Chapter 11

Captain Nathan Jones sat at the table, exhausted from making the trip from the dorm to the dining room. After a week in the infirmary, they had given him a portable parallel walker. The next week, they had moved him to a first year dorm room that he shared with three naked roommates, a man and two women.

At Bethesda, he wouldn’t have been forced into such an active life without months of physical therapy. There were times when he wondered why he had accepted to be transferred here. Of course, it had been the female Druid with the artificial leg that had convinced him. She functioned as though her artificial leg was just part of her.

So far, this entire ordeal had been tougher than boot camp. At least in boot camp, normal rules of society applied. Men bunked together and were separate from women. You didn’t wake up in the morning to find your roommates having sex with each other. You didn’t have people having sex in public. Here it was a free-for-all. The fact of the matter was, he was horny.

One of the Carter kids entered the room and spotted him. He shivered at the sight of the youngest boy. The kid was weird, too weird for his taste. The boy seemed to know things that he shouldn’t. He put his neutral face on, the one he used when dealing with people who were too powerful or too criminal to allow them to know your real opinion.

Without waiting for an invitation, William sat down at the table and said, “I see by the careful expression on your face that I make you nervous, don’t I?”

‘Screw the neutral face approach, ‘ thought the solder as he answered, “A little.”

“I’d say a lot. It would probably be easier for you to imagine me as a thirty year old midget rather than a little boy,” commented William.

“How come you aren’t naked?” asked Nathan.

William shrugged, stood up, and then pulled off his blue robe. Returning to his seat, he asked, “Are you more comfortable now?”

The man stared at the boy sitting in front of him. He noticed the two scars that crossed his chest. He asked, “What’s with the scars?”

William looked down at his chest and then answered, “I cut myself in grief when my grandfather, William Redman, died.”

The soldier sat back and stared at the boy unable to believe that he had cut himself in that fashion. He knew that his father had died a couple months ago, but the boy didn’t seem to have the kind of grief that would motivate him to cut himself over his father. He asked, “Why didn’t you do that when John Carter died?”

“You’re really asking why didn’t I grieve the same way when Daddy John died,” restated William thoughtfully. A full minute passed before he answered. “No one has ever asked me that. I shall have to think about it.”

William was actually surprised that someone had asked a question about himself that he had never considered. He thought about his father’s death for a moment and his reaction to it. The Gods and Goddesses had taken his father. He wondered if it was a difference between the two cultures at play within him. His Native American side grieved in a very different manner than his Druid side.

Nathan had watched William think about his question and realized that the young boy really did think things through. He apologized, “Sorry, I was just curious.”

“There was nothing in your question to apologize for. I find it interesting that I don’t have an answer. So how are you settling in here?” asked William changing the topic.

“I haven’t figured out all of the rules here,” answered Nathan.

“There are only two rules,” replied the young boy with a grin. He knew that first years had a hard time understanding the full implications of the rules. It wasn’t a surprise to him that Nathan was having a difficult time after only a week.

“Right. Protect the weak from the strong. If it harms none, then do it.”

“See, you know all the rules,” replied William with a wink letting the other know that he understood that the rules were much harder to understand than to spout.

“You’re probably the wrong one to ask, but I was curious why the first years are not allowed clothes,” asked Nathan.

“It’s part of protecting the weak from the strong,” answered William. He had thought about that question a lot in his time at the school and had identified a reason for it. His father had set up the program in the college, but had never explained his reasons for some of the rules to anyone. He wasn’t sure if the reasons that he had come up with were the same as the reasons why his father had done it.

“Why?”

“People are at their most vulnerable when they are naked. The students here are invulnerable to that problem after the end of the first year. The experiences of this year can protect them when all others are weak. It also helps teach them the full implications of the first rule. The crowding, the loss of privacy, and the nudity make violating the first rule almost automatic. The first years can’t learn the rule deep inside them where it counts, without this environment. The environment is enforced to protect them, even if it hurts a little at first.”

Nathan sat back and thought about boot camp. Close order drills, close-cropped haircuts, and Drill Sergeants screaming in the faces of new recruits served many of the same purposes. It was all part of taking a bunch of civilians and molding them into soldiers. He could understand that and it allowed him to better understand what was going on here.

“I guess I can accept that for now. I’ll need to think about it some more, though.”

William sat there for a moment and then said, “Momma Ling says that you walk like the Frankenstein Monster.”

“What?” asked Nathan taken by surprise. The children had accepted his injury without a second thought and to hear William talk about how he walked was very out of character.

“She says that you need training in the martial arts and wants to start your training next week. I agree that you should start your training next week, but my reasons why I think so are totally different from hers.”

“And what are your reasons?”

“The second rule. To protect the weak from the strong.”

“Are you saying that I’m weak?” asked Nathan surprised by the young man’s mention of the rule. He wondered if the kid knew that he had killed more than one person bare-handed.

William stood up and picked up his clothes before he answered, “There are two voices at war within you. The strong one thinks that you are less than you were. The weak one believes that you can emerge from this better than you were. I think we need to help the weak voice win.”

Nathan watched William walk away as though he had just made a passing comment on the ability of birds to fly. The boy paused and put on his robe before leaving the dining room. The kid was weird, definitely weird. Despite the strangeness, he found that he liked him a lot.

Ed, Kelly, and Linda arrived at the table and sat down without asking for permission. Linda said, “I see you were talking with William.”

