Chapter 20

Dan Granger:

I don't know if I can keep up. Ten months ago I walked out of my house in the aftermath of a hurricane and heard a cry from a collapsed building. I rescued a young girl.

It was like finding an undistinguished-looking egg and upon incubating it, finding that instead of a baby chick, it hatches a tiny dragon. Make that a cute, pleasantly-demeanored dragon, but a dragon none-the-less.

Lying together in the dim light of the moon streaming through our window, I mentioned my feelings.

"You're really worried about it?" she asked, her voice soft, caring.

"I do, little one. You're something rare beyond measurement. I've known a lot of people in my years, some of them very smart. Never met one like you."

"Yes you have."

"I haven't."

"CIndy," she said. "You've met Cindy. We're neck and neck in this thing, baby. Why are you worried?"

"I don't know if I can keep up," I said. "And I love you. Adore you."

"And I mirror your feelings, Dan love," she said. "Remember what I said? You're the first and the only? Forever? Are you not going to want me any more?"

I looked at her face. Her eyes were moist. Worried. "Oh, god, please, noooo, little one. Never. But you're running so far ahead of me..."

She pulled up and kissed me. "I'm not runnin' ahead." She sighed. "Baby, let's look at this the other way. Just suppose that I hadn't made that little jump. You'd still be back there and I'd be on summer vacation, waitin' to start the next school year. What would you worry about then? Me staying home while you went to work? Me running the roads with friends?"

"I admit..."

"So you got THIS instead. And I still adore you. Dude," she said, "You SAVED my life. Really. No metaphor. Now! What do I need to do to make you relax." She saw my eyes. She giggled. "Noooo! You're a beast. What do I need to do to ease your mind?"

"I dunno, baby," I said. "Every time I see you I realize that I hit the lottery. You're ... everything."

"So why can't you just relax and see how this all shakes out, huh? In two years it will be Mr. & Mrs. Granger, Engineers. And I can be very happy imagining that."

"I can, too, princess. Just sometimes it all hits me at once." I kissed her.

"You don't need to worry, Dan Granger. I am yours. All of me." Her hands were comforting me, caressing. She moved downward, found me half hard. Little squeal. "And right now, despite what your head is saying, this thing wants one part of me."

"See, you're wrong, little brown-haired girl," I said. "That thing wants you because my head wants all of you."

"If I, like, kiss you all over your face will you know that I love you?" Those blue eyes hovered under her bangs. She saw the motion of my eyes, knew what to do. Her head bobbed, shaking that head of thick brown hair. She knows me. Yes, she does.

"I will know you love me."

She kissed me. Withdrew. Gazed into my eyes. "And when the last light in the universe blinks out, and I'm still at your side, then maybe you'll believe it's forever."

"Okay, baby," I said. "I'm sorry. Sometimes the good is just too good to believe."

"It is, isn't it?" she smiled. "It's a good thing. You're a good thing. And if I turned out to be Albert Stinkin' Einstein hisownself I would still want my Dan."

"I love you."

"I know you do," she said. "Cindy and I were talking about how wonderful it is to each have our own Dan. It is wonderful. Baby, her Dan has some of the same feelings you do. And she loves him the way I love you. Y'all need to get a grip. I will never leave you nor forsake you. When I met you, you were the smartest man I ever met. And there's more to you than just being smart. You're good to me. To other people, too. I remember how you managed our study group. Even when Holly was hittin' on you, you let her down easy. You're good to people."

"You're no slouch, either, princess," I said. "And I am so in love with you."

"Good!" she giggled, kissing me. "Let's make love."

"More love? I'm drowning in love since I met you."

"And I hold in my hand the evidence that your mind is worrying about things your body cares nothing of." And she squeezed.

I moaned, was silenced in mid-moan by soft lips meeting mine, an agile tongue transmitting a tactile version of her smile. She pulled away. "I would like to be eaten, sir," she said. "And I fully intend to reciprocate." And that marked the ascent into an ecstasy that I'd never experienced until this one entered my life. Afterward, I was supine, savoring the ennui resulting from two hard orgasms in the past hour and a half. I had a tousled brown head laid on my shoulder, probably doing much the same, although she had four.

I felt her move upward and twist. I opened my eyes to gaze right into hers. "Never doubt me, Daniel Granger. It is only a convergence of two universes that put us together and I could never expect another. I'm yours forever."

"Okay, little girl. I want you forever. But pretty and smart, others will notice."

"Let 'em notice," she said. "Too many smart guys are weird, and until I met you I thought guys only have one thing on their tiny little minds."

"Tiny little minds," I repeated.

"Of course," she giggled, "Up until YOU, I didn't have a lot of close exposure to decent guys. An' the ones Mom brought home ... Lord!"

"I'm glad I qualify," I said.

"You more than qualify. And now I can compare you to other decent men, and you know, you still come out on top! You speak a language that only you and I understand. Sometimes it's words, sometimes it's a look, sometimes it's a touch." Kiss. "And when I'm away from you, I remember the conversations we've had in our private language."

