Chapter 9

The squick of a white board marker flying across the white board filled the air. William looked up and watched Lucy work through the equations on the board; her hand moving at almost a blur. She stepped back for a second and then dived in for another round of simplifications. Her hips swung from side to side as she worked her magic on the mathematics. With her entire body participating, her long hair started swaying in a most seductive manner. William was entranced.

Frowning, Lucy stepped back from the board and said, "Hmm, I'm going to have to think about this some more."

"What are you trying to do?" William asked.

"I'm trying to find a transformation that simplifies that collection of equations you call a theory," Lucy said tapping her lower lip with her index finger.

Shaking his head, he said, "It doesn't look any simpler to me."

"Of course not! I haven't found the right transformation yet," Lucy said giving him a dirty look.

"Hey don't get made at me," William said holding up his hands palm out towards Lucy.

"I can't work miracles with the mess," Lucy said.

"That's okay," William said.

"It's going to take some time to find the right one."

"Great," William said with a smile.

The smile caught Lucy's attention. She frowned trying to figure out why he was smiling. When nothing came to mind, she asked, "Why is that great?"

"I like watching you work," William answered.

Lucy rolled her eyes and turned back to face the whiteboard. She said, "Well, I'm going to busy here for a while."

"Okay," William said sitting back in his chair. He folded his arms across his chest and watched Lucy return to work.

"She's here," Barbara said from the door of William's office.

"Who's here?" William asked.

"The woman interviewing to be your research assistant," Barbara answered still not used to having to tell William what was happening.

"I'll get Lucy and we'll meet you in the conference room," William said.

Hoping that he wouldn't get upset, Barbara said, "She's already in the conference room. We're waiting for you."

William saved his document and watched the screen of his computer. The little icon signifying that it was working flashed on the screen. The seconds ticked by while he waited for the icon to disappear. About the time he had become convinced that the program was stuck in some sort of infinite loop, it went away and he relaxed. Looking over at the door, he asked, "Why does it seem to take forever to save my files?"

"How big is it?"

"Only two hundred pages," William answered. The program he was using to write his book had become increasing slower with each page of text that he had added. It seemed to him that another dozen pages and the program would become unusable.

"It can't handle documents that big. You need to get a better word processor," Barbara said with a frown.

"What do you mean? Everyone uses this word processor," William said.

"Well, I hate to tell you this, but it isn't a very good one. It's meant for small reports, short papers, and letters. It isn't intended to produce books," Barbara said.

"That's stupid," William said. He held up a book produced by the company that wrote the word processor and said, "Their book is more than two hundred pages in length."

"They don't use their product to produce their books," Barbara replied with a smile.

"Remind me to remove the CEO from that company," William said throwing the book onto the table in disgust.

"I don't think that will be possible. He's the one who started it."

"Alright. I guess I have to find a new program to use while I write my book," William said. He decided that he would break his book into individual chapters instead of trying to do it all within a single file. It would make it more difficult to search for text, generate indexes, and to create a table of contents.

Barbara said, "That'll be the first thing that your new research assistant can do for you. She can find a better word processor and then import your book files into it."

"Well, we better hire her soon because I can't tolerate more delays," William said standing up. Looking at Barbara, he said, "I'm sure that I don't even need to interview her. I'm positive that she'll be outstanding. You've never let me down."

"The last one was a Chinese spy," Barbara said.

"So what? The CIA hasn't verified what Daddy Ed discovered. There's no way that you could have discovered that all by yourself."

"Well, I'm sure that Vera isn't a spy for the Chinese government."

"Why?"

"She's not Chinese," Barbara answered. She wasn't going to mention that her mother had known the Vera's mother. She smiled and led the way to the conference room.

The page he had been editing the day before now looked like a page out of a book. The difference was almost as striking as night and day. Surprised, he said, "Wow, this looks like a real book."

"It's a typesetting program that is used by a number of publishers. You can control everything about the way each page is laid out," Vera said. Her fingers ran across the keyboard with practiced ease. She was still breaking the huge file into chapters for the new program.

William watched Vera work. After hiring her, she had immediately gone out and purchased a program at one of the office supply places that carried high-end software. That morning, she had installed it and started importing his file into the program. After just a few hours, she had his manuscript looking like a million dollars.

