“Dad?”
“What is it, hon?”
“What’s the comm-code for your attorney?”
“That doesn’t sound good. What’s wrong?”
“We’re being evicted. And those snakes are trying to grab our personal property. Things Simon and I paid for, ourselves.”
“I’ll get the number.”
Five minutes later, she was pouring out her grievance to John Helm, who asked several brief questions, including a query as to whether she had proof that various items had been paid for out of private funds.
“Oh, yes,” she assured him, “I have plenty of proof.”
“Good. Send me the eviction notice and start packing. We can’t fight the actual eviction, but POPPA can’t touch your personal property. That much, at least, I can accomplish. If nothing else, we’ll go public and crucify them on the evening news. I don’t think POPPA will relish having news reports showing them grabbing the personal belongings of a bereaved war heroine and her young daughter. That idiotic film Mirabelle Caresse made about you may just be useful for something, after all.”
“Huh. That would be a switch, wouldn’t it? All right, I’m sending the message now. And thank you.”
“It is entirely my pleasure.”
She sat back, wondering where to start and how she could possibly get everything packed, when someone rang the bell at the front door. Startled, Kafari switched the datascreen view to the entrance security camera. She was even more startled to see who it was. “Aisha?” she said aloud, not quite believing the evidence of her eyes. She flew to the door and opened it with a wondering stare.
“Aisha Ghamal? What in the world are you doing here? How did you get here?”
The older woman gave her a honey-warm smile. “Kafari, it’s good to see you, child. You’ve been so busy, these last few years, I haven’t wanted to bother you. But things are different now. So I just climbed into my car and came along to visit.” She held up a pass-card, required for anyone who wanted to enter Nineveh Base, these days. The P-Squad gate guards had itchy trigger fingers and a serious suspicion of everyone and everything that tried to enter their headquarters and training base. “I had to talk the Klameth Canyon sheriff into it, but he got me an authorization.”
Kafari stared, thunderstruck, from the pass-card to Aisha’s face. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get an authorization like that? My parents had trouble getting one.”
Aisha gave her a broad smile, touched here and there by gold, a slender band edging one tooth, a gleaming star inlaid into another. It was an ancient art form, a cultural tradition early pioneers had carried to the stars from Terra, itself. “Oh, yes, I know exactly how hard it is, Kafari. But Sheriff Jackley never had a chance, once I decided to convince him.” She gave Kafari a broad wink and another grin.
Tears trembled on Kafari’s eyelashes. “It’s just wonderful to see you! Come inside, please.” Kafari ushered her into the living room. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Maybe in a bit. But tell me this, first. Is your little girl here?”
Kafari shook her head. “No, she’s still at school. Yalena’s involved in a whole bunch of after-school clubs.”
“Just as well. From what I’ve been hearing, it’s just as well it’s you and me and nobody else.”
Kafari frowned. “What’s wrong, Aisha?”
“With me? Not a blessed thing. But you have been handed one big heap of troubles. You’ve got a big family, child, and you don’t need me to tell you how blessed you are to still have them. But Dinny and I talked it over and we couldn’t help thinking there might be a thing or two we could do, even if it’s just giving you somebody to talk to, now and again.”
Tears threatened again.
“Now, then, if it don’t hurt too much to talk about it, how’s your husband, child? I don’t hardly bother listening to the news, these days. There’s not two words in ten you can take to the bank without finding ’em counterfeit. So how is he, really?”
The tears spilled over, this time. “He’s alive. But he’s all broken up. Like a china doll somebody smashed into the ground.” She wiped her cheeks. “The doctors say he might walk again. Some day. If he’s lucky. If his immune system doesn’t reject the bone regeneration matrix. The surgeons and rehab specialists on Vishnu have to rebuild him…”
“Rebuild him?” Aisha asked gently, when Kafari stumbled to a halt.
She nodded. “His lower legs and arms were shattered. His breastbone and ribs cracked like spiderwebbed ice. They had to remove splintered bone from his face, a lot of it. Once the new bone matrix has filled in, they’ll have to sculpt a new face for him. And they’ll have to do the same thing with his legs and arms, only it’s worse, there, because a lot of the nerves were severed and crushed. They’re going to try molecular nerve-regeneration therapy to replace nerve networks destroyed in the crash. The emergency air-lift crew said it was literally astonishing that none of his major arteries was severed. If they had, he would’ve bled to death before they reached him.” She wiped her face again. “At least he was on active duty, so the Brigade is paying the bills.”
“Then he wasn’t fired, like the news reports said?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly, no. The Concordiat reassigned him. He was supposed to take command of another Bolo in a place called Hakkor. They’d already dispatched a courier ship to pick him up, told him to be ready to leave within three days. Then his aircar crashed.”
Aisha pinned her with an intense stare. “Was that crash an accident?”
“I don’t know,” Kafari whispered. “There’s no proof.”
“Huh,” the older woman muttered. “I got all the proof I need, child, looking at your face and watching what’s happening, out there.” She nodded toward Madison.
Kafari sighed. “Whatever the truth is, there’s nothing I can do about it, one way or the other. And just now, I’ve got bigger worries on my mind. We’re being evicted. We have twenty-five hours to leave.”
“Twenty-five hours? Honey child, you and I got a fair bit of work to do, then, don’t we?” She stood up and glanced around the apartment. “You got any boxes? Or suitcases?”
“Aisha, you don’t have to…”
“Oh, yes I do. There’s some things the Lord puts in our path, meaning for us to do, and I can tell you from experience, we turn into mean little people if we don’t do them. So you tell me what goes and what doesn’t and we’ll just get started.”
The faucet behind Kafari’s eyes started dripping again. Kafari hugged her, hard, and felt the other woman’s love wrap around her, along with strong, protective arms. Perhaps it was foolish — or merely desperate — but as they began to sort out what could be salvaged, she felt a wave of hope crest within her, born of the realization that she had the support of both family and friends. As bad as things might get in the next few months and years, she wouldn’t face them entirely alone.
And if Dinny and Aisha Ghamal ever needed help…
Kafari would move mountains — even star systems — to give it.
IV
At the end of five days, twenty-one hours, and seventeen minutes, I conclude that I am in serious trouble and do not know how to remedy the situation. President Zeloc has not contacted me again, evidently too busy doing whatever it is he does, all day, to contact me. I do not know what Gifre Zeloc does, because I have been locked out of the Presidential Residence’s security system, by some very sophisticated programming on extremely expensive psychotronic hardware. This was put into place shortly after my first lengthy debriefing with the president. Evidently, Gifre Zeloc prizes his privacy and is willing to pay a great deal of money to maintain it.