"And Cindy's supposed to be the poetic one? That's beautiful?"

"Cindy doesn't write poetry. And what's beautiful?"

"The description of the way we communicate."

She smiled. "We do. I noticed that about the second or third day I lived with you. I can read your eyes, Dan. I can see you talking and between the words you speak and the eyes, I know exactly what you're saying and how you feel about it."

"You're dangerous," I said. "No wife should be able to read her husband that closely."

"And every husband should have a wife that adores him like I adore you." She giggled. "And I shall only use my powers for good, not evil."

Later that week she and I met with the professor who was herding Nikki through the engineering courses. "He wants to talk about credit for lab work," she said.

"I thought that thing about you and Cindy and the railgun research..."

"I think I'll be getting something for that," she said. "CIndy too."

"Lord," I said. "The future of the defense of this nation rests with a fourteen and fifteen year old."

"Don't be mean," she said. "Others are already working on it. The only reason we're involved is that we let the cat out of the bag about our own experiment. Now Susan wants a vertical mill and a metal lathe with thread-cutting gears."

That came out of the clear blue. "What?"

"Susan knows the basics of metal-working. That old guy at her dad's shop taught her stuff. And if we need special hardware, Susan says she can make it."

"Lord!" I said again.

"We looked. What she needs isn't that expensive. Her dad says he owes her a wedding gift anyway."

"What kind of child gets metal-working equipment for a wedding gift?"

"One who's knocking out the first year of college this summer."

"It's crazy."

"As crazy as the first time you saw Cindy in the pilot's seat? Or listened to me teaching calculus? Which kind of crazy? The kind where a forty-year old guy and a fifteen year old girl exchange vows in front of a judge? Or the fifteen year old girl graduates from high school?"

"You're right. You and the gang have redefined crazy."

The meeting with Professor Jeffrey was interesting. First, I never tire of people expressing amazement at my wife's intelligence.

"I thought that somehow she's managed to game the system," he said. "It happens." He looked at Nikki and smiled. "The system gamed Nikki. Not to mention the fact that I have TWO of them, her and Cindy. You know Cindy, right?"

"Oh yeah," I laughed.

He smiled. "Yeah, they both do that to me all the time. I've handled some gifted students in the past that made me want to sit on a white sheet in the central square and slice my belly open. Nikki ... she and Cindy let me go home shaking my head and smiling. I need to get my wife to meet them so she'll know I'm not finally going over the edge."

"Labs, though. They both need labs. You know, though, that a lot of students graduate and their lab work is, shall we say, indifferent."

"I have that experience. Not my own, but I know some..."

"Thought you would. But I talked with the guy who interviewed Nikki from our technology bunch. He said she could go to work as a network designer today. Lab. Don't need one. But I have to jump through some hoops, you understand. Has she told you about the railgun?"

"Which one, the one that she and Cindy are building? I just got half a bank of capacitors from an acquaintance at the utility company."

"We're gonna crush quarters, too," Nikki laughed. "Do you know what kind of mischief you can do with a few farads of high voltage capacitance?"

"Do you know how many graduates I will see this year that hardly remember that capacitors are measured in farads?"

"And embedded microprocessor controls," Nikki added.

Professor Jeffrey sighed. "She says you're a power engineer?"

"765 kV on down," I said.

"Look, it's gonna sound strange, but could you enroll Cindy as YOUR intern and have Cindy's husband enroll Nikki as his? And come up with something that will show them achieving some measure of competence within the field?" He sort of eyed me sideways. "I'm gonna have this talk tomorrow with Cindy and her husband."

"Look," I said, "since I married this girl, there has never been a time where she WASN'T learning. Baby, tell Professor Jeffrey about the modelling software we use."

"ETAP!" Nikki said. "Our license cost us almost thirty thousand dollars. I've done the dog work with it."

"Dog work?" he asked.

"Yes, you know, you get a stack of drawings, one-lines, for a facility, and then you have to build the model on the screen. Buses, breakers, cables, all those pieces. Somebody has to go in there and put the thing together then go back and for each component, enter the parameters."

"Transformer. What does a transformer need?"

And my doll told him.

"Golly, lady," he said. "What's a seventeen year old engineer gonna do?"

And she looked at him with those twinkly eyes that always melt my heart and said, "R&D."

"Undoubtedly," he said. "Mister Granger..."

"Dan, please. If she's Nikki, I can be Dan."

"And I'm Jeffrey. Nikki may have told you. My first name's really Rutherford, but I've been Jeffrey ever since I got away from home. Anyway, has she participated in any of the actual system studies?"

"Like building study cases? Weak source, strong source?" Nikki asked.

I think Jeffrey looked annoyed for a second. "Yes. Dan, if she had a double E right now, she'd be working, wouldn't she?"

"No," I said. "Federal regulations against child labor in hazardous locations will keep her out of most of my client facilities."