Chapter 2

Tina's turn:

So I practically had to TIE Terri down. New sister in town, Kim, and Terri's curiosity hit its upper reaches. Terri in 'curiosity mode' is as much a handful as I want to deal with.

"You'll get plenty of time with Kim," I said.

"Are you even sure she's joining us?"

I laughed. "There was doubt until she saw YOU. Said all her life she wanted to live next door to a pTerri-dactyl."

"Now you're making fun of me," she said, feigning sadness.

"Not 'of you'. WITH you. Besides, don't you have some work to do with that paintball projector?" The squirrel denial system looks like a Pentagon project. The girls wanted to play with mobile platforms. Now we had a semi-autonomous tracked vehicle. It could roam the back yard, linked to the master computer by wi-fi, receiving targeting data, its own on-board computer providing the housekeeping for navigation.

Wasn't just the Terri-Rachel confluence. I had to practically tie my husband down to keep him from taking over. I understand my sisters had similar problems.

"Okay," Terri said. "It's not like I'm exactly bored. Rachel and I are working on a range modulation algorithm."

"Tell me what you're thinking."

"We don't want to KILL the squirrels. A paintball at standard velocity and close range would do that. One from across the yard won't. Rachel says we can do it like a blow-gun. Close range, we don't use full pressure."

"How are you controlling pressure? That little air tank is three thousand pounds."

Blonde head bounced. "Yeah. So we tap it into a low-pressure reservoir. Monitor pressure in the reservoir, and trigger that pressure to launch." She smiled. "The bot feeds its location to the master computer, the master computer ranges to the squirrel, a computation is made, the reservoir charges, and then we shoot."

"Won't the squirrel hear the air in the reservoir?"

"Freebie," Terri said. "After they learn to associate that sound with a whack on the heinie, they'll start taking off. It's not the ideal, but it's legal."

That's one event. The other happened on the steps of the engineering building on campus. I was ambushed by Bert.

"What's up?"

"I think I'm goin' crazy," he said. Bert was a frequent participant in community musical activities, playing fiddle with Kara. It went past that. The two of them were the unlikeliest of couples, he with a hillbilly country accent so thick you could almost cut it, her with a completely normal speech pattern only slightly softened by her Houston, Texas upbringing.

"You're not going crazy. I watch for crazy people. So what makes you say that?"

"Kara Sevinsky. I never had a girlfriend before."

"Kara's a good girl. She likes you. You could do a lot worse."

"I know. But I don't know what I'm doing."

"You're being a friend. That's why it's called 'girlFRIEND' and 'boyFRIEND'," I said.

"I thought I could handle that. But she ain't normal?"

"YOU aren't normal, either. Look around our group. NONE of us is normal."

"They's six million people in Houston. Why'd that one pop out and run over me?"

"Karma," I said.

"She makes me think THINGS..."

"I don't wanna know," I told him.

"No, not THAT stuff," he backpedalled, "things like how I'm supposed to explain to my people that I have a Jewish girlfriend."

"Is that a big deal? I had no idea..."

"I dunno myself," he admitted. "But it could be. And what's she gonna tell her dad? I met 'im. His precious daughter's gonna marry some Ozark ridgerunnin' hillbilly?"

"Are you two engaged?"

He shook his head. "No. This is hypothetical."

"Do another one, Bert. Hillbillies don't use 'hypothetical..."

He smiled that lopsided smile of his. I'm half a head taller than he is. So is Kara, for that matter. But that smile sort of puts a girl off her guard.

"I use it. Don't give me a hard time, Tina. I'm tryin' to have a serious conversation here."

"What's your uncle say?"

"Cousin brought back a bride from Korea when he was in the army. People accepted HER, and she's a whole lot more different than Kara. He says people are supposed to find their partners and worry about the fallout later."

"I sort of know some of that. I remember when I started talking to Alan's family. They thought HE was crazy but they accepted me right off."

"Uncle Amos told me that I was the first one in our family to go to college, and if they didn't accept Kara, then I never had to go back there and deal with, as he said, 'them unconscionable bastards'."

"That's what Alan said. But you really don't want to turn your back on family."

"I don't. I think Kara's dad would get over the shock."

"But you're not engaged."

"Hypotheticals, Tina. And we never HAD this conversation, okay?"

