Part 18 (1/2)
Reports had to be filed, careers had to be restarted. After all, it was not exactly common for a professional soldier to disappear on a tenyear mission, and such an absence had to be explained to the various bureaucracies. Backdated promotions, for instance, were given to all of them.
Naturally, this disbanding of the team had an effect on Lily, for that team of soldiers was the closest thing to family she had ever known.
She felt like Frodo at the end of her favorite book,The Lord of the Rings. Having completed a huge Earthchanging mission, now they all had to return to normal life-and how could life ever satisfy someone who had partic.i.p.ated in such an adventure. Worse, how did you deal withordinary people who didn't-couldn't-know of the great deeds you'd done on their behalf.
Fortunately, the team came to visit her and Jack at the farm often and once she got her own cell phone-a big day-Lily kept in touch with them by SMS. And of course, whenever it could be arranged, she went to visit them: seeing Pooh Bear in Dubai, Fuzzy in Jamaica, Wizard all over the place, and Zoe in Ireland.
Zoe.
Lily's favorite times, of course, were Zoe's visits to Australia. But at first this had been difficult, since an insensitive lieutenant colonel in the Irish Army-ignorant of the heroic role she had played in the Seven Wonders mission-had insisted she retrain and be regraded in the Sciathan Fhianoglach an Airm.
Ordinary people, Lily sighed. Urgh.
Naturally, Jack was aware of this. Indeed, sometimes he felt the same way himself.
The solution was simple.
They had to find new challenges to occupy them.
Which was OK for him, Lily thought, as Wizard would often send him queries and conundrums via email. Things like: ”Jack, can you look up the Neetha Tribe for me, from the Congo?” Or: ”Can you get an authoritative translation of Aristotle's Riddles?” Or: ”Can you find out the names of all the BirdMen of Easter Island?”
But then, just when she had been at a loss for interesting challenges, Jack had provided Lily with a startling new one that she had not been prepared for: School.
Since schools were kind of hard to come by in the northern deserts of Australia, Lily was sent to a prestigious boarding school for gifted children in Perth.
But prestigious or not, kids are kids, and for a little girl who had grown up as an only child among crack troops on an isolated farm in Kenya, school proved to be a confusing and tough experience.
Of course, Jack had known this would be the case-but he also knew that it was necessary.
Just how tough it had been, however, became clear at his first parentteacher meeting.
Dressed in jeans and a jacket that concealed his muscular physique and work gloves that hid his artificial left hand, Jack West Jr.-commando, adventurer, and owner of two master's degrees in ancient history-sat in a low plastic chair at a tiny plastic desk in front of Lily's personal guidance counselor, a bespectacled woman named Brooke. A ”guidance counselor,” Jack was told, was simply a teacher a.s.signed to monitor Lily's overall progress at school.
Brooke's long list of comments made Jack smile behind his concerned exterior: ”Lily has been embarra.s.sing her Latin teacher in cla.s.s. Correcting her in front of the other students.”
”She's scoring excellently in all her subjects, averaging over ninety percent, but I get the feeling that she can do better. She seems only to be doing what is necessary to get a tick, not what she is truly capable of. Our syllabus is the most advanced in the country, yet she seems, well, bored.”
”She's very choosy when it comes to friends. She hangs out with Alby Calvin, which is great, but from what I've seen she appears to have no female friends at all.”
”Oh, and she made young Tyson Bradley cry by bending his wrist backward with a strange grip. The school nurse says she almost broke his arm.”
Jack knew about that one.
Young Tyson Bradley was a little ratb.a.s.t.a.r.d and gardenvariety bully, and one day he'd tried to bully Alby into giving up his lunch money.
Lily had intervened, and when Tyson had reached out for her throat, she had grabbed his wrist and twisted it inside out, forcing Tyson to his knees, almost breaking his wrist- exactly as West had trained her to do.
Young Tyson had not bothered Alby or Lily again.
It was at that parent teacher night that West had first met Alby's mother, Lois Calvin.
A sweet, timid woman from America, she was living in Perth with her mining executive husband. Anxious and nervous, she worried constantly about her gifted son.
