable high school career to this point.

Leaving school the last day of my sophomore year, I should have been feeling triumphant, with plans to enjoy the summer and return in the fall to pick up where I'd left off. But Teddy was an emotional wreck. I was already thinking of where I would be tomorrow, and what I would do, and I was prepared to do anything that didn't involve thinking about Teddy.

During the course of the school year I managed to talk again to Oscar Menendez several times. He encouraged me to pursue whatever it was that I was thinking about, and suggested I stay in Grandma and Grandpa's old place in Somerville while I was doing my research. It was still in the family, and used frequently by those close to the family who had reason to be in the Boston area.

The only problem I had with Somerville and the Boston area in general, was the lack of places to go climbing. There were those awful recreational 'rock wall' places that gave you fifty feet or so of pure vertical climbing space, all decked out with an overwhelming number of hand and footholds, but they were no fun at all, so I fell back on the old family standby and went running every morning to get my exercise.

I enjoyed my month in Somerville. I spent my days at MIT, going through the archives in the gravity sciences library. I had a lot of alumni eager to intervene for me, so I pretty much had the run of the entire gravitics school, outside of the actual labs of course. Even all the McKesson pull in the world wasn't going to get a fifteen year old girl into a room with a bare fusion reactor and unshielded gravity generator. I spent my evenings visiting Oscar Menendez and people like him. People who had been friends of my grandparents back in the early days of gravitics on Earth. That included spending time with their grandchildren as well, some of whom were close to my own age. Meanwhile, apart from the socializing and the 'Andy & Cor anecdote' sessions, the library had the facts of what I wanted, in combination with what I'd learned from Oscar and from the material he gave me access to at First Guardian, so I spent most of my time there.

I had the meat and bones of my idea by this time, and now all I needed were the brains to tie it all together. For that, I thought I should try to contact Howard Dexter or Tony Gaines, two of the men who had been members of the original Mars Expedition along with Grandpa Andy, and two of the best and first programmers for the Amorphous Nano Substrate Computer systems developed by members of the expedition. Neither of them were actively programming in the field any longer, both having retired, but Howard put me in touch with his sister-in-law Jerri Kimble, who was married to his youngest brother Ryan. Jerri was teaching at Boston College, and she thought it a brilliant idea to have me talk to her son Chris, who was a very good programmer himself, for a high school junior, and very current in the latest programming trends and techniques.