“Yes. He’s a very unusual child.”

Ed laughed at the understatement while Kelly shrugged her shoulders. Although she had heard that a lot, Linda answered, “People keep telling me that, but all I see is my baby boy.”

“Ling is going to start your martial arts training next week,” commented Ed.

“I know. William told me,” replied Nathan wondering what was the big deal about having Ling train him. He’d had advanced martial arts training in the special forces and felt that he could probably teach her a thing or two. At least, he could have when he still had his leg. He knew that she had pulled him out of the bed and into the wheelchair that first night with relative ease, but he hadn’t been expecting it.

Ling arrived at the table and saw that there were not enough chairs for all of them. She sat down at the next table and said, “Betsy and Leroy will be here in a few minutes. I tell you, that girl is about to wear me out. I’ll be glad when I start training the good Captain there. It’ll give me an excuse to put her through two training sessions a day.”

Captain Jones asked, “Are you telling me that you’re training that little girl in martial arts?”

“Yes,” answered Ling, “I am training her. I have no doubts that if she had the strength required that she could take you in a fight on your best day.”

He recalled the short-lived temper tantrum where Betsy complained about not getting to throw him into the wheelchair. It made him wonder if she could have done it. That was a scary thought. Ed watched the expressions on Nathan’s face change as he thought through what Ling had said.

After a minute, Nathan said, “All of your kids are a little scary.”

The comment caused Ed to laugh uncontrollably. It was perhaps the most accurate assessment of the Carter kids he had heard in ages. At the school it appeared to him that the students got used to the kids after their first week of exposure. He didn’t know why the students were so accepting of the kids, but they were.

Ling said, “You had better be done with your walker before next week. It will be rather difficult to train without it if you can’t even stand up on your own.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” complained Nathan. He was just at the point where he could make any kind of distance without having to stop and rest.

Shaking her head, Kelly said, “She never kids when it comes to martial arts training.”

Betsy tore into the room followed by a puffing Leroy. He collapsed into the chair and said, “I give up. We’ve got to find a better solution than trying to keep up with her.”

Ed asked, “Ling, can she take care of herself against the typical attacker?”

“Of course, she’s been trained by me and she’s faster than lightening,” answered Ling with more than a little pride. Her daughter had the required skills and the strength to take advantage of all the weak points of an adult body. It didn’t take much strength to attack the knees, groin, and instep at ground level. Any adult that actually picked up the girl would find that she knew how to attack the neck and chest in a manner to cause significant damage.

“Select areas where she can go and places for her to avoid. Strap a walkie-talkie to her in addition to your tracker and let her go,” said Ed.

The three wives all looked at Ed as if he were crazy. Leroy immediately understood what Ed was saying. Nodding his approval, he said, “That’s not a bad idea, Ed.”

“She’s a little girl. You can’t let her run wild. She has to be supervised at all times,” countered Ling.

Winking at Leroy, Ed asked, “So where is she?”

The wives looked around in search of the little girl. Ling started swearing in Chinese when she couldn’t find her. Fishing out her tracking device, she saw that the pointer indicated that she was across the dining room. Looking over there, she spotted Betsy standing under a potted plant talking to a couple of students. Ling grunted, “Point taken.”

Upon hearing Nathan groan, Ed looked up from the folders that he was examining. With an exhausted expression on his face, the military man settled into one of the chairs at the table. Ed smiled at the obvious exhaustion as he asked, “So how was it?”

“She’s good. I’ll give her that,” replied the soldier. He had never had anyone push him to his limits with the unerring accuracy with which Ling had identified them. Every movement that she required him to make was performed in slow motion. Moving as slow as she insisted was far harder than he could have imagined.

“Yes, she is,” remarked Ed with a smile. The poor captain had suffered through two weeks in this environment and was only now starting to relax.

“I have no idea how many times I fell over.”

The Captain understood why everyone had taken the opportunity to warn him about getting trained by Ling. She gave no quarter to weakness and forced him to face it head on. During those infrequent moments when he was ready to quit, she was in his face getting that last little bit of effort out of him. She didn’t accept excuses. Can’t balance with the fake leg? Big deal, he’d better learn how and do it now. He had thought the therapists at Bethesda were tough. Come to think of it, he had thought that training in the special forces was hard.

Ed interrupted his thoughts when he said, “I need you to look over the plans for my Halloween Haunted House this afternoon.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re my aide now,” replied Ed looking at the young man.

“A Halloween Haunted House? It’s the middle of March.”

Ed nodded and said, “Yes. It will take about three months to get contractors lined up to build it. Another two months or so to get it built, a month to move it out to Arizona, and then a week to get it set up. We’ve got to double-check the concept and engineering now.”

“You want me to examine the plans for a Halloween Haunted House?” asked the soldier, still not sure that he had understood what Ed had requested him to do.

“Yes,” replied Ed knowing that it was probably the last thing that the special forces man expected to be asked to do. That was why he had selected that particular task for him.

“I don’t know anything about Haunted Houses.”

Nodding his understanding, Ed said, “It’s time for you to learn. The plans are over there.”

Nathan picked up a stack of rolled up papers wondering what he was supposed to do with them. Uneasy, he stood up and left the table thinking that he would show them to Beth since she appeared interested in buildings. As he hobbled away, Ed called out, “Don’t show them to the kids. They aren’t allowed to see the plans until after Halloween.”