”That awful sportsmaster just terrorizes him,” she complained to Jack over coffee. ”I honestly don't see why a gentle boy like Alby should have to play a sport. What if he gets a knock to the head? My son can do amazing things in mathematics-things his teachers couldn't evendream of doing-and that could all be ruined by a single head injury in a soccer game. But that horrible sportsmaster insists that sport is compulsory and I can't persuade him to excuse Alby.”
Lois was a lovely woman and she clearly adored Alby, but Jack felt she must be exaggerating things-until later that evening when he himself met the sportsmaster, Mr. Naismith.
Mr. Todd Naismith was a great hulking man who wore tootight tennis shorts and a polo s.h.i.+rt that accentuated his thick biceps. To a kid, he would have appeared gigantic. To Jack, he was just a bigger version of Tyson Bradley-an adult bully.
The big sportsmaster seemed to a.s.sess West's size and stature as he sat down. He pulled out Lily's file, absently tossing a softball in his spare hand as he did so.
”Lily West...” he said, perusing the file. ”Ah, yes. How could I forget. She refused to partic.i.p.ate in a game of dodgeball one day. Said it was a stupid game and that I was a 'dumb jockmoron who didn't know anything about the real world,' if I recall correctly.”
Oh dear,Jack had thought. He hadn't heard about this.
”Geez,” he said. ”I'm really sor-”
”Not much of an athlete, your girl,” Mr. Naismith went on anyway, bringing Jack up short. ”But her teachers tell me she's a bright one. Now booksmarts are one thing, and sure, this school focuses on the academic. But between us, I like sports. You know why I like 'em?”
”I can't imagine-”
”Because they engender a team mentality.Team. The idea of selflessness. If the chips were down and their backs were to the wall, would Lily stand up and put herself on the line for her friends? I would, and I know I would, from my experiences in sport.”
Jack felt his jaw begin to grind, knowing full well what Lily had done on behalf of dips.h.i.+ts like this guy.
”Is that so?” he said slowly.
”It sure is.” Naismith kept tossing his ball and- Quick as a whip, Jack s.n.a.t.c.hed the softball in midair and held it in his gloved left hand between their faces, his icecold blue eyes levelled at the big sportsmaster's.
”Mr. Naismith. Todd. My daughter, she's a good kid. And I have no problem with her conceptions of loyalty and team spirit. I apologize for any offense she might have caused you. She gets her stubbornness from me. But then-”
West squeezed the softball with his mechanical left hand...and with a softcrunch, cracked it to pieces, stringy pieces that fell through his fingers to the floor, the ball's leather cover sliding limply after it.
Mr. Naismith's eyes went wide, his previous confidence vanis.h.i.+ng in a second.
”-perhaps you should try appealing to her on a more intellectual level. You might get a better response that way. Oh, and, Mr. Naismith-Todd-if her little friend, Alby Calvin, doesn't want to play soccer, don't make him. You're making his mother nervous. That'll be all.”
With that, Jack left, leaving Todd Naismith sitting there with his mouth open.
AND SO LILY lived for holidays and weekends, when she could return to the farm and meet up with her old friends.
Wizard's visits were a highlight, although as the months went by, they became less frequent. He was at work, he said, on a very important project, one that he had been working on his whole life.
Lily was thrilled to read his notes, filled as they were with ancient mysteries and symbols, and on a few occasions, she even helped Wizard translate some carvings that were written in the Word of Thoth, an ancient language that only she and one other person in the world could decode.
Twice Wizard brought his research partner Tank Tanaka to the farm.
Lily liked Tank. Clever, cuddly, and fun, on his second visit he brought Lily a toy from his native j.a.pan, a little robot dog built by the Sony Corporation, called Aibo. Lily quickly renamed the dog Sir Barksalot and equally quickly set about using him to terrorize Horus. A quick tweak from Wizard enhanced Sir Barksalot's infrared motion sensors-making him bark if he detected movement, even in the dark. It made for great games of ”spotlight” with Alby, with the goal being to bellycrawl past the hyperalert robot dog.
Tank also had a tattoo on his right forearm that intrigued Lily: it depicted a j.a.panese character hidden behind the flag of j.a.pan. Ever curious about languages, she tried to look it up one day on the Net, but she couldn't find it anywhere.