"but the matrix is all wrong for it to be a food preparation area, "
"yes, yes," Pota replied impatiently," but what about the integument, "
"Mum!" Tia said, running up to them and tugging it her mother's elbow. "I've found something!"
"Hello, pumpkin, that's very nice," her mother replied absently, hugging her, and going right on with her conversation. Her intense expression showed that she was thinking while she spoke, and her eyes never wandered from her husband's face, and as for Braddon, the rest of the world simply did not exist.
"Mum!" Tia persisted. "I've found an artifact!"
"In a moment, dear," Pota replied. "But what about, "
"MUM!" Tia shouted, disobeying every rule of not interrupting grown-ups in desperation, knowing from all the signs that she would never get their attention otherwise. Conversations like this one could go on for hours. "I've found an artifact!"
Both her parents stopped their argument in midsentence and stared at her. Silence enveloped the room; an ominous silence. Tia gulped nervously.
"Tia," Braddon finally said, disapproval creeping into his voice. "Your mother and I are in the middle of a very important conversation. This is not the time for pretend."
"Dad, it's not pretend!" she said insistently, pointing to her plastic box. "It's not! I found an artifact, and there's more."
Pota raised an eyebrow at her husband and shrugged. Braddon picked up the box, carelessly, and Tia winced as the first lump inside visibly disintegrated more.
"I am going to respect your intelligence and integrity enough to assume that you think you found an artifact," Braddon replied, prying the lid from the container. "But Tia, you know better than to,"
He glanced down inside, and his eyebrows arched upward in the greatest show of surprise that Tia had ever seen him make.
"I told you," Tia could not resist saying, triumphantly.
"so they took the big lights out to the trench, and the extra field-generators," she told Ted E. Bear after she'd been put to bed for the night. "They were out there for hours, and they let me wait up to hear what it was. And it was, I did find a garbage dump! A big one, too! Mum made a special call to the Institute, 'cause this is the first really big EsKay dump anybody's ever found."
She hugged Ted closer, basking in the warmth of Pota's praise, a warmth that still lingered and made he fed happy right down to her toes. "You did everything exactly right with the equipment you had," Pota had told her. "I've had undergraduates that didn't do a well as you did, pumpkin! You remember what I told you, when you asked me about why I wanted to find garbage?"
"That we learn more from sentients' garbage than from anything other than their literature," she recited dutifully.
"Well," Pota had replied, sitting on the edge of he bed and touching her nose with one finger, playfully. "You, my curious little chick, have just upgraded this site from a Class One to a Class Three with four hours of work! That's more than Braddon and I have ever done!"
"Does that mean that we'll be leaving?" she'd asked in confusion.
"Eventually," Pota told her, a certain gloating glee in her voice. "But it takes time to put together a Class Three team, and we happen to be right here. Your father and I will be making gigabytes of important discoveries before the team gets here to replace us. And with that much already invested, they may not replace us!"
Tia had shaken her head, confused.
Pota had hugged her. "What I mean, pumpkin, is that there is a very good chance that we'll stay on here as the dig supervisors! An instant promotion from Class One supervisor to Class Three supervisor! There'll be better equipment, a better dome to live in, you'll have some playmates, couriers will be by every week instead of every few months, not to mention the raises in pay and status! All the papers on this site will go out under our names! And all because you were my clever, bright, careful little girl, who knew what she saw and knew when to stop playing!"
"Mum and Dad are really, really happy," she told Ted, thinking about the glow of joy that had been on both their faces when they finished the expensive link to the nearest Institute supervisor. "I think we did a good thing. I think maybe you brought us luck, Ted." She yawned. "Except about the other kids coming. But we don't have to play with them if we don't want to, do we?"
Ted agreed silently, and she hugged him again. "I'd rather talk to you, anyway," she told him. "You never say anything dumb. Dad says that if you can't say something intelligent, you shouldn't say anything; and Mum says that people who know when to shut up are the smartest people of all, so I guess you must be pretty smart Right?"
But she never got a chance to find out if Ted agreed with that statement, because at that point she fell right asleep.
Over the course of the next few days, it became evident that this was not just an ordinary garbage dump; This was one containing scientific or medical debris. That raised the status of the site from 'important' to 'priceless', and Pota and Braddon took to spending every waking moment either at the site or preserving and examining their finds, making copious notes, and any number of speculations. They hardly ever saw Tia anymore; they had changed their schedule so that they were awake long before she was and came in long after she went to bed.
Pota apologized, via a holo that she had left to play for Tia as soon as she came in to breakfast this morning.
"Pumpkin," her image said, while Tia sipped her juice. "I hope you can understand why we're doing this. The more we find out before the team gets sent out, the more we make ourselves essential to the dig, the better our chances for that promotion." Pota's image ran a hand through her hair; to Tia's critical eyes, she looked very tired, and a bit frazzled, but fairly satisfied. "It won't be more than a few weeks, I promise. Then things will go back to normal. Better than normal, in fact. I promise that we'll have a Family Day before the team gets here, all right? So start thinking what you'd like to do."
Well, that would be stellar! Tia knew exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted to go out to the mountains on the big sled, and she wanted to drive it herself on the way.
"So forgive us, all right? We don't love you any less and we think about you all the time, and we miss you like anything." Pota blew a kiss toward the camera. I know you can take care of yourself; in fact, we're counting on that. You're making a big difference to us. I was you to know that. Love you, baby."
Tia finished her juice as the holo flickered out, and certain temptation raised its head. This could be really unique opportunity to play hooky, just a little bit. Mum and Dad were not going to be checking the tutor to see how her lessons were going, and the Institute Psychs wouldn't care; they thought she was too advanced for her age anyway. She could even raid library for the holos she wasn't precisely supposed to watch.
"Oh, Finagle," she said, regretfully, after a moment It might be fun, but it would be guilty fun. And besides, sooner or later, Mum and Dad would find out what she'd done, and poof, there would go the Family Day and probably a lot of other privileges. She weighed the immediate pleasure of being lazy and watching forbidden holos against the future pleasure of being able to pilot the sled up the mountains, and the latter outranked the former. Piloting the sled was the closest she would get to piloting a ship, and she wouldn't be able to do that for years and years and years yet.