"Won't it be difficult to write the material when I have to worry about how to format the page?"

"You don't have to format each page until you are done with the first draft. I just did that on the first couple of chapters to see what it would look like," Vera answered looking up at him. She turned back to the screen and looked at the figure. Frowning, she said, "You're going to have to get those figures done professionally. I'm sure that we can pick up a graphic artist who will take your hand drawn pictures and turn out publication quality images."

"I guess I need to talk to Barbara," William said.

"I'll handle that," Vera said. She pushed her chair away from the desk and said, "You can get to work now. I'll load the early files and start formatting the chapters you have finished."

"Won't my working on this interfere with you?" William asked.

"No. This program has version control built into it. We can't edit the same file at the same time, but I can work on one of them while you are working on another," Vera answered.

Lucy turned around from the whiteboard and watched Vera. The two women were a study in contrasts despite being the same height. Vera was extremely skinny with short black hair. Lucy was softer with long brown hair that was nearly to the middle of her back. Vera's movements were sharp, almost staccato in their tempo. Lucy's movements were graceful and flowing. Perhaps as a result of those differences, Lucy found that she liked Vera.

Lucy recognized that Vera confused William. The woman had never smiled at him; not even during the interview. The expression on her face when dealing with him was always very serious and business-like. She watched the puzzled expression on his face as he watched Vera leave the room.

"She's good."

"I suppose so," William said shaking his head. He wondered if he was going to be able to work with her.

"You know she's good."

"Okay. She's just not very friendly," William said turning to look at Lucy. The smile on her face was a startling contrast to Vera's typical expression.

The Hugger kicked up a plume of dust as it traveled down the dirt road. Ken looked over at William and said, "I imagine that you're wondering why we are going this way. We put up a cattle guard between your place and the reservation. It cuts almost twenty minutes off the drive to the school."

"Why did we put up a cattle guard?" William asked wondering when he had lost track of what was happening on his place.

"With so many of the men who work on the ranch living on the reservation we thought it would be a good idea. It cuts the commute time significantly for many of the men. It's really nice with Tim going to school on the reservation," Ken said.

"How long does it take to get him to school?" William asked. He hadn't even given any thought to that.

"Forty minutes," Ken answered.

William realized that he should have known that since they had left an hour before he was supposed to be in the classroom. He asked, "So you are spending almost three hours a day taking him to school and then picking him up?"

"No. He drives himself to school," Ken answered with a grin.

"Isn't he too young?"

"This is private property and the school is on reservation land. The reservation decided that kids could drive so long as they avoided roads with real traffic. He's only allowed to drive on your place and the dirt roads on the reservation. He can't drive on regular roads," Ken answered.

"That's good thinking."

"It wasn't our idea. When we enrolled him in the school, the administrator there suggested it. It seems that a lot of the kids on the reservation do the same thing. Most of them live thirty minutes to an hour away from the school. He took a driving course at the school over the summer and got a permit that is valid only on the reservation," Ken said.

"I wasn't aware that they did that. In fact, I wasn't aware that they could even do that," William said. He imagined that it would allow a lot of the kids to make it to school that would have had difficulties in other circumstances.

"They've been renegotiating some of the freedoms on the reservation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They've decided that some of the protections that have been placed on the young are preventing them from maturing. As a result, they relaxed some of those limitations and are forcing the kids to accept a little responsibility for their actions."

"How do you feel about that?" William asked. He could imagine that Lisa would be pretty upset if something bad happened to Tim.

"I like it. He's doing stuff that I did as a kid growing up. Back in Pennsylvania he wouldn't be able to do a lot of things for a couple of years."

"Like what?" William asked.

"Well, like driving. They upped the minimum driving age from sixteen to seventeen after I got my regular driver's license. A lot of us who grew up in the country had agricultural licenses that allowed us to drive at fourteen. We could drive farm equipment on roads, including trucks. That didn't mean that we were out racing or anything like that, but we could drive a tractor or a truck loaded down with hay. There were also hardship licenses that allowed a person who was fifteen to drive to home, school, work, and the store.