"Bert, just be careful. Neither of you has a lot of experience in relationships..."

"Uh ... I heard the same thing about you 'n' the rest of 'em. Cindy was fourteen when she got married. How many relationships do you think SHE had?"

"Just the one. And she's still into it."

"And probably will be when the universe implodes," he said. "I never saw anything like it."

"Nobody has. But mine's like that. So's Nikki's. Susan actually dated and stuff in high school."

"Susan's the most normal of the bunch," he laughed.

"I know it. We all know it."

"And she says you are all her enablers," Bert laughed.

"You're laughing. Feeling better?"

"Yeah," he replied. "Sometimes it's overwhelming."

"Just be friends," I said. "Let it be friendship. And if it progresses past that point, you'll be with somebody who's already your friend."

"She's kinda bossy, though," he said.

I knew that. Kara sort of took charge right about the third time they met. "I need somebody to go to this recital. Bert, you ought to take me." I thought Bert would've run, except she said it right in the middle of one of our gatherings, and Bert's a tough little guy in some ways.

"I haven't exactly seen you pull up short and tell her 'no' yet."

"It's happened," he replied. "Just not over anything big. That's part of the issue. She's smart. Makes good choices."

"Uh-huh," I giggled. "There! You said it yourself. YOU are one of her choices."

"How'd YOU know? I mean, you 'n' Alan?"

"It just appeared to me that this was the person who'd fit by my side forever."

"Good point," Bert said. "I keep thinking..."

"Gets you into trouble."

"Learnt that in grade school," he said. "Learned to keep my mouth shut and stay in the background, and even that wasn't enough for some people."

"Nikki and I had the same experiences. Maddie was on the other side of the fence on that deal. She changed. People can change."

"Yeah," he said. "Maddie's a good 'un, too."

"Nothing wrong with that, Bert. They can both be your friends. I'm your friend. But..."

"I get the feeling that Kara had other ideas."

"You two go everywhere together."

"We've gone out of town together overnight. She gets a room. I get a room." He gazed at me. "You know about it. Hanky-panky level zero."

"That's entirely possible. Before I decided that Alan and I were destined for each other, we spent several nights in hotel rooms together. He got HIS bed. I got mine."

"I didn't know that."

I smiled, remembering. "I was a rescue. I had no place to go. He offered to help. He was traveling to a job with that travel rig of his. We lived together in a travel trailer for weeks. NO hanky-panky there either. I even went out on a date once."

"See?!? I didn't know your story," Bert confided. By this time we were sitting on a bench, waiting for Cindy to show up.

"That's the truth. Weeks together in that trailer. He got me into high school. Got me a car so I could have a bit of my own life. And I decided that HE was supposed to be part of my life. Scared both of us almost to death, but here we are..."

"I didn't know your story," Bert said. "I know Cindy's, and Nikki's."

"Same hurricane that got Nikki set up with her Dan got me set up with my Alan."

"Sort of makes you think of that quote about an ill wind, huh?"

"Exactly," I said. I looked up, saw Cindy walking across the grass with a couple of other students. When she got close enough to hear, I said, "Stop talking about her. She's here."

"That one's soooo old and tired, you know," she said. "Hi, Bert. Where's Kara?"

"See!?!" Bert said. "I'm defined by Kara."

"Not hardly, young engineer," Cindy spoke, "I'm used to seeing the two of you together."

"She's talking with some math people this morning," he said. "I was waiting for her to get out. Got a chance to talk with Tina."

Cindy's eyes flashed a question. I know she'll ask later, so I dodged for now. "Are you gonna be back here after lunch?"

"Yeah," she says. "You have a one o'clock class anyway. I can bother people on the research project."

"How's that?"

"She keeps telling me that I need to stop teleconferencing and just GO to visit the people at the national laboratory."

"That's something I'd like to see. You're sixteen and you walk into a conference room at the National Laboratory and talk about DC pulse propagation." I gave that image a little time to develop. "So! When are you going?"

"I need to see what Dan can get away with. He makes money. I don't."

"I heard through the grapevine that they were going to change your status."

"I heard that myself, but I'm not holding my breath."

She let just the tiniest hint of smile escape. I jumped on it. "You DO know something!"

"I don't want to get ahead of the announcement. But yes ... there's something afoot. They don't know how they can legally put me on the payroll at